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[
"P. G. Wodehouse",
"Broadway: 1915-19",
"What did he do in Broadway?",
"Wodehouse \"the most observant, literate, and witty lyricist of his day\".",
"What prompted him to go to Broadway?",
"they thought the song lyrics weak and invited Wodehouse to join them on its successor.",
"How many musicals did he write?",
"I don't know.",
"Who invited him to Broadway?",
"Jerome Kern introduced him to the writer Guy Bolton, who became Wodehouse's closest friend and a regular collaborator."
] | C_14a60ae6a0404de9a8adfd5f0367ce69_1 | What was his best success? | 5 | What was P. G. Wodehouse's best success? | P. G. Wodehouse | A third milestone in Wodehouse's life came towards the end of 1915: his old songwriting partner Jerome Kern introduced him to the writer Guy Bolton, who became Wodehouse's closest friend and a regular collaborator. Bolton and Kern had a musical, Very Good Eddie, running at the Princess Theatre in New York. The show was successful, but they thought the song lyrics weak and invited Wodehouse to join them on its successor. This was Miss Springtime (1916), which ran for 227 performances--a good run by the standards of the day. The team produced several more successes, including Leave It to Jane (1917), Oh, Boy! (1917-18) and Oh, Lady! Lady!! (1918), and Wodehouse and Bolton wrote a few more shows with other composers. In these musicals Wodehouse's lyrics won high praise from critics as well as fellow lyricists such as Ira Gershwin. Unlike his original model, Gilbert, Wodehouse preferred the music to be written first, fitting his words into the melodies. Donaldson suggests that this is the reason why his lyrics have largely been overlooked in recent years: they fit the music perfectly, but do not stand on their own in verse form as Gilbert's do. Nonetheless, Donaldson adds, the book and lyrics for the Princess Theatre shows made the collaborators an enormous fortune and played an important part in the development of the American musical. In the Grove Dictionary of American Music Larry Stempel writes, "By presenting naturalistic stories and characters and attempting to integrate the songs and lyrics into the action of the libretto, these works brought a new level of intimacy, cohesion, and sophistication to American musical comedy." The theatre writer Gerald Bordman calls Wodehouse "the most observant, literate, and witty lyricist of his day". The composer Richard Rodgers wrote, "Before Larry Hart, only P.G. Wodehouse had made any real assault on the intelligence of the song-listening public." In the years after the war, Wodehouse steadily increased his sales, polished his existing characters and introduced new ones. Bertie and Jeeves, Lord Emsworth and his circle, and Ukridge appeared in novels and short stories; Psmith made his fourth and last appearance; two new characters were the Oldest Member, narrating his series of golfing stories, and Mr Mulliner, telling his particularly tall tales to fellow patrons of the bar at the Angler's Rest. Various other young men-about-town appeared in short stories about members of the Drones Club. The Wodehouses returned to England, where they had a house in London for some years, but Wodehouse continued to cross the Atlantic frequently, spending substantial periods in New York. He continued to work in the theatre. During the 1920s he collaborated on nine musical comedies produced on Broadway or in the West End, including the long-running Sally (1920, New York), The Cabaret Girl (1922, London) and Rosalie (1928, New York). He also wrote non-musical plays, including The Play's the Thing (1926), adapted from Ferenc Molnar, and A Damsel in Distress (1928), a dramatisation of his 1919 novel. Though never a naturally gregarious man, Wodehouse was more sociable in the 1920s than at other periods. Donaldson lists among those with whom he was on friendly terms writers including A.A. Milne, Ian Hay, Frederick Lonsdale and E. Phillips Oppenheim, and stage performers including George Grossmith, Jr., Heather Thatcher and Dorothy Dickson. CANNOTANSWER | the long-running Sally (1920, New York), | Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, ( ; 15 October 188114 February 1975) was an English author and one of the most widely read humorists of the 20th century. His creations include the feather-brained Bertie Wooster and his sagacious valet, Jeeves; the immaculate and loquacious Psmith; Lord Emsworth and the Blandings Castle set; the Oldest Member, with stories about golf; and Mr Mulliner, with tall tales on subjects ranging from bibulous bishops to megalomaniac movie moguls.
Born in Guildford, the third son of a British magistrate based in Hong Kong, Wodehouse spent happy teenage years at Dulwich College, to which he remained devoted all his life. After leaving school he was employed by a bank but disliked the work and turned to writing in his spare time. His early novels were mostly school stories, but he later switched to comic fiction. Most of Wodehouse's fiction is set in his native United Kingdom, although he spent much of his life in the US and used New York and Hollywood as settings for some of his novels and short stories. He wrote a series of Broadway musical comedies during and after the First World War, together with Guy Bolton and Jerome Kern, that played an important part in the development of the American musical. He began the 1930s writing for MGM in Hollywood. In a 1931 interview, his naive revelations of incompetence and extravagance in the studios caused a furore. In the same decade, his literary career reached a new peak.
In 1934 Wodehouse moved to France for tax reasons; in 1940 he was taken prisoner at Le Touquet by the invading Germans and interned for nearly a year. After his release he made six broadcasts from German radio in Berlin to the US, which had not yet entered the war. The talks were comic and apolitical, but his broadcasting over enemy radio prompted anger and strident controversy in Britain, and a threat of prosecution. Wodehouse never returned to England. From 1947 until his death he lived in the US, taking dual British-American citizenship in 1955. He died in 1975, at the age of 93, in Southampton, New York.
Wodehouse was a prolific writer throughout his life, publishing more than ninety books, forty plays, two hundred short stories and other writings between 1902 and 1974. He worked extensively on his books, sometimes having two or more in preparation simultaneously. He would take up to two years to build a plot and write a scenario of about thirty thousand words. After the scenario was complete he would write the story. Early in his career Wodehouse would produce a novel in about three months, but he slowed in old age to around six months. He used a mixture of Edwardian slang, quotations from and allusions to numerous poets, and several literary techniques to produce a prose style that has been compared to comic poetry and musical comedy. Some critics of Wodehouse have considered his work flippant, but among his fans are former British prime ministers and many of his fellow writers.
Life and career
Early years
Wodehouse was born in Guildford, Surrey, the third son of Henry Ernest Wodehouse (1845–1929), a magistrate resident in the British colony of Hong Kong, and his wife, Eleanor (1861–1941), daughter of the Rev John Bathurst Deane. The Wodehouses, who traced their ancestry back to the 13th century, belonged to a cadet branch of the family of the earls of Kimberley. Eleanor Wodehouse was also of ancient aristocratic ancestry. She was visiting her sister in Guildford when Wodehouse was born there prematurely.
The boy was baptised at the Church of St Nicolas, Guildford, and was named after his godfather, Pelham von Donop. Wodehouse wrote in 1957, "If you ask me to tell you frankly if I like the name Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, I must confess that I do not.... I was named after a godfather, and not a thing to show for it but a small silver mug which I lost in 1897." The first name was rapidly elided to "Plum", the name by which Wodehouse became known to family and friends.
Mother and son sailed for Hong Kong, where for his first two years Wodehouse was raised by a Chinese amah (nurse), alongside his elder brothers Peveril (1877–1951) and Armine (1879–1936). When he was two, the brothers were brought to England, where they were placed under the care of an English nanny in a house adjoining that of Eleanor's father and mother. The boys' parents returned to Hong Kong and became virtual strangers to their sons. Such an arrangement was then normal for middle-class families based in the colonies. The lack of parental contact, and the harsh regime of some of those in loco parentis, left permanent emotional scars on many children from similar backgrounds, including the writers Thackeray, Saki, Kipling and Walpole. Wodehouse was more fortunate; his nanny, Emma Roper, was strict but not unkind, and both with her and later at his different schools Wodehouse had a generally happy childhood. His recollection was that "it went like a breeze from start to finish, with everybody I met understanding me perfectly". The biographer Robert McCrum suggests that nonetheless Wodehouse's isolation from his parents left a psychological mark, causing him to avoid emotional engagement both in life and in his works. Another biographer, Frances Donaldson, writes, "Deprived so early, not merely of maternal love, but of home life and even a stable background, Wodehouse consoled himself from the youngest age in an imaginary world of his own."
In 1886 the brothers were sent to a dame-school in Croydon, where they spent three years. Peveril was then found to have a "weak chest"; sea air was prescribed, and the three boys were moved to Elizabeth College on the island of Guernsey. In 1891 Wodehouse went on to Malvern House Preparatory School in Kent, which concentrated on preparing its pupils for entry to the Royal Navy. His father had planned a naval career for him, but the boy's eyesight was found to be too poor for it. He was unimpressed by the school's narrow curriculum and zealous discipline; he later parodied it in his novels, with Bertie Wooster recalling his early years as a pupil at a "penitentiary... with the outward guise of a prep school" called Malvern House.
Throughout their school years the brothers were sent to stay during the holidays with various uncles and aunts from both sides of the family. In the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Iain Sproat counts twenty aunts and considers that they played an important part not only in Wodehouse's early life, but, thinly disguised, in his mature novels, as the formidable aunts who dominate the action in the Wooster, Blandings, and other stories. The boys had fifteen uncles, four of whom were clergymen. Sproat writes that they inspired Wodehouse's "pious but fallible curates, vicars, and bishops, of which he wrote with friendly irreverence but without mockery".
At the age of twelve in 1894, to his great joy, Wodehouse was able to follow his brother Armine to Dulwich College. He was entirely at home there; Donaldson comments that Dulwich gave him, for the first time, "some continuity and a stable and ordered life". He loved the camaraderie, distinguished himself at cricket, rugby and boxing, and was a good, if not consistently diligent, student. The headmaster at the time was A. H. Gilkes, a respected classicist, who was a strong influence on Wodehouse. In a study of Wodehouse's works, Richard Usborne argues that "only a writer who was himself a scholar and had had his face ground into Latin and Greek (especially Thucydides) as a boy" could sustain the complex sequences of subordinate clauses sometimes found in Wodehouse's comic prose.
Wodehouse's six years at Dulwich were among the happiest of his life: "To me the years between 1894 and 1900 were like heaven." In addition to his sporting achievements he was a good singer and enjoyed taking part in school concerts; his literary leanings found an outlet in editing the school magazine, The Alleynian. For the rest of his life he remained devoted to the school. The biographer Barry Phelps writes that Wodehouse "loved the college as much as he loved anything or anybody".
Reluctant banker; budding writer: 1900–1908
Wodehouse expected to follow Armine to the University of Oxford, but the family's finances took a turn for the worse at the crucial moment. Ernest Wodehouse had retired in 1895, and his pension was paid in rupees; fluctuation against the pound reduced its value in Britain. Wodehouse recalled, "The wolf was not actually whining at the door and there was always a little something in the kitty for the butcher and the grocer, but the finances would not run to anything in the nature of a splash". Instead of a university career, in September 1900 Wodehouse was engaged in a junior position in the London office of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank. He was unsuited to it and found the work baffling and uncongenial. He later wrote a humorous account of his experiences at the bank, but at the time he longed for the end of each working day, when he could return to his rented lodgings in Chelsea and write. At first he concentrated, with some success, on serious articles about school sports for Public School Magazine. In November 1900 his first comic piece, "Men Who Missed Their Own Weddings", was accepted by Tit-Bits. A new magazine for boys, The Captain, provided further well-paid opportunities, and during his two years at the bank, Wodehouse had eighty pieces published in a total of nine magazines.
In 1901, with the help of a former Dulwich master, William Beach Thomas, Wodehouse secured an appointment—at first temporary and later permanent—writing for The Globes popular "By the Way" column. He held the post until 1909. At around the same time his first novel was published—a school story called The Pothunters, serialised incomplete in Public School Magazine in early 1902, and issued in full in hardback in September. He resigned from the bank that month to devote himself to writing full-time.
Between the publication of The Pothunters 1902 and that of Mike in 1909, Wodehouse wrote eight novels and co-wrote another two. The critic R. D. B. French writes that, of Wodehouse's work from this period, almost all that deserves to survive is the school fiction. Looking back in the 1950s Wodehouse viewed these as his apprentice years: "I was practically in swaddling clothes and it is extremely creditable to me that I was able to write at all."
From his boyhood Wodehouse had been fascinated by America, which he conceived of as "a land of romance"; he "yearned" to visit the country, and by 1904 he had earned enough to do so. In April he sailed to New York, which he found greatly to his liking. He noted in his diary: "In New York gathering experience. Worth many guineas in the future but none for the moment." This prediction proved correct: few British writers had first-hand experience of the US, and his articles about life in New York brought him higher than usual fees. He later recalled that "in 1904 anyone in the London writing world who had been to America was regarded with awe and looked upon as an authority on that terra incognita.... After that trip to New York I was a man who counted.... My income rose like a rocketing pheasant."
Wodehouse's other new venture in 1904 was writing for the stage. Towards the end of the year the librettist Owen Hall invited him to contribute an additional lyric for a musical comedy Sergeant Brue. Wodehouse had loved theatre since his first visit, aged thirteen, when Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience had made him "drunk with ecstasy". His lyric for Hall, "Put Me in My Little Cell", was a Gilbertian number for a trio of comic crooks, with music by Frederick Rosse; it was well received and launched Wodehouse on a career as a theatre writer that spanned three decades.
Although it made little impact on its first publication, the 1906 novel Love Among the Chickens contained what French calls the author's first original comic creation: Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge. The character, an amoral, bungling opportunist, is partly based on Wodehouse's Globe colleague Herbert Westbrook. The two collaborated between 1907 and 1913 on two books, two music hall sketches, and a play, Brother Alfred. Wodehouse would return to the character in short stories over the next six decades.
In early 1906 the actor-manager Seymour Hicks invited Wodehouse to become resident lyricist at the Aldwych Theatre, to add topical verses to newly imported or long-running shows. Hicks had already recruited the young Jerome Kern to write the music for such songs. The first Kern-Wodehouse collaboration, a comic number for The Beauty of Bath titled "Mr [Joseph] Chamberlain", was a show-stopper and was briefly the most popular song in London.
Psmith, Blandings, Wooster and Jeeves: 1908–1915
Wodehouse's early period as a writer came to an end in 1908 with the serialisation of The Lost Lambs, published the following year in book form as the second half of the novel Mike. The work begins as a conventional school story, but Wodehouse introduces a new and strikingly original character, Psmith, whose creation both Evelyn Waugh and George Orwell regarded as a watershed in Wodehouse's development. Wodehouse said that he based Psmith on the hotelier and impresario Rupert D'Oyly Carte—"the only thing in my literary career which was handed to me on a silver plate with watercress around it". Wodehouse wrote in the 1970s that a cousin of his who had been at school with Carte told him of the latter's monocle, studied suavity, and stateliness of speech, all of which Wodehouse adopted for his new character. Psmith featured in three more novels: Psmith in the City (1910), a burlesque of banking; Psmith, Journalist (1915) set in New York; and Leave It to Psmith (1923), set at Blandings Castle.
In May 1909 Wodehouse made his second visit to New York, where he sold two short stories to Cosmopolitan and Collier's for a total of $500, a much higher fee than he had commanded previously. He resigned from The Globe and stayed in New York for nearly a year. He sold many more stories, but none of the American publications offered a permanent relationship and guaranteed income. Wodehouse returned to England in late 1910, rejoining The Globe and also contributing regularly to The Strand Magazine. Between then and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 he revisited America frequently.
Wodehouse was in New York when the war began. Ineligible for military service because of his poor eyesight, he remained in the US throughout the war, detached from the conflict in Europe and absorbed in his theatrical and literary concerns. In September 1914 he married Ethel May Wayman, née Newton (1885–1984), an English widow. The marriage proved happy and lifelong. Ethel's personality was in contrast with her husband's: he was shy and impractical; she was gregarious, decisive and well organised. In Sproat's phrase, she "took charge of Wodehouse's life and made certain that he had the peace and quiet he needed to write". There were no children of the marriage, but Wodehouse came to love Ethel's daughter Leonora (1905–1944) and legally adopted her.
Wodehouse experimented with different genres of fiction in these years; Psmith, Journalist, mixing comedy with social comment on slum landlords and racketeers, was published in 1915. In the same year The Saturday Evening Post paid $3,500 to serialise Something New, the first of what became a series of novels set at Blandings Castle. It was published in hardback in the US and the UK in the same year (the British edition being retitled Something Fresh). It was Wodehouse's first farcical novel; it was also his first best-seller, and although his later books included some gentler, lightly sentimental stories, it was as a farceur that he became known. Later in the same year "Extricating Young Gussie", the first story about Bertie and Jeeves, was published. These stories introduced two sets of characters about whom Wodehouse wrote for the rest of his life. The Blandings Castle stories, set in an English stately home, depict the attempts of the placid Lord Emsworth to evade the many distractions around him, which include successive pairs of young lovers, the machinations of his exuberant brother Galahad, the demands of his domineering sisters and super-efficient secretaries, and anything detrimental to his prize sow, the Empress of Blandings. The Bertie and Jeeves stories feature an amiable young man-about-town, regularly rescued from the consequences of his idiocy by the benign interference of his valet.
Broadway: 1915–1919
A third milestone in Wodehouse's life came towards the end of 1915: his old songwriting partner Jerome Kern introduced him to the writer Guy Bolton, who became Wodehouse's closest friend and a regular collaborator. Bolton and Kern had a musical, Very Good Eddie, running at the Princess Theatre in New York. The show was successful, but they thought the song lyrics weak and invited Wodehouse to join them on its successor. This was Miss Springtime (1916), which ran for 227 performances—a good run by the standards of the day. The team produced several more successes, including Leave It to Jane (1917), Oh, Boy! (1917–18) and Oh, Lady! Lady!! (1918), and Wodehouse and Bolton wrote a few more shows with other composers. In these musicals Wodehouse's lyrics won high praise from critics as well as fellow lyricists such as Ira Gershwin.
Unlike his original model, Gilbert, Wodehouse preferred the music to be written first, fitting his words into the melodies. Donaldson suggests that this is the reason why his lyrics have largely been overlooked in recent years: they fit the music perfectly, but do not stand on their own in verse form as Gilbert's do. Nonetheless, Donaldson adds, the book and lyrics for the Princess Theatre shows made the collaborators an enormous fortune and played an important part in the development of the American musical. In the Grove Dictionary of American Music Larry Stempel writes, "By presenting naturalistic stories and characters and attempting to integrate the songs and lyrics into the action of the libretto, these works brought a new level of intimacy, cohesion, and sophistication to American musical comedy." The theatre writer Gerald Bordman calls Wodehouse "the most observant, literate, and witty lyricist of his day". The composer Richard Rodgers wrote, "Before Larry Hart, only P.G. Wodehouse had made any real assault on the intelligence of the song-listening public."
1920s
In the years after the war, Wodehouse steadily increased his sales, polished his existing characters and introduced new ones. Bertie and Jeeves, Lord Emsworth and his circle, and Ukridge appeared in novels and short stories; Psmith made his fourth and last appearance; two new characters were the Oldest Member, narrating his series of golfing stories, and Mr Mulliner, telling his particularly tall tales to fellow patrons of the bar at the Angler's Rest. Various other young men-about-town appeared in short stories about members of the Drones Club.
The Wodehouses returned to England, where they had a house in London for some years, but Wodehouse continued to cross the Atlantic frequently, spending substantial periods in New York. He continued to work in the theatre. During the 1920s he collaborated on nine musical comedies produced on Broadway or in the West End, including the long-running Sally (1920, New York), The Cabaret Girl (1922, London) and Rosalie (1928, New York). He also wrote non-musical plays, including The Play's the Thing (1926), adapted from Ferenc Molnár, and A Damsel in Distress (1928), a dramatisation of his 1919 novel.
Though never a naturally gregarious man, Wodehouse was more sociable in the 1920s than at other periods. Donaldson lists among those with whom he was on friendly terms writers including A. A. Milne, Ian Hay, Frederick Lonsdale and E. Phillips Oppenheim, and stage performers including George Grossmith Jr., Heather Thatcher and Dorothy Dickson.
Hollywood: 1929–1931
There had been films of Wodehouse stories since 1915, when A Gentleman of Leisure was based on his 1910 novel of the same name. Further screen adaptations of his books were made between then and 1927, but it was not until 1929 that Wodehouse went to Hollywood where Bolton was working as a highly paid writer for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Ethel was taken with both the financial and social aspects of Hollywood life, and she negotiated a contract with MGM on her husband's behalf under which he would be paid $2,000 a week. This large salary was particularly welcome because the couple had lost considerable sums in the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
The contract started in May 1930, but the studio found little for Wodehouse to do, and he had spare time to write a novel and nine short stories. He commented, "It's odd how soon one comes to look on every minute as wasted that is given to earning one's salary." Even when the studio found a project for him to work on, the interventions of committees and constant rewriting by numerous contract authors meant that his ideas were rarely used. In a 2005 study of Wodehouse in Hollywood, Brian Taves writes that Those Three French Girls (1930) was "as close to a success as Wodehouse was to have at MGM. His only other credits were minimal, and the other projects he worked on were not produced."
Wodehouse's contract ended after a year and was not renewed. At MGM's request, he gave an interview to The Los Angeles Times. Wodehouse was described by Herbert Warren Wind as "politically naive [and] fundamentally unworldly", and he caused a sensation by saying publicly what he had already told his friends privately about Hollywood's inefficiency, arbitrary decision-making, and waste of expensive talent. The interview was reprinted in The New York Times, and there was much editorial comment about the state of the film industry. Many writers have considered that the interview precipitated a radical overhaul of the studio system, but Taves believes it to have been "a storm in a teacup", and Donaldson comments that, in the straitened post-crash era, the reforms would have been inevitable.
Wind's view of Wodehouse's naïveté is not universally held. Biographers including Donaldson, McCrum and Phelps suggest that his unworldliness was only part of a complex character, and that in some respects he was highly astute. He was unsparing of the studio owners in his early-1930s short stories set in Hollywood, which contain what Taves considers Wodehouse's sharpest and most biting satire.
Best-seller: 1930s
During the 1930s Wodehouse's theatrical work tailed off. He wrote or adapted four plays for the West End; Leave it to Psmith (1930), which he adapted in collaboration with Ian Hay, was the only one to have a long run. The reviewer in The Manchester Guardian praised the play, but commented: "It is Mr Wodehouse's own inimitable narrative comments and descriptions in his own person of the antics of his puppets that one misses. They cannot be got into a play and they are at least half the fun of the novels." In 1934 Wodehouse collaborated with Bolton on the book for Cole Porter's Anything Goes (Porter wrote his own lyrics), but at the last minute their version was almost entirely rewritten by others at the instigation of the producer, who disliked the original script. Concentrating on writing novels and short stories, Wodehouse reached the peak of his productivity in this decade, averaging two books each year, and grossing an annual £100,000.
His practice of dividing his time between Britain and America caused Wodehouse difficulties with the tax authorities of both countries. Both the UK Inland Revenue and the US Internal Revenue Service sought to tax him as a resident. The matter was settled after lengthy negotiations, but the Wodehouses decided to change their residential status beyond doubt by moving to France, where they bought a house near Le Touquet in the north.
In 1935 Wodehouse created the last of his regular cast of principal characters, Lord Ickenham, otherwise known as Uncle Fred, who, in Usborne's words, "leads the dance in four novels and a short story... a whirring dynamo of misrule". His other books from the decade include Right Ho, Jeeves, which Donaldson judged his best work, Uncle Fred in the Springtime, which the writer Bernard Levin considered the best, and Blandings Castle, which contains "Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend", which Rudyard Kipling thought "one of the most perfect short stories I have ever read".
Other leading literary figures who admired Wodehouse were A. E. Housman, Max Beerbohm and Hilaire Belloc; on the radio and in print Belloc called Wodehouse "the best writer of our time: the best living writer of English... the head of my profession". Wodehouse regarded Belloc's plaudit as "a gag, to get a rise out of serious-minded authors whom he disliked". Wodehouse was never sure that his books had literary merit as well as popular appeal, and, Donaldson suggests, must have been overwhelmed when the University of Oxford conferred an honorary doctorate of letters on him in June 1939. His visit to England for the awarding ceremony was the last time he set foot in his native land.
Second World War: internment and broadcasts
At the start of the Second World War Wodehouse and his wife remained at their Le Touquet house, where, during the Phoney War, he worked on Joy in the Morning. With the advance of the Germans, the nearby Royal Air Force base withdrew; Wodehouse was offered the sole spare seat in one of the fighter aircraft, but he turned down the opportunity as it would have meant leaving behind Ethel and their dog. On 21 May 1940, with German troops advancing through northern France, the Wodehouses decided to drive to Portugal and fly from there to the US. Two miles from home their car broke down, so they returned and borrowed a car from a neighbour; with the routes blocked with refugees, they returned home again.
The Germans occupied Le Touquet on 22 May 1940 and Wodehouse had to report to the authorities daily. After two months of occupation the Germans interned all male enemy nationals under 60, and Wodehouse was sent to a former prison in Loos, a suburb of Lille, on 21 July; Ethel remained in Le Touquet. The internees were placed four to a cell, each of which had been designed for one man. One bed was available per cell, which was made available to the eldest man—not Wodehouse, who slept on the granite floor. The prisoners were not kept long in Loos before they were transported in cattle trucks to a former barracks in Liège, Belgium, which was run as a prison by the SS. After a week the men were transferred to Huy in Liège, where they were incarcerated in the local citadel. They remained there until September 1940, when they were transported to Tost in Upper Silesia (then Germany, now Toszek in Poland).
Wodehouse's family and friends had not had any news of his location after the fall of France, but an article from an Associated Press reporter who had visited Tost in December 1940 led to pressure on the German authorities to release the novelist. This included a petition from influential people in the US; Senator W. Warren Barbour presented it to the German ambassador. Although his captors refused to release him, Wodehouse was provided with a typewriter and, to pass the time, he wrote Money in the Bank. Throughout his time in Tost, he sent postcards to his US literary agent asking for $5 to be sent to various people in Canada, mentioning his name. These were the families of Canadian prisoners of war, and the news from Wodehouse was the first indication that their sons were alive and well. Wodehouse risked severe punishment for the communication, but managed to evade the German censor.
On 21 June 1941, while he was in the middle of playing a game of cricket, Wodehouse received a visit from two members of the Gestapo. He was given ten minutes to pack his things before he was taken to the Hotel Adlon, a top luxury hotel in Berlin. He stayed there at his own expense; royalties from the German editions of his books had been put into a special frozen bank account at the outset of the war, and Wodehouse was permitted to draw upon this money he had earned while staying in Berlin. He was thus released from internment a few months before his sixtieth birthday—the age at which civilian internees were released by the Nazis. Shortly afterwards Wodehouse was, in the words of Phelps, "cleverly trapped" into making five broadcasts to the US via German radio, with the Berlin-based correspondent of the Columbia Broadcasting System. The broadcasts—aired on 28 June, 9, 23 and 30 July and 6 August—were titled How to be an Internee Without Previous Training, and comprised humorous anecdotes about Wodehouse's experiences as a prisoner, including some gentle mocking of his captors. The German propaganda ministry arranged for the recordings to be broadcast to Britain in August. The day after Wodehouse recorded his final programme, Ethel joined him in Berlin, having sold most of her jewellery to pay for the journey.
Aftermath: reactions and investigation
The reaction in Britain to Wodehouse's broadcasts was hostile, and he was "reviled ... as a traitor, collaborator, Nazi propagandist, and a coward", although, Phelps observes, many of those who decried his actions had not heard the content of the programmes. A front-page article in The Daily Mirror stated that Wodehouse "lived luxuriously because Britain laughed with him, but when the laughter was out of his country's heart, ... [he] was not ready to share her suffering. He hadn't the guts ... even to stick it out in the internment camp." In the House of Commons Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary, regretted Wodehouse's actions. Several libraries removed Wodehouse novels from their shelves.
On 15 July the journalist William Connor, under his pen name Cassandra, broadcast a postscript to the news programme railing against Wodehouse. According to The Times, the broadcast "provoked a storm of complaint ... from listeners all over the country". Wodehouse's biographer, Joseph Connolly, thinks the broadcast "inaccurate, spiteful and slanderous"; Phelps calls it "probably the most vituperative attack on an individual ever heard on British radio". The broadcast was made at the direct instruction of Duff Cooper, the Minister of Information, who overruled strong protests made by the BBC against the decision to air the programme. Numerous letters appeared in the British press, both supporting and criticising Wodehouse. The letters page of The Daily Telegraph became a focus for censuring Wodehouse, including one from Wodehouse's friend, ; a reply from their fellow author Compton Mackenzie in defence of Wodehouse was not published because the editor claimed a lack of space. Most of those defending Wodehouse against accusations of disloyalty, including Sax Rohmer, Dorothy L. Sayers and Gilbert Frankau, conceded that he had acted stupidly. Some members of the public wrote to the newspapers to say that the full facts were not yet known and a fair judgment could not be made until they were. The management of the BBC, who considered Wodehouse's actions no worse than "ill advised", pointed out to Cooper that there was no evidence at that point whether Wodehouse had acted voluntarily or under compulsion.
When Wodehouse heard of the furore the broadcasts had caused, he contacted the Foreign Office—through the Swiss embassy in Berlin—to explain his actions, and attempted to return home via neutral countries, but the German authorities refused to let him leave. In Performing Flea, a 1953 collection of letters, Wodehouse wrote, "Of course I ought to have had the sense to see that it was a loony thing to do to use the German radio for even the most harmless stuff, but I didn't. I suppose prison life saps the intellect". The reaction in America was mixed: the left-leaning publication PM accused Wodehouse of "play[ing] Jeeves to the Nazis", but the Department of War used the interviews as an ideal representation of anti-Nazi propaganda.
The Wodehouses remained in Germany until September 1943, when, because of the Allied bombings, they were allowed to move back to Paris. They were living there when the city was liberated on 25 August 1944; Wodehouse reported to the American authorities the following day, asking them to inform the British of his whereabouts. He was subsequently visited by Malcolm Muggeridge, recently arrived in Paris as an intelligence officer with MI6. The young officer quickly came to like Wodehouse and considered the question of treasonable behaviour as "ludicrous"; he summed up the writer as "ill-fitted to live in an age of ideological conflict". On 9 September Wodehouse was visited by an MI5 officer and former barrister, Major Edward Cussen, who formally investigated him, a process that stretched over four days. On 28 September Cussen filed his report, which states that in regard to the broadcasts, Wodehouse's behaviour "has been unwise", but advised against further action. On 23 November Theobald Matthew, the Director of Public Prosecutions, decided there was no evidence to justify prosecuting Wodehouse.
In November 1944 Duff Cooper was appointed British ambassador to France and was provided accommodation at the Hôtel Le Bristol, where the Wodehouses were living. Cooper complained to the French authorities, and the couple were moved to a different hotel. They were subsequently arrested by French police and placed under preventive detention, despite no charges being presented. When Muggeridge tracked them down later, he managed to get Ethel released straight away and, four days later, ensured that the French authorities declared Wodehouse unwell and put him in a nearby hospital, which was more comfortable than where they had been detained. While in this hospital, Wodehouse worked on his novel Uncle Dynamite.
While still detained by the French, Wodehouse was again mentioned in questions in the House of Commons in December 1944 when MPs wondered if the French authorities could repatriate him to stand trial. Eden stated that the "matter has been gone into, and, according to the advice given, there are no grounds upon which we could take action". Two months later, Orwell wrote the essay "In Defence of P.G. Wodehouse", where he stated that "it is important to realise that the events of 1941 do not convict Wodehouse of anything worse than stupidity". Orwell's rationale was that Wodehouse's "moral outlook has remained that of a public-school boy, and according to the public-school code, treachery in time of war is the most unforgivable of all the sins", which was compounded by his "complete lack—so far as one can judge from his printed works—of political awareness".
On 15 January 1945 the French authorities released Wodehouse, but they did not inform him, until June 1946, that he would not face any official charges and was free to leave the country.
American exile: 1946–1975
Having secured American visas in July 1946, the Wodehouses made preparations to return to New York. They were delayed by Ethel's insistence on acquiring suitable new clothes and by Wodehouse's wish to finish writing his current novel, The Mating Season, in the peace of the French countryside. In April 1947 they sailed to New York, where Wodehouse was relieved at the friendly reception he received from the large press contingent awaiting his arrival. Ethel secured a comfortable penthouse apartment in Manhattan's Upper East Side, but Wodehouse was not at ease. The New York that he had known before the war was much changed. The magazines that had paid lavishly for his stories were in decline, and those that remained were not much interested in him. He was sounded out about writing for Broadway, but he was not at home in the post-war theatre; he had money problems, with large sums temporarily tied up in Britain, and for the first time in his career he had no ideas for a new novel. He did not complete one until 1951.
Wodehouse remained unsettled until he and Ethel left New York City for Long Island. Bolton and his wife lived in the prosperous hamlet of Remsenburg, part of the Southampton area of Long Island, east of Manhattan. Wodehouse stayed with them frequently, and in 1952 he and Ethel bought a house nearby. They lived at Remsenburg for the rest of their lives. Between 1952 and 1975 he published more than twenty novels, as well as two collections of short stories, a heavily edited collection of his letters, a volume of memoirs, and a selection of his magazine articles. He continued to hanker after a revival of his theatrical career. A 1959 off-Broadway revival of the 1917 Bolton-Wodehouse-Kern Leave It to Jane was a surprise hit, running for 928 performances, but his few post-war stage works, some in collaboration with Bolton, made little impression.
Although Ethel made a return visit to England in 1948 to shop and visit family and friends, Wodehouse never left America after his arrival in 1947. It was not until 1965 that the British government indicated privately that he could return without fear of legal proceedings, and by then he felt too old to make the journey. The biographers Benny Green and Robert McCrum both take the view that this exile benefited Wodehouse's writing, helping him to go on depicting an idealised England seen in his mind's eye, rather than as it actually was in the post-war decades. During their years in Long Island, the couple often took in stray animals and contributed substantial funds to a local animal shelter.
In 1955 Wodehouse became an American citizen, though he remained a British subject, and was therefore still eligible for UK state honours. He was considered for the award of a knighthood three times from 1967, but the honour was twice blocked by British officials. In 1974 the British prime minister, Harold Wilson, intervened to secure a knighthood (KBE) for Wodehouse, which was announced in the January 1975 New Year Honours list. The Times commented that Wodehouse's honour signalled "official forgiveness for his wartime indiscretion.... It is late, but not too late, to take the sting out of that unhappy incident."
The following month Wodehouse entered Southampton Hospital, Long Island, for treatment of a skin complaint. While there, he suffered a heart attack and died on 14 February 1975 at the age of 93. He was buried at Remsenburg Presbyterian Church four days later. Ethel outlived him by more than nine years; Leonora had predeceased him, dying suddenly in 1944.
Writing
Technique and approach
Before starting a book Wodehouse would write up to four hundred pages of notes bringing together an outline of the plot; he acknowledged that "It's the plots that I find so hard to work out. It takes such a long time to work one out." He always completed the plot before working on specific character actions. For a novel the note-writing process could take up to two years, and he would usually have two or more novels in preparation simultaneously. After he had completed his notes, he would draw up a fuller scenario of about thirty thousand words, which ensured plot holes were avoided, and allowed for the dialogue to begin to develop. When interviewed in 1975 he revealed that "For a humorous novel you've got to have a scenario, and you've got to test it so that you know where the comedy comes in, where the situations come in ... splitting it up into scenes (you can make a scene of almost anything) and have as little stuff in between as possible." He preferred working between 4 and 7 pm—but never after dinner—and would work seven days a week. In his younger years, he would write around two to three thousand words a day, although he slowed as he aged, so that in his nineties he would produce a thousand. The reduced speed in writing slowed his production of books: when younger he would produce a novel in about three months, while Bachelors Anonymous, published in 1973, took around six months. Although studies of language production in normal healthy ageing show a marked decline from the mid-70s on, a study of Wodehouse's works did not find any evidence of a decline in linguistic ability with age.
Wodehouse believed that one of the factors that made his stories humorous was his view of life, and he stated that "If you take life fairly easily, then you take a humorous view of things. It's probably because you were born that way." He carried this view through into his writing, describing the approach as "making the thing a sort of musical comedy without music, and ignoring real life altogether". The literary critic Edward L. Galligan considers Wodehouse's stories to show his mastery in adapting the form of the American musical comedy for his writings. Wodehouse would ensure that his first draft was as carefully and accurately done as possible, correcting and refining the prose as he wrote, and would then make another good copy, before proofreading again and then making a final copy for his publisher.
Most of Wodehouse's canon is set in an undated period around the 1920s and 1930s. The critic Anthony Lejeune describes the settings of Wodehouse's novels, such as the Drones Club and Blandings Castle, as "a fairyland". Although some critics thought Wodehouse's fiction was based on a world that had never existed, Wodehouse affirmed that "it did. It was going strong between the wars", although he agreed that his version was to some extent "a sort of artificial world of my own creation". The novels showed a largely unchanging world, regardless of when they were written, and only rarely—and mistakenly in McCrum's view—did Wodehouse allow modernity to intrude, as he did in the 1966 story "Bingo Bans the Bomb".
When dealing with the dialogue in his novels, Wodehouse would consider the book's characters as if they were actors in a play, ensuring that the main roles were kept suitably employed throughout the storyline, which must be strong: "If they aren't in interesting situations, characters can't be major characters, not even if you have the rest of the troop talk their heads off about them." Many of Wodehouse's parts were stereotypes, and he acknowledged that "a real character in one of my books sticks out like a sore thumb." The publisher Michael Joseph identifies that even within the stereotypes Wodehouse understood human nature, and therefore "shares with [Charles] Dickens and Charles Chaplin the ability to present the comic resistance of the individual against those superior forces to which we are all subject".
Much of Wodehouse's use of slang terms reflects the influence of his time at school in Dulwich, and partly reflects Edwardian slang. As a young man he enjoyed the literary works of Arthur Conan Doyle and Jerome K. Jerome, and the operatic works of Gilbert and Sullivan. Wodehouse quotes from and alludes to numerous poets throughout his work. The scholar Clarke Olney lists those quoted, including Milton, Byron, Longfellow, Coleridge, Swinburne, Tennyson, Wordsworth and Shakespeare. Another favoured source was the King James Bible.
Language
In 1941 the Concise Cambridge History of English Literature opined that Wodehouse had "a gift for highly original aptness of phrase that almost suggests a poet struggling for release among the wild extravagances of farce", while McCrum thinks that Wodehouse manages to combine "high farce with the inverted poetry of his mature comic style", particularly in The Code of the Woosters; the novelist Anthony Powell believes Wodehouse to be a "comic poet". Robert A. Hall Jr., in his study of Wodehouse's style and technique, describes the author as a master of prose, an opinion also shared by Levin, who considers Wodehouse "one of the finest and purest writers of English prose". Hall identifies several techniques used by Wodehouse to achieve comic effect, including the creation of new words through adding or removing prefixes and suffixes, so when Pongo Twistleton removes the housemaid Elsie Bean from a cupboard, Wodehouse writes that the character "de-Beaned the cupboard". Wodehouse created new words by splitting others in two, thus Wodehouse divides "hobnobbing" when he writes: "To offer a housemaid a cigarette is not hobbing. Nor, when you light it for her, does that constitute nobbing."
Richard Voorhees, Wodehouse's biographer, believes that the author used clichés in a deliberate and ironic manner. His opinion is shared by the academic Stephen Medcalf, who deems Wodehouse's skill is to "bring a cliché just enough to life to kill it", although Pamela March, writing in The Christian Science Monitor, considers Wodehouse to have "an ability to decliché a cliché". Medcalf provides an example from Right Ho, Jeeves in which the teetotal Gussie Fink-Nottle has surreptitiously been given whisky and gin in a punch prior to a prize-giving:
'It seems to me, Jeeves, that the ceremony may be one fraught with considerable interest.'
'Yes, sir.'
'What, in your opinion, will the harvest be?'
'One finds it difficult to hazard a conjecture, sir.'
'You mean imagination boggles?'
'Yes, sir.'
I inspected my imagination. He was right. It boggled.
The stylistic device most commonly found in Wodehouse's work is his use of comparative imagery that includes similes. Hall opines that the humour comes from Wodehouse's ability to accentuate "resemblances which at first glance seem highly incongruous". Examples can be seen in Joy in the Morning, Chapter 29: "There was a sound in the background like a distant sheep coughing gently on a mountainside. Jeeves sailing into action", or Psmith, Chapter 7: "A sound like two or three pigs feeding rather noisily in the middle of a thunderstorm interrupted his meditation." Hall also identifies that periodically Wodehouse used the stylistic device of a transferred epithet, with an adjective that properly belongs to a person applied instead to some inanimate object. The form of expression is used sparingly by Wodehouse in comparison with other mechanisms, only once or twice in a story or novel, according to Hall.
"I balanced a thoughtful lump of sugar on the teaspoon."
—Joy in the Morning, Chapter 5
"As I sat in the bath-tub, soaping a meditative foot ..."
—Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, Chapter 1
"The first thing he did was to prod Jeeves in the lower ribs with an uncouth forefinger."
—Much Obliged, Jeeves, Chapter 4
Wordplay is a key element in Wodehouse's writing. This can take the form of puns, such as in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, when Bertie is released after a night in the police cells, and says that he has "a pinched look" about him. Linguistic confusion is another humorous mechanism, such as in Uncle Dynamite when Constable Potter says he has been "assaulted by the duck pond". In reply, Sir Aylmer, confusing the two meanings of the word "by", asks: "How the devil can you be assaulted by a duck pond?" Wodehouse also uses metaphor and mixed metaphor to add humour. Some come through exaggeration, such as Bingo Little's infant child who "not only has the aspect of a mass murderer, but that of a mass murderer suffering from an ingrown toenail", or Wooster's complaint that "the rumpuses that Bobbie Wickham is already starting may be amusing to her, but not to the unfortunate toads beneath the harrow whom she ruthlessly plunges into the soup." Bertie Wooster's half-forgotten vocabulary also provides a further humorous device. In Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit Bertie asks Jeeves "Let a plugugly like young Thos loose in the community with a cosh, and you are inviting disaster and ... what's the word? Something about cats." Jeeves replies, "Cataclysms, sir?"
Reception and reputation
Literary reception
Wodehouse's early career as a lyricist and playwright was profitable, and his work with Bolton, according to The Guardian, "was one of the most successful in the history of musical comedy". At the outbreak of the Second World War he was earning £40,000 a year from his work, which had broadened to include novels and short stories. Following the furore ensuing from the wartime broadcasts, he suffered a downturn in his popularity and book sales; The Saturday Evening Post stopped publishing his short stories, a stance they reversed in 1965, although his popularity—and the sales figures—slowly recovered over time.
Wodehouse received great praise from many of his contemporaries, including Max Beerbohm, Rudyard Kipling, A. E. Housman and Evelyn Waugh—the last of whom opines, "One has to regard a man as a Master who can produce on average three uniquely brilliant and entirely original similes on each page." There are dissenters to the praise. The writer Alan Bennett thinks that "inspired though his language is, I can never take more than ten pages of the novels at a time, their relentless flippancy wearing and tedious", while the literary critic Q. D. Leavis writes that Wodehouse had a "stereotyped humour ... of ingenious variations on a laugh in one place". In a 2010 study of Wodehouse's few relatively serious novels, such as The Coming of Bill (1919), Jill the Reckless (1920) and The Adventures of Sally (1922), David Heddendorf concludes that though their literary quality does not match that of the farcical novels, they show a range of empathy and interests that in real life—and in his most comic works—the author seemed to lack. "Never oblivious to grief and despair, he opts in clear-eyed awareness for his timeless world of spats and woolly-headed peers. It's an austere, almost bloodless preference for pristine artifice over the pain and messy outcomes of actual existence, but it's a case of Wodehouse keeping faith with his own unique art."
The American literary analyst Robert F. Kiernan, defining "camp" as "excessive stylization of whatever kind", brackets Wodehouse as "a master of the camp novel", along with Thomas Love Peacock, Max Beerbohm, Ronald Firbank, E. F. Benson and Ivy Compton-Burnett. The literary critic and writer Cyril Connolly calls Wodehouse a "politicians' author"—one who does "not like art to be exacting and difficult". Two former British prime ministers, H. H. Asquith and Tony Blair, are on record as Wodehouse aficionados, and the latter became a patron of the Wodehouse Society. Seán O'Casey, a successful playwright of the 1920s, thought little of Wodehouse; he commented in 1941 that it was damaging to England's dignity that the public or "the academic government of Oxford, dead from the chin up" considered Wodehouse an important figure in English literature. His jibe that Wodehouse was "English literature's performing flea" provided his target with the title of his collected letters, published in 1953. McCrum, writing in 2004, observes, "Wodehouse is more popular today than on the day he died", and "his comic vision has an absolutely secure place in the English literary imagination."
Honours and influence
The proposed nominations of Wodehouse for a knighthood in 1967 and 1971 were blocked for fear that such an award would "revive the controversy of his wartime behaviour and give currency to a Bertie Wooster image of the British character which the embassy was doing its best to eradicate". When Wodehouse was awarded the knighthood, only four years later, the journalist Dennis Barker wrote in The Guardian that the writer was "the solitary surviving English literary comic genius". After his death six weeks later, the journalist Michael Davie, writing in the same paper, observed that "Many people regarded ... [Wodehouse] as he regarded Beachcomber, as 'one, if not more than one, of England's greatest men'", while in the view of the obituarist for The Times Wodehouse "was a comic genius recognized in his lifetime as a classic and an old master of farce". In September 2019 Wodehouse was commemorated with a memorial stone in Westminster Abbey; the dedication was held two days after it was installed.
Since Wodehouse's death there have been numerous adaptations and dramatisations of his work on television and film; Wodehouse himself has been portrayed on radio and screen numerous times. There are several literary societies dedicated to Wodehouse. The P.G. Wodehouse Society (UK) was founded in 1997 and has over 1,000 members as at 2015. The president of the society as at 2017 is Alexander Armstrong; past presidents have included Terry Wogan and Richard Briers. There are also other groups of Wodehouse fans in Australia, Belgium, France, Finland, India, Italy, Russia, Sweden and the US. As at 2015 the Oxford English Dictionary contains over 1,750 quotations from Wodehouse, illustrating terms from crispish to zippiness. Voorhees, while acknowledging that Wodehouse's antecedents in literature range from Ben Jonson to Oscar Wilde, writes:
Notes, references and sources
Notes
References
Sources
External links
P. G. Wodehouse collection at One More Library
P.G. Wodehouse Archive on loan to the British Library
The Wodehouse Society
The P. G. Wodehouse Society (UK)
Transcripts of Wodehouse's Berlin Broadcasts
"P. G. Wodehouse: An English Master of American Slang" from The American Legion Weekly, 24 October 1919
Orwell, George "In Defence of P.G. Wodehouse"
1881 births
1975 deaths
20th-century English novelists
20th-century British dramatists and playwrights
British emigrants to the United States
English lyricists
Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire
English male dramatists and playwrights
British male novelists
People educated at Dulwich College
People educated at Elizabeth College, Guernsey
People from Guildford
People from Long Island
PG
People interned during World War II
English humorists
20th-century American novelists
American dramatists and playwrights
American humorists
American lyricists
American male novelists
Novelists from New York (state)
Literature controversies
English broadcasters for Nazi Germany
20th-century American male writers | true | [
"Bessie Anderson Stanley (born Caroline Elizabeth Anderson, March 25, 1879 – October 2, 1952) was an American writer, the author of the poem Success (What is success? or What Constitutes Success?), which is often incorrectly attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson or Robert Louis Stevenson.\n\nShe was born in Newton, Iowa, and married Arthur Jehu Stanley in 1900, living thereafter in Lincoln, Kansas. Her poem was written in 1904 for a contest held in Brown Book Magazine,<ref name=robin>[http://www.robinsweb.com/truth_behind_success.html The Truth behind the Poem \"Success\"] (email exchange between Robin Olson and Bethanne Larson, Stanley's great-granddaughter, on \"Robin's Web\" website)</ref> by George Livingston Richards Co. of Boston, Massachusetts Mrs. Stanley submitted the words in the form of an essay, rather than as a poem. The competition was to answer the question \"What is success?\" in 100 words or less. Mrs. Stanley won the first prize of $250.\n\nWritten in verse form, it reads:\n\nHe achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much;\nWho has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children;\nWho has filled his niche and accomplished his task;\nWho has never lacked appreciation of Earth's beauty or failed to express it;\nWho has left the world better than he found it,\nWhether an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul;\nWho has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had;\nWhose life was an inspiration;\nWhose memory a benediction.\n\nThe poem was in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations in the 1930s or 1940s but was mysteriously removed in the 1960s. It was again included in the seventeenth edition. However, it does appear in a 1911 book, More Heart Throbs, volume 2, on pages 1–2.\n\nBessie Anderson Stanley died in 1952, aged 73. The verse is inscribed on her gravestone in Lincoln Cemetery, Kansas.\n\nAnn Landers (and her sister Abby) are also said to have misattributed the poem to Emerson and her concession to a public correction is in The Ann Landers Encyclopedia''.\n\nReferences\n\n\"Success\", Mila Tasseva for The Ralph Waldo Emerson Society, April 15, 2003\n\nExternal links\n\n \n\nPoets from Kansas\nAmerican women poets\n1952 deaths\n1879 births\nPeople from Newton, Iowa\nPeople from Lincoln Center, Kansas\nPoets from Iowa\n20th-century American poets\n20th-century American women writers",
"What Price Glory?, a 1924 comedy-drama written by Maxwell Anderson and critic/veteran Laurence Stallings was Anderson's first commercial success, with a long run on Broadway, starring Louis Wolheim.\n\nThe play depicted the rivalry between two U.S. Marine Corps officers fighting in France during World War I.\n\nThe play was notable for its profanity, \"toot goddam sweet,\" etc., and for censorship efforts by military and religious groups. These efforts failed when the primary censorship authority, Rear Admiral Charles P. Plunkett, was revealed by columnist Heywood Broun to have written a far more vulgar series of letters to a General Chatelaine.\n\nThe play's success allowed Anderson to quit teaching and journalism, and start his long and successful career as a professional playwright. It was included in Burns Mantle's The Best Plays of 1924-1925.\n\nThe play was filmed in 1926 and 1952.\n\nReferences\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \nFull text of What Price Glory? at HathiTrust Digital Library\n\nPlays by Maxwell Anderson\n1924 plays\nPlays about World War I\nBroadway plays\nAmerican plays adapted into films"
] |
[
"P. G. Wodehouse",
"Broadway: 1915-19",
"What did he do in Broadway?",
"Wodehouse \"the most observant, literate, and witty lyricist of his day\".",
"What prompted him to go to Broadway?",
"they thought the song lyrics weak and invited Wodehouse to join them on its successor.",
"How many musicals did he write?",
"I don't know.",
"Who invited him to Broadway?",
"Jerome Kern introduced him to the writer Guy Bolton, who became Wodehouse's closest friend and a regular collaborator.",
"What was his best success?",
"the long-running Sally (1920, New York),"
] | C_14a60ae6a0404de9a8adfd5f0367ce69_1 | Why did he leave? | 6 | Why did P. G. Wodehouse leave Broadway? | P. G. Wodehouse | A third milestone in Wodehouse's life came towards the end of 1915: his old songwriting partner Jerome Kern introduced him to the writer Guy Bolton, who became Wodehouse's closest friend and a regular collaborator. Bolton and Kern had a musical, Very Good Eddie, running at the Princess Theatre in New York. The show was successful, but they thought the song lyrics weak and invited Wodehouse to join them on its successor. This was Miss Springtime (1916), which ran for 227 performances--a good run by the standards of the day. The team produced several more successes, including Leave It to Jane (1917), Oh, Boy! (1917-18) and Oh, Lady! Lady!! (1918), and Wodehouse and Bolton wrote a few more shows with other composers. In these musicals Wodehouse's lyrics won high praise from critics as well as fellow lyricists such as Ira Gershwin. Unlike his original model, Gilbert, Wodehouse preferred the music to be written first, fitting his words into the melodies. Donaldson suggests that this is the reason why his lyrics have largely been overlooked in recent years: they fit the music perfectly, but do not stand on their own in verse form as Gilbert's do. Nonetheless, Donaldson adds, the book and lyrics for the Princess Theatre shows made the collaborators an enormous fortune and played an important part in the development of the American musical. In the Grove Dictionary of American Music Larry Stempel writes, "By presenting naturalistic stories and characters and attempting to integrate the songs and lyrics into the action of the libretto, these works brought a new level of intimacy, cohesion, and sophistication to American musical comedy." The theatre writer Gerald Bordman calls Wodehouse "the most observant, literate, and witty lyricist of his day". The composer Richard Rodgers wrote, "Before Larry Hart, only P.G. Wodehouse had made any real assault on the intelligence of the song-listening public." In the years after the war, Wodehouse steadily increased his sales, polished his existing characters and introduced new ones. Bertie and Jeeves, Lord Emsworth and his circle, and Ukridge appeared in novels and short stories; Psmith made his fourth and last appearance; two new characters were the Oldest Member, narrating his series of golfing stories, and Mr Mulliner, telling his particularly tall tales to fellow patrons of the bar at the Angler's Rest. Various other young men-about-town appeared in short stories about members of the Drones Club. The Wodehouses returned to England, where they had a house in London for some years, but Wodehouse continued to cross the Atlantic frequently, spending substantial periods in New York. He continued to work in the theatre. During the 1920s he collaborated on nine musical comedies produced on Broadway or in the West End, including the long-running Sally (1920, New York), The Cabaret Girl (1922, London) and Rosalie (1928, New York). He also wrote non-musical plays, including The Play's the Thing (1926), adapted from Ferenc Molnar, and A Damsel in Distress (1928), a dramatisation of his 1919 novel. Though never a naturally gregarious man, Wodehouse was more sociable in the 1920s than at other periods. Donaldson lists among those with whom he was on friendly terms writers including A.A. Milne, Ian Hay, Frederick Lonsdale and E. Phillips Oppenheim, and stage performers including George Grossmith, Jr., Heather Thatcher and Dorothy Dickson. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, ( ; 15 October 188114 February 1975) was an English author and one of the most widely read humorists of the 20th century. His creations include the feather-brained Bertie Wooster and his sagacious valet, Jeeves; the immaculate and loquacious Psmith; Lord Emsworth and the Blandings Castle set; the Oldest Member, with stories about golf; and Mr Mulliner, with tall tales on subjects ranging from bibulous bishops to megalomaniac movie moguls.
Born in Guildford, the third son of a British magistrate based in Hong Kong, Wodehouse spent happy teenage years at Dulwich College, to which he remained devoted all his life. After leaving school he was employed by a bank but disliked the work and turned to writing in his spare time. His early novels were mostly school stories, but he later switched to comic fiction. Most of Wodehouse's fiction is set in his native United Kingdom, although he spent much of his life in the US and used New York and Hollywood as settings for some of his novels and short stories. He wrote a series of Broadway musical comedies during and after the First World War, together with Guy Bolton and Jerome Kern, that played an important part in the development of the American musical. He began the 1930s writing for MGM in Hollywood. In a 1931 interview, his naive revelations of incompetence and extravagance in the studios caused a furore. In the same decade, his literary career reached a new peak.
In 1934 Wodehouse moved to France for tax reasons; in 1940 he was taken prisoner at Le Touquet by the invading Germans and interned for nearly a year. After his release he made six broadcasts from German radio in Berlin to the US, which had not yet entered the war. The talks were comic and apolitical, but his broadcasting over enemy radio prompted anger and strident controversy in Britain, and a threat of prosecution. Wodehouse never returned to England. From 1947 until his death he lived in the US, taking dual British-American citizenship in 1955. He died in 1975, at the age of 93, in Southampton, New York.
Wodehouse was a prolific writer throughout his life, publishing more than ninety books, forty plays, two hundred short stories and other writings between 1902 and 1974. He worked extensively on his books, sometimes having two or more in preparation simultaneously. He would take up to two years to build a plot and write a scenario of about thirty thousand words. After the scenario was complete he would write the story. Early in his career Wodehouse would produce a novel in about three months, but he slowed in old age to around six months. He used a mixture of Edwardian slang, quotations from and allusions to numerous poets, and several literary techniques to produce a prose style that has been compared to comic poetry and musical comedy. Some critics of Wodehouse have considered his work flippant, but among his fans are former British prime ministers and many of his fellow writers.
Life and career
Early years
Wodehouse was born in Guildford, Surrey, the third son of Henry Ernest Wodehouse (1845–1929), a magistrate resident in the British colony of Hong Kong, and his wife, Eleanor (1861–1941), daughter of the Rev John Bathurst Deane. The Wodehouses, who traced their ancestry back to the 13th century, belonged to a cadet branch of the family of the earls of Kimberley. Eleanor Wodehouse was also of ancient aristocratic ancestry. She was visiting her sister in Guildford when Wodehouse was born there prematurely.
The boy was baptised at the Church of St Nicolas, Guildford, and was named after his godfather, Pelham von Donop. Wodehouse wrote in 1957, "If you ask me to tell you frankly if I like the name Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, I must confess that I do not.... I was named after a godfather, and not a thing to show for it but a small silver mug which I lost in 1897." The first name was rapidly elided to "Plum", the name by which Wodehouse became known to family and friends.
Mother and son sailed for Hong Kong, where for his first two years Wodehouse was raised by a Chinese amah (nurse), alongside his elder brothers Peveril (1877–1951) and Armine (1879–1936). When he was two, the brothers were brought to England, where they were placed under the care of an English nanny in a house adjoining that of Eleanor's father and mother. The boys' parents returned to Hong Kong and became virtual strangers to their sons. Such an arrangement was then normal for middle-class families based in the colonies. The lack of parental contact, and the harsh regime of some of those in loco parentis, left permanent emotional scars on many children from similar backgrounds, including the writers Thackeray, Saki, Kipling and Walpole. Wodehouse was more fortunate; his nanny, Emma Roper, was strict but not unkind, and both with her and later at his different schools Wodehouse had a generally happy childhood. His recollection was that "it went like a breeze from start to finish, with everybody I met understanding me perfectly". The biographer Robert McCrum suggests that nonetheless Wodehouse's isolation from his parents left a psychological mark, causing him to avoid emotional engagement both in life and in his works. Another biographer, Frances Donaldson, writes, "Deprived so early, not merely of maternal love, but of home life and even a stable background, Wodehouse consoled himself from the youngest age in an imaginary world of his own."
In 1886 the brothers were sent to a dame-school in Croydon, where they spent three years. Peveril was then found to have a "weak chest"; sea air was prescribed, and the three boys were moved to Elizabeth College on the island of Guernsey. In 1891 Wodehouse went on to Malvern House Preparatory School in Kent, which concentrated on preparing its pupils for entry to the Royal Navy. His father had planned a naval career for him, but the boy's eyesight was found to be too poor for it. He was unimpressed by the school's narrow curriculum and zealous discipline; he later parodied it in his novels, with Bertie Wooster recalling his early years as a pupil at a "penitentiary... with the outward guise of a prep school" called Malvern House.
Throughout their school years the brothers were sent to stay during the holidays with various uncles and aunts from both sides of the family. In the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Iain Sproat counts twenty aunts and considers that they played an important part not only in Wodehouse's early life, but, thinly disguised, in his mature novels, as the formidable aunts who dominate the action in the Wooster, Blandings, and other stories. The boys had fifteen uncles, four of whom were clergymen. Sproat writes that they inspired Wodehouse's "pious but fallible curates, vicars, and bishops, of which he wrote with friendly irreverence but without mockery".
At the age of twelve in 1894, to his great joy, Wodehouse was able to follow his brother Armine to Dulwich College. He was entirely at home there; Donaldson comments that Dulwich gave him, for the first time, "some continuity and a stable and ordered life". He loved the camaraderie, distinguished himself at cricket, rugby and boxing, and was a good, if not consistently diligent, student. The headmaster at the time was A. H. Gilkes, a respected classicist, who was a strong influence on Wodehouse. In a study of Wodehouse's works, Richard Usborne argues that "only a writer who was himself a scholar and had had his face ground into Latin and Greek (especially Thucydides) as a boy" could sustain the complex sequences of subordinate clauses sometimes found in Wodehouse's comic prose.
Wodehouse's six years at Dulwich were among the happiest of his life: "To me the years between 1894 and 1900 were like heaven." In addition to his sporting achievements he was a good singer and enjoyed taking part in school concerts; his literary leanings found an outlet in editing the school magazine, The Alleynian. For the rest of his life he remained devoted to the school. The biographer Barry Phelps writes that Wodehouse "loved the college as much as he loved anything or anybody".
Reluctant banker; budding writer: 1900–1908
Wodehouse expected to follow Armine to the University of Oxford, but the family's finances took a turn for the worse at the crucial moment. Ernest Wodehouse had retired in 1895, and his pension was paid in rupees; fluctuation against the pound reduced its value in Britain. Wodehouse recalled, "The wolf was not actually whining at the door and there was always a little something in the kitty for the butcher and the grocer, but the finances would not run to anything in the nature of a splash". Instead of a university career, in September 1900 Wodehouse was engaged in a junior position in the London office of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank. He was unsuited to it and found the work baffling and uncongenial. He later wrote a humorous account of his experiences at the bank, but at the time he longed for the end of each working day, when he could return to his rented lodgings in Chelsea and write. At first he concentrated, with some success, on serious articles about school sports for Public School Magazine. In November 1900 his first comic piece, "Men Who Missed Their Own Weddings", was accepted by Tit-Bits. A new magazine for boys, The Captain, provided further well-paid opportunities, and during his two years at the bank, Wodehouse had eighty pieces published in a total of nine magazines.
In 1901, with the help of a former Dulwich master, William Beach Thomas, Wodehouse secured an appointment—at first temporary and later permanent—writing for The Globes popular "By the Way" column. He held the post until 1909. At around the same time his first novel was published—a school story called The Pothunters, serialised incomplete in Public School Magazine in early 1902, and issued in full in hardback in September. He resigned from the bank that month to devote himself to writing full-time.
Between the publication of The Pothunters 1902 and that of Mike in 1909, Wodehouse wrote eight novels and co-wrote another two. The critic R. D. B. French writes that, of Wodehouse's work from this period, almost all that deserves to survive is the school fiction. Looking back in the 1950s Wodehouse viewed these as his apprentice years: "I was practically in swaddling clothes and it is extremely creditable to me that I was able to write at all."
From his boyhood Wodehouse had been fascinated by America, which he conceived of as "a land of romance"; he "yearned" to visit the country, and by 1904 he had earned enough to do so. In April he sailed to New York, which he found greatly to his liking. He noted in his diary: "In New York gathering experience. Worth many guineas in the future but none for the moment." This prediction proved correct: few British writers had first-hand experience of the US, and his articles about life in New York brought him higher than usual fees. He later recalled that "in 1904 anyone in the London writing world who had been to America was regarded with awe and looked upon as an authority on that terra incognita.... After that trip to New York I was a man who counted.... My income rose like a rocketing pheasant."
Wodehouse's other new venture in 1904 was writing for the stage. Towards the end of the year the librettist Owen Hall invited him to contribute an additional lyric for a musical comedy Sergeant Brue. Wodehouse had loved theatre since his first visit, aged thirteen, when Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience had made him "drunk with ecstasy". His lyric for Hall, "Put Me in My Little Cell", was a Gilbertian number for a trio of comic crooks, with music by Frederick Rosse; it was well received and launched Wodehouse on a career as a theatre writer that spanned three decades.
Although it made little impact on its first publication, the 1906 novel Love Among the Chickens contained what French calls the author's first original comic creation: Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge. The character, an amoral, bungling opportunist, is partly based on Wodehouse's Globe colleague Herbert Westbrook. The two collaborated between 1907 and 1913 on two books, two music hall sketches, and a play, Brother Alfred. Wodehouse would return to the character in short stories over the next six decades.
In early 1906 the actor-manager Seymour Hicks invited Wodehouse to become resident lyricist at the Aldwych Theatre, to add topical verses to newly imported or long-running shows. Hicks had already recruited the young Jerome Kern to write the music for such songs. The first Kern-Wodehouse collaboration, a comic number for The Beauty of Bath titled "Mr [Joseph] Chamberlain", was a show-stopper and was briefly the most popular song in London.
Psmith, Blandings, Wooster and Jeeves: 1908–1915
Wodehouse's early period as a writer came to an end in 1908 with the serialisation of The Lost Lambs, published the following year in book form as the second half of the novel Mike. The work begins as a conventional school story, but Wodehouse introduces a new and strikingly original character, Psmith, whose creation both Evelyn Waugh and George Orwell regarded as a watershed in Wodehouse's development. Wodehouse said that he based Psmith on the hotelier and impresario Rupert D'Oyly Carte—"the only thing in my literary career which was handed to me on a silver plate with watercress around it". Wodehouse wrote in the 1970s that a cousin of his who had been at school with Carte told him of the latter's monocle, studied suavity, and stateliness of speech, all of which Wodehouse adopted for his new character. Psmith featured in three more novels: Psmith in the City (1910), a burlesque of banking; Psmith, Journalist (1915) set in New York; and Leave It to Psmith (1923), set at Blandings Castle.
In May 1909 Wodehouse made his second visit to New York, where he sold two short stories to Cosmopolitan and Collier's for a total of $500, a much higher fee than he had commanded previously. He resigned from The Globe and stayed in New York for nearly a year. He sold many more stories, but none of the American publications offered a permanent relationship and guaranteed income. Wodehouse returned to England in late 1910, rejoining The Globe and also contributing regularly to The Strand Magazine. Between then and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 he revisited America frequently.
Wodehouse was in New York when the war began. Ineligible for military service because of his poor eyesight, he remained in the US throughout the war, detached from the conflict in Europe and absorbed in his theatrical and literary concerns. In September 1914 he married Ethel May Wayman, née Newton (1885–1984), an English widow. The marriage proved happy and lifelong. Ethel's personality was in contrast with her husband's: he was shy and impractical; she was gregarious, decisive and well organised. In Sproat's phrase, she "took charge of Wodehouse's life and made certain that he had the peace and quiet he needed to write". There were no children of the marriage, but Wodehouse came to love Ethel's daughter Leonora (1905–1944) and legally adopted her.
Wodehouse experimented with different genres of fiction in these years; Psmith, Journalist, mixing comedy with social comment on slum landlords and racketeers, was published in 1915. In the same year The Saturday Evening Post paid $3,500 to serialise Something New, the first of what became a series of novels set at Blandings Castle. It was published in hardback in the US and the UK in the same year (the British edition being retitled Something Fresh). It was Wodehouse's first farcical novel; it was also his first best-seller, and although his later books included some gentler, lightly sentimental stories, it was as a farceur that he became known. Later in the same year "Extricating Young Gussie", the first story about Bertie and Jeeves, was published. These stories introduced two sets of characters about whom Wodehouse wrote for the rest of his life. The Blandings Castle stories, set in an English stately home, depict the attempts of the placid Lord Emsworth to evade the many distractions around him, which include successive pairs of young lovers, the machinations of his exuberant brother Galahad, the demands of his domineering sisters and super-efficient secretaries, and anything detrimental to his prize sow, the Empress of Blandings. The Bertie and Jeeves stories feature an amiable young man-about-town, regularly rescued from the consequences of his idiocy by the benign interference of his valet.
Broadway: 1915–1919
A third milestone in Wodehouse's life came towards the end of 1915: his old songwriting partner Jerome Kern introduced him to the writer Guy Bolton, who became Wodehouse's closest friend and a regular collaborator. Bolton and Kern had a musical, Very Good Eddie, running at the Princess Theatre in New York. The show was successful, but they thought the song lyrics weak and invited Wodehouse to join them on its successor. This was Miss Springtime (1916), which ran for 227 performances—a good run by the standards of the day. The team produced several more successes, including Leave It to Jane (1917), Oh, Boy! (1917–18) and Oh, Lady! Lady!! (1918), and Wodehouse and Bolton wrote a few more shows with other composers. In these musicals Wodehouse's lyrics won high praise from critics as well as fellow lyricists such as Ira Gershwin.
Unlike his original model, Gilbert, Wodehouse preferred the music to be written first, fitting his words into the melodies. Donaldson suggests that this is the reason why his lyrics have largely been overlooked in recent years: they fit the music perfectly, but do not stand on their own in verse form as Gilbert's do. Nonetheless, Donaldson adds, the book and lyrics for the Princess Theatre shows made the collaborators an enormous fortune and played an important part in the development of the American musical. In the Grove Dictionary of American Music Larry Stempel writes, "By presenting naturalistic stories and characters and attempting to integrate the songs and lyrics into the action of the libretto, these works brought a new level of intimacy, cohesion, and sophistication to American musical comedy." The theatre writer Gerald Bordman calls Wodehouse "the most observant, literate, and witty lyricist of his day". The composer Richard Rodgers wrote, "Before Larry Hart, only P.G. Wodehouse had made any real assault on the intelligence of the song-listening public."
1920s
In the years after the war, Wodehouse steadily increased his sales, polished his existing characters and introduced new ones. Bertie and Jeeves, Lord Emsworth and his circle, and Ukridge appeared in novels and short stories; Psmith made his fourth and last appearance; two new characters were the Oldest Member, narrating his series of golfing stories, and Mr Mulliner, telling his particularly tall tales to fellow patrons of the bar at the Angler's Rest. Various other young men-about-town appeared in short stories about members of the Drones Club.
The Wodehouses returned to England, where they had a house in London for some years, but Wodehouse continued to cross the Atlantic frequently, spending substantial periods in New York. He continued to work in the theatre. During the 1920s he collaborated on nine musical comedies produced on Broadway or in the West End, including the long-running Sally (1920, New York), The Cabaret Girl (1922, London) and Rosalie (1928, New York). He also wrote non-musical plays, including The Play's the Thing (1926), adapted from Ferenc Molnár, and A Damsel in Distress (1928), a dramatisation of his 1919 novel.
Though never a naturally gregarious man, Wodehouse was more sociable in the 1920s than at other periods. Donaldson lists among those with whom he was on friendly terms writers including A. A. Milne, Ian Hay, Frederick Lonsdale and E. Phillips Oppenheim, and stage performers including George Grossmith Jr., Heather Thatcher and Dorothy Dickson.
Hollywood: 1929–1931
There had been films of Wodehouse stories since 1915, when A Gentleman of Leisure was based on his 1910 novel of the same name. Further screen adaptations of his books were made between then and 1927, but it was not until 1929 that Wodehouse went to Hollywood where Bolton was working as a highly paid writer for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Ethel was taken with both the financial and social aspects of Hollywood life, and she negotiated a contract with MGM on her husband's behalf under which he would be paid $2,000 a week. This large salary was particularly welcome because the couple had lost considerable sums in the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
The contract started in May 1930, but the studio found little for Wodehouse to do, and he had spare time to write a novel and nine short stories. He commented, "It's odd how soon one comes to look on every minute as wasted that is given to earning one's salary." Even when the studio found a project for him to work on, the interventions of committees and constant rewriting by numerous contract authors meant that his ideas were rarely used. In a 2005 study of Wodehouse in Hollywood, Brian Taves writes that Those Three French Girls (1930) was "as close to a success as Wodehouse was to have at MGM. His only other credits were minimal, and the other projects he worked on were not produced."
Wodehouse's contract ended after a year and was not renewed. At MGM's request, he gave an interview to The Los Angeles Times. Wodehouse was described by Herbert Warren Wind as "politically naive [and] fundamentally unworldly", and he caused a sensation by saying publicly what he had already told his friends privately about Hollywood's inefficiency, arbitrary decision-making, and waste of expensive talent. The interview was reprinted in The New York Times, and there was much editorial comment about the state of the film industry. Many writers have considered that the interview precipitated a radical overhaul of the studio system, but Taves believes it to have been "a storm in a teacup", and Donaldson comments that, in the straitened post-crash era, the reforms would have been inevitable.
Wind's view of Wodehouse's naïveté is not universally held. Biographers including Donaldson, McCrum and Phelps suggest that his unworldliness was only part of a complex character, and that in some respects he was highly astute. He was unsparing of the studio owners in his early-1930s short stories set in Hollywood, which contain what Taves considers Wodehouse's sharpest and most biting satire.
Best-seller: 1930s
During the 1930s Wodehouse's theatrical work tailed off. He wrote or adapted four plays for the West End; Leave it to Psmith (1930), which he adapted in collaboration with Ian Hay, was the only one to have a long run. The reviewer in The Manchester Guardian praised the play, but commented: "It is Mr Wodehouse's own inimitable narrative comments and descriptions in his own person of the antics of his puppets that one misses. They cannot be got into a play and they are at least half the fun of the novels." In 1934 Wodehouse collaborated with Bolton on the book for Cole Porter's Anything Goes (Porter wrote his own lyrics), but at the last minute their version was almost entirely rewritten by others at the instigation of the producer, who disliked the original script. Concentrating on writing novels and short stories, Wodehouse reached the peak of his productivity in this decade, averaging two books each year, and grossing an annual £100,000.
His practice of dividing his time between Britain and America caused Wodehouse difficulties with the tax authorities of both countries. Both the UK Inland Revenue and the US Internal Revenue Service sought to tax him as a resident. The matter was settled after lengthy negotiations, but the Wodehouses decided to change their residential status beyond doubt by moving to France, where they bought a house near Le Touquet in the north.
In 1935 Wodehouse created the last of his regular cast of principal characters, Lord Ickenham, otherwise known as Uncle Fred, who, in Usborne's words, "leads the dance in four novels and a short story... a whirring dynamo of misrule". His other books from the decade include Right Ho, Jeeves, which Donaldson judged his best work, Uncle Fred in the Springtime, which the writer Bernard Levin considered the best, and Blandings Castle, which contains "Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend", which Rudyard Kipling thought "one of the most perfect short stories I have ever read".
Other leading literary figures who admired Wodehouse were A. E. Housman, Max Beerbohm and Hilaire Belloc; on the radio and in print Belloc called Wodehouse "the best writer of our time: the best living writer of English... the head of my profession". Wodehouse regarded Belloc's plaudit as "a gag, to get a rise out of serious-minded authors whom he disliked". Wodehouse was never sure that his books had literary merit as well as popular appeal, and, Donaldson suggests, must have been overwhelmed when the University of Oxford conferred an honorary doctorate of letters on him in June 1939. His visit to England for the awarding ceremony was the last time he set foot in his native land.
Second World War: internment and broadcasts
At the start of the Second World War Wodehouse and his wife remained at their Le Touquet house, where, during the Phoney War, he worked on Joy in the Morning. With the advance of the Germans, the nearby Royal Air Force base withdrew; Wodehouse was offered the sole spare seat in one of the fighter aircraft, but he turned down the opportunity as it would have meant leaving behind Ethel and their dog. On 21 May 1940, with German troops advancing through northern France, the Wodehouses decided to drive to Portugal and fly from there to the US. Two miles from home their car broke down, so they returned and borrowed a car from a neighbour; with the routes blocked with refugees, they returned home again.
The Germans occupied Le Touquet on 22 May 1940 and Wodehouse had to report to the authorities daily. After two months of occupation the Germans interned all male enemy nationals under 60, and Wodehouse was sent to a former prison in Loos, a suburb of Lille, on 21 July; Ethel remained in Le Touquet. The internees were placed four to a cell, each of which had been designed for one man. One bed was available per cell, which was made available to the eldest man—not Wodehouse, who slept on the granite floor. The prisoners were not kept long in Loos before they were transported in cattle trucks to a former barracks in Liège, Belgium, which was run as a prison by the SS. After a week the men were transferred to Huy in Liège, where they were incarcerated in the local citadel. They remained there until September 1940, when they were transported to Tost in Upper Silesia (then Germany, now Toszek in Poland).
Wodehouse's family and friends had not had any news of his location after the fall of France, but an article from an Associated Press reporter who had visited Tost in December 1940 led to pressure on the German authorities to release the novelist. This included a petition from influential people in the US; Senator W. Warren Barbour presented it to the German ambassador. Although his captors refused to release him, Wodehouse was provided with a typewriter and, to pass the time, he wrote Money in the Bank. Throughout his time in Tost, he sent postcards to his US literary agent asking for $5 to be sent to various people in Canada, mentioning his name. These were the families of Canadian prisoners of war, and the news from Wodehouse was the first indication that their sons were alive and well. Wodehouse risked severe punishment for the communication, but managed to evade the German censor.
On 21 June 1941, while he was in the middle of playing a game of cricket, Wodehouse received a visit from two members of the Gestapo. He was given ten minutes to pack his things before he was taken to the Hotel Adlon, a top luxury hotel in Berlin. He stayed there at his own expense; royalties from the German editions of his books had been put into a special frozen bank account at the outset of the war, and Wodehouse was permitted to draw upon this money he had earned while staying in Berlin. He was thus released from internment a few months before his sixtieth birthday—the age at which civilian internees were released by the Nazis. Shortly afterwards Wodehouse was, in the words of Phelps, "cleverly trapped" into making five broadcasts to the US via German radio, with the Berlin-based correspondent of the Columbia Broadcasting System. The broadcasts—aired on 28 June, 9, 23 and 30 July and 6 August—were titled How to be an Internee Without Previous Training, and comprised humorous anecdotes about Wodehouse's experiences as a prisoner, including some gentle mocking of his captors. The German propaganda ministry arranged for the recordings to be broadcast to Britain in August. The day after Wodehouse recorded his final programme, Ethel joined him in Berlin, having sold most of her jewellery to pay for the journey.
Aftermath: reactions and investigation
The reaction in Britain to Wodehouse's broadcasts was hostile, and he was "reviled ... as a traitor, collaborator, Nazi propagandist, and a coward", although, Phelps observes, many of those who decried his actions had not heard the content of the programmes. A front-page article in The Daily Mirror stated that Wodehouse "lived luxuriously because Britain laughed with him, but when the laughter was out of his country's heart, ... [he] was not ready to share her suffering. He hadn't the guts ... even to stick it out in the internment camp." In the House of Commons Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary, regretted Wodehouse's actions. Several libraries removed Wodehouse novels from their shelves.
On 15 July the journalist William Connor, under his pen name Cassandra, broadcast a postscript to the news programme railing against Wodehouse. According to The Times, the broadcast "provoked a storm of complaint ... from listeners all over the country". Wodehouse's biographer, Joseph Connolly, thinks the broadcast "inaccurate, spiteful and slanderous"; Phelps calls it "probably the most vituperative attack on an individual ever heard on British radio". The broadcast was made at the direct instruction of Duff Cooper, the Minister of Information, who overruled strong protests made by the BBC against the decision to air the programme. Numerous letters appeared in the British press, both supporting and criticising Wodehouse. The letters page of The Daily Telegraph became a focus for censuring Wodehouse, including one from Wodehouse's friend, ; a reply from their fellow author Compton Mackenzie in defence of Wodehouse was not published because the editor claimed a lack of space. Most of those defending Wodehouse against accusations of disloyalty, including Sax Rohmer, Dorothy L. Sayers and Gilbert Frankau, conceded that he had acted stupidly. Some members of the public wrote to the newspapers to say that the full facts were not yet known and a fair judgment could not be made until they were. The management of the BBC, who considered Wodehouse's actions no worse than "ill advised", pointed out to Cooper that there was no evidence at that point whether Wodehouse had acted voluntarily or under compulsion.
When Wodehouse heard of the furore the broadcasts had caused, he contacted the Foreign Office—through the Swiss embassy in Berlin—to explain his actions, and attempted to return home via neutral countries, but the German authorities refused to let him leave. In Performing Flea, a 1953 collection of letters, Wodehouse wrote, "Of course I ought to have had the sense to see that it was a loony thing to do to use the German radio for even the most harmless stuff, but I didn't. I suppose prison life saps the intellect". The reaction in America was mixed: the left-leaning publication PM accused Wodehouse of "play[ing] Jeeves to the Nazis", but the Department of War used the interviews as an ideal representation of anti-Nazi propaganda.
The Wodehouses remained in Germany until September 1943, when, because of the Allied bombings, they were allowed to move back to Paris. They were living there when the city was liberated on 25 August 1944; Wodehouse reported to the American authorities the following day, asking them to inform the British of his whereabouts. He was subsequently visited by Malcolm Muggeridge, recently arrived in Paris as an intelligence officer with MI6. The young officer quickly came to like Wodehouse and considered the question of treasonable behaviour as "ludicrous"; he summed up the writer as "ill-fitted to live in an age of ideological conflict". On 9 September Wodehouse was visited by an MI5 officer and former barrister, Major Edward Cussen, who formally investigated him, a process that stretched over four days. On 28 September Cussen filed his report, which states that in regard to the broadcasts, Wodehouse's behaviour "has been unwise", but advised against further action. On 23 November Theobald Matthew, the Director of Public Prosecutions, decided there was no evidence to justify prosecuting Wodehouse.
In November 1944 Duff Cooper was appointed British ambassador to France and was provided accommodation at the Hôtel Le Bristol, where the Wodehouses were living. Cooper complained to the French authorities, and the couple were moved to a different hotel. They were subsequently arrested by French police and placed under preventive detention, despite no charges being presented. When Muggeridge tracked them down later, he managed to get Ethel released straight away and, four days later, ensured that the French authorities declared Wodehouse unwell and put him in a nearby hospital, which was more comfortable than where they had been detained. While in this hospital, Wodehouse worked on his novel Uncle Dynamite.
While still detained by the French, Wodehouse was again mentioned in questions in the House of Commons in December 1944 when MPs wondered if the French authorities could repatriate him to stand trial. Eden stated that the "matter has been gone into, and, according to the advice given, there are no grounds upon which we could take action". Two months later, Orwell wrote the essay "In Defence of P.G. Wodehouse", where he stated that "it is important to realise that the events of 1941 do not convict Wodehouse of anything worse than stupidity". Orwell's rationale was that Wodehouse's "moral outlook has remained that of a public-school boy, and according to the public-school code, treachery in time of war is the most unforgivable of all the sins", which was compounded by his "complete lack—so far as one can judge from his printed works—of political awareness".
On 15 January 1945 the French authorities released Wodehouse, but they did not inform him, until June 1946, that he would not face any official charges and was free to leave the country.
American exile: 1946–1975
Having secured American visas in July 1946, the Wodehouses made preparations to return to New York. They were delayed by Ethel's insistence on acquiring suitable new clothes and by Wodehouse's wish to finish writing his current novel, The Mating Season, in the peace of the French countryside. In April 1947 they sailed to New York, where Wodehouse was relieved at the friendly reception he received from the large press contingent awaiting his arrival. Ethel secured a comfortable penthouse apartment in Manhattan's Upper East Side, but Wodehouse was not at ease. The New York that he had known before the war was much changed. The magazines that had paid lavishly for his stories were in decline, and those that remained were not much interested in him. He was sounded out about writing for Broadway, but he was not at home in the post-war theatre; he had money problems, with large sums temporarily tied up in Britain, and for the first time in his career he had no ideas for a new novel. He did not complete one until 1951.
Wodehouse remained unsettled until he and Ethel left New York City for Long Island. Bolton and his wife lived in the prosperous hamlet of Remsenburg, part of the Southampton area of Long Island, east of Manhattan. Wodehouse stayed with them frequently, and in 1952 he and Ethel bought a house nearby. They lived at Remsenburg for the rest of their lives. Between 1952 and 1975 he published more than twenty novels, as well as two collections of short stories, a heavily edited collection of his letters, a volume of memoirs, and a selection of his magazine articles. He continued to hanker after a revival of his theatrical career. A 1959 off-Broadway revival of the 1917 Bolton-Wodehouse-Kern Leave It to Jane was a surprise hit, running for 928 performances, but his few post-war stage works, some in collaboration with Bolton, made little impression.
Although Ethel made a return visit to England in 1948 to shop and visit family and friends, Wodehouse never left America after his arrival in 1947. It was not until 1965 that the British government indicated privately that he could return without fear of legal proceedings, and by then he felt too old to make the journey. The biographers Benny Green and Robert McCrum both take the view that this exile benefited Wodehouse's writing, helping him to go on depicting an idealised England seen in his mind's eye, rather than as it actually was in the post-war decades. During their years in Long Island, the couple often took in stray animals and contributed substantial funds to a local animal shelter.
In 1955 Wodehouse became an American citizen, though he remained a British subject, and was therefore still eligible for UK state honours. He was considered for the award of a knighthood three times from 1967, but the honour was twice blocked by British officials. In 1974 the British prime minister, Harold Wilson, intervened to secure a knighthood (KBE) for Wodehouse, which was announced in the January 1975 New Year Honours list. The Times commented that Wodehouse's honour signalled "official forgiveness for his wartime indiscretion.... It is late, but not too late, to take the sting out of that unhappy incident."
The following month Wodehouse entered Southampton Hospital, Long Island, for treatment of a skin complaint. While there, he suffered a heart attack and died on 14 February 1975 at the age of 93. He was buried at Remsenburg Presbyterian Church four days later. Ethel outlived him by more than nine years; Leonora had predeceased him, dying suddenly in 1944.
Writing
Technique and approach
Before starting a book Wodehouse would write up to four hundred pages of notes bringing together an outline of the plot; he acknowledged that "It's the plots that I find so hard to work out. It takes such a long time to work one out." He always completed the plot before working on specific character actions. For a novel the note-writing process could take up to two years, and he would usually have two or more novels in preparation simultaneously. After he had completed his notes, he would draw up a fuller scenario of about thirty thousand words, which ensured plot holes were avoided, and allowed for the dialogue to begin to develop. When interviewed in 1975 he revealed that "For a humorous novel you've got to have a scenario, and you've got to test it so that you know where the comedy comes in, where the situations come in ... splitting it up into scenes (you can make a scene of almost anything) and have as little stuff in between as possible." He preferred working between 4 and 7 pm—but never after dinner—and would work seven days a week. In his younger years, he would write around two to three thousand words a day, although he slowed as he aged, so that in his nineties he would produce a thousand. The reduced speed in writing slowed his production of books: when younger he would produce a novel in about three months, while Bachelors Anonymous, published in 1973, took around six months. Although studies of language production in normal healthy ageing show a marked decline from the mid-70s on, a study of Wodehouse's works did not find any evidence of a decline in linguistic ability with age.
Wodehouse believed that one of the factors that made his stories humorous was his view of life, and he stated that "If you take life fairly easily, then you take a humorous view of things. It's probably because you were born that way." He carried this view through into his writing, describing the approach as "making the thing a sort of musical comedy without music, and ignoring real life altogether". The literary critic Edward L. Galligan considers Wodehouse's stories to show his mastery in adapting the form of the American musical comedy for his writings. Wodehouse would ensure that his first draft was as carefully and accurately done as possible, correcting and refining the prose as he wrote, and would then make another good copy, before proofreading again and then making a final copy for his publisher.
Most of Wodehouse's canon is set in an undated period around the 1920s and 1930s. The critic Anthony Lejeune describes the settings of Wodehouse's novels, such as the Drones Club and Blandings Castle, as "a fairyland". Although some critics thought Wodehouse's fiction was based on a world that had never existed, Wodehouse affirmed that "it did. It was going strong between the wars", although he agreed that his version was to some extent "a sort of artificial world of my own creation". The novels showed a largely unchanging world, regardless of when they were written, and only rarely—and mistakenly in McCrum's view—did Wodehouse allow modernity to intrude, as he did in the 1966 story "Bingo Bans the Bomb".
When dealing with the dialogue in his novels, Wodehouse would consider the book's characters as if they were actors in a play, ensuring that the main roles were kept suitably employed throughout the storyline, which must be strong: "If they aren't in interesting situations, characters can't be major characters, not even if you have the rest of the troop talk their heads off about them." Many of Wodehouse's parts were stereotypes, and he acknowledged that "a real character in one of my books sticks out like a sore thumb." The publisher Michael Joseph identifies that even within the stereotypes Wodehouse understood human nature, and therefore "shares with [Charles] Dickens and Charles Chaplin the ability to present the comic resistance of the individual against those superior forces to which we are all subject".
Much of Wodehouse's use of slang terms reflects the influence of his time at school in Dulwich, and partly reflects Edwardian slang. As a young man he enjoyed the literary works of Arthur Conan Doyle and Jerome K. Jerome, and the operatic works of Gilbert and Sullivan. Wodehouse quotes from and alludes to numerous poets throughout his work. The scholar Clarke Olney lists those quoted, including Milton, Byron, Longfellow, Coleridge, Swinburne, Tennyson, Wordsworth and Shakespeare. Another favoured source was the King James Bible.
Language
In 1941 the Concise Cambridge History of English Literature opined that Wodehouse had "a gift for highly original aptness of phrase that almost suggests a poet struggling for release among the wild extravagances of farce", while McCrum thinks that Wodehouse manages to combine "high farce with the inverted poetry of his mature comic style", particularly in The Code of the Woosters; the novelist Anthony Powell believes Wodehouse to be a "comic poet". Robert A. Hall Jr., in his study of Wodehouse's style and technique, describes the author as a master of prose, an opinion also shared by Levin, who considers Wodehouse "one of the finest and purest writers of English prose". Hall identifies several techniques used by Wodehouse to achieve comic effect, including the creation of new words through adding or removing prefixes and suffixes, so when Pongo Twistleton removes the housemaid Elsie Bean from a cupboard, Wodehouse writes that the character "de-Beaned the cupboard". Wodehouse created new words by splitting others in two, thus Wodehouse divides "hobnobbing" when he writes: "To offer a housemaid a cigarette is not hobbing. Nor, when you light it for her, does that constitute nobbing."
Richard Voorhees, Wodehouse's biographer, believes that the author used clichés in a deliberate and ironic manner. His opinion is shared by the academic Stephen Medcalf, who deems Wodehouse's skill is to "bring a cliché just enough to life to kill it", although Pamela March, writing in The Christian Science Monitor, considers Wodehouse to have "an ability to decliché a cliché". Medcalf provides an example from Right Ho, Jeeves in which the teetotal Gussie Fink-Nottle has surreptitiously been given whisky and gin in a punch prior to a prize-giving:
'It seems to me, Jeeves, that the ceremony may be one fraught with considerable interest.'
'Yes, sir.'
'What, in your opinion, will the harvest be?'
'One finds it difficult to hazard a conjecture, sir.'
'You mean imagination boggles?'
'Yes, sir.'
I inspected my imagination. He was right. It boggled.
The stylistic device most commonly found in Wodehouse's work is his use of comparative imagery that includes similes. Hall opines that the humour comes from Wodehouse's ability to accentuate "resemblances which at first glance seem highly incongruous". Examples can be seen in Joy in the Morning, Chapter 29: "There was a sound in the background like a distant sheep coughing gently on a mountainside. Jeeves sailing into action", or Psmith, Chapter 7: "A sound like two or three pigs feeding rather noisily in the middle of a thunderstorm interrupted his meditation." Hall also identifies that periodically Wodehouse used the stylistic device of a transferred epithet, with an adjective that properly belongs to a person applied instead to some inanimate object. The form of expression is used sparingly by Wodehouse in comparison with other mechanisms, only once or twice in a story or novel, according to Hall.
"I balanced a thoughtful lump of sugar on the teaspoon."
—Joy in the Morning, Chapter 5
"As I sat in the bath-tub, soaping a meditative foot ..."
—Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, Chapter 1
"The first thing he did was to prod Jeeves in the lower ribs with an uncouth forefinger."
—Much Obliged, Jeeves, Chapter 4
Wordplay is a key element in Wodehouse's writing. This can take the form of puns, such as in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, when Bertie is released after a night in the police cells, and says that he has "a pinched look" about him. Linguistic confusion is another humorous mechanism, such as in Uncle Dynamite when Constable Potter says he has been "assaulted by the duck pond". In reply, Sir Aylmer, confusing the two meanings of the word "by", asks: "How the devil can you be assaulted by a duck pond?" Wodehouse also uses metaphor and mixed metaphor to add humour. Some come through exaggeration, such as Bingo Little's infant child who "not only has the aspect of a mass murderer, but that of a mass murderer suffering from an ingrown toenail", or Wooster's complaint that "the rumpuses that Bobbie Wickham is already starting may be amusing to her, but not to the unfortunate toads beneath the harrow whom she ruthlessly plunges into the soup." Bertie Wooster's half-forgotten vocabulary also provides a further humorous device. In Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit Bertie asks Jeeves "Let a plugugly like young Thos loose in the community with a cosh, and you are inviting disaster and ... what's the word? Something about cats." Jeeves replies, "Cataclysms, sir?"
Reception and reputation
Literary reception
Wodehouse's early career as a lyricist and playwright was profitable, and his work with Bolton, according to The Guardian, "was one of the most successful in the history of musical comedy". At the outbreak of the Second World War he was earning £40,000 a year from his work, which had broadened to include novels and short stories. Following the furore ensuing from the wartime broadcasts, he suffered a downturn in his popularity and book sales; The Saturday Evening Post stopped publishing his short stories, a stance they reversed in 1965, although his popularity—and the sales figures—slowly recovered over time.
Wodehouse received great praise from many of his contemporaries, including Max Beerbohm, Rudyard Kipling, A. E. Housman and Evelyn Waugh—the last of whom opines, "One has to regard a man as a Master who can produce on average three uniquely brilliant and entirely original similes on each page." There are dissenters to the praise. The writer Alan Bennett thinks that "inspired though his language is, I can never take more than ten pages of the novels at a time, their relentless flippancy wearing and tedious", while the literary critic Q. D. Leavis writes that Wodehouse had a "stereotyped humour ... of ingenious variations on a laugh in one place". In a 2010 study of Wodehouse's few relatively serious novels, such as The Coming of Bill (1919), Jill the Reckless (1920) and The Adventures of Sally (1922), David Heddendorf concludes that though their literary quality does not match that of the farcical novels, they show a range of empathy and interests that in real life—and in his most comic works—the author seemed to lack. "Never oblivious to grief and despair, he opts in clear-eyed awareness for his timeless world of spats and woolly-headed peers. It's an austere, almost bloodless preference for pristine artifice over the pain and messy outcomes of actual existence, but it's a case of Wodehouse keeping faith with his own unique art."
The American literary analyst Robert F. Kiernan, defining "camp" as "excessive stylization of whatever kind", brackets Wodehouse as "a master of the camp novel", along with Thomas Love Peacock, Max Beerbohm, Ronald Firbank, E. F. Benson and Ivy Compton-Burnett. The literary critic and writer Cyril Connolly calls Wodehouse a "politicians' author"—one who does "not like art to be exacting and difficult". Two former British prime ministers, H. H. Asquith and Tony Blair, are on record as Wodehouse aficionados, and the latter became a patron of the Wodehouse Society. Seán O'Casey, a successful playwright of the 1920s, thought little of Wodehouse; he commented in 1941 that it was damaging to England's dignity that the public or "the academic government of Oxford, dead from the chin up" considered Wodehouse an important figure in English literature. His jibe that Wodehouse was "English literature's performing flea" provided his target with the title of his collected letters, published in 1953. McCrum, writing in 2004, observes, "Wodehouse is more popular today than on the day he died", and "his comic vision has an absolutely secure place in the English literary imagination."
Honours and influence
The proposed nominations of Wodehouse for a knighthood in 1967 and 1971 were blocked for fear that such an award would "revive the controversy of his wartime behaviour and give currency to a Bertie Wooster image of the British character which the embassy was doing its best to eradicate". When Wodehouse was awarded the knighthood, only four years later, the journalist Dennis Barker wrote in The Guardian that the writer was "the solitary surviving English literary comic genius". After his death six weeks later, the journalist Michael Davie, writing in the same paper, observed that "Many people regarded ... [Wodehouse] as he regarded Beachcomber, as 'one, if not more than one, of England's greatest men'", while in the view of the obituarist for The Times Wodehouse "was a comic genius recognized in his lifetime as a classic and an old master of farce". In September 2019 Wodehouse was commemorated with a memorial stone in Westminster Abbey; the dedication was held two days after it was installed.
Since Wodehouse's death there have been numerous adaptations and dramatisations of his work on television and film; Wodehouse himself has been portrayed on radio and screen numerous times. There are several literary societies dedicated to Wodehouse. The P.G. Wodehouse Society (UK) was founded in 1997 and has over 1,000 members as at 2015. The president of the society as at 2017 is Alexander Armstrong; past presidents have included Terry Wogan and Richard Briers. There are also other groups of Wodehouse fans in Australia, Belgium, France, Finland, India, Italy, Russia, Sweden and the US. As at 2015 the Oxford English Dictionary contains over 1,750 quotations from Wodehouse, illustrating terms from crispish to zippiness. Voorhees, while acknowledging that Wodehouse's antecedents in literature range from Ben Jonson to Oscar Wilde, writes:
Notes, references and sources
Notes
References
Sources
External links
P. G. Wodehouse collection at One More Library
P.G. Wodehouse Archive on loan to the British Library
The Wodehouse Society
The P. G. Wodehouse Society (UK)
Transcripts of Wodehouse's Berlin Broadcasts
"P. G. Wodehouse: An English Master of American Slang" from The American Legion Weekly, 24 October 1919
Orwell, George "In Defence of P.G. Wodehouse"
1881 births
1975 deaths
20th-century English novelists
20th-century British dramatists and playwrights
British emigrants to the United States
English lyricists
Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire
English male dramatists and playwrights
British male novelists
People educated at Dulwich College
People educated at Elizabeth College, Guernsey
People from Guildford
People from Long Island
PG
People interned during World War II
English humorists
20th-century American novelists
American dramatists and playwrights
American humorists
American lyricists
American male novelists
Novelists from New York (state)
Literature controversies
English broadcasters for Nazi Germany
20th-century American male writers | false | [
"\"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",
"Leih Sebtaha (Why Did You Leave Her') is the fifteenth full-length Arabic studio album from Egyptian pop singer Angham, launched in Egypt in 2001.\n\nTrack listing\n\n Sidi Wisalak (Your Charm) (Lyrics by: Ezzat elGendy | Music composed by: Sheriff Tagg | Music arrangements by: Tarek Akef)\n Leih Sebtaha (Why Did You Leave Her) (Lyrics by: Baha' elDeen Mohammad | Music composed by: Sheriff Tagg | Music arrangements by: Tarek Madkour)\n Rahet Layali (Nights Have Gone) (Lyrics by: Mohammad elRifai | Music composed by: Sheriff Tagg | Music arrangements by: Yahya elMougi)\n Magabsh Serty (Did He Mention Me) (Lyrics by: Ayman Bahgat Amar | Music composed by: Riyad elHamshari | Music arrangements by: Tarek Akef)\n Leih Sebtaha (instrumental) (Why Did You Leave Her) Lyrics by: Baha' elDeen Mohammad | Music composed by: Sheriff Tagg | Music arrangements by: Tarek Madkour)\n Tedhak Alaya (You Laugh At Me) (Lyrics by: Saoud elSharabtli | Music composed by: elFaissal | Music arrangements by: Mahmoud Sadek)\n Noujoum elLeil (Stars Of the Night) (Lyrics by: Wael Helal | Music composed by: Ameer Abdel Majeed | Music arrangements by: Ashraf Mahrous)\n Habbeitak Leih (Why Did I Even Love You) (Lyrics by: Nader Abdallah | Music composed by: Sheriff Tagg | Music arrangements by: Ashraf Mahrous)\n Hayran (Confused) (Lyrics by: Naser Rashwan | Music composed by: Ameer Abdel Majeed | Music arrangements by: Hisham Niyaz)\n Ana Indak (I'm At Your Place)''''' (Lyrics by: Bahaa elDeen Mohammad | Music composed by: Sheriff Tagg | Music arrangements by: Tarek Madkour)\n\nReferences\n\nAngham albums\nArabic-language albums\n2001 albums\nAlam elPhan Records albums"
] |
[
"P. G. Wodehouse",
"Broadway: 1915-19",
"What did he do in Broadway?",
"Wodehouse \"the most observant, literate, and witty lyricist of his day\".",
"What prompted him to go to Broadway?",
"they thought the song lyrics weak and invited Wodehouse to join them on its successor.",
"How many musicals did he write?",
"I don't know.",
"Who invited him to Broadway?",
"Jerome Kern introduced him to the writer Guy Bolton, who became Wodehouse's closest friend and a regular collaborator.",
"What was his best success?",
"the long-running Sally (1920, New York),",
"Why did he leave?",
"I don't know."
] | C_14a60ae6a0404de9a8adfd5f0367ce69_1 | Was he successful? | 7 | Was P. G. Wodehouse successful? | P. G. Wodehouse | A third milestone in Wodehouse's life came towards the end of 1915: his old songwriting partner Jerome Kern introduced him to the writer Guy Bolton, who became Wodehouse's closest friend and a regular collaborator. Bolton and Kern had a musical, Very Good Eddie, running at the Princess Theatre in New York. The show was successful, but they thought the song lyrics weak and invited Wodehouse to join them on its successor. This was Miss Springtime (1916), which ran for 227 performances--a good run by the standards of the day. The team produced several more successes, including Leave It to Jane (1917), Oh, Boy! (1917-18) and Oh, Lady! Lady!! (1918), and Wodehouse and Bolton wrote a few more shows with other composers. In these musicals Wodehouse's lyrics won high praise from critics as well as fellow lyricists such as Ira Gershwin. Unlike his original model, Gilbert, Wodehouse preferred the music to be written first, fitting his words into the melodies. Donaldson suggests that this is the reason why his lyrics have largely been overlooked in recent years: they fit the music perfectly, but do not stand on their own in verse form as Gilbert's do. Nonetheless, Donaldson adds, the book and lyrics for the Princess Theatre shows made the collaborators an enormous fortune and played an important part in the development of the American musical. In the Grove Dictionary of American Music Larry Stempel writes, "By presenting naturalistic stories and characters and attempting to integrate the songs and lyrics into the action of the libretto, these works brought a new level of intimacy, cohesion, and sophistication to American musical comedy." The theatre writer Gerald Bordman calls Wodehouse "the most observant, literate, and witty lyricist of his day". The composer Richard Rodgers wrote, "Before Larry Hart, only P.G. Wodehouse had made any real assault on the intelligence of the song-listening public." In the years after the war, Wodehouse steadily increased his sales, polished his existing characters and introduced new ones. Bertie and Jeeves, Lord Emsworth and his circle, and Ukridge appeared in novels and short stories; Psmith made his fourth and last appearance; two new characters were the Oldest Member, narrating his series of golfing stories, and Mr Mulliner, telling his particularly tall tales to fellow patrons of the bar at the Angler's Rest. Various other young men-about-town appeared in short stories about members of the Drones Club. The Wodehouses returned to England, where they had a house in London for some years, but Wodehouse continued to cross the Atlantic frequently, spending substantial periods in New York. He continued to work in the theatre. During the 1920s he collaborated on nine musical comedies produced on Broadway or in the West End, including the long-running Sally (1920, New York), The Cabaret Girl (1922, London) and Rosalie (1928, New York). He also wrote non-musical plays, including The Play's the Thing (1926), adapted from Ferenc Molnar, and A Damsel in Distress (1928), a dramatisation of his 1919 novel. Though never a naturally gregarious man, Wodehouse was more sociable in the 1920s than at other periods. Donaldson lists among those with whom he was on friendly terms writers including A.A. Milne, Ian Hay, Frederick Lonsdale and E. Phillips Oppenheim, and stage performers including George Grossmith, Jr., Heather Thatcher and Dorothy Dickson. CANNOTANSWER | In these musicals Wodehouse's lyrics won high praise from critics as well as fellow lyricists such as Ira Gershwin. | Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, ( ; 15 October 188114 February 1975) was an English author and one of the most widely read humorists of the 20th century. His creations include the feather-brained Bertie Wooster and his sagacious valet, Jeeves; the immaculate and loquacious Psmith; Lord Emsworth and the Blandings Castle set; the Oldest Member, with stories about golf; and Mr Mulliner, with tall tales on subjects ranging from bibulous bishops to megalomaniac movie moguls.
Born in Guildford, the third son of a British magistrate based in Hong Kong, Wodehouse spent happy teenage years at Dulwich College, to which he remained devoted all his life. After leaving school he was employed by a bank but disliked the work and turned to writing in his spare time. His early novels were mostly school stories, but he later switched to comic fiction. Most of Wodehouse's fiction is set in his native United Kingdom, although he spent much of his life in the US and used New York and Hollywood as settings for some of his novels and short stories. He wrote a series of Broadway musical comedies during and after the First World War, together with Guy Bolton and Jerome Kern, that played an important part in the development of the American musical. He began the 1930s writing for MGM in Hollywood. In a 1931 interview, his naive revelations of incompetence and extravagance in the studios caused a furore. In the same decade, his literary career reached a new peak.
In 1934 Wodehouse moved to France for tax reasons; in 1940 he was taken prisoner at Le Touquet by the invading Germans and interned for nearly a year. After his release he made six broadcasts from German radio in Berlin to the US, which had not yet entered the war. The talks were comic and apolitical, but his broadcasting over enemy radio prompted anger and strident controversy in Britain, and a threat of prosecution. Wodehouse never returned to England. From 1947 until his death he lived in the US, taking dual British-American citizenship in 1955. He died in 1975, at the age of 93, in Southampton, New York.
Wodehouse was a prolific writer throughout his life, publishing more than ninety books, forty plays, two hundred short stories and other writings between 1902 and 1974. He worked extensively on his books, sometimes having two or more in preparation simultaneously. He would take up to two years to build a plot and write a scenario of about thirty thousand words. After the scenario was complete he would write the story. Early in his career Wodehouse would produce a novel in about three months, but he slowed in old age to around six months. He used a mixture of Edwardian slang, quotations from and allusions to numerous poets, and several literary techniques to produce a prose style that has been compared to comic poetry and musical comedy. Some critics of Wodehouse have considered his work flippant, but among his fans are former British prime ministers and many of his fellow writers.
Life and career
Early years
Wodehouse was born in Guildford, Surrey, the third son of Henry Ernest Wodehouse (1845–1929), a magistrate resident in the British colony of Hong Kong, and his wife, Eleanor (1861–1941), daughter of the Rev John Bathurst Deane. The Wodehouses, who traced their ancestry back to the 13th century, belonged to a cadet branch of the family of the earls of Kimberley. Eleanor Wodehouse was also of ancient aristocratic ancestry. She was visiting her sister in Guildford when Wodehouse was born there prematurely.
The boy was baptised at the Church of St Nicolas, Guildford, and was named after his godfather, Pelham von Donop. Wodehouse wrote in 1957, "If you ask me to tell you frankly if I like the name Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, I must confess that I do not.... I was named after a godfather, and not a thing to show for it but a small silver mug which I lost in 1897." The first name was rapidly elided to "Plum", the name by which Wodehouse became known to family and friends.
Mother and son sailed for Hong Kong, where for his first two years Wodehouse was raised by a Chinese amah (nurse), alongside his elder brothers Peveril (1877–1951) and Armine (1879–1936). When he was two, the brothers were brought to England, where they were placed under the care of an English nanny in a house adjoining that of Eleanor's father and mother. The boys' parents returned to Hong Kong and became virtual strangers to their sons. Such an arrangement was then normal for middle-class families based in the colonies. The lack of parental contact, and the harsh regime of some of those in loco parentis, left permanent emotional scars on many children from similar backgrounds, including the writers Thackeray, Saki, Kipling and Walpole. Wodehouse was more fortunate; his nanny, Emma Roper, was strict but not unkind, and both with her and later at his different schools Wodehouse had a generally happy childhood. His recollection was that "it went like a breeze from start to finish, with everybody I met understanding me perfectly". The biographer Robert McCrum suggests that nonetheless Wodehouse's isolation from his parents left a psychological mark, causing him to avoid emotional engagement both in life and in his works. Another biographer, Frances Donaldson, writes, "Deprived so early, not merely of maternal love, but of home life and even a stable background, Wodehouse consoled himself from the youngest age in an imaginary world of his own."
In 1886 the brothers were sent to a dame-school in Croydon, where they spent three years. Peveril was then found to have a "weak chest"; sea air was prescribed, and the three boys were moved to Elizabeth College on the island of Guernsey. In 1891 Wodehouse went on to Malvern House Preparatory School in Kent, which concentrated on preparing its pupils for entry to the Royal Navy. His father had planned a naval career for him, but the boy's eyesight was found to be too poor for it. He was unimpressed by the school's narrow curriculum and zealous discipline; he later parodied it in his novels, with Bertie Wooster recalling his early years as a pupil at a "penitentiary... with the outward guise of a prep school" called Malvern House.
Throughout their school years the brothers were sent to stay during the holidays with various uncles and aunts from both sides of the family. In the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Iain Sproat counts twenty aunts and considers that they played an important part not only in Wodehouse's early life, but, thinly disguised, in his mature novels, as the formidable aunts who dominate the action in the Wooster, Blandings, and other stories. The boys had fifteen uncles, four of whom were clergymen. Sproat writes that they inspired Wodehouse's "pious but fallible curates, vicars, and bishops, of which he wrote with friendly irreverence but without mockery".
At the age of twelve in 1894, to his great joy, Wodehouse was able to follow his brother Armine to Dulwich College. He was entirely at home there; Donaldson comments that Dulwich gave him, for the first time, "some continuity and a stable and ordered life". He loved the camaraderie, distinguished himself at cricket, rugby and boxing, and was a good, if not consistently diligent, student. The headmaster at the time was A. H. Gilkes, a respected classicist, who was a strong influence on Wodehouse. In a study of Wodehouse's works, Richard Usborne argues that "only a writer who was himself a scholar and had had his face ground into Latin and Greek (especially Thucydides) as a boy" could sustain the complex sequences of subordinate clauses sometimes found in Wodehouse's comic prose.
Wodehouse's six years at Dulwich were among the happiest of his life: "To me the years between 1894 and 1900 were like heaven." In addition to his sporting achievements he was a good singer and enjoyed taking part in school concerts; his literary leanings found an outlet in editing the school magazine, The Alleynian. For the rest of his life he remained devoted to the school. The biographer Barry Phelps writes that Wodehouse "loved the college as much as he loved anything or anybody".
Reluctant banker; budding writer: 1900–1908
Wodehouse expected to follow Armine to the University of Oxford, but the family's finances took a turn for the worse at the crucial moment. Ernest Wodehouse had retired in 1895, and his pension was paid in rupees; fluctuation against the pound reduced its value in Britain. Wodehouse recalled, "The wolf was not actually whining at the door and there was always a little something in the kitty for the butcher and the grocer, but the finances would not run to anything in the nature of a splash". Instead of a university career, in September 1900 Wodehouse was engaged in a junior position in the London office of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank. He was unsuited to it and found the work baffling and uncongenial. He later wrote a humorous account of his experiences at the bank, but at the time he longed for the end of each working day, when he could return to his rented lodgings in Chelsea and write. At first he concentrated, with some success, on serious articles about school sports for Public School Magazine. In November 1900 his first comic piece, "Men Who Missed Their Own Weddings", was accepted by Tit-Bits. A new magazine for boys, The Captain, provided further well-paid opportunities, and during his two years at the bank, Wodehouse had eighty pieces published in a total of nine magazines.
In 1901, with the help of a former Dulwich master, William Beach Thomas, Wodehouse secured an appointment—at first temporary and later permanent—writing for The Globes popular "By the Way" column. He held the post until 1909. At around the same time his first novel was published—a school story called The Pothunters, serialised incomplete in Public School Magazine in early 1902, and issued in full in hardback in September. He resigned from the bank that month to devote himself to writing full-time.
Between the publication of The Pothunters 1902 and that of Mike in 1909, Wodehouse wrote eight novels and co-wrote another two. The critic R. D. B. French writes that, of Wodehouse's work from this period, almost all that deserves to survive is the school fiction. Looking back in the 1950s Wodehouse viewed these as his apprentice years: "I was practically in swaddling clothes and it is extremely creditable to me that I was able to write at all."
From his boyhood Wodehouse had been fascinated by America, which he conceived of as "a land of romance"; he "yearned" to visit the country, and by 1904 he had earned enough to do so. In April he sailed to New York, which he found greatly to his liking. He noted in his diary: "In New York gathering experience. Worth many guineas in the future but none for the moment." This prediction proved correct: few British writers had first-hand experience of the US, and his articles about life in New York brought him higher than usual fees. He later recalled that "in 1904 anyone in the London writing world who had been to America was regarded with awe and looked upon as an authority on that terra incognita.... After that trip to New York I was a man who counted.... My income rose like a rocketing pheasant."
Wodehouse's other new venture in 1904 was writing for the stage. Towards the end of the year the librettist Owen Hall invited him to contribute an additional lyric for a musical comedy Sergeant Brue. Wodehouse had loved theatre since his first visit, aged thirteen, when Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience had made him "drunk with ecstasy". His lyric for Hall, "Put Me in My Little Cell", was a Gilbertian number for a trio of comic crooks, with music by Frederick Rosse; it was well received and launched Wodehouse on a career as a theatre writer that spanned three decades.
Although it made little impact on its first publication, the 1906 novel Love Among the Chickens contained what French calls the author's first original comic creation: Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge. The character, an amoral, bungling opportunist, is partly based on Wodehouse's Globe colleague Herbert Westbrook. The two collaborated between 1907 and 1913 on two books, two music hall sketches, and a play, Brother Alfred. Wodehouse would return to the character in short stories over the next six decades.
In early 1906 the actor-manager Seymour Hicks invited Wodehouse to become resident lyricist at the Aldwych Theatre, to add topical verses to newly imported or long-running shows. Hicks had already recruited the young Jerome Kern to write the music for such songs. The first Kern-Wodehouse collaboration, a comic number for The Beauty of Bath titled "Mr [Joseph] Chamberlain", was a show-stopper and was briefly the most popular song in London.
Psmith, Blandings, Wooster and Jeeves: 1908–1915
Wodehouse's early period as a writer came to an end in 1908 with the serialisation of The Lost Lambs, published the following year in book form as the second half of the novel Mike. The work begins as a conventional school story, but Wodehouse introduces a new and strikingly original character, Psmith, whose creation both Evelyn Waugh and George Orwell regarded as a watershed in Wodehouse's development. Wodehouse said that he based Psmith on the hotelier and impresario Rupert D'Oyly Carte—"the only thing in my literary career which was handed to me on a silver plate with watercress around it". Wodehouse wrote in the 1970s that a cousin of his who had been at school with Carte told him of the latter's monocle, studied suavity, and stateliness of speech, all of which Wodehouse adopted for his new character. Psmith featured in three more novels: Psmith in the City (1910), a burlesque of banking; Psmith, Journalist (1915) set in New York; and Leave It to Psmith (1923), set at Blandings Castle.
In May 1909 Wodehouse made his second visit to New York, where he sold two short stories to Cosmopolitan and Collier's for a total of $500, a much higher fee than he had commanded previously. He resigned from The Globe and stayed in New York for nearly a year. He sold many more stories, but none of the American publications offered a permanent relationship and guaranteed income. Wodehouse returned to England in late 1910, rejoining The Globe and also contributing regularly to The Strand Magazine. Between then and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 he revisited America frequently.
Wodehouse was in New York when the war began. Ineligible for military service because of his poor eyesight, he remained in the US throughout the war, detached from the conflict in Europe and absorbed in his theatrical and literary concerns. In September 1914 he married Ethel May Wayman, née Newton (1885–1984), an English widow. The marriage proved happy and lifelong. Ethel's personality was in contrast with her husband's: he was shy and impractical; she was gregarious, decisive and well organised. In Sproat's phrase, she "took charge of Wodehouse's life and made certain that he had the peace and quiet he needed to write". There were no children of the marriage, but Wodehouse came to love Ethel's daughter Leonora (1905–1944) and legally adopted her.
Wodehouse experimented with different genres of fiction in these years; Psmith, Journalist, mixing comedy with social comment on slum landlords and racketeers, was published in 1915. In the same year The Saturday Evening Post paid $3,500 to serialise Something New, the first of what became a series of novels set at Blandings Castle. It was published in hardback in the US and the UK in the same year (the British edition being retitled Something Fresh). It was Wodehouse's first farcical novel; it was also his first best-seller, and although his later books included some gentler, lightly sentimental stories, it was as a farceur that he became known. Later in the same year "Extricating Young Gussie", the first story about Bertie and Jeeves, was published. These stories introduced two sets of characters about whom Wodehouse wrote for the rest of his life. The Blandings Castle stories, set in an English stately home, depict the attempts of the placid Lord Emsworth to evade the many distractions around him, which include successive pairs of young lovers, the machinations of his exuberant brother Galahad, the demands of his domineering sisters and super-efficient secretaries, and anything detrimental to his prize sow, the Empress of Blandings. The Bertie and Jeeves stories feature an amiable young man-about-town, regularly rescued from the consequences of his idiocy by the benign interference of his valet.
Broadway: 1915–1919
A third milestone in Wodehouse's life came towards the end of 1915: his old songwriting partner Jerome Kern introduced him to the writer Guy Bolton, who became Wodehouse's closest friend and a regular collaborator. Bolton and Kern had a musical, Very Good Eddie, running at the Princess Theatre in New York. The show was successful, but they thought the song lyrics weak and invited Wodehouse to join them on its successor. This was Miss Springtime (1916), which ran for 227 performances—a good run by the standards of the day. The team produced several more successes, including Leave It to Jane (1917), Oh, Boy! (1917–18) and Oh, Lady! Lady!! (1918), and Wodehouse and Bolton wrote a few more shows with other composers. In these musicals Wodehouse's lyrics won high praise from critics as well as fellow lyricists such as Ira Gershwin.
Unlike his original model, Gilbert, Wodehouse preferred the music to be written first, fitting his words into the melodies. Donaldson suggests that this is the reason why his lyrics have largely been overlooked in recent years: they fit the music perfectly, but do not stand on their own in verse form as Gilbert's do. Nonetheless, Donaldson adds, the book and lyrics for the Princess Theatre shows made the collaborators an enormous fortune and played an important part in the development of the American musical. In the Grove Dictionary of American Music Larry Stempel writes, "By presenting naturalistic stories and characters and attempting to integrate the songs and lyrics into the action of the libretto, these works brought a new level of intimacy, cohesion, and sophistication to American musical comedy." The theatre writer Gerald Bordman calls Wodehouse "the most observant, literate, and witty lyricist of his day". The composer Richard Rodgers wrote, "Before Larry Hart, only P.G. Wodehouse had made any real assault on the intelligence of the song-listening public."
1920s
In the years after the war, Wodehouse steadily increased his sales, polished his existing characters and introduced new ones. Bertie and Jeeves, Lord Emsworth and his circle, and Ukridge appeared in novels and short stories; Psmith made his fourth and last appearance; two new characters were the Oldest Member, narrating his series of golfing stories, and Mr Mulliner, telling his particularly tall tales to fellow patrons of the bar at the Angler's Rest. Various other young men-about-town appeared in short stories about members of the Drones Club.
The Wodehouses returned to England, where they had a house in London for some years, but Wodehouse continued to cross the Atlantic frequently, spending substantial periods in New York. He continued to work in the theatre. During the 1920s he collaborated on nine musical comedies produced on Broadway or in the West End, including the long-running Sally (1920, New York), The Cabaret Girl (1922, London) and Rosalie (1928, New York). He also wrote non-musical plays, including The Play's the Thing (1926), adapted from Ferenc Molnár, and A Damsel in Distress (1928), a dramatisation of his 1919 novel.
Though never a naturally gregarious man, Wodehouse was more sociable in the 1920s than at other periods. Donaldson lists among those with whom he was on friendly terms writers including A. A. Milne, Ian Hay, Frederick Lonsdale and E. Phillips Oppenheim, and stage performers including George Grossmith Jr., Heather Thatcher and Dorothy Dickson.
Hollywood: 1929–1931
There had been films of Wodehouse stories since 1915, when A Gentleman of Leisure was based on his 1910 novel of the same name. Further screen adaptations of his books were made between then and 1927, but it was not until 1929 that Wodehouse went to Hollywood where Bolton was working as a highly paid writer for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Ethel was taken with both the financial and social aspects of Hollywood life, and she negotiated a contract with MGM on her husband's behalf under which he would be paid $2,000 a week. This large salary was particularly welcome because the couple had lost considerable sums in the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
The contract started in May 1930, but the studio found little for Wodehouse to do, and he had spare time to write a novel and nine short stories. He commented, "It's odd how soon one comes to look on every minute as wasted that is given to earning one's salary." Even when the studio found a project for him to work on, the interventions of committees and constant rewriting by numerous contract authors meant that his ideas were rarely used. In a 2005 study of Wodehouse in Hollywood, Brian Taves writes that Those Three French Girls (1930) was "as close to a success as Wodehouse was to have at MGM. His only other credits were minimal, and the other projects he worked on were not produced."
Wodehouse's contract ended after a year and was not renewed. At MGM's request, he gave an interview to The Los Angeles Times. Wodehouse was described by Herbert Warren Wind as "politically naive [and] fundamentally unworldly", and he caused a sensation by saying publicly what he had already told his friends privately about Hollywood's inefficiency, arbitrary decision-making, and waste of expensive talent. The interview was reprinted in The New York Times, and there was much editorial comment about the state of the film industry. Many writers have considered that the interview precipitated a radical overhaul of the studio system, but Taves believes it to have been "a storm in a teacup", and Donaldson comments that, in the straitened post-crash era, the reforms would have been inevitable.
Wind's view of Wodehouse's naïveté is not universally held. Biographers including Donaldson, McCrum and Phelps suggest that his unworldliness was only part of a complex character, and that in some respects he was highly astute. He was unsparing of the studio owners in his early-1930s short stories set in Hollywood, which contain what Taves considers Wodehouse's sharpest and most biting satire.
Best-seller: 1930s
During the 1930s Wodehouse's theatrical work tailed off. He wrote or adapted four plays for the West End; Leave it to Psmith (1930), which he adapted in collaboration with Ian Hay, was the only one to have a long run. The reviewer in The Manchester Guardian praised the play, but commented: "It is Mr Wodehouse's own inimitable narrative comments and descriptions in his own person of the antics of his puppets that one misses. They cannot be got into a play and they are at least half the fun of the novels." In 1934 Wodehouse collaborated with Bolton on the book for Cole Porter's Anything Goes (Porter wrote his own lyrics), but at the last minute their version was almost entirely rewritten by others at the instigation of the producer, who disliked the original script. Concentrating on writing novels and short stories, Wodehouse reached the peak of his productivity in this decade, averaging two books each year, and grossing an annual £100,000.
His practice of dividing his time between Britain and America caused Wodehouse difficulties with the tax authorities of both countries. Both the UK Inland Revenue and the US Internal Revenue Service sought to tax him as a resident. The matter was settled after lengthy negotiations, but the Wodehouses decided to change their residential status beyond doubt by moving to France, where they bought a house near Le Touquet in the north.
In 1935 Wodehouse created the last of his regular cast of principal characters, Lord Ickenham, otherwise known as Uncle Fred, who, in Usborne's words, "leads the dance in four novels and a short story... a whirring dynamo of misrule". His other books from the decade include Right Ho, Jeeves, which Donaldson judged his best work, Uncle Fred in the Springtime, which the writer Bernard Levin considered the best, and Blandings Castle, which contains "Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend", which Rudyard Kipling thought "one of the most perfect short stories I have ever read".
Other leading literary figures who admired Wodehouse were A. E. Housman, Max Beerbohm and Hilaire Belloc; on the radio and in print Belloc called Wodehouse "the best writer of our time: the best living writer of English... the head of my profession". Wodehouse regarded Belloc's plaudit as "a gag, to get a rise out of serious-minded authors whom he disliked". Wodehouse was never sure that his books had literary merit as well as popular appeal, and, Donaldson suggests, must have been overwhelmed when the University of Oxford conferred an honorary doctorate of letters on him in June 1939. His visit to England for the awarding ceremony was the last time he set foot in his native land.
Second World War: internment and broadcasts
At the start of the Second World War Wodehouse and his wife remained at their Le Touquet house, where, during the Phoney War, he worked on Joy in the Morning. With the advance of the Germans, the nearby Royal Air Force base withdrew; Wodehouse was offered the sole spare seat in one of the fighter aircraft, but he turned down the opportunity as it would have meant leaving behind Ethel and their dog. On 21 May 1940, with German troops advancing through northern France, the Wodehouses decided to drive to Portugal and fly from there to the US. Two miles from home their car broke down, so they returned and borrowed a car from a neighbour; with the routes blocked with refugees, they returned home again.
The Germans occupied Le Touquet on 22 May 1940 and Wodehouse had to report to the authorities daily. After two months of occupation the Germans interned all male enemy nationals under 60, and Wodehouse was sent to a former prison in Loos, a suburb of Lille, on 21 July; Ethel remained in Le Touquet. The internees were placed four to a cell, each of which had been designed for one man. One bed was available per cell, which was made available to the eldest man—not Wodehouse, who slept on the granite floor. The prisoners were not kept long in Loos before they were transported in cattle trucks to a former barracks in Liège, Belgium, which was run as a prison by the SS. After a week the men were transferred to Huy in Liège, where they were incarcerated in the local citadel. They remained there until September 1940, when they were transported to Tost in Upper Silesia (then Germany, now Toszek in Poland).
Wodehouse's family and friends had not had any news of his location after the fall of France, but an article from an Associated Press reporter who had visited Tost in December 1940 led to pressure on the German authorities to release the novelist. This included a petition from influential people in the US; Senator W. Warren Barbour presented it to the German ambassador. Although his captors refused to release him, Wodehouse was provided with a typewriter and, to pass the time, he wrote Money in the Bank. Throughout his time in Tost, he sent postcards to his US literary agent asking for $5 to be sent to various people in Canada, mentioning his name. These were the families of Canadian prisoners of war, and the news from Wodehouse was the first indication that their sons were alive and well. Wodehouse risked severe punishment for the communication, but managed to evade the German censor.
On 21 June 1941, while he was in the middle of playing a game of cricket, Wodehouse received a visit from two members of the Gestapo. He was given ten minutes to pack his things before he was taken to the Hotel Adlon, a top luxury hotel in Berlin. He stayed there at his own expense; royalties from the German editions of his books had been put into a special frozen bank account at the outset of the war, and Wodehouse was permitted to draw upon this money he had earned while staying in Berlin. He was thus released from internment a few months before his sixtieth birthday—the age at which civilian internees were released by the Nazis. Shortly afterwards Wodehouse was, in the words of Phelps, "cleverly trapped" into making five broadcasts to the US via German radio, with the Berlin-based correspondent of the Columbia Broadcasting System. The broadcasts—aired on 28 June, 9, 23 and 30 July and 6 August—were titled How to be an Internee Without Previous Training, and comprised humorous anecdotes about Wodehouse's experiences as a prisoner, including some gentle mocking of his captors. The German propaganda ministry arranged for the recordings to be broadcast to Britain in August. The day after Wodehouse recorded his final programme, Ethel joined him in Berlin, having sold most of her jewellery to pay for the journey.
Aftermath: reactions and investigation
The reaction in Britain to Wodehouse's broadcasts was hostile, and he was "reviled ... as a traitor, collaborator, Nazi propagandist, and a coward", although, Phelps observes, many of those who decried his actions had not heard the content of the programmes. A front-page article in The Daily Mirror stated that Wodehouse "lived luxuriously because Britain laughed with him, but when the laughter was out of his country's heart, ... [he] was not ready to share her suffering. He hadn't the guts ... even to stick it out in the internment camp." In the House of Commons Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary, regretted Wodehouse's actions. Several libraries removed Wodehouse novels from their shelves.
On 15 July the journalist William Connor, under his pen name Cassandra, broadcast a postscript to the news programme railing against Wodehouse. According to The Times, the broadcast "provoked a storm of complaint ... from listeners all over the country". Wodehouse's biographer, Joseph Connolly, thinks the broadcast "inaccurate, spiteful and slanderous"; Phelps calls it "probably the most vituperative attack on an individual ever heard on British radio". The broadcast was made at the direct instruction of Duff Cooper, the Minister of Information, who overruled strong protests made by the BBC against the decision to air the programme. Numerous letters appeared in the British press, both supporting and criticising Wodehouse. The letters page of The Daily Telegraph became a focus for censuring Wodehouse, including one from Wodehouse's friend, ; a reply from their fellow author Compton Mackenzie in defence of Wodehouse was not published because the editor claimed a lack of space. Most of those defending Wodehouse against accusations of disloyalty, including Sax Rohmer, Dorothy L. Sayers and Gilbert Frankau, conceded that he had acted stupidly. Some members of the public wrote to the newspapers to say that the full facts were not yet known and a fair judgment could not be made until they were. The management of the BBC, who considered Wodehouse's actions no worse than "ill advised", pointed out to Cooper that there was no evidence at that point whether Wodehouse had acted voluntarily or under compulsion.
When Wodehouse heard of the furore the broadcasts had caused, he contacted the Foreign Office—through the Swiss embassy in Berlin—to explain his actions, and attempted to return home via neutral countries, but the German authorities refused to let him leave. In Performing Flea, a 1953 collection of letters, Wodehouse wrote, "Of course I ought to have had the sense to see that it was a loony thing to do to use the German radio for even the most harmless stuff, but I didn't. I suppose prison life saps the intellect". The reaction in America was mixed: the left-leaning publication PM accused Wodehouse of "play[ing] Jeeves to the Nazis", but the Department of War used the interviews as an ideal representation of anti-Nazi propaganda.
The Wodehouses remained in Germany until September 1943, when, because of the Allied bombings, they were allowed to move back to Paris. They were living there when the city was liberated on 25 August 1944; Wodehouse reported to the American authorities the following day, asking them to inform the British of his whereabouts. He was subsequently visited by Malcolm Muggeridge, recently arrived in Paris as an intelligence officer with MI6. The young officer quickly came to like Wodehouse and considered the question of treasonable behaviour as "ludicrous"; he summed up the writer as "ill-fitted to live in an age of ideological conflict". On 9 September Wodehouse was visited by an MI5 officer and former barrister, Major Edward Cussen, who formally investigated him, a process that stretched over four days. On 28 September Cussen filed his report, which states that in regard to the broadcasts, Wodehouse's behaviour "has been unwise", but advised against further action. On 23 November Theobald Matthew, the Director of Public Prosecutions, decided there was no evidence to justify prosecuting Wodehouse.
In November 1944 Duff Cooper was appointed British ambassador to France and was provided accommodation at the Hôtel Le Bristol, where the Wodehouses were living. Cooper complained to the French authorities, and the couple were moved to a different hotel. They were subsequently arrested by French police and placed under preventive detention, despite no charges being presented. When Muggeridge tracked them down later, he managed to get Ethel released straight away and, four days later, ensured that the French authorities declared Wodehouse unwell and put him in a nearby hospital, which was more comfortable than where they had been detained. While in this hospital, Wodehouse worked on his novel Uncle Dynamite.
While still detained by the French, Wodehouse was again mentioned in questions in the House of Commons in December 1944 when MPs wondered if the French authorities could repatriate him to stand trial. Eden stated that the "matter has been gone into, and, according to the advice given, there are no grounds upon which we could take action". Two months later, Orwell wrote the essay "In Defence of P.G. Wodehouse", where he stated that "it is important to realise that the events of 1941 do not convict Wodehouse of anything worse than stupidity". Orwell's rationale was that Wodehouse's "moral outlook has remained that of a public-school boy, and according to the public-school code, treachery in time of war is the most unforgivable of all the sins", which was compounded by his "complete lack—so far as one can judge from his printed works—of political awareness".
On 15 January 1945 the French authorities released Wodehouse, but they did not inform him, until June 1946, that he would not face any official charges and was free to leave the country.
American exile: 1946–1975
Having secured American visas in July 1946, the Wodehouses made preparations to return to New York. They were delayed by Ethel's insistence on acquiring suitable new clothes and by Wodehouse's wish to finish writing his current novel, The Mating Season, in the peace of the French countryside. In April 1947 they sailed to New York, where Wodehouse was relieved at the friendly reception he received from the large press contingent awaiting his arrival. Ethel secured a comfortable penthouse apartment in Manhattan's Upper East Side, but Wodehouse was not at ease. The New York that he had known before the war was much changed. The magazines that had paid lavishly for his stories were in decline, and those that remained were not much interested in him. He was sounded out about writing for Broadway, but he was not at home in the post-war theatre; he had money problems, with large sums temporarily tied up in Britain, and for the first time in his career he had no ideas for a new novel. He did not complete one until 1951.
Wodehouse remained unsettled until he and Ethel left New York City for Long Island. Bolton and his wife lived in the prosperous hamlet of Remsenburg, part of the Southampton area of Long Island, east of Manhattan. Wodehouse stayed with them frequently, and in 1952 he and Ethel bought a house nearby. They lived at Remsenburg for the rest of their lives. Between 1952 and 1975 he published more than twenty novels, as well as two collections of short stories, a heavily edited collection of his letters, a volume of memoirs, and a selection of his magazine articles. He continued to hanker after a revival of his theatrical career. A 1959 off-Broadway revival of the 1917 Bolton-Wodehouse-Kern Leave It to Jane was a surprise hit, running for 928 performances, but his few post-war stage works, some in collaboration with Bolton, made little impression.
Although Ethel made a return visit to England in 1948 to shop and visit family and friends, Wodehouse never left America after his arrival in 1947. It was not until 1965 that the British government indicated privately that he could return without fear of legal proceedings, and by then he felt too old to make the journey. The biographers Benny Green and Robert McCrum both take the view that this exile benefited Wodehouse's writing, helping him to go on depicting an idealised England seen in his mind's eye, rather than as it actually was in the post-war decades. During their years in Long Island, the couple often took in stray animals and contributed substantial funds to a local animal shelter.
In 1955 Wodehouse became an American citizen, though he remained a British subject, and was therefore still eligible for UK state honours. He was considered for the award of a knighthood three times from 1967, but the honour was twice blocked by British officials. In 1974 the British prime minister, Harold Wilson, intervened to secure a knighthood (KBE) for Wodehouse, which was announced in the January 1975 New Year Honours list. The Times commented that Wodehouse's honour signalled "official forgiveness for his wartime indiscretion.... It is late, but not too late, to take the sting out of that unhappy incident."
The following month Wodehouse entered Southampton Hospital, Long Island, for treatment of a skin complaint. While there, he suffered a heart attack and died on 14 February 1975 at the age of 93. He was buried at Remsenburg Presbyterian Church four days later. Ethel outlived him by more than nine years; Leonora had predeceased him, dying suddenly in 1944.
Writing
Technique and approach
Before starting a book Wodehouse would write up to four hundred pages of notes bringing together an outline of the plot; he acknowledged that "It's the plots that I find so hard to work out. It takes such a long time to work one out." He always completed the plot before working on specific character actions. For a novel the note-writing process could take up to two years, and he would usually have two or more novels in preparation simultaneously. After he had completed his notes, he would draw up a fuller scenario of about thirty thousand words, which ensured plot holes were avoided, and allowed for the dialogue to begin to develop. When interviewed in 1975 he revealed that "For a humorous novel you've got to have a scenario, and you've got to test it so that you know where the comedy comes in, where the situations come in ... splitting it up into scenes (you can make a scene of almost anything) and have as little stuff in between as possible." He preferred working between 4 and 7 pm—but never after dinner—and would work seven days a week. In his younger years, he would write around two to three thousand words a day, although he slowed as he aged, so that in his nineties he would produce a thousand. The reduced speed in writing slowed his production of books: when younger he would produce a novel in about three months, while Bachelors Anonymous, published in 1973, took around six months. Although studies of language production in normal healthy ageing show a marked decline from the mid-70s on, a study of Wodehouse's works did not find any evidence of a decline in linguistic ability with age.
Wodehouse believed that one of the factors that made his stories humorous was his view of life, and he stated that "If you take life fairly easily, then you take a humorous view of things. It's probably because you were born that way." He carried this view through into his writing, describing the approach as "making the thing a sort of musical comedy without music, and ignoring real life altogether". The literary critic Edward L. Galligan considers Wodehouse's stories to show his mastery in adapting the form of the American musical comedy for his writings. Wodehouse would ensure that his first draft was as carefully and accurately done as possible, correcting and refining the prose as he wrote, and would then make another good copy, before proofreading again and then making a final copy for his publisher.
Most of Wodehouse's canon is set in an undated period around the 1920s and 1930s. The critic Anthony Lejeune describes the settings of Wodehouse's novels, such as the Drones Club and Blandings Castle, as "a fairyland". Although some critics thought Wodehouse's fiction was based on a world that had never existed, Wodehouse affirmed that "it did. It was going strong between the wars", although he agreed that his version was to some extent "a sort of artificial world of my own creation". The novels showed a largely unchanging world, regardless of when they were written, and only rarely—and mistakenly in McCrum's view—did Wodehouse allow modernity to intrude, as he did in the 1966 story "Bingo Bans the Bomb".
When dealing with the dialogue in his novels, Wodehouse would consider the book's characters as if they were actors in a play, ensuring that the main roles were kept suitably employed throughout the storyline, which must be strong: "If they aren't in interesting situations, characters can't be major characters, not even if you have the rest of the troop talk their heads off about them." Many of Wodehouse's parts were stereotypes, and he acknowledged that "a real character in one of my books sticks out like a sore thumb." The publisher Michael Joseph identifies that even within the stereotypes Wodehouse understood human nature, and therefore "shares with [Charles] Dickens and Charles Chaplin the ability to present the comic resistance of the individual against those superior forces to which we are all subject".
Much of Wodehouse's use of slang terms reflects the influence of his time at school in Dulwich, and partly reflects Edwardian slang. As a young man he enjoyed the literary works of Arthur Conan Doyle and Jerome K. Jerome, and the operatic works of Gilbert and Sullivan. Wodehouse quotes from and alludes to numerous poets throughout his work. The scholar Clarke Olney lists those quoted, including Milton, Byron, Longfellow, Coleridge, Swinburne, Tennyson, Wordsworth and Shakespeare. Another favoured source was the King James Bible.
Language
In 1941 the Concise Cambridge History of English Literature opined that Wodehouse had "a gift for highly original aptness of phrase that almost suggests a poet struggling for release among the wild extravagances of farce", while McCrum thinks that Wodehouse manages to combine "high farce with the inverted poetry of his mature comic style", particularly in The Code of the Woosters; the novelist Anthony Powell believes Wodehouse to be a "comic poet". Robert A. Hall Jr., in his study of Wodehouse's style and technique, describes the author as a master of prose, an opinion also shared by Levin, who considers Wodehouse "one of the finest and purest writers of English prose". Hall identifies several techniques used by Wodehouse to achieve comic effect, including the creation of new words through adding or removing prefixes and suffixes, so when Pongo Twistleton removes the housemaid Elsie Bean from a cupboard, Wodehouse writes that the character "de-Beaned the cupboard". Wodehouse created new words by splitting others in two, thus Wodehouse divides "hobnobbing" when he writes: "To offer a housemaid a cigarette is not hobbing. Nor, when you light it for her, does that constitute nobbing."
Richard Voorhees, Wodehouse's biographer, believes that the author used clichés in a deliberate and ironic manner. His opinion is shared by the academic Stephen Medcalf, who deems Wodehouse's skill is to "bring a cliché just enough to life to kill it", although Pamela March, writing in The Christian Science Monitor, considers Wodehouse to have "an ability to decliché a cliché". Medcalf provides an example from Right Ho, Jeeves in which the teetotal Gussie Fink-Nottle has surreptitiously been given whisky and gin in a punch prior to a prize-giving:
'It seems to me, Jeeves, that the ceremony may be one fraught with considerable interest.'
'Yes, sir.'
'What, in your opinion, will the harvest be?'
'One finds it difficult to hazard a conjecture, sir.'
'You mean imagination boggles?'
'Yes, sir.'
I inspected my imagination. He was right. It boggled.
The stylistic device most commonly found in Wodehouse's work is his use of comparative imagery that includes similes. Hall opines that the humour comes from Wodehouse's ability to accentuate "resemblances which at first glance seem highly incongruous". Examples can be seen in Joy in the Morning, Chapter 29: "There was a sound in the background like a distant sheep coughing gently on a mountainside. Jeeves sailing into action", or Psmith, Chapter 7: "A sound like two or three pigs feeding rather noisily in the middle of a thunderstorm interrupted his meditation." Hall also identifies that periodically Wodehouse used the stylistic device of a transferred epithet, with an adjective that properly belongs to a person applied instead to some inanimate object. The form of expression is used sparingly by Wodehouse in comparison with other mechanisms, only once or twice in a story or novel, according to Hall.
"I balanced a thoughtful lump of sugar on the teaspoon."
—Joy in the Morning, Chapter 5
"As I sat in the bath-tub, soaping a meditative foot ..."
—Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, Chapter 1
"The first thing he did was to prod Jeeves in the lower ribs with an uncouth forefinger."
—Much Obliged, Jeeves, Chapter 4
Wordplay is a key element in Wodehouse's writing. This can take the form of puns, such as in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, when Bertie is released after a night in the police cells, and says that he has "a pinched look" about him. Linguistic confusion is another humorous mechanism, such as in Uncle Dynamite when Constable Potter says he has been "assaulted by the duck pond". In reply, Sir Aylmer, confusing the two meanings of the word "by", asks: "How the devil can you be assaulted by a duck pond?" Wodehouse also uses metaphor and mixed metaphor to add humour. Some come through exaggeration, such as Bingo Little's infant child who "not only has the aspect of a mass murderer, but that of a mass murderer suffering from an ingrown toenail", or Wooster's complaint that "the rumpuses that Bobbie Wickham is already starting may be amusing to her, but not to the unfortunate toads beneath the harrow whom she ruthlessly plunges into the soup." Bertie Wooster's half-forgotten vocabulary also provides a further humorous device. In Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit Bertie asks Jeeves "Let a plugugly like young Thos loose in the community with a cosh, and you are inviting disaster and ... what's the word? Something about cats." Jeeves replies, "Cataclysms, sir?"
Reception and reputation
Literary reception
Wodehouse's early career as a lyricist and playwright was profitable, and his work with Bolton, according to The Guardian, "was one of the most successful in the history of musical comedy". At the outbreak of the Second World War he was earning £40,000 a year from his work, which had broadened to include novels and short stories. Following the furore ensuing from the wartime broadcasts, he suffered a downturn in his popularity and book sales; The Saturday Evening Post stopped publishing his short stories, a stance they reversed in 1965, although his popularity—and the sales figures—slowly recovered over time.
Wodehouse received great praise from many of his contemporaries, including Max Beerbohm, Rudyard Kipling, A. E. Housman and Evelyn Waugh—the last of whom opines, "One has to regard a man as a Master who can produce on average three uniquely brilliant and entirely original similes on each page." There are dissenters to the praise. The writer Alan Bennett thinks that "inspired though his language is, I can never take more than ten pages of the novels at a time, their relentless flippancy wearing and tedious", while the literary critic Q. D. Leavis writes that Wodehouse had a "stereotyped humour ... of ingenious variations on a laugh in one place". In a 2010 study of Wodehouse's few relatively serious novels, such as The Coming of Bill (1919), Jill the Reckless (1920) and The Adventures of Sally (1922), David Heddendorf concludes that though their literary quality does not match that of the farcical novels, they show a range of empathy and interests that in real life—and in his most comic works—the author seemed to lack. "Never oblivious to grief and despair, he opts in clear-eyed awareness for his timeless world of spats and woolly-headed peers. It's an austere, almost bloodless preference for pristine artifice over the pain and messy outcomes of actual existence, but it's a case of Wodehouse keeping faith with his own unique art."
The American literary analyst Robert F. Kiernan, defining "camp" as "excessive stylization of whatever kind", brackets Wodehouse as "a master of the camp novel", along with Thomas Love Peacock, Max Beerbohm, Ronald Firbank, E. F. Benson and Ivy Compton-Burnett. The literary critic and writer Cyril Connolly calls Wodehouse a "politicians' author"—one who does "not like art to be exacting and difficult". Two former British prime ministers, H. H. Asquith and Tony Blair, are on record as Wodehouse aficionados, and the latter became a patron of the Wodehouse Society. Seán O'Casey, a successful playwright of the 1920s, thought little of Wodehouse; he commented in 1941 that it was damaging to England's dignity that the public or "the academic government of Oxford, dead from the chin up" considered Wodehouse an important figure in English literature. His jibe that Wodehouse was "English literature's performing flea" provided his target with the title of his collected letters, published in 1953. McCrum, writing in 2004, observes, "Wodehouse is more popular today than on the day he died", and "his comic vision has an absolutely secure place in the English literary imagination."
Honours and influence
The proposed nominations of Wodehouse for a knighthood in 1967 and 1971 were blocked for fear that such an award would "revive the controversy of his wartime behaviour and give currency to a Bertie Wooster image of the British character which the embassy was doing its best to eradicate". When Wodehouse was awarded the knighthood, only four years later, the journalist Dennis Barker wrote in The Guardian that the writer was "the solitary surviving English literary comic genius". After his death six weeks later, the journalist Michael Davie, writing in the same paper, observed that "Many people regarded ... [Wodehouse] as he regarded Beachcomber, as 'one, if not more than one, of England's greatest men'", while in the view of the obituarist for The Times Wodehouse "was a comic genius recognized in his lifetime as a classic and an old master of farce". In September 2019 Wodehouse was commemorated with a memorial stone in Westminster Abbey; the dedication was held two days after it was installed.
Since Wodehouse's death there have been numerous adaptations and dramatisations of his work on television and film; Wodehouse himself has been portrayed on radio and screen numerous times. There are several literary societies dedicated to Wodehouse. The P.G. Wodehouse Society (UK) was founded in 1997 and has over 1,000 members as at 2015. The president of the society as at 2017 is Alexander Armstrong; past presidents have included Terry Wogan and Richard Briers. There are also other groups of Wodehouse fans in Australia, Belgium, France, Finland, India, Italy, Russia, Sweden and the US. As at 2015 the Oxford English Dictionary contains over 1,750 quotations from Wodehouse, illustrating terms from crispish to zippiness. Voorhees, while acknowledging that Wodehouse's antecedents in literature range from Ben Jonson to Oscar Wilde, writes:
Notes, references and sources
Notes
References
Sources
External links
P. G. Wodehouse collection at One More Library
P.G. Wodehouse Archive on loan to the British Library
The Wodehouse Society
The P. G. Wodehouse Society (UK)
Transcripts of Wodehouse's Berlin Broadcasts
"P. G. Wodehouse: An English Master of American Slang" from The American Legion Weekly, 24 October 1919
Orwell, George "In Defence of P.G. Wodehouse"
1881 births
1975 deaths
20th-century English novelists
20th-century British dramatists and playwrights
British emigrants to the United States
English lyricists
Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire
English male dramatists and playwrights
British male novelists
People educated at Dulwich College
People educated at Elizabeth College, Guernsey
People from Guildford
People from Long Island
PG
People interned during World War II
English humorists
20th-century American novelists
American dramatists and playwrights
American humorists
American lyricists
American male novelists
Novelists from New York (state)
Literature controversies
English broadcasters for Nazi Germany
20th-century American male writers | true | [
"Charles Young (September 1686 – 12 December 1758) was an English organist and composer. He was part of a well-known English family of musicians that included several professional singers and organists during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.\n\nBiography\nCharles Young was born sometime during September 1686 in the Covent Garden area of London and was baptised on 7 October of the same year. Born into a musical family, his initial studies were with his father alongside his elder brother Anthony Young, who would also become a successful organist and minor composer. He became a chorister at St Paul's Cathedral in the late 1690s where he sang for over a decade. In 1713, Young was appointed organist of All Hallows, Barking-by-the-Tower, where he remained until his death in 1758. His grandson, Charles John Frederick Lampe, replaced him as organist at All Hallows after his death.\n\nAs a composer, Young wrote music mostly for the Church of England. He was not prolific, producing only a handful of anthems and some organ preludes. He also composed a few vocal art songs. His reputation lies more on his skills as an organist and he was regarded as one of the finest players in England during the eighteenth century.\n\nSeveral of Young's children went on to have successful careers. His eldest daughter Cecilia Young (1712-1789) was one of the greatest English sopranos of the eighteenth century and the wife of composer Thomas Arne. Their son and Charles's grandson, Michael Arne, was a successful composer. His daughter Isabella was also a successful soprano and the wife of composer John Frederick Lampe, and his daughter Esther was a well known contralto and wife to Charles Jones, one of the largest music publishers in England during the eighteenth century. Young's only son, Charles, was a clerk at the Treasury, whose daughters, Isabella, Elizabeth, and Polly followed in the foot steps of their aunts to become successful singers.\n\nReferences\n\n1686 births\n1758 deaths\nEnglish organists\nBritish male organists\nEnglish composers\nCharles",
"This is a list of members of the Western Australian Legislative Assembly between the 1917 election and the 1921 election, together known as the 10th Parliament.\n\nNotes\n The Labor member for Subiaco, Bartholomew James Stubbs, died in action in Belgium on 26 September 1917. At the resulting by-election on 10 November 1917, the Nationalist candidate, Samuel Brown, was successful.\n The Nationalist member for Claremont, John Stewart, resigned on 30 August 1918. At the resulting by-election on 14 September 1918, the Nationalist candidate, Thomas Duff, was successful.\n Sir James Mitchell, member for Northam, was appointed by Premier Hal Colebatch as Minister for Lands and Repatriation on 17 April 1919. Mitchell was therefore required to resign and contest a ministerial by-election, at which he was declared elected upon the close of nominations on 24 April 1919. He himself became premier three weeks later after the failure of the Colebatch Ministry.\n The Nationalist member for Albany, Herbert Robinson, died on 2 May 1919. At the resulting by-election on 31 May 1919, the National Labor candidate, former Premier John Scaddan, was successful.\n Thomas Draper, member for West Perth, was appointed by Premier James Mitchell as Attorney-General on 17 May 1919. Draper was therefore required to resign and contest a ministerial by-election, at which he was successful against an Independent candidate on 7 June 1919.\n Frank Broun, member for Beverley, was appointed by Premier James Mitchell as Colonial Secretary on 25 June 1919. Broun was therefore required to resign and contest a ministerial by-election, at which he was returned unopposed at the close of nominations on 10 July 1919.\n The National Labor member for Mount Leonora, George Foley, resigned on 18 November 1920, to run as the Nationalist candidate for the federal seat of Kalgoorlie at a by-election following the expulsion of Hugh Mahon from the Australian House of Representatives. At the resulting by-election on 20 December 1920, the Labor candidate, Thomas Heron, was successful.\n\nSources\n \n \n\nMembers of Western Australian parliaments by term"
] |
[
"P. G. Wodehouse",
"Broadway: 1915-19",
"What did he do in Broadway?",
"Wodehouse \"the most observant, literate, and witty lyricist of his day\".",
"What prompted him to go to Broadway?",
"they thought the song lyrics weak and invited Wodehouse to join them on its successor.",
"How many musicals did he write?",
"I don't know.",
"Who invited him to Broadway?",
"Jerome Kern introduced him to the writer Guy Bolton, who became Wodehouse's closest friend and a regular collaborator.",
"What was his best success?",
"the long-running Sally (1920, New York),",
"Why did he leave?",
"I don't know.",
"Was he successful?",
"In these musicals Wodehouse's lyrics won high praise from critics as well as fellow lyricists such as Ira Gershwin."
] | C_14a60ae6a0404de9a8adfd5f0367ce69_1 | What was he praised for? | 8 | What was P. G. Wodehouse praised for? | P. G. Wodehouse | A third milestone in Wodehouse's life came towards the end of 1915: his old songwriting partner Jerome Kern introduced him to the writer Guy Bolton, who became Wodehouse's closest friend and a regular collaborator. Bolton and Kern had a musical, Very Good Eddie, running at the Princess Theatre in New York. The show was successful, but they thought the song lyrics weak and invited Wodehouse to join them on its successor. This was Miss Springtime (1916), which ran for 227 performances--a good run by the standards of the day. The team produced several more successes, including Leave It to Jane (1917), Oh, Boy! (1917-18) and Oh, Lady! Lady!! (1918), and Wodehouse and Bolton wrote a few more shows with other composers. In these musicals Wodehouse's lyrics won high praise from critics as well as fellow lyricists such as Ira Gershwin. Unlike his original model, Gilbert, Wodehouse preferred the music to be written first, fitting his words into the melodies. Donaldson suggests that this is the reason why his lyrics have largely been overlooked in recent years: they fit the music perfectly, but do not stand on their own in verse form as Gilbert's do. Nonetheless, Donaldson adds, the book and lyrics for the Princess Theatre shows made the collaborators an enormous fortune and played an important part in the development of the American musical. In the Grove Dictionary of American Music Larry Stempel writes, "By presenting naturalistic stories and characters and attempting to integrate the songs and lyrics into the action of the libretto, these works brought a new level of intimacy, cohesion, and sophistication to American musical comedy." The theatre writer Gerald Bordman calls Wodehouse "the most observant, literate, and witty lyricist of his day". The composer Richard Rodgers wrote, "Before Larry Hart, only P.G. Wodehouse had made any real assault on the intelligence of the song-listening public." In the years after the war, Wodehouse steadily increased his sales, polished his existing characters and introduced new ones. Bertie and Jeeves, Lord Emsworth and his circle, and Ukridge appeared in novels and short stories; Psmith made his fourth and last appearance; two new characters were the Oldest Member, narrating his series of golfing stories, and Mr Mulliner, telling his particularly tall tales to fellow patrons of the bar at the Angler's Rest. Various other young men-about-town appeared in short stories about members of the Drones Club. The Wodehouses returned to England, where they had a house in London for some years, but Wodehouse continued to cross the Atlantic frequently, spending substantial periods in New York. He continued to work in the theatre. During the 1920s he collaborated on nine musical comedies produced on Broadway or in the West End, including the long-running Sally (1920, New York), The Cabaret Girl (1922, London) and Rosalie (1928, New York). He also wrote non-musical plays, including The Play's the Thing (1926), adapted from Ferenc Molnar, and A Damsel in Distress (1928), a dramatisation of his 1919 novel. Though never a naturally gregarious man, Wodehouse was more sociable in the 1920s than at other periods. Donaldson lists among those with whom he was on friendly terms writers including A.A. Milne, Ian Hay, Frederick Lonsdale and E. Phillips Oppenheim, and stage performers including George Grossmith, Jr., Heather Thatcher and Dorothy Dickson. CANNOTANSWER | these works brought a new level of intimacy, cohesion, and sophistication to American musical comedy. | Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, ( ; 15 October 188114 February 1975) was an English author and one of the most widely read humorists of the 20th century. His creations include the feather-brained Bertie Wooster and his sagacious valet, Jeeves; the immaculate and loquacious Psmith; Lord Emsworth and the Blandings Castle set; the Oldest Member, with stories about golf; and Mr Mulliner, with tall tales on subjects ranging from bibulous bishops to megalomaniac movie moguls.
Born in Guildford, the third son of a British magistrate based in Hong Kong, Wodehouse spent happy teenage years at Dulwich College, to which he remained devoted all his life. After leaving school he was employed by a bank but disliked the work and turned to writing in his spare time. His early novels were mostly school stories, but he later switched to comic fiction. Most of Wodehouse's fiction is set in his native United Kingdom, although he spent much of his life in the US and used New York and Hollywood as settings for some of his novels and short stories. He wrote a series of Broadway musical comedies during and after the First World War, together with Guy Bolton and Jerome Kern, that played an important part in the development of the American musical. He began the 1930s writing for MGM in Hollywood. In a 1931 interview, his naive revelations of incompetence and extravagance in the studios caused a furore. In the same decade, his literary career reached a new peak.
In 1934 Wodehouse moved to France for tax reasons; in 1940 he was taken prisoner at Le Touquet by the invading Germans and interned for nearly a year. After his release he made six broadcasts from German radio in Berlin to the US, which had not yet entered the war. The talks were comic and apolitical, but his broadcasting over enemy radio prompted anger and strident controversy in Britain, and a threat of prosecution. Wodehouse never returned to England. From 1947 until his death he lived in the US, taking dual British-American citizenship in 1955. He died in 1975, at the age of 93, in Southampton, New York.
Wodehouse was a prolific writer throughout his life, publishing more than ninety books, forty plays, two hundred short stories and other writings between 1902 and 1974. He worked extensively on his books, sometimes having two or more in preparation simultaneously. He would take up to two years to build a plot and write a scenario of about thirty thousand words. After the scenario was complete he would write the story. Early in his career Wodehouse would produce a novel in about three months, but he slowed in old age to around six months. He used a mixture of Edwardian slang, quotations from and allusions to numerous poets, and several literary techniques to produce a prose style that has been compared to comic poetry and musical comedy. Some critics of Wodehouse have considered his work flippant, but among his fans are former British prime ministers and many of his fellow writers.
Life and career
Early years
Wodehouse was born in Guildford, Surrey, the third son of Henry Ernest Wodehouse (1845–1929), a magistrate resident in the British colony of Hong Kong, and his wife, Eleanor (1861–1941), daughter of the Rev John Bathurst Deane. The Wodehouses, who traced their ancestry back to the 13th century, belonged to a cadet branch of the family of the earls of Kimberley. Eleanor Wodehouse was also of ancient aristocratic ancestry. She was visiting her sister in Guildford when Wodehouse was born there prematurely.
The boy was baptised at the Church of St Nicolas, Guildford, and was named after his godfather, Pelham von Donop. Wodehouse wrote in 1957, "If you ask me to tell you frankly if I like the name Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, I must confess that I do not.... I was named after a godfather, and not a thing to show for it but a small silver mug which I lost in 1897." The first name was rapidly elided to "Plum", the name by which Wodehouse became known to family and friends.
Mother and son sailed for Hong Kong, where for his first two years Wodehouse was raised by a Chinese amah (nurse), alongside his elder brothers Peveril (1877–1951) and Armine (1879–1936). When he was two, the brothers were brought to England, where they were placed under the care of an English nanny in a house adjoining that of Eleanor's father and mother. The boys' parents returned to Hong Kong and became virtual strangers to their sons. Such an arrangement was then normal for middle-class families based in the colonies. The lack of parental contact, and the harsh regime of some of those in loco parentis, left permanent emotional scars on many children from similar backgrounds, including the writers Thackeray, Saki, Kipling and Walpole. Wodehouse was more fortunate; his nanny, Emma Roper, was strict but not unkind, and both with her and later at his different schools Wodehouse had a generally happy childhood. His recollection was that "it went like a breeze from start to finish, with everybody I met understanding me perfectly". The biographer Robert McCrum suggests that nonetheless Wodehouse's isolation from his parents left a psychological mark, causing him to avoid emotional engagement both in life and in his works. Another biographer, Frances Donaldson, writes, "Deprived so early, not merely of maternal love, but of home life and even a stable background, Wodehouse consoled himself from the youngest age in an imaginary world of his own."
In 1886 the brothers were sent to a dame-school in Croydon, where they spent three years. Peveril was then found to have a "weak chest"; sea air was prescribed, and the three boys were moved to Elizabeth College on the island of Guernsey. In 1891 Wodehouse went on to Malvern House Preparatory School in Kent, which concentrated on preparing its pupils for entry to the Royal Navy. His father had planned a naval career for him, but the boy's eyesight was found to be too poor for it. He was unimpressed by the school's narrow curriculum and zealous discipline; he later parodied it in his novels, with Bertie Wooster recalling his early years as a pupil at a "penitentiary... with the outward guise of a prep school" called Malvern House.
Throughout their school years the brothers were sent to stay during the holidays with various uncles and aunts from both sides of the family. In the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Iain Sproat counts twenty aunts and considers that they played an important part not only in Wodehouse's early life, but, thinly disguised, in his mature novels, as the formidable aunts who dominate the action in the Wooster, Blandings, and other stories. The boys had fifteen uncles, four of whom were clergymen. Sproat writes that they inspired Wodehouse's "pious but fallible curates, vicars, and bishops, of which he wrote with friendly irreverence but without mockery".
At the age of twelve in 1894, to his great joy, Wodehouse was able to follow his brother Armine to Dulwich College. He was entirely at home there; Donaldson comments that Dulwich gave him, for the first time, "some continuity and a stable and ordered life". He loved the camaraderie, distinguished himself at cricket, rugby and boxing, and was a good, if not consistently diligent, student. The headmaster at the time was A. H. Gilkes, a respected classicist, who was a strong influence on Wodehouse. In a study of Wodehouse's works, Richard Usborne argues that "only a writer who was himself a scholar and had had his face ground into Latin and Greek (especially Thucydides) as a boy" could sustain the complex sequences of subordinate clauses sometimes found in Wodehouse's comic prose.
Wodehouse's six years at Dulwich were among the happiest of his life: "To me the years between 1894 and 1900 were like heaven." In addition to his sporting achievements he was a good singer and enjoyed taking part in school concerts; his literary leanings found an outlet in editing the school magazine, The Alleynian. For the rest of his life he remained devoted to the school. The biographer Barry Phelps writes that Wodehouse "loved the college as much as he loved anything or anybody".
Reluctant banker; budding writer: 1900–1908
Wodehouse expected to follow Armine to the University of Oxford, but the family's finances took a turn for the worse at the crucial moment. Ernest Wodehouse had retired in 1895, and his pension was paid in rupees; fluctuation against the pound reduced its value in Britain. Wodehouse recalled, "The wolf was not actually whining at the door and there was always a little something in the kitty for the butcher and the grocer, but the finances would not run to anything in the nature of a splash". Instead of a university career, in September 1900 Wodehouse was engaged in a junior position in the London office of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank. He was unsuited to it and found the work baffling and uncongenial. He later wrote a humorous account of his experiences at the bank, but at the time he longed for the end of each working day, when he could return to his rented lodgings in Chelsea and write. At first he concentrated, with some success, on serious articles about school sports for Public School Magazine. In November 1900 his first comic piece, "Men Who Missed Their Own Weddings", was accepted by Tit-Bits. A new magazine for boys, The Captain, provided further well-paid opportunities, and during his two years at the bank, Wodehouse had eighty pieces published in a total of nine magazines.
In 1901, with the help of a former Dulwich master, William Beach Thomas, Wodehouse secured an appointment—at first temporary and later permanent—writing for The Globes popular "By the Way" column. He held the post until 1909. At around the same time his first novel was published—a school story called The Pothunters, serialised incomplete in Public School Magazine in early 1902, and issued in full in hardback in September. He resigned from the bank that month to devote himself to writing full-time.
Between the publication of The Pothunters 1902 and that of Mike in 1909, Wodehouse wrote eight novels and co-wrote another two. The critic R. D. B. French writes that, of Wodehouse's work from this period, almost all that deserves to survive is the school fiction. Looking back in the 1950s Wodehouse viewed these as his apprentice years: "I was practically in swaddling clothes and it is extremely creditable to me that I was able to write at all."
From his boyhood Wodehouse had been fascinated by America, which he conceived of as "a land of romance"; he "yearned" to visit the country, and by 1904 he had earned enough to do so. In April he sailed to New York, which he found greatly to his liking. He noted in his diary: "In New York gathering experience. Worth many guineas in the future but none for the moment." This prediction proved correct: few British writers had first-hand experience of the US, and his articles about life in New York brought him higher than usual fees. He later recalled that "in 1904 anyone in the London writing world who had been to America was regarded with awe and looked upon as an authority on that terra incognita.... After that trip to New York I was a man who counted.... My income rose like a rocketing pheasant."
Wodehouse's other new venture in 1904 was writing for the stage. Towards the end of the year the librettist Owen Hall invited him to contribute an additional lyric for a musical comedy Sergeant Brue. Wodehouse had loved theatre since his first visit, aged thirteen, when Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience had made him "drunk with ecstasy". His lyric for Hall, "Put Me in My Little Cell", was a Gilbertian number for a trio of comic crooks, with music by Frederick Rosse; it was well received and launched Wodehouse on a career as a theatre writer that spanned three decades.
Although it made little impact on its first publication, the 1906 novel Love Among the Chickens contained what French calls the author's first original comic creation: Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge. The character, an amoral, bungling opportunist, is partly based on Wodehouse's Globe colleague Herbert Westbrook. The two collaborated between 1907 and 1913 on two books, two music hall sketches, and a play, Brother Alfred. Wodehouse would return to the character in short stories over the next six decades.
In early 1906 the actor-manager Seymour Hicks invited Wodehouse to become resident lyricist at the Aldwych Theatre, to add topical verses to newly imported or long-running shows. Hicks had already recruited the young Jerome Kern to write the music for such songs. The first Kern-Wodehouse collaboration, a comic number for The Beauty of Bath titled "Mr [Joseph] Chamberlain", was a show-stopper and was briefly the most popular song in London.
Psmith, Blandings, Wooster and Jeeves: 1908–1915
Wodehouse's early period as a writer came to an end in 1908 with the serialisation of The Lost Lambs, published the following year in book form as the second half of the novel Mike. The work begins as a conventional school story, but Wodehouse introduces a new and strikingly original character, Psmith, whose creation both Evelyn Waugh and George Orwell regarded as a watershed in Wodehouse's development. Wodehouse said that he based Psmith on the hotelier and impresario Rupert D'Oyly Carte—"the only thing in my literary career which was handed to me on a silver plate with watercress around it". Wodehouse wrote in the 1970s that a cousin of his who had been at school with Carte told him of the latter's monocle, studied suavity, and stateliness of speech, all of which Wodehouse adopted for his new character. Psmith featured in three more novels: Psmith in the City (1910), a burlesque of banking; Psmith, Journalist (1915) set in New York; and Leave It to Psmith (1923), set at Blandings Castle.
In May 1909 Wodehouse made his second visit to New York, where he sold two short stories to Cosmopolitan and Collier's for a total of $500, a much higher fee than he had commanded previously. He resigned from The Globe and stayed in New York for nearly a year. He sold many more stories, but none of the American publications offered a permanent relationship and guaranteed income. Wodehouse returned to England in late 1910, rejoining The Globe and also contributing regularly to The Strand Magazine. Between then and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 he revisited America frequently.
Wodehouse was in New York when the war began. Ineligible for military service because of his poor eyesight, he remained in the US throughout the war, detached from the conflict in Europe and absorbed in his theatrical and literary concerns. In September 1914 he married Ethel May Wayman, née Newton (1885–1984), an English widow. The marriage proved happy and lifelong. Ethel's personality was in contrast with her husband's: he was shy and impractical; she was gregarious, decisive and well organised. In Sproat's phrase, she "took charge of Wodehouse's life and made certain that he had the peace and quiet he needed to write". There were no children of the marriage, but Wodehouse came to love Ethel's daughter Leonora (1905–1944) and legally adopted her.
Wodehouse experimented with different genres of fiction in these years; Psmith, Journalist, mixing comedy with social comment on slum landlords and racketeers, was published in 1915. In the same year The Saturday Evening Post paid $3,500 to serialise Something New, the first of what became a series of novels set at Blandings Castle. It was published in hardback in the US and the UK in the same year (the British edition being retitled Something Fresh). It was Wodehouse's first farcical novel; it was also his first best-seller, and although his later books included some gentler, lightly sentimental stories, it was as a farceur that he became known. Later in the same year "Extricating Young Gussie", the first story about Bertie and Jeeves, was published. These stories introduced two sets of characters about whom Wodehouse wrote for the rest of his life. The Blandings Castle stories, set in an English stately home, depict the attempts of the placid Lord Emsworth to evade the many distractions around him, which include successive pairs of young lovers, the machinations of his exuberant brother Galahad, the demands of his domineering sisters and super-efficient secretaries, and anything detrimental to his prize sow, the Empress of Blandings. The Bertie and Jeeves stories feature an amiable young man-about-town, regularly rescued from the consequences of his idiocy by the benign interference of his valet.
Broadway: 1915–1919
A third milestone in Wodehouse's life came towards the end of 1915: his old songwriting partner Jerome Kern introduced him to the writer Guy Bolton, who became Wodehouse's closest friend and a regular collaborator. Bolton and Kern had a musical, Very Good Eddie, running at the Princess Theatre in New York. The show was successful, but they thought the song lyrics weak and invited Wodehouse to join them on its successor. This was Miss Springtime (1916), which ran for 227 performances—a good run by the standards of the day. The team produced several more successes, including Leave It to Jane (1917), Oh, Boy! (1917–18) and Oh, Lady! Lady!! (1918), and Wodehouse and Bolton wrote a few more shows with other composers. In these musicals Wodehouse's lyrics won high praise from critics as well as fellow lyricists such as Ira Gershwin.
Unlike his original model, Gilbert, Wodehouse preferred the music to be written first, fitting his words into the melodies. Donaldson suggests that this is the reason why his lyrics have largely been overlooked in recent years: they fit the music perfectly, but do not stand on their own in verse form as Gilbert's do. Nonetheless, Donaldson adds, the book and lyrics for the Princess Theatre shows made the collaborators an enormous fortune and played an important part in the development of the American musical. In the Grove Dictionary of American Music Larry Stempel writes, "By presenting naturalistic stories and characters and attempting to integrate the songs and lyrics into the action of the libretto, these works brought a new level of intimacy, cohesion, and sophistication to American musical comedy." The theatre writer Gerald Bordman calls Wodehouse "the most observant, literate, and witty lyricist of his day". The composer Richard Rodgers wrote, "Before Larry Hart, only P.G. Wodehouse had made any real assault on the intelligence of the song-listening public."
1920s
In the years after the war, Wodehouse steadily increased his sales, polished his existing characters and introduced new ones. Bertie and Jeeves, Lord Emsworth and his circle, and Ukridge appeared in novels and short stories; Psmith made his fourth and last appearance; two new characters were the Oldest Member, narrating his series of golfing stories, and Mr Mulliner, telling his particularly tall tales to fellow patrons of the bar at the Angler's Rest. Various other young men-about-town appeared in short stories about members of the Drones Club.
The Wodehouses returned to England, where they had a house in London for some years, but Wodehouse continued to cross the Atlantic frequently, spending substantial periods in New York. He continued to work in the theatre. During the 1920s he collaborated on nine musical comedies produced on Broadway or in the West End, including the long-running Sally (1920, New York), The Cabaret Girl (1922, London) and Rosalie (1928, New York). He also wrote non-musical plays, including The Play's the Thing (1926), adapted from Ferenc Molnár, and A Damsel in Distress (1928), a dramatisation of his 1919 novel.
Though never a naturally gregarious man, Wodehouse was more sociable in the 1920s than at other periods. Donaldson lists among those with whom he was on friendly terms writers including A. A. Milne, Ian Hay, Frederick Lonsdale and E. Phillips Oppenheim, and stage performers including George Grossmith Jr., Heather Thatcher and Dorothy Dickson.
Hollywood: 1929–1931
There had been films of Wodehouse stories since 1915, when A Gentleman of Leisure was based on his 1910 novel of the same name. Further screen adaptations of his books were made between then and 1927, but it was not until 1929 that Wodehouse went to Hollywood where Bolton was working as a highly paid writer for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Ethel was taken with both the financial and social aspects of Hollywood life, and she negotiated a contract with MGM on her husband's behalf under which he would be paid $2,000 a week. This large salary was particularly welcome because the couple had lost considerable sums in the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
The contract started in May 1930, but the studio found little for Wodehouse to do, and he had spare time to write a novel and nine short stories. He commented, "It's odd how soon one comes to look on every minute as wasted that is given to earning one's salary." Even when the studio found a project for him to work on, the interventions of committees and constant rewriting by numerous contract authors meant that his ideas were rarely used. In a 2005 study of Wodehouse in Hollywood, Brian Taves writes that Those Three French Girls (1930) was "as close to a success as Wodehouse was to have at MGM. His only other credits were minimal, and the other projects he worked on were not produced."
Wodehouse's contract ended after a year and was not renewed. At MGM's request, he gave an interview to The Los Angeles Times. Wodehouse was described by Herbert Warren Wind as "politically naive [and] fundamentally unworldly", and he caused a sensation by saying publicly what he had already told his friends privately about Hollywood's inefficiency, arbitrary decision-making, and waste of expensive talent. The interview was reprinted in The New York Times, and there was much editorial comment about the state of the film industry. Many writers have considered that the interview precipitated a radical overhaul of the studio system, but Taves believes it to have been "a storm in a teacup", and Donaldson comments that, in the straitened post-crash era, the reforms would have been inevitable.
Wind's view of Wodehouse's naïveté is not universally held. Biographers including Donaldson, McCrum and Phelps suggest that his unworldliness was only part of a complex character, and that in some respects he was highly astute. He was unsparing of the studio owners in his early-1930s short stories set in Hollywood, which contain what Taves considers Wodehouse's sharpest and most biting satire.
Best-seller: 1930s
During the 1930s Wodehouse's theatrical work tailed off. He wrote or adapted four plays for the West End; Leave it to Psmith (1930), which he adapted in collaboration with Ian Hay, was the only one to have a long run. The reviewer in The Manchester Guardian praised the play, but commented: "It is Mr Wodehouse's own inimitable narrative comments and descriptions in his own person of the antics of his puppets that one misses. They cannot be got into a play and they are at least half the fun of the novels." In 1934 Wodehouse collaborated with Bolton on the book for Cole Porter's Anything Goes (Porter wrote his own lyrics), but at the last minute their version was almost entirely rewritten by others at the instigation of the producer, who disliked the original script. Concentrating on writing novels and short stories, Wodehouse reached the peak of his productivity in this decade, averaging two books each year, and grossing an annual £100,000.
His practice of dividing his time between Britain and America caused Wodehouse difficulties with the tax authorities of both countries. Both the UK Inland Revenue and the US Internal Revenue Service sought to tax him as a resident. The matter was settled after lengthy negotiations, but the Wodehouses decided to change their residential status beyond doubt by moving to France, where they bought a house near Le Touquet in the north.
In 1935 Wodehouse created the last of his regular cast of principal characters, Lord Ickenham, otherwise known as Uncle Fred, who, in Usborne's words, "leads the dance in four novels and a short story... a whirring dynamo of misrule". His other books from the decade include Right Ho, Jeeves, which Donaldson judged his best work, Uncle Fred in the Springtime, which the writer Bernard Levin considered the best, and Blandings Castle, which contains "Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend", which Rudyard Kipling thought "one of the most perfect short stories I have ever read".
Other leading literary figures who admired Wodehouse were A. E. Housman, Max Beerbohm and Hilaire Belloc; on the radio and in print Belloc called Wodehouse "the best writer of our time: the best living writer of English... the head of my profession". Wodehouse regarded Belloc's plaudit as "a gag, to get a rise out of serious-minded authors whom he disliked". Wodehouse was never sure that his books had literary merit as well as popular appeal, and, Donaldson suggests, must have been overwhelmed when the University of Oxford conferred an honorary doctorate of letters on him in June 1939. His visit to England for the awarding ceremony was the last time he set foot in his native land.
Second World War: internment and broadcasts
At the start of the Second World War Wodehouse and his wife remained at their Le Touquet house, where, during the Phoney War, he worked on Joy in the Morning. With the advance of the Germans, the nearby Royal Air Force base withdrew; Wodehouse was offered the sole spare seat in one of the fighter aircraft, but he turned down the opportunity as it would have meant leaving behind Ethel and their dog. On 21 May 1940, with German troops advancing through northern France, the Wodehouses decided to drive to Portugal and fly from there to the US. Two miles from home their car broke down, so they returned and borrowed a car from a neighbour; with the routes blocked with refugees, they returned home again.
The Germans occupied Le Touquet on 22 May 1940 and Wodehouse had to report to the authorities daily. After two months of occupation the Germans interned all male enemy nationals under 60, and Wodehouse was sent to a former prison in Loos, a suburb of Lille, on 21 July; Ethel remained in Le Touquet. The internees were placed four to a cell, each of which had been designed for one man. One bed was available per cell, which was made available to the eldest man—not Wodehouse, who slept on the granite floor. The prisoners were not kept long in Loos before they were transported in cattle trucks to a former barracks in Liège, Belgium, which was run as a prison by the SS. After a week the men were transferred to Huy in Liège, where they were incarcerated in the local citadel. They remained there until September 1940, when they were transported to Tost in Upper Silesia (then Germany, now Toszek in Poland).
Wodehouse's family and friends had not had any news of his location after the fall of France, but an article from an Associated Press reporter who had visited Tost in December 1940 led to pressure on the German authorities to release the novelist. This included a petition from influential people in the US; Senator W. Warren Barbour presented it to the German ambassador. Although his captors refused to release him, Wodehouse was provided with a typewriter and, to pass the time, he wrote Money in the Bank. Throughout his time in Tost, he sent postcards to his US literary agent asking for $5 to be sent to various people in Canada, mentioning his name. These were the families of Canadian prisoners of war, and the news from Wodehouse was the first indication that their sons were alive and well. Wodehouse risked severe punishment for the communication, but managed to evade the German censor.
On 21 June 1941, while he was in the middle of playing a game of cricket, Wodehouse received a visit from two members of the Gestapo. He was given ten minutes to pack his things before he was taken to the Hotel Adlon, a top luxury hotel in Berlin. He stayed there at his own expense; royalties from the German editions of his books had been put into a special frozen bank account at the outset of the war, and Wodehouse was permitted to draw upon this money he had earned while staying in Berlin. He was thus released from internment a few months before his sixtieth birthday—the age at which civilian internees were released by the Nazis. Shortly afterwards Wodehouse was, in the words of Phelps, "cleverly trapped" into making five broadcasts to the US via German radio, with the Berlin-based correspondent of the Columbia Broadcasting System. The broadcasts—aired on 28 June, 9, 23 and 30 July and 6 August—were titled How to be an Internee Without Previous Training, and comprised humorous anecdotes about Wodehouse's experiences as a prisoner, including some gentle mocking of his captors. The German propaganda ministry arranged for the recordings to be broadcast to Britain in August. The day after Wodehouse recorded his final programme, Ethel joined him in Berlin, having sold most of her jewellery to pay for the journey.
Aftermath: reactions and investigation
The reaction in Britain to Wodehouse's broadcasts was hostile, and he was "reviled ... as a traitor, collaborator, Nazi propagandist, and a coward", although, Phelps observes, many of those who decried his actions had not heard the content of the programmes. A front-page article in The Daily Mirror stated that Wodehouse "lived luxuriously because Britain laughed with him, but when the laughter was out of his country's heart, ... [he] was not ready to share her suffering. He hadn't the guts ... even to stick it out in the internment camp." In the House of Commons Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary, regretted Wodehouse's actions. Several libraries removed Wodehouse novels from their shelves.
On 15 July the journalist William Connor, under his pen name Cassandra, broadcast a postscript to the news programme railing against Wodehouse. According to The Times, the broadcast "provoked a storm of complaint ... from listeners all over the country". Wodehouse's biographer, Joseph Connolly, thinks the broadcast "inaccurate, spiteful and slanderous"; Phelps calls it "probably the most vituperative attack on an individual ever heard on British radio". The broadcast was made at the direct instruction of Duff Cooper, the Minister of Information, who overruled strong protests made by the BBC against the decision to air the programme. Numerous letters appeared in the British press, both supporting and criticising Wodehouse. The letters page of The Daily Telegraph became a focus for censuring Wodehouse, including one from Wodehouse's friend, ; a reply from their fellow author Compton Mackenzie in defence of Wodehouse was not published because the editor claimed a lack of space. Most of those defending Wodehouse against accusations of disloyalty, including Sax Rohmer, Dorothy L. Sayers and Gilbert Frankau, conceded that he had acted stupidly. Some members of the public wrote to the newspapers to say that the full facts were not yet known and a fair judgment could not be made until they were. The management of the BBC, who considered Wodehouse's actions no worse than "ill advised", pointed out to Cooper that there was no evidence at that point whether Wodehouse had acted voluntarily or under compulsion.
When Wodehouse heard of the furore the broadcasts had caused, he contacted the Foreign Office—through the Swiss embassy in Berlin—to explain his actions, and attempted to return home via neutral countries, but the German authorities refused to let him leave. In Performing Flea, a 1953 collection of letters, Wodehouse wrote, "Of course I ought to have had the sense to see that it was a loony thing to do to use the German radio for even the most harmless stuff, but I didn't. I suppose prison life saps the intellect". The reaction in America was mixed: the left-leaning publication PM accused Wodehouse of "play[ing] Jeeves to the Nazis", but the Department of War used the interviews as an ideal representation of anti-Nazi propaganda.
The Wodehouses remained in Germany until September 1943, when, because of the Allied bombings, they were allowed to move back to Paris. They were living there when the city was liberated on 25 August 1944; Wodehouse reported to the American authorities the following day, asking them to inform the British of his whereabouts. He was subsequently visited by Malcolm Muggeridge, recently arrived in Paris as an intelligence officer with MI6. The young officer quickly came to like Wodehouse and considered the question of treasonable behaviour as "ludicrous"; he summed up the writer as "ill-fitted to live in an age of ideological conflict". On 9 September Wodehouse was visited by an MI5 officer and former barrister, Major Edward Cussen, who formally investigated him, a process that stretched over four days. On 28 September Cussen filed his report, which states that in regard to the broadcasts, Wodehouse's behaviour "has been unwise", but advised against further action. On 23 November Theobald Matthew, the Director of Public Prosecutions, decided there was no evidence to justify prosecuting Wodehouse.
In November 1944 Duff Cooper was appointed British ambassador to France and was provided accommodation at the Hôtel Le Bristol, where the Wodehouses were living. Cooper complained to the French authorities, and the couple were moved to a different hotel. They were subsequently arrested by French police and placed under preventive detention, despite no charges being presented. When Muggeridge tracked them down later, he managed to get Ethel released straight away and, four days later, ensured that the French authorities declared Wodehouse unwell and put him in a nearby hospital, which was more comfortable than where they had been detained. While in this hospital, Wodehouse worked on his novel Uncle Dynamite.
While still detained by the French, Wodehouse was again mentioned in questions in the House of Commons in December 1944 when MPs wondered if the French authorities could repatriate him to stand trial. Eden stated that the "matter has been gone into, and, according to the advice given, there are no grounds upon which we could take action". Two months later, Orwell wrote the essay "In Defence of P.G. Wodehouse", where he stated that "it is important to realise that the events of 1941 do not convict Wodehouse of anything worse than stupidity". Orwell's rationale was that Wodehouse's "moral outlook has remained that of a public-school boy, and according to the public-school code, treachery in time of war is the most unforgivable of all the sins", which was compounded by his "complete lack—so far as one can judge from his printed works—of political awareness".
On 15 January 1945 the French authorities released Wodehouse, but they did not inform him, until June 1946, that he would not face any official charges and was free to leave the country.
American exile: 1946–1975
Having secured American visas in July 1946, the Wodehouses made preparations to return to New York. They were delayed by Ethel's insistence on acquiring suitable new clothes and by Wodehouse's wish to finish writing his current novel, The Mating Season, in the peace of the French countryside. In April 1947 they sailed to New York, where Wodehouse was relieved at the friendly reception he received from the large press contingent awaiting his arrival. Ethel secured a comfortable penthouse apartment in Manhattan's Upper East Side, but Wodehouse was not at ease. The New York that he had known before the war was much changed. The magazines that had paid lavishly for his stories were in decline, and those that remained were not much interested in him. He was sounded out about writing for Broadway, but he was not at home in the post-war theatre; he had money problems, with large sums temporarily tied up in Britain, and for the first time in his career he had no ideas for a new novel. He did not complete one until 1951.
Wodehouse remained unsettled until he and Ethel left New York City for Long Island. Bolton and his wife lived in the prosperous hamlet of Remsenburg, part of the Southampton area of Long Island, east of Manhattan. Wodehouse stayed with them frequently, and in 1952 he and Ethel bought a house nearby. They lived at Remsenburg for the rest of their lives. Between 1952 and 1975 he published more than twenty novels, as well as two collections of short stories, a heavily edited collection of his letters, a volume of memoirs, and a selection of his magazine articles. He continued to hanker after a revival of his theatrical career. A 1959 off-Broadway revival of the 1917 Bolton-Wodehouse-Kern Leave It to Jane was a surprise hit, running for 928 performances, but his few post-war stage works, some in collaboration with Bolton, made little impression.
Although Ethel made a return visit to England in 1948 to shop and visit family and friends, Wodehouse never left America after his arrival in 1947. It was not until 1965 that the British government indicated privately that he could return without fear of legal proceedings, and by then he felt too old to make the journey. The biographers Benny Green and Robert McCrum both take the view that this exile benefited Wodehouse's writing, helping him to go on depicting an idealised England seen in his mind's eye, rather than as it actually was in the post-war decades. During their years in Long Island, the couple often took in stray animals and contributed substantial funds to a local animal shelter.
In 1955 Wodehouse became an American citizen, though he remained a British subject, and was therefore still eligible for UK state honours. He was considered for the award of a knighthood three times from 1967, but the honour was twice blocked by British officials. In 1974 the British prime minister, Harold Wilson, intervened to secure a knighthood (KBE) for Wodehouse, which was announced in the January 1975 New Year Honours list. The Times commented that Wodehouse's honour signalled "official forgiveness for his wartime indiscretion.... It is late, but not too late, to take the sting out of that unhappy incident."
The following month Wodehouse entered Southampton Hospital, Long Island, for treatment of a skin complaint. While there, he suffered a heart attack and died on 14 February 1975 at the age of 93. He was buried at Remsenburg Presbyterian Church four days later. Ethel outlived him by more than nine years; Leonora had predeceased him, dying suddenly in 1944.
Writing
Technique and approach
Before starting a book Wodehouse would write up to four hundred pages of notes bringing together an outline of the plot; he acknowledged that "It's the plots that I find so hard to work out. It takes such a long time to work one out." He always completed the plot before working on specific character actions. For a novel the note-writing process could take up to two years, and he would usually have two or more novels in preparation simultaneously. After he had completed his notes, he would draw up a fuller scenario of about thirty thousand words, which ensured plot holes were avoided, and allowed for the dialogue to begin to develop. When interviewed in 1975 he revealed that "For a humorous novel you've got to have a scenario, and you've got to test it so that you know where the comedy comes in, where the situations come in ... splitting it up into scenes (you can make a scene of almost anything) and have as little stuff in between as possible." He preferred working between 4 and 7 pm—but never after dinner—and would work seven days a week. In his younger years, he would write around two to three thousand words a day, although he slowed as he aged, so that in his nineties he would produce a thousand. The reduced speed in writing slowed his production of books: when younger he would produce a novel in about three months, while Bachelors Anonymous, published in 1973, took around six months. Although studies of language production in normal healthy ageing show a marked decline from the mid-70s on, a study of Wodehouse's works did not find any evidence of a decline in linguistic ability with age.
Wodehouse believed that one of the factors that made his stories humorous was his view of life, and he stated that "If you take life fairly easily, then you take a humorous view of things. It's probably because you were born that way." He carried this view through into his writing, describing the approach as "making the thing a sort of musical comedy without music, and ignoring real life altogether". The literary critic Edward L. Galligan considers Wodehouse's stories to show his mastery in adapting the form of the American musical comedy for his writings. Wodehouse would ensure that his first draft was as carefully and accurately done as possible, correcting and refining the prose as he wrote, and would then make another good copy, before proofreading again and then making a final copy for his publisher.
Most of Wodehouse's canon is set in an undated period around the 1920s and 1930s. The critic Anthony Lejeune describes the settings of Wodehouse's novels, such as the Drones Club and Blandings Castle, as "a fairyland". Although some critics thought Wodehouse's fiction was based on a world that had never existed, Wodehouse affirmed that "it did. It was going strong between the wars", although he agreed that his version was to some extent "a sort of artificial world of my own creation". The novels showed a largely unchanging world, regardless of when they were written, and only rarely—and mistakenly in McCrum's view—did Wodehouse allow modernity to intrude, as he did in the 1966 story "Bingo Bans the Bomb".
When dealing with the dialogue in his novels, Wodehouse would consider the book's characters as if they were actors in a play, ensuring that the main roles were kept suitably employed throughout the storyline, which must be strong: "If they aren't in interesting situations, characters can't be major characters, not even if you have the rest of the troop talk their heads off about them." Many of Wodehouse's parts were stereotypes, and he acknowledged that "a real character in one of my books sticks out like a sore thumb." The publisher Michael Joseph identifies that even within the stereotypes Wodehouse understood human nature, and therefore "shares with [Charles] Dickens and Charles Chaplin the ability to present the comic resistance of the individual against those superior forces to which we are all subject".
Much of Wodehouse's use of slang terms reflects the influence of his time at school in Dulwich, and partly reflects Edwardian slang. As a young man he enjoyed the literary works of Arthur Conan Doyle and Jerome K. Jerome, and the operatic works of Gilbert and Sullivan. Wodehouse quotes from and alludes to numerous poets throughout his work. The scholar Clarke Olney lists those quoted, including Milton, Byron, Longfellow, Coleridge, Swinburne, Tennyson, Wordsworth and Shakespeare. Another favoured source was the King James Bible.
Language
In 1941 the Concise Cambridge History of English Literature opined that Wodehouse had "a gift for highly original aptness of phrase that almost suggests a poet struggling for release among the wild extravagances of farce", while McCrum thinks that Wodehouse manages to combine "high farce with the inverted poetry of his mature comic style", particularly in The Code of the Woosters; the novelist Anthony Powell believes Wodehouse to be a "comic poet". Robert A. Hall Jr., in his study of Wodehouse's style and technique, describes the author as a master of prose, an opinion also shared by Levin, who considers Wodehouse "one of the finest and purest writers of English prose". Hall identifies several techniques used by Wodehouse to achieve comic effect, including the creation of new words through adding or removing prefixes and suffixes, so when Pongo Twistleton removes the housemaid Elsie Bean from a cupboard, Wodehouse writes that the character "de-Beaned the cupboard". Wodehouse created new words by splitting others in two, thus Wodehouse divides "hobnobbing" when he writes: "To offer a housemaid a cigarette is not hobbing. Nor, when you light it for her, does that constitute nobbing."
Richard Voorhees, Wodehouse's biographer, believes that the author used clichés in a deliberate and ironic manner. His opinion is shared by the academic Stephen Medcalf, who deems Wodehouse's skill is to "bring a cliché just enough to life to kill it", although Pamela March, writing in The Christian Science Monitor, considers Wodehouse to have "an ability to decliché a cliché". Medcalf provides an example from Right Ho, Jeeves in which the teetotal Gussie Fink-Nottle has surreptitiously been given whisky and gin in a punch prior to a prize-giving:
'It seems to me, Jeeves, that the ceremony may be one fraught with considerable interest.'
'Yes, sir.'
'What, in your opinion, will the harvest be?'
'One finds it difficult to hazard a conjecture, sir.'
'You mean imagination boggles?'
'Yes, sir.'
I inspected my imagination. He was right. It boggled.
The stylistic device most commonly found in Wodehouse's work is his use of comparative imagery that includes similes. Hall opines that the humour comes from Wodehouse's ability to accentuate "resemblances which at first glance seem highly incongruous". Examples can be seen in Joy in the Morning, Chapter 29: "There was a sound in the background like a distant sheep coughing gently on a mountainside. Jeeves sailing into action", or Psmith, Chapter 7: "A sound like two or three pigs feeding rather noisily in the middle of a thunderstorm interrupted his meditation." Hall also identifies that periodically Wodehouse used the stylistic device of a transferred epithet, with an adjective that properly belongs to a person applied instead to some inanimate object. The form of expression is used sparingly by Wodehouse in comparison with other mechanisms, only once or twice in a story or novel, according to Hall.
"I balanced a thoughtful lump of sugar on the teaspoon."
—Joy in the Morning, Chapter 5
"As I sat in the bath-tub, soaping a meditative foot ..."
—Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, Chapter 1
"The first thing he did was to prod Jeeves in the lower ribs with an uncouth forefinger."
—Much Obliged, Jeeves, Chapter 4
Wordplay is a key element in Wodehouse's writing. This can take the form of puns, such as in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, when Bertie is released after a night in the police cells, and says that he has "a pinched look" about him. Linguistic confusion is another humorous mechanism, such as in Uncle Dynamite when Constable Potter says he has been "assaulted by the duck pond". In reply, Sir Aylmer, confusing the two meanings of the word "by", asks: "How the devil can you be assaulted by a duck pond?" Wodehouse also uses metaphor and mixed metaphor to add humour. Some come through exaggeration, such as Bingo Little's infant child who "not only has the aspect of a mass murderer, but that of a mass murderer suffering from an ingrown toenail", or Wooster's complaint that "the rumpuses that Bobbie Wickham is already starting may be amusing to her, but not to the unfortunate toads beneath the harrow whom she ruthlessly plunges into the soup." Bertie Wooster's half-forgotten vocabulary also provides a further humorous device. In Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit Bertie asks Jeeves "Let a plugugly like young Thos loose in the community with a cosh, and you are inviting disaster and ... what's the word? Something about cats." Jeeves replies, "Cataclysms, sir?"
Reception and reputation
Literary reception
Wodehouse's early career as a lyricist and playwright was profitable, and his work with Bolton, according to The Guardian, "was one of the most successful in the history of musical comedy". At the outbreak of the Second World War he was earning £40,000 a year from his work, which had broadened to include novels and short stories. Following the furore ensuing from the wartime broadcasts, he suffered a downturn in his popularity and book sales; The Saturday Evening Post stopped publishing his short stories, a stance they reversed in 1965, although his popularity—and the sales figures—slowly recovered over time.
Wodehouse received great praise from many of his contemporaries, including Max Beerbohm, Rudyard Kipling, A. E. Housman and Evelyn Waugh—the last of whom opines, "One has to regard a man as a Master who can produce on average three uniquely brilliant and entirely original similes on each page." There are dissenters to the praise. The writer Alan Bennett thinks that "inspired though his language is, I can never take more than ten pages of the novels at a time, their relentless flippancy wearing and tedious", while the literary critic Q. D. Leavis writes that Wodehouse had a "stereotyped humour ... of ingenious variations on a laugh in one place". In a 2010 study of Wodehouse's few relatively serious novels, such as The Coming of Bill (1919), Jill the Reckless (1920) and The Adventures of Sally (1922), David Heddendorf concludes that though their literary quality does not match that of the farcical novels, they show a range of empathy and interests that in real life—and in his most comic works—the author seemed to lack. "Never oblivious to grief and despair, he opts in clear-eyed awareness for his timeless world of spats and woolly-headed peers. It's an austere, almost bloodless preference for pristine artifice over the pain and messy outcomes of actual existence, but it's a case of Wodehouse keeping faith with his own unique art."
The American literary analyst Robert F. Kiernan, defining "camp" as "excessive stylization of whatever kind", brackets Wodehouse as "a master of the camp novel", along with Thomas Love Peacock, Max Beerbohm, Ronald Firbank, E. F. Benson and Ivy Compton-Burnett. The literary critic and writer Cyril Connolly calls Wodehouse a "politicians' author"—one who does "not like art to be exacting and difficult". Two former British prime ministers, H. H. Asquith and Tony Blair, are on record as Wodehouse aficionados, and the latter became a patron of the Wodehouse Society. Seán O'Casey, a successful playwright of the 1920s, thought little of Wodehouse; he commented in 1941 that it was damaging to England's dignity that the public or "the academic government of Oxford, dead from the chin up" considered Wodehouse an important figure in English literature. His jibe that Wodehouse was "English literature's performing flea" provided his target with the title of his collected letters, published in 1953. McCrum, writing in 2004, observes, "Wodehouse is more popular today than on the day he died", and "his comic vision has an absolutely secure place in the English literary imagination."
Honours and influence
The proposed nominations of Wodehouse for a knighthood in 1967 and 1971 were blocked for fear that such an award would "revive the controversy of his wartime behaviour and give currency to a Bertie Wooster image of the British character which the embassy was doing its best to eradicate". When Wodehouse was awarded the knighthood, only four years later, the journalist Dennis Barker wrote in The Guardian that the writer was "the solitary surviving English literary comic genius". After his death six weeks later, the journalist Michael Davie, writing in the same paper, observed that "Many people regarded ... [Wodehouse] as he regarded Beachcomber, as 'one, if not more than one, of England's greatest men'", while in the view of the obituarist for The Times Wodehouse "was a comic genius recognized in his lifetime as a classic and an old master of farce". In September 2019 Wodehouse was commemorated with a memorial stone in Westminster Abbey; the dedication was held two days after it was installed.
Since Wodehouse's death there have been numerous adaptations and dramatisations of his work on television and film; Wodehouse himself has been portrayed on radio and screen numerous times. There are several literary societies dedicated to Wodehouse. The P.G. Wodehouse Society (UK) was founded in 1997 and has over 1,000 members as at 2015. The president of the society as at 2017 is Alexander Armstrong; past presidents have included Terry Wogan and Richard Briers. There are also other groups of Wodehouse fans in Australia, Belgium, France, Finland, India, Italy, Russia, Sweden and the US. As at 2015 the Oxford English Dictionary contains over 1,750 quotations from Wodehouse, illustrating terms from crispish to zippiness. Voorhees, while acknowledging that Wodehouse's antecedents in literature range from Ben Jonson to Oscar Wilde, writes:
Notes, references and sources
Notes
References
Sources
External links
P. G. Wodehouse collection at One More Library
P.G. Wodehouse Archive on loan to the British Library
The Wodehouse Society
The P. G. Wodehouse Society (UK)
Transcripts of Wodehouse's Berlin Broadcasts
"P. G. Wodehouse: An English Master of American Slang" from The American Legion Weekly, 24 October 1919
Orwell, George "In Defence of P.G. Wodehouse"
1881 births
1975 deaths
20th-century English novelists
20th-century British dramatists and playwrights
British emigrants to the United States
English lyricists
Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire
English male dramatists and playwrights
British male novelists
People educated at Dulwich College
People educated at Elizabeth College, Guernsey
People from Guildford
People from Long Island
PG
People interned during World War II
English humorists
20th-century American novelists
American dramatists and playwrights
American humorists
American lyricists
American male novelists
Novelists from New York (state)
Literature controversies
English broadcasters for Nazi Germany
20th-century American male writers | true | [
"Make Do with What You Got is an album by R&B musician Solomon Burke. It was released on March 1, 2005, on the Shout! Factory and Sony BMG labels. The album was produced by Don Was and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album.\n\nCritical reception\n\nMake Do with What You Got received mostly favorable reviews from music critics. AllMusic critic Mark Deming praised Burke's vocal ability while also criticizing Was's production.\n\nTrack listing\n\nReferences\n\nSolomon Burke albums\n2005 albums\nShout! Factory albums\nSony BMG albums\nAlbums produced by Don Was",
"Jegaatha (born 3 January 1956) is a famous Tamil author of over 500 short stories, 30 small novels, 10 novels, 100 poems and more than 300 books on various titles. He has also contributed more than 44 Tamil periodicides, ceylon periodicals, Internet periodicals and radio broadcasts.\n\nCreative works\n\nShort story collections\n\nSmall novel collections\n\nNovels\n\nPoetry\n\nTamil periodical contributions\n\nTranslation novels\n\nFictions on various titles\n\nDrama\n\nMusic\n\nCinema\n\nHistory\n\nTheology\n\nLiterature\n\nEpic\n\nLaw\n\nComputer\n\nSports\n\nG.K\n\nSiddha\n\nOther media contributions \n\n Many short stories were contributed to Madurai, Tuticorin radio stations and were praised by Radio fans.\n\nAwards and contributions \n\n \"Ilakkiya Sindhanai\" award to his \"Koottanjoru\" Sirukadaihal.\n \"Therunai\" short story was praised by Ananda vikadan itself.\n \"Vizhuthugal\" short story was praised by \"Idayam pesugiradhu\" weekly for \"Natchathira sirukadhai\".\n \"Ooothapoo\" short story was praised by \"Saavi\" weekly for its \"Vaanavil sirukadhai potti\".\n \"Iravu nerathu magudihal\" was praised by \"Thai\" weekly for its sirukathai potti.\n \"Samuthira Kumararhal\" novel was selected as one of the best novel of 1980's by TKC.This novel was accepted by Madurai Kamaraj University for M.A. subject.\n \"Viduthalai vengai\" novel was accepted by Annamalai University for M.Phil.\n \"Viradha paruvam\" - A short story collection was accepted by Pachaiyappa college,Chennai for M.Phil.\n \"Velviyil Mulaitha vidhaihal\" -A short story collection was accepted by Annamalai University for M.phil.\n \"Jegaadhavin Sirukadhaihal\" collection was accepted by Sri saradha women college(Salem),Fathima College for M.phil.\n\nReferences\n\nSources \n\nThe details have been gathered from the following publications.\n India Today\n Ananda Vikadan\n Kumudham\n Dhinamani\n Nakkeran\n Saravanna store\n Kunguma chimzh\n Thayin manikkodi\n Mugavai murasu\n Thodarum \n Saandror Murasu\n Niraimathi\n Ambala, Internet\n Nivedhini(Ceylon)\n\n1956 births\nLiving people\nTamil writers"
] |
[
"Stephen E. Ambrose",
"Television, film, and other activities"
] | C_e608cccf1c024635807a29e8c150f222_1 | What work did Stephen do in Television? | 1 | What work did Stephen E. Ambrose do in Television? | Stephen E. Ambrose | Ambrose was the lone historian featured in the 1973-74 ITV television series, The World at War, which detailed the history of World War II. He served as the historical consultant for the movie Saving Private Ryan. Tom Hanks, who starred in the movie, said he "pored over D-Day" and Band of Brothers in researching his role. Hanks also credited Ambrose's books with providing extensive detail, particularly regarding D-Day landings. The HBO mini-series, Band of Brothers (2001), for which he was an executive producer, helped sustain the fresh interest in World War II that had been stimulated by the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 1994 and the 60th anniversary in 2004. Ambrose served as executive producer for Price for Peace, a documentary concerning the war in the Pacific theater during World War II, and for Moments of Truth, a TV documentary containing interviews with World War II veterans. In addition, Ambrose served as a commentator for Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, a documentary by Ken Burns. He provided commentary in twenty made-for TV documentaries, covering diverse topics, such as World War II, Lewis & Clark, and America's prominence in the 20th century. He also appeared as a guest on numerous TV programs or stations, including The Charlie Rose Show, C-Span programming, CNN programming, NBC's Today Show, CNBC's Hardball, and various programming on The History Channel and the National Geographic Channel. Ambrose's association with National Geographic stemmed, in part, from his designation as an Explorer-in-Residence by the Society. In addition to his academic work and publishing, Ambrose operated a historical tour business, acting as a tour guide to European locales of World War II. Also, he served on the board of directors for American Rivers and was a member of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Council. CANNOTANSWER | He served as the historical consultant for the movie Saving Private Ryan. | Stephen Edward Ambrose (January 10, 1936 – October 13, 2002) was an American historian, most noted for his biographies of U.S. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. He was a longtime professor of history at the University of New Orleans and the author of many bestselling volumes of American popular history.
There have been numerous well documented allegations of plagiarism, inaccuracies, and sloppiness in Ambrose's writings in addition to claims that he has made about his works. However, in a review of To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian for the New York Times, high school teacher William Everdell credited the historian with reaching "an important lay audience without endorsing its every prejudice."
Early life
Ambrose was born January 10, 1936, in Lovington, Illinois, to Rosepha Trippe Ambrose and Stephen Hedges Ambrose. His father was a physician who served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. Ambrose was raised in Whitewater, Wisconsin, where he graduated from Whitewater High School. His family also owned a farm in Lovington, Illinois, and vacation property in Marinette County, Wisconsin. He attended college at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he was a member of Chi Psi fraternity and played on the University of Wisconsin football team for three years.
Ambrose originally wanted to major in pre-medicine, but changed his major to history after hearing the first lecture in a U.S. history class entitled "Representative Americans" in his sophomore year. The course was taught by William B. Hesseltine, whom Ambrose credits with fundamentally shaping his writing and igniting his interest in history. While at Wisconsin, Ambrose was a member of the Navy and Army ROTC. He graduated with a B.A. in 1957. Ambrose received a master's degree in history from Louisiana State University in 1958, studying under T. Harry Williams. Ambrose then went on to earn a PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1963, under William B. Hesseltine.
Career
Academic positions
Ambrose was a history professor from 1960 until his retirement in 1995. From 1971 onward, he was on the faculty of the University of New Orleans, where he was named the Boyd Professor of History in 1989, an honor given only to faculty who attain "national or international distinction for outstanding teaching, research, or other creative achievement". During the 1969–1970 academic year, he was the Ernest J. King Professor of Maritime History at the Naval War College. While teaching at Kansas State University as the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of War and Peace during the 1970–1971 academic year, Ambrose participated in heckling of Richard Nixon during a speech the president gave on the KSU campus. Given pressure from the KSU administration and having job offers elsewhere, upon finishing out the year Ambrose offered to leave and the offer was accepted. His opposition to the Vietnam War stood in contrast to his research on "presidents and the military at a time when such topics were increasingly regarded by his colleagues as old fashioned and conservative." Ambrose also taught at Louisiana State University (assistant professor of history; 1960–1964) and Johns Hopkins University (associate professor of history; 1964–1969). He held visiting posts at Rutgers University, the University of California, Berkeley, and a number of European schools, including University College Dublin, where he taught as the Mary Ball Washington Professor of American History.
He founded the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans in 1989 serving as its director until 1994. "The mission of the Eisenhower Center is the study of the causes, conduct, and consequences of American national security policy and the use of force as an instrument of policy in the twentieth century." The center's first efforts, which Ambrose initiated, involved the collection of oral histories from World War II veterans about their experiences, particularly any participation in D-Day. By the time of publication of Ambrose's D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II, in 1994, the center had collected more than 1,200 oral histories. Ambrose donated $150,000 to the Center in 1998 to foster additional efforts to collect oral histories from World War II veterans.
Writings
Ambrose's earliest works concerned the American Civil War. He wrote biographies of the generals Emory Upton and Henry Halleck, the first of which was based on his dissertation.
Early in his career, Ambrose was mentored by World War II historian Forrest Pogue. In 1964, Ambrose took a position at Johns Hopkins as the Associate Editor of the Eisenhower Papers, a project aimed at organizing, cataloging and publishing Eisenhower's principal papers. From this work and discussions with Eisenhower emerged an article critical of Cornelius Ryan's The Last Battle, which had depicted Eisenhower as politically naîve, when at the end of World War II he allowed Soviet forces to take Berlin, thus shaping the Cold War that followed. Ambrose expanded this into a book, Eisenhower and Berlin, 1945: The Decision to Halt at the Elbe (1967). Ambrose was aided in the book's writing by comments and notes provided by Eisenhower, who read a draft of the book.
In 1964, Ambrose was commissioned to write the official biography of the former president and five-star general Dwight D. Eisenhower. This resulted in a book on Eisenhower's war years, The Supreme Commander (1970) and a two-volume full biography (published 1983 and 1984), which are considered "the standard" on the subject. Regarding the first volume, Gordon Harrison, writing for the New York Times, proclaimed, "It is Mr. Ambrose's special triumph that he has been able to fight through the memoranda, the directives, plans, reports, and official self-serving pieties of the World War II establishment to uncover the idiosyncratic people at its center." Ambrose also wrote a three-volume biography of Richard Nixon. Although Ambrose was a strong critic of Nixon, the biography was considered fair and just regarding Nixon's presidency.
A visit to a reunion of Easy Company veterans in 1988 prompted Ambrose to collect their stories, turning them into Band of Brothers, E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne: From Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest (1992). D-Day (1994), built upon additional oral histories, presented the battle from the view points of individual soldiers and became his first best seller. A reviewer for the Journal of Military History commended D-Day as the "most comprehensive discussion" of the sea, air, and land operations that coalesced on that day. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, writing for the New York Times, proclaimed that "Reading this history, you can understand why for so many of its participants, despite all the death surrounding them, life revealed itself in that moment at that place." Ambrose's Citizen Soldiers, which describes battles fought in northwest Europe from D-Day through the end of the war, utilized, again, extensive oral histories. Citizen Soldiers became a best seller, appearing on the New York Times best sellers lists for both hardcover and paperback editions in the same week. During the same week, in September 1998, D-Day and Undaunted Courage, Ambrose's 1996 book on Meriwether Lewis and the Corps of Discovery, appeared on the best seller list, also. He also wrote The Victors (1998), a distillation of material from other books detailing Eisenhower's wartime experiences and connections to the common soldier, and The Wild Blue, that looks at World War II aviation largely through the experiences of George McGovern, who commanded a B-24 crew that flew numerous missions over Germany. His other major works include Undaunted Courage about the Lewis and Clark Expedition and Nothing Like It in the World about the construction of the Pacific Railroad. His final book, This Vast Land, a historical novel about the Lewis & Clark expedition written for young readers, was published posthumously in 2003.
Ambrose's most popular single work was Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West (1996), which stayed on the New York Times best seller list for a combined, hardcover and paperback, 126 weeks. Ambrose consolidated research on the Corps of Discovery's expedition conducted in the previous thirty years and "synthesized it skillfully to enrich our understanding and appreciation of this grand epic," according to Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., who reviewed the book for the New York Times. Ken Burns, who produced and directed a PBS documentary on Lewis & Clark declared that Ambrose "takes one of the great, but also one of the most superficially considered, stories in American history and breathes fresh life into it."
In addition to twenty-seven self-authored books, Ambrose co-authored, edited, and contributed to many more and was a frequent contributor to magazines such as American Heritage. He, also, reviewed the works of other historians in the Journal of Southern History, Military Affairs, American Historical Review, Journal of American History, and Foreign Affairs. He served as a contributing editor to MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, also.
Television, film, and other activities
Ambrose featured in the 1973-74 ITV television series, The World at War, which detailed the history of World War II.
He served as the historical consultant for the movie Saving Private Ryan. Tom Hanks, who starred in the movie, said he "pored over D-Day" and Band of Brothers in researching his role. Hanks also credited Ambrose's books with providing extensive detail, particularly regarding D-Day landings.
The HBO mini-series, Band of Brothers (2001), for which he was an executive producer, helped sustain the fresh interest in World War II that had been stimulated by the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 1994 and the 60th anniversary in 2004. Ambrose served as executive producer for Price for Peace, a documentary concerning the war in the Pacific theater during World War II, and for Moments of Truth, a TV documentary containing interviews with World War II veterans.
In addition, Ambrose served as a commentator for Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, a documentary by Ken Burns. He provided commentary in twenty made-for TV documentaries, covering diverse topics, such as World War II, Lewis & Clark, and America's prominence in the 20th century. He also appeared as a guest on numerous TV programs or stations, including The Charlie Rose Show, C-Span programming, CNN programming, NBC's Today Show, CNBC's Hardball, and various programming on The History Channel and the National Geographic Channel. Ambrose's association with National Geographic stemmed, in part, from his designation as an Explorer-in-Residence by the Society.
In addition to his academic work and publishing, Ambrose operated a historical tour business, acting as a tour guide to European locales of World War II. Also, he served on the board of directors for American Rivers and was a member of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Council.
National World War II Museum
Ambrose's work for the Eisenhower Center, specifically his work with D-Day veterans, inspired him to co-found the National D-Day Museum in New Orleans with another historian and UNO professor Gordon H. "Nick" Mueller. Ambrose initiated fundraising by donating $500,000. "He dreamt of a museum that reflected his deep regard for our nation's citizen soldiers, the workers on the Home Front and the sacrifices and hardships they endured to achieve victory." He secured large contributions from the federal government, state of Louisiana, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, and many smaller donations from former students, who answered a plea made by Ambrose in the New Orleans Times-Picayune. In 2003, Congress designated the museum as "America's National World War II Museum," acknowledging an expanded scope and mission for the museum. "The Stephen E. Ambrose Memorial Fund continues to support the development of the museum's Center for Study of the American Spirit, its educational programs and oral history and publication initiatives."
Awards
In 1997, Ambrose received the St. Louis Literary Award from the Saint Louis University Library Associates. In 1998, he received the National Humanities Medal. In 1998, he was awarded the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize for lifetime achievement given by the Society for Military History. In 1998, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. In 2000, Ambrose received the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, the highest honorary award the Department of Defense offers to civilians. In 2001, he was awarded the Theodore Roosevelt Medal for Distinguished Service from the Theodore Roosevelt Association. Ambrose won an Emmy as one of the producers for the mini-series Band of Brothers. Ambrose also received the George Marshall Award, the Abraham Lincoln Literary Award, the Bob Hope Award from the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, and the Will Rogers Memorial Award.
Upon Ambrose's death, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana offered a resolution in the Senate, which received unanimous consent, saluting the "excellence of Stephen Ambrose at capturing the greatness of the American spirit in words."
Personal life, final years, and death
He married his first wife, Judith Dorlester, in 1957, and they had two children, Stephenie and Barry. Judith died in 1965, when Ambrose was 29. Ambrose married his second wife, Moira Buckley (1939–2009), in 1967 and adopted her three children, Andrew, Grace, and Hugh. Moira was an active assistant in his writing and academic projects. After retiring, he maintained homes in Helena, Montana, and Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. A longtime smoker, he was diagnosed with lung cancer in April 2002. His health deteriorated rapidly, and seven months after the diagnosis he died, at the age of 66. George McGovern, the primary focus of Ambrose's Wild Blue said, "He probably reached more readers than any other historian in our national history."
Legacy
Ambrose donated $500,000, half the amount needed, to the University of Wisconsin, to endow a chair in the name of William B. Hesseltine, Ambrose's mentor. The chair's position would focus on the teaching of American military history. When the chair became fully endowed, after Ambrose's death, it was renamed the Ambrose-Hesseltine Chair.
The Ambrose Professor of History title was established at the University of New Orleans after his death. The position is reserved for a military historian.
Each year the Rutgers University Living History Society awards the Stephen E. Ambrose Oral History Award to "an author or artist who has made significant use of oral history." Past winners include Tom Brokaw, Steven Spielberg, Studs Terkel, Michael Beschloss, and Ken Burns.
Criticism
Plagiarism
In 2002, Ambrose was accused of plagiarizing several passages in his book The Wild Blue.<ref>Williams, Robert Chadwell. The Historian's Toolbox: A Student's Guide to the Theory and Craft of History] Armonk NY: M E Sharpe Inc (2003) pp 88-89</ref> Fred Barnes reported in The Weekly Standard that Ambrose had taken passages from Wings of Morning: The Story of the Last American Bomber Shot Down over Germany in World War II, by Thomas Childers, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Ambrose had footnoted sources, but had not enclosed in quotation marks numerous passages from Childers's book."How the Ambrose Story Developed," History News Network, June 2002.
Ambrose asserted that only a few sentences in all his numerous books were the work of other authors. He offered this defense:
A Forbes investigation of his work found cases of plagiarism involving passages in at least six books, with a similar pattern going all the way back to his doctoral dissertation. The History News Network lists seven of Ambrose's more than 40 works—The Wild Blue, Undaunted Courage, Nothing Like It In the World, Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, Citizen Soldiers, The Supreme Commander, and Crazy Horse and Custer—contained content from twelve authors without appropriate attribution from Ambrose.
Factual errors and disputed characterizations
Pacific Railroad
A front-page article published in The Sacramento Bee on January 1, 2001, entitled "Area Historians Rail Against Inaccuracies in Book", listed more than sixty instances identified as "significant errors, misstatements, and made-up quotes" in Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863–1869, Ambrose's non-academic popular history about the construction of the Pacific Railroad between Council Bluffs, Iowa/Omaha, Nebraska, and the San Francisco Bay at Alameda/Oakland via Sacramento, California, which was published in August 2000. The discrepancies were documented in a detailed "fact-checking" paper compiled in December 2000 by three Western US railroad historians who are also experienced researchers, consultants, and collectors specializing in the Pacific Railroad and related topics.Graves, G.J., Strobridge, E.T., & Sweet, C.N.The Sins of Stephen E. Ambrose The Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum (CPRR.org), December 19, 2000
On January 11, 2001, Washington Post columnist Lloyd Grove reported in his column The Reliable Source, that a co-worker had found a "serious historical error" in the same book that "a chastened Ambrose" promised to correct in future editions. A number of journal reviews also sharply criticized the research and fact checking in the book. Reviewer Walter Nugent observed that it contained "annoying slips" such as mislabeled maps, inaccurate dates, geographical errors, and misidentified word origins, while railroad historian Don L. Hofsommer agreed that the book "confuses facts" and that "The research might best be characterized as 'once over lightly'."
The Eisenhower controversy
In the introduction to Ambrose's biography of Eisenhower, he claims that the former president approached him after having read his previous biography of the American general Henry Halleck,
but Tim Rives, Deputy Director of the Eisenhower Presidential Center, says it was Ambrose who contacted Eisenhower and suggested the project, as shown by a letter from Ambrose found in the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum. In his response, Eisenhower stated that "the confidence I have derived from your work by reading your two books—especially the one on Halleck—give reasons why I should be ready to help out so far as I can." The Halleck biography "still sits on a shelf" at the Eisenhower National Historic Site in Gettysburg.
After Eisenhower's death in 1969, Ambrose made repeated claims to have had a unique and extraordinarily close relationship with him over the final five years of the former President's life. In an extensive 1998 interview, before a group of high school students, Ambrose stated that he spent "a lot of time with Ike, really a lot, hundreds and hundreds of hours." Ambrose claimed he interviewed Eisenhower on a wide range of subjects, and that he had been with him "on a daily basis for a couple years" before his death "doing interviews and talking about his life." The former president's diary and telephone records show that the pair met only three times, for a total of less than five hours. Rives has stated that interview dates Ambrose cites in his 1970 book, The Supreme Commander, cannot be reconciled with Eisenhower's personal schedule, but Rives discovered, upon further investigation, a "hidden" relationship between the two men. Eisenhower enlisted Ambrose in his efforts to preserve his legacy and counteract criticisms of his presidency, particularly those charging that Eisenhower's actions at the end of World War II produced the Cold War. Ambrose wrote a review and book supporting the former general, with Eisenhower providing direction and comments during the process. Rives could not square the questionable interview dates cited by Ambrose in later works, but uncovered a relationship with Eisenhower that was "too complicated" to be described by Ambrose's critics.
Works
Sole author
Halleck: Lincoln's Chief of Staff, Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press (1962)
Upton and the Army, Louisiana State University Press (1964)
Duty, Honor, Country: A History of West Point, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press (1966)
[https://archive.org/details/supremecommander00ambr The Supreme Commander: the War Years of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, New York: Doubleday (1970)
Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors, New York: Doubleday (1975)
Ike's Spies: Eisenhower and the Espionage Establishment, New York: Doubleday (1981)
Eisenhower Volume 1: Soldier, General of the Army, President-Elect, 1890-1952, New York: Simon & Schuster (1983)
Eisenhower Volume 2: The President, New York: Simon & Schuster (1984)
Pegasus Bridge: June 6, 1944, New York: Simon & Schuster (1985)
Nixon: The Education of a Politician, 1913-1962, New York: Simon & Schuster (1987)
Eisenhower: Soldier and President, New York: Simon & Schuster (1990) (a one-volume condensation of the 1983-84 two-volume Eisenhower biography)
Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962-1972, New York: Simon & Schuster (1990)
Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, 1973-1990, New York: Simon & Schuster (1991)
Band of Brothers, E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne: From Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest (1992)
D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II, New York, Simon & Schuster (1994)
Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, New York: Simon & Schuster (1996)
Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944 - May 7, 1945, New York: Simon & Schuster (1997)
Americans at War, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi (1997)
The Victors: Eisenhower and his Boys - The Men of World War II, New York: Simon & Schuster (1998)
Comrades: Brothers, Fathers, Heroes, Sons, Pals, New York: Simon & Schuster (1999)
Nothing Like It in the World: The Men who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863-1869, New York: Simon & Schuster (2000)
The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys who Flew the B-24s over Germany, New York: Simon & Schuster (2001)
To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian, New York: Simon & Schuster (2002)
This Vast Land, New York: Simon & Schuster, (2003)
With others
with Richard H. Immerman, Milton S. Eisenhower, Educational Statesman, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press (1983)
with Douglas Brinkley, Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy since 1938, New York: Penguin Books (1997)
with Sam Abell, Lewis and Clark: Voyage of Discovery, Washington DC: National Geographic Society, (1998, 2002)
with Douglas Brinkley, Witness to America (1999) ; 2010:
with Douglas Brinkley, The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation: From the Louisiana Purchase to Today (2002),
Edited works
Institutions in Modern America: Innovation in Structure and Process, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press (1967)
with James A. Barber, The Military and American Society: Essays and Readings, New York, NY: The Free Press (1972)
with Gunter Bischoff, Eisenhower and the German POWs: Facts Against Falsehood, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press (1992)
with Gunter Bischoff, Eisenhower" A Centenary Assessment, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press (1995)
American Heritage New History of World War II(original text by C.L. Sulzberger), New York, NY: Viking Press (1997)
References
Further reading
External links
WorldCat search of works by Stephen Ambrose
Stephen E. Ambrose at FantasticFiction.co.uk
Interview with Stephen Ambrose (1998)
Obituary in The Independent''
Obituary at website of the American Historical Association
Commentary dated December 19, 2000 contributed by G. J. "Chris" Graves, Edson T. Strobridge, and Charles N. Sweet regarding Stephen E. Ambrose's book "Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built The Transcontinental Railroad 1863 - 1869."
Booknotes interview with Ambrose on D-Day: June 6, 1944, June 5, 1994.
In Depth interview with Ambrose, November 5, 2000
1936 births
2002 deaths
American Congregationalists
American military historians
American military writers
Deaths from lung cancer
Deaths from cancer in Mississippi
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Historians of the American West
Historians of the United States
Johns Hopkins University faculty
Kansas State University faculty
Louisiana State University faculty
National Humanities Medal recipients
Naval War College faculty
Official biographers to the presidents of the United States
Writers from Decatur, Illinois
People from Moultrie County, Illinois
People from Helena, Montana
Military personnel from Illinois
Writers from New Orleans
People from Whitewater, Wisconsin
University of New Orleans faculty
University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Letters and Science alumni
Wisconsin Badgers football players
Writers from Wisconsin
Historians of World War II
21st-century American male writers
20th-century American historians
21st-century American historians
Historians of the American Civil War
People involved in plagiarism controversies
American male non-fiction writers | true | [
"Do-Ré-Mi or Standing on Wires is the debut EP album by Australian rock/pop group Do-Ré-Mi which was released by independent label Green Records in August 1982. The album has four tracks, which were written by lead vocalist Deborah Conway, drummer Dorland Bray, bass guitarist Helen Carter and guitarist Stephen Philip. Philip had been a session musician but was invited to join the band during recording in July.\n\nBackground\nDo-Ré-Mi had formed in Sydney in 1981 when Deborah Conway (lead vocals) and Dorland Bray (drums, percussion, backing vocals), both previously in Melbourne-based group The Benders, joined Helen Carter (bass, backing vocals) ex-Friction. Stephen Philip (guitar), ex-Thought Criminals, was initially a studio musician for this EP. Do-Ré-Mi was recorded in July 1982 and Philip was asked to join formally by its release in August. They returned to the studio almost immediately and recorded their next EP The Waiting Room which was released in January 1983.\n\nCarter later said, \"When we did release the first EP we didn't even put on it what everybody did; we just put our names on it and that really shat everybody off. Definitely the press hated us. The success of it, which had a lotto do with 2JJ in those days, was a real surprise.\"\n\nTrack listing\nAll tracks were written by Deborah Conway, Dorland Bray, Helen Carter and Stephen Philip.\n\"Standing on Wires\"\n\"Honeymoon\"\n\"Pecking Order\"\n\"Violet Town\"\n\nPersonnel\nDo-Ré-Mi members\nDorland Bray – drums, percussion, backing vocals\nHelen Carter – bass guitar, backing vocals\nDeborah Conway – lead vocalist\nStephen Philip – guitar\n\nReferences\n\n1982 debut EPs\nDo-Re-Mi (band) albums",
"Follow Me! is a series of television programmes produced by Bayerischer Rundfunk and the BBC in the late 1970s to provide a crash course in the English language. It became popular in many overseas countries as a first introduction to English; in 1983, one hundred million people watched the show in China alone, featuring Kathy Flower.\n\nThe British actor Francis Matthews hosted and narrated the series.\n\nThe course consists of sixty lessons. Each lesson lasts from 12 to 15 minutes and covers a specific lexis. The lessons follow a consistent group of actors, with the relationships between their characters developing during the course.\n\nFollow Me! actors\n Francis Matthews\n Raymond Mason\n David Savile\n Ian Bamforth\n Keith Alexander\n Diane Mercer\n Jane Argyle\n Diana King\n Veronica Leigh\n Elaine Wells\n Danielle Cohn\n Lashawnda Bell\n\nEpisodes \n \"What's your name\"\n \"How are you\"\n \"Can you help me\"\n \"Left, right, straight ahead\"\n \"Where are they\"\n \"What's the time\"\n \"What's this What's that\"\n \"I like it very much\"\n \"Have you got any wine\"\n \"What are they doing\"\n \"Can I have your name, please\"\n \"What does she look like\"\n \"No smoking\"\n \"It's on the first floor\"\n \"Where's he gone\"\n \"Going away\"\n \"Buying things\"\n \"Why do you like it\"\n \"What do you need\"\n \"I sometimes work late\"\n \"Welcome to Britain\"\n \"Who's that\"\n \"What would you like to do\"\n \"How can I get there?\"\n \"Where is it\"\n \"What's the date\"\n \"Whose is it\"\n \"I enjoy it\"\n \"How many and how much\"\n \"What have you done\"\n \"Haven't we met before\"\n \"What did you say\"\n \"Please stop\"\n \"How can I get to Brightly\"\n \"Where can I get it\"\n \"There's a concert on Wednesday\"\n \"What's it like\"\n \"What do you think of him\"\n \"I need someone\"\n \"What were you doing\"\n \"What do you do\"\n \"What do you know about him\"\n \"You shouldn't do that\"\n \"I hope you enjoy your holiday\"\n \"Where can I see a football match\"\n \"When will it be ready\"\n \"Where did you go\"\n \"I think it's awful\"\n \"A room with a view\"\n \"You'll be ill\"\n \"I don't believe in strikes\"\n \"They look tired\"\n \"Would you like to\"\n \"Holiday plans\"\n \"The second shelf on the left\"\n \"When you are ready\"\n \"Tell them about Britain\"\n \"I liked everything\"\n \"Classical or modern\"\n \"Finale\"\n\nReferences \n\n BBC article about the series in China\n\nExternal links \n Follow Me – Beginner level \n Follow Me – Elementary level\n Follow Me – Intermediate level\n Follow Me – Advanced level\n\nAdult education television series\nEnglish-language education television programming"
] |
[
"Stephen E. Ambrose",
"Television, film, and other activities",
"What work did Stephen do in Television?",
"He served as the historical consultant for the movie Saving Private Ryan."
] | C_e608cccf1c024635807a29e8c150f222_1 | Did he work as a consultant on any other films? | 2 | besides Saving Private Ryan, did Stephen E. Ambrose work as a consultant on any other films? | Stephen E. Ambrose | Ambrose was the lone historian featured in the 1973-74 ITV television series, The World at War, which detailed the history of World War II. He served as the historical consultant for the movie Saving Private Ryan. Tom Hanks, who starred in the movie, said he "pored over D-Day" and Band of Brothers in researching his role. Hanks also credited Ambrose's books with providing extensive detail, particularly regarding D-Day landings. The HBO mini-series, Band of Brothers (2001), for which he was an executive producer, helped sustain the fresh interest in World War II that had been stimulated by the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 1994 and the 60th anniversary in 2004. Ambrose served as executive producer for Price for Peace, a documentary concerning the war in the Pacific theater during World War II, and for Moments of Truth, a TV documentary containing interviews with World War II veterans. In addition, Ambrose served as a commentator for Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, a documentary by Ken Burns. He provided commentary in twenty made-for TV documentaries, covering diverse topics, such as World War II, Lewis & Clark, and America's prominence in the 20th century. He also appeared as a guest on numerous TV programs or stations, including The Charlie Rose Show, C-Span programming, CNN programming, NBC's Today Show, CNBC's Hardball, and various programming on The History Channel and the National Geographic Channel. Ambrose's association with National Geographic stemmed, in part, from his designation as an Explorer-in-Residence by the Society. In addition to his academic work and publishing, Ambrose operated a historical tour business, acting as a tour guide to European locales of World War II. Also, he served on the board of directors for American Rivers and was a member of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Council. CANNOTANSWER | Ambrose served as executive producer for Price for Peace, a documentary concerning the war in the Pacific theater during World War II, | Stephen Edward Ambrose (January 10, 1936 – October 13, 2002) was an American historian, most noted for his biographies of U.S. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. He was a longtime professor of history at the University of New Orleans and the author of many bestselling volumes of American popular history.
There have been numerous well documented allegations of plagiarism, inaccuracies, and sloppiness in Ambrose's writings in addition to claims that he has made about his works. However, in a review of To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian for the New York Times, high school teacher William Everdell credited the historian with reaching "an important lay audience without endorsing its every prejudice."
Early life
Ambrose was born January 10, 1936, in Lovington, Illinois, to Rosepha Trippe Ambrose and Stephen Hedges Ambrose. His father was a physician who served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. Ambrose was raised in Whitewater, Wisconsin, where he graduated from Whitewater High School. His family also owned a farm in Lovington, Illinois, and vacation property in Marinette County, Wisconsin. He attended college at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he was a member of Chi Psi fraternity and played on the University of Wisconsin football team for three years.
Ambrose originally wanted to major in pre-medicine, but changed his major to history after hearing the first lecture in a U.S. history class entitled "Representative Americans" in his sophomore year. The course was taught by William B. Hesseltine, whom Ambrose credits with fundamentally shaping his writing and igniting his interest in history. While at Wisconsin, Ambrose was a member of the Navy and Army ROTC. He graduated with a B.A. in 1957. Ambrose received a master's degree in history from Louisiana State University in 1958, studying under T. Harry Williams. Ambrose then went on to earn a PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1963, under William B. Hesseltine.
Career
Academic positions
Ambrose was a history professor from 1960 until his retirement in 1995. From 1971 onward, he was on the faculty of the University of New Orleans, where he was named the Boyd Professor of History in 1989, an honor given only to faculty who attain "national or international distinction for outstanding teaching, research, or other creative achievement". During the 1969–1970 academic year, he was the Ernest J. King Professor of Maritime History at the Naval War College. While teaching at Kansas State University as the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of War and Peace during the 1970–1971 academic year, Ambrose participated in heckling of Richard Nixon during a speech the president gave on the KSU campus. Given pressure from the KSU administration and having job offers elsewhere, upon finishing out the year Ambrose offered to leave and the offer was accepted. His opposition to the Vietnam War stood in contrast to his research on "presidents and the military at a time when such topics were increasingly regarded by his colleagues as old fashioned and conservative." Ambrose also taught at Louisiana State University (assistant professor of history; 1960–1964) and Johns Hopkins University (associate professor of history; 1964–1969). He held visiting posts at Rutgers University, the University of California, Berkeley, and a number of European schools, including University College Dublin, where he taught as the Mary Ball Washington Professor of American History.
He founded the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans in 1989 serving as its director until 1994. "The mission of the Eisenhower Center is the study of the causes, conduct, and consequences of American national security policy and the use of force as an instrument of policy in the twentieth century." The center's first efforts, which Ambrose initiated, involved the collection of oral histories from World War II veterans about their experiences, particularly any participation in D-Day. By the time of publication of Ambrose's D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II, in 1994, the center had collected more than 1,200 oral histories. Ambrose donated $150,000 to the Center in 1998 to foster additional efforts to collect oral histories from World War II veterans.
Writings
Ambrose's earliest works concerned the American Civil War. He wrote biographies of the generals Emory Upton and Henry Halleck, the first of which was based on his dissertation.
Early in his career, Ambrose was mentored by World War II historian Forrest Pogue. In 1964, Ambrose took a position at Johns Hopkins as the Associate Editor of the Eisenhower Papers, a project aimed at organizing, cataloging and publishing Eisenhower's principal papers. From this work and discussions with Eisenhower emerged an article critical of Cornelius Ryan's The Last Battle, which had depicted Eisenhower as politically naîve, when at the end of World War II he allowed Soviet forces to take Berlin, thus shaping the Cold War that followed. Ambrose expanded this into a book, Eisenhower and Berlin, 1945: The Decision to Halt at the Elbe (1967). Ambrose was aided in the book's writing by comments and notes provided by Eisenhower, who read a draft of the book.
In 1964, Ambrose was commissioned to write the official biography of the former president and five-star general Dwight D. Eisenhower. This resulted in a book on Eisenhower's war years, The Supreme Commander (1970) and a two-volume full biography (published 1983 and 1984), which are considered "the standard" on the subject. Regarding the first volume, Gordon Harrison, writing for the New York Times, proclaimed, "It is Mr. Ambrose's special triumph that he has been able to fight through the memoranda, the directives, plans, reports, and official self-serving pieties of the World War II establishment to uncover the idiosyncratic people at its center." Ambrose also wrote a three-volume biography of Richard Nixon. Although Ambrose was a strong critic of Nixon, the biography was considered fair and just regarding Nixon's presidency.
A visit to a reunion of Easy Company veterans in 1988 prompted Ambrose to collect their stories, turning them into Band of Brothers, E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne: From Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest (1992). D-Day (1994), built upon additional oral histories, presented the battle from the view points of individual soldiers and became his first best seller. A reviewer for the Journal of Military History commended D-Day as the "most comprehensive discussion" of the sea, air, and land operations that coalesced on that day. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, writing for the New York Times, proclaimed that "Reading this history, you can understand why for so many of its participants, despite all the death surrounding them, life revealed itself in that moment at that place." Ambrose's Citizen Soldiers, which describes battles fought in northwest Europe from D-Day through the end of the war, utilized, again, extensive oral histories. Citizen Soldiers became a best seller, appearing on the New York Times best sellers lists for both hardcover and paperback editions in the same week. During the same week, in September 1998, D-Day and Undaunted Courage, Ambrose's 1996 book on Meriwether Lewis and the Corps of Discovery, appeared on the best seller list, also. He also wrote The Victors (1998), a distillation of material from other books detailing Eisenhower's wartime experiences and connections to the common soldier, and The Wild Blue, that looks at World War II aviation largely through the experiences of George McGovern, who commanded a B-24 crew that flew numerous missions over Germany. His other major works include Undaunted Courage about the Lewis and Clark Expedition and Nothing Like It in the World about the construction of the Pacific Railroad. His final book, This Vast Land, a historical novel about the Lewis & Clark expedition written for young readers, was published posthumously in 2003.
Ambrose's most popular single work was Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West (1996), which stayed on the New York Times best seller list for a combined, hardcover and paperback, 126 weeks. Ambrose consolidated research on the Corps of Discovery's expedition conducted in the previous thirty years and "synthesized it skillfully to enrich our understanding and appreciation of this grand epic," according to Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., who reviewed the book for the New York Times. Ken Burns, who produced and directed a PBS documentary on Lewis & Clark declared that Ambrose "takes one of the great, but also one of the most superficially considered, stories in American history and breathes fresh life into it."
In addition to twenty-seven self-authored books, Ambrose co-authored, edited, and contributed to many more and was a frequent contributor to magazines such as American Heritage. He, also, reviewed the works of other historians in the Journal of Southern History, Military Affairs, American Historical Review, Journal of American History, and Foreign Affairs. He served as a contributing editor to MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, also.
Television, film, and other activities
Ambrose featured in the 1973-74 ITV television series, The World at War, which detailed the history of World War II.
He served as the historical consultant for the movie Saving Private Ryan. Tom Hanks, who starred in the movie, said he "pored over D-Day" and Band of Brothers in researching his role. Hanks also credited Ambrose's books with providing extensive detail, particularly regarding D-Day landings.
The HBO mini-series, Band of Brothers (2001), for which he was an executive producer, helped sustain the fresh interest in World War II that had been stimulated by the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 1994 and the 60th anniversary in 2004. Ambrose served as executive producer for Price for Peace, a documentary concerning the war in the Pacific theater during World War II, and for Moments of Truth, a TV documentary containing interviews with World War II veterans.
In addition, Ambrose served as a commentator for Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, a documentary by Ken Burns. He provided commentary in twenty made-for TV documentaries, covering diverse topics, such as World War II, Lewis & Clark, and America's prominence in the 20th century. He also appeared as a guest on numerous TV programs or stations, including The Charlie Rose Show, C-Span programming, CNN programming, NBC's Today Show, CNBC's Hardball, and various programming on The History Channel and the National Geographic Channel. Ambrose's association with National Geographic stemmed, in part, from his designation as an Explorer-in-Residence by the Society.
In addition to his academic work and publishing, Ambrose operated a historical tour business, acting as a tour guide to European locales of World War II. Also, he served on the board of directors for American Rivers and was a member of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Council.
National World War II Museum
Ambrose's work for the Eisenhower Center, specifically his work with D-Day veterans, inspired him to co-found the National D-Day Museum in New Orleans with another historian and UNO professor Gordon H. "Nick" Mueller. Ambrose initiated fundraising by donating $500,000. "He dreamt of a museum that reflected his deep regard for our nation's citizen soldiers, the workers on the Home Front and the sacrifices and hardships they endured to achieve victory." He secured large contributions from the federal government, state of Louisiana, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, and many smaller donations from former students, who answered a plea made by Ambrose in the New Orleans Times-Picayune. In 2003, Congress designated the museum as "America's National World War II Museum," acknowledging an expanded scope and mission for the museum. "The Stephen E. Ambrose Memorial Fund continues to support the development of the museum's Center for Study of the American Spirit, its educational programs and oral history and publication initiatives."
Awards
In 1997, Ambrose received the St. Louis Literary Award from the Saint Louis University Library Associates. In 1998, he received the National Humanities Medal. In 1998, he was awarded the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize for lifetime achievement given by the Society for Military History. In 1998, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. In 2000, Ambrose received the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, the highest honorary award the Department of Defense offers to civilians. In 2001, he was awarded the Theodore Roosevelt Medal for Distinguished Service from the Theodore Roosevelt Association. Ambrose won an Emmy as one of the producers for the mini-series Band of Brothers. Ambrose also received the George Marshall Award, the Abraham Lincoln Literary Award, the Bob Hope Award from the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, and the Will Rogers Memorial Award.
Upon Ambrose's death, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana offered a resolution in the Senate, which received unanimous consent, saluting the "excellence of Stephen Ambrose at capturing the greatness of the American spirit in words."
Personal life, final years, and death
He married his first wife, Judith Dorlester, in 1957, and they had two children, Stephenie and Barry. Judith died in 1965, when Ambrose was 29. Ambrose married his second wife, Moira Buckley (1939–2009), in 1967 and adopted her three children, Andrew, Grace, and Hugh. Moira was an active assistant in his writing and academic projects. After retiring, he maintained homes in Helena, Montana, and Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. A longtime smoker, he was diagnosed with lung cancer in April 2002. His health deteriorated rapidly, and seven months after the diagnosis he died, at the age of 66. George McGovern, the primary focus of Ambrose's Wild Blue said, "He probably reached more readers than any other historian in our national history."
Legacy
Ambrose donated $500,000, half the amount needed, to the University of Wisconsin, to endow a chair in the name of William B. Hesseltine, Ambrose's mentor. The chair's position would focus on the teaching of American military history. When the chair became fully endowed, after Ambrose's death, it was renamed the Ambrose-Hesseltine Chair.
The Ambrose Professor of History title was established at the University of New Orleans after his death. The position is reserved for a military historian.
Each year the Rutgers University Living History Society awards the Stephen E. Ambrose Oral History Award to "an author or artist who has made significant use of oral history." Past winners include Tom Brokaw, Steven Spielberg, Studs Terkel, Michael Beschloss, and Ken Burns.
Criticism
Plagiarism
In 2002, Ambrose was accused of plagiarizing several passages in his book The Wild Blue.<ref>Williams, Robert Chadwell. The Historian's Toolbox: A Student's Guide to the Theory and Craft of History] Armonk NY: M E Sharpe Inc (2003) pp 88-89</ref> Fred Barnes reported in The Weekly Standard that Ambrose had taken passages from Wings of Morning: The Story of the Last American Bomber Shot Down over Germany in World War II, by Thomas Childers, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Ambrose had footnoted sources, but had not enclosed in quotation marks numerous passages from Childers's book."How the Ambrose Story Developed," History News Network, June 2002.
Ambrose asserted that only a few sentences in all his numerous books were the work of other authors. He offered this defense:
A Forbes investigation of his work found cases of plagiarism involving passages in at least six books, with a similar pattern going all the way back to his doctoral dissertation. The History News Network lists seven of Ambrose's more than 40 works—The Wild Blue, Undaunted Courage, Nothing Like It In the World, Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, Citizen Soldiers, The Supreme Commander, and Crazy Horse and Custer—contained content from twelve authors without appropriate attribution from Ambrose.
Factual errors and disputed characterizations
Pacific Railroad
A front-page article published in The Sacramento Bee on January 1, 2001, entitled "Area Historians Rail Against Inaccuracies in Book", listed more than sixty instances identified as "significant errors, misstatements, and made-up quotes" in Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863–1869, Ambrose's non-academic popular history about the construction of the Pacific Railroad between Council Bluffs, Iowa/Omaha, Nebraska, and the San Francisco Bay at Alameda/Oakland via Sacramento, California, which was published in August 2000. The discrepancies were documented in a detailed "fact-checking" paper compiled in December 2000 by three Western US railroad historians who are also experienced researchers, consultants, and collectors specializing in the Pacific Railroad and related topics.Graves, G.J., Strobridge, E.T., & Sweet, C.N.The Sins of Stephen E. Ambrose The Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum (CPRR.org), December 19, 2000
On January 11, 2001, Washington Post columnist Lloyd Grove reported in his column The Reliable Source, that a co-worker had found a "serious historical error" in the same book that "a chastened Ambrose" promised to correct in future editions. A number of journal reviews also sharply criticized the research and fact checking in the book. Reviewer Walter Nugent observed that it contained "annoying slips" such as mislabeled maps, inaccurate dates, geographical errors, and misidentified word origins, while railroad historian Don L. Hofsommer agreed that the book "confuses facts" and that "The research might best be characterized as 'once over lightly'."
The Eisenhower controversy
In the introduction to Ambrose's biography of Eisenhower, he claims that the former president approached him after having read his previous biography of the American general Henry Halleck,
but Tim Rives, Deputy Director of the Eisenhower Presidential Center, says it was Ambrose who contacted Eisenhower and suggested the project, as shown by a letter from Ambrose found in the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum. In his response, Eisenhower stated that "the confidence I have derived from your work by reading your two books—especially the one on Halleck—give reasons why I should be ready to help out so far as I can." The Halleck biography "still sits on a shelf" at the Eisenhower National Historic Site in Gettysburg.
After Eisenhower's death in 1969, Ambrose made repeated claims to have had a unique and extraordinarily close relationship with him over the final five years of the former President's life. In an extensive 1998 interview, before a group of high school students, Ambrose stated that he spent "a lot of time with Ike, really a lot, hundreds and hundreds of hours." Ambrose claimed he interviewed Eisenhower on a wide range of subjects, and that he had been with him "on a daily basis for a couple years" before his death "doing interviews and talking about his life." The former president's diary and telephone records show that the pair met only three times, for a total of less than five hours. Rives has stated that interview dates Ambrose cites in his 1970 book, The Supreme Commander, cannot be reconciled with Eisenhower's personal schedule, but Rives discovered, upon further investigation, a "hidden" relationship between the two men. Eisenhower enlisted Ambrose in his efforts to preserve his legacy and counteract criticisms of his presidency, particularly those charging that Eisenhower's actions at the end of World War II produced the Cold War. Ambrose wrote a review and book supporting the former general, with Eisenhower providing direction and comments during the process. Rives could not square the questionable interview dates cited by Ambrose in later works, but uncovered a relationship with Eisenhower that was "too complicated" to be described by Ambrose's critics.
Works
Sole author
Halleck: Lincoln's Chief of Staff, Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press (1962)
Upton and the Army, Louisiana State University Press (1964)
Duty, Honor, Country: A History of West Point, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press (1966)
[https://archive.org/details/supremecommander00ambr The Supreme Commander: the War Years of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, New York: Doubleday (1970)
Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors, New York: Doubleday (1975)
Ike's Spies: Eisenhower and the Espionage Establishment, New York: Doubleday (1981)
Eisenhower Volume 1: Soldier, General of the Army, President-Elect, 1890-1952, New York: Simon & Schuster (1983)
Eisenhower Volume 2: The President, New York: Simon & Schuster (1984)
Pegasus Bridge: June 6, 1944, New York: Simon & Schuster (1985)
Nixon: The Education of a Politician, 1913-1962, New York: Simon & Schuster (1987)
Eisenhower: Soldier and President, New York: Simon & Schuster (1990) (a one-volume condensation of the 1983-84 two-volume Eisenhower biography)
Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962-1972, New York: Simon & Schuster (1990)
Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, 1973-1990, New York: Simon & Schuster (1991)
Band of Brothers, E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne: From Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest (1992)
D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II, New York, Simon & Schuster (1994)
Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, New York: Simon & Schuster (1996)
Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944 - May 7, 1945, New York: Simon & Schuster (1997)
Americans at War, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi (1997)
The Victors: Eisenhower and his Boys - The Men of World War II, New York: Simon & Schuster (1998)
Comrades: Brothers, Fathers, Heroes, Sons, Pals, New York: Simon & Schuster (1999)
Nothing Like It in the World: The Men who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863-1869, New York: Simon & Schuster (2000)
The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys who Flew the B-24s over Germany, New York: Simon & Schuster (2001)
To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian, New York: Simon & Schuster (2002)
This Vast Land, New York: Simon & Schuster, (2003)
With others
with Richard H. Immerman, Milton S. Eisenhower, Educational Statesman, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press (1983)
with Douglas Brinkley, Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy since 1938, New York: Penguin Books (1997)
with Sam Abell, Lewis and Clark: Voyage of Discovery, Washington DC: National Geographic Society, (1998, 2002)
with Douglas Brinkley, Witness to America (1999) ; 2010:
with Douglas Brinkley, The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation: From the Louisiana Purchase to Today (2002),
Edited works
Institutions in Modern America: Innovation in Structure and Process, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press (1967)
with James A. Barber, The Military and American Society: Essays and Readings, New York, NY: The Free Press (1972)
with Gunter Bischoff, Eisenhower and the German POWs: Facts Against Falsehood, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press (1992)
with Gunter Bischoff, Eisenhower" A Centenary Assessment, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press (1995)
American Heritage New History of World War II(original text by C.L. Sulzberger), New York, NY: Viking Press (1997)
References
Further reading
External links
WorldCat search of works by Stephen Ambrose
Stephen E. Ambrose at FantasticFiction.co.uk
Interview with Stephen Ambrose (1998)
Obituary in The Independent''
Obituary at website of the American Historical Association
Commentary dated December 19, 2000 contributed by G. J. "Chris" Graves, Edson T. Strobridge, and Charles N. Sweet regarding Stephen E. Ambrose's book "Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built The Transcontinental Railroad 1863 - 1869."
Booknotes interview with Ambrose on D-Day: June 6, 1944, June 5, 1994.
In Depth interview with Ambrose, November 5, 2000
1936 births
2002 deaths
American Congregationalists
American military historians
American military writers
Deaths from lung cancer
Deaths from cancer in Mississippi
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Historians of the American West
Historians of the United States
Johns Hopkins University faculty
Kansas State University faculty
Louisiana State University faculty
National Humanities Medal recipients
Naval War College faculty
Official biographers to the presidents of the United States
Writers from Decatur, Illinois
People from Moultrie County, Illinois
People from Helena, Montana
Military personnel from Illinois
Writers from New Orleans
People from Whitewater, Wisconsin
University of New Orleans faculty
University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Letters and Science alumni
Wisconsin Badgers football players
Writers from Wisconsin
Historians of World War II
21st-century American male writers
20th-century American historians
21st-century American historians
Historians of the American Civil War
People involved in plagiarism controversies
American male non-fiction writers | true | [
"Bruce A. Block is a film producer, author and visual consultant whose career spans 30+ years. In 2001, Block's book The Visual Story was published. In 2007 it went into a completely revised second edition. In 2020 a revised third edition was published by Routledge Press and imprint of Taylor & Francis. \n\nBlock began work as a director of commercials, corporate films, and visual effects at Graphic Films Corporation in Hollywood, California. He became a filmic and visual consultant on such films as Irreconcilable Differences (1984) and Bachelor Party (1984). He has gone on to be a consultant for films such as Stuart Little (1999), As Good as It Gets (1997) and Spanglish (2004). As a film producer, Block has produced and co-produced the films Father of the Bride (1991), Father of the Bride II (1995), Disney's The Parent Trap (1998), What Women Want (2000), Something's Gotta Give (2003), and The Holiday (2006).\n\nIn 2007, Block was featured in an on-camera interview, discussing visual style, for the 40th Anniversary DVD release of the film The Graduate. Block's audio commentary as a film historian is also featured in the 2008 Collector's Edition DVD of the classic 1960 film The Apartment.\n\nBlock is a graduate of Carnegie-Mellon University with a degree in theatre directing. Block also received an MFA from UCS's School of Cinematic Arts. \nHe is now a tenured professor at USC teaching classes in production and visual structure. Block holds the Sergei Eisenstein Endowded Chair in Cinematic Design.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n Bruce Block website\n \n\nAmerican film producers\nAmerican male writers\nLiving people\nYear of birth missing (living people)\nLincoln College (Illinois) alumni",
"Larry Boelens (September 12, 1942 – August 23, 1988) was an American television lighting consultant, gaffer, electrician, second unit photographer, and director of photography. He worked in several capacities on some noted television sitcoms, among them Soap, as well as on episodes of the original WKRP in Cincinnati, one of them being the famous Turkeys Away episode, for which he was the lighting consultant. He was also lighting consultant on the two-part pilot episode for the series. He also worked on the children's Saturday morning series The Bugaloos. He served as gaffer on the films Let's Do It Again (1975) and Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living in New York (1975), and as lighting director for the program 20 Minute Workout. His most notable work, however, may have been as director of photography for the 1977 television production of Tchaikovsky's Christmas ballet The Nutcracker starring Mikhail Baryshnikov, a now-classic interpretation of the work that has become a television, VHS, and DVD favorite. He was also director of photography on Cindy, a 1978 all-black modern retelling of \"Cinderella\", and on several episodes of Bosom Buddies, the sitcom that introduced Tom Hanks to television audiences.\n\nBoelens died at the age of 45 in 1988, the same year that he served as second unit photographer on the John Hughes comedy She's Having a Baby.\n\nThough Boelens himself was never nominated for an Emmy Award, several of the television programs on which he worked were, including Soap, WRKP in Cincinnati, the Baryshnikov Nutcracker, and Cindy.\n\n(See also the articles The Nutcracker, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Soap.)\n\nReferences\n\n1942 births\n1988 deaths\nAmerican cinematographers"
] |
[
"Stephen E. Ambrose",
"Television, film, and other activities",
"What work did Stephen do in Television?",
"He served as the historical consultant for the movie Saving Private Ryan.",
"Did he work as a consultant on any other films?",
"Ambrose served as executive producer for Price for Peace, a documentary concerning the war in the Pacific theater during World War II,"
] | C_e608cccf1c024635807a29e8c150f222_1 | What other films did he work on? | 3 | In addition to Price for Peace, what other films did Stephen E. Ambrose work on? | Stephen E. Ambrose | Ambrose was the lone historian featured in the 1973-74 ITV television series, The World at War, which detailed the history of World War II. He served as the historical consultant for the movie Saving Private Ryan. Tom Hanks, who starred in the movie, said he "pored over D-Day" and Band of Brothers in researching his role. Hanks also credited Ambrose's books with providing extensive detail, particularly regarding D-Day landings. The HBO mini-series, Band of Brothers (2001), for which he was an executive producer, helped sustain the fresh interest in World War II that had been stimulated by the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 1994 and the 60th anniversary in 2004. Ambrose served as executive producer for Price for Peace, a documentary concerning the war in the Pacific theater during World War II, and for Moments of Truth, a TV documentary containing interviews with World War II veterans. In addition, Ambrose served as a commentator for Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, a documentary by Ken Burns. He provided commentary in twenty made-for TV documentaries, covering diverse topics, such as World War II, Lewis & Clark, and America's prominence in the 20th century. He also appeared as a guest on numerous TV programs or stations, including The Charlie Rose Show, C-Span programming, CNN programming, NBC's Today Show, CNBC's Hardball, and various programming on The History Channel and the National Geographic Channel. Ambrose's association with National Geographic stemmed, in part, from his designation as an Explorer-in-Residence by the Society. In addition to his academic work and publishing, Ambrose operated a historical tour business, acting as a tour guide to European locales of World War II. Also, he served on the board of directors for American Rivers and was a member of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Council. CANNOTANSWER | Moments of Truth, a TV documentary | Stephen Edward Ambrose (January 10, 1936 – October 13, 2002) was an American historian, most noted for his biographies of U.S. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. He was a longtime professor of history at the University of New Orleans and the author of many bestselling volumes of American popular history.
There have been numerous well documented allegations of plagiarism, inaccuracies, and sloppiness in Ambrose's writings in addition to claims that he has made about his works. However, in a review of To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian for the New York Times, high school teacher William Everdell credited the historian with reaching "an important lay audience without endorsing its every prejudice."
Early life
Ambrose was born January 10, 1936, in Lovington, Illinois, to Rosepha Trippe Ambrose and Stephen Hedges Ambrose. His father was a physician who served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. Ambrose was raised in Whitewater, Wisconsin, where he graduated from Whitewater High School. His family also owned a farm in Lovington, Illinois, and vacation property in Marinette County, Wisconsin. He attended college at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he was a member of Chi Psi fraternity and played on the University of Wisconsin football team for three years.
Ambrose originally wanted to major in pre-medicine, but changed his major to history after hearing the first lecture in a U.S. history class entitled "Representative Americans" in his sophomore year. The course was taught by William B. Hesseltine, whom Ambrose credits with fundamentally shaping his writing and igniting his interest in history. While at Wisconsin, Ambrose was a member of the Navy and Army ROTC. He graduated with a B.A. in 1957. Ambrose received a master's degree in history from Louisiana State University in 1958, studying under T. Harry Williams. Ambrose then went on to earn a PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1963, under William B. Hesseltine.
Career
Academic positions
Ambrose was a history professor from 1960 until his retirement in 1995. From 1971 onward, he was on the faculty of the University of New Orleans, where he was named the Boyd Professor of History in 1989, an honor given only to faculty who attain "national or international distinction for outstanding teaching, research, or other creative achievement". During the 1969–1970 academic year, he was the Ernest J. King Professor of Maritime History at the Naval War College. While teaching at Kansas State University as the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of War and Peace during the 1970–1971 academic year, Ambrose participated in heckling of Richard Nixon during a speech the president gave on the KSU campus. Given pressure from the KSU administration and having job offers elsewhere, upon finishing out the year Ambrose offered to leave and the offer was accepted. His opposition to the Vietnam War stood in contrast to his research on "presidents and the military at a time when such topics were increasingly regarded by his colleagues as old fashioned and conservative." Ambrose also taught at Louisiana State University (assistant professor of history; 1960–1964) and Johns Hopkins University (associate professor of history; 1964–1969). He held visiting posts at Rutgers University, the University of California, Berkeley, and a number of European schools, including University College Dublin, where he taught as the Mary Ball Washington Professor of American History.
He founded the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans in 1989 serving as its director until 1994. "The mission of the Eisenhower Center is the study of the causes, conduct, and consequences of American national security policy and the use of force as an instrument of policy in the twentieth century." The center's first efforts, which Ambrose initiated, involved the collection of oral histories from World War II veterans about their experiences, particularly any participation in D-Day. By the time of publication of Ambrose's D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II, in 1994, the center had collected more than 1,200 oral histories. Ambrose donated $150,000 to the Center in 1998 to foster additional efforts to collect oral histories from World War II veterans.
Writings
Ambrose's earliest works concerned the American Civil War. He wrote biographies of the generals Emory Upton and Henry Halleck, the first of which was based on his dissertation.
Early in his career, Ambrose was mentored by World War II historian Forrest Pogue. In 1964, Ambrose took a position at Johns Hopkins as the Associate Editor of the Eisenhower Papers, a project aimed at organizing, cataloging and publishing Eisenhower's principal papers. From this work and discussions with Eisenhower emerged an article critical of Cornelius Ryan's The Last Battle, which had depicted Eisenhower as politically naîve, when at the end of World War II he allowed Soviet forces to take Berlin, thus shaping the Cold War that followed. Ambrose expanded this into a book, Eisenhower and Berlin, 1945: The Decision to Halt at the Elbe (1967). Ambrose was aided in the book's writing by comments and notes provided by Eisenhower, who read a draft of the book.
In 1964, Ambrose was commissioned to write the official biography of the former president and five-star general Dwight D. Eisenhower. This resulted in a book on Eisenhower's war years, The Supreme Commander (1970) and a two-volume full biography (published 1983 and 1984), which are considered "the standard" on the subject. Regarding the first volume, Gordon Harrison, writing for the New York Times, proclaimed, "It is Mr. Ambrose's special triumph that he has been able to fight through the memoranda, the directives, plans, reports, and official self-serving pieties of the World War II establishment to uncover the idiosyncratic people at its center." Ambrose also wrote a three-volume biography of Richard Nixon. Although Ambrose was a strong critic of Nixon, the biography was considered fair and just regarding Nixon's presidency.
A visit to a reunion of Easy Company veterans in 1988 prompted Ambrose to collect their stories, turning them into Band of Brothers, E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne: From Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest (1992). D-Day (1994), built upon additional oral histories, presented the battle from the view points of individual soldiers and became his first best seller. A reviewer for the Journal of Military History commended D-Day as the "most comprehensive discussion" of the sea, air, and land operations that coalesced on that day. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, writing for the New York Times, proclaimed that "Reading this history, you can understand why for so many of its participants, despite all the death surrounding them, life revealed itself in that moment at that place." Ambrose's Citizen Soldiers, which describes battles fought in northwest Europe from D-Day through the end of the war, utilized, again, extensive oral histories. Citizen Soldiers became a best seller, appearing on the New York Times best sellers lists for both hardcover and paperback editions in the same week. During the same week, in September 1998, D-Day and Undaunted Courage, Ambrose's 1996 book on Meriwether Lewis and the Corps of Discovery, appeared on the best seller list, also. He also wrote The Victors (1998), a distillation of material from other books detailing Eisenhower's wartime experiences and connections to the common soldier, and The Wild Blue, that looks at World War II aviation largely through the experiences of George McGovern, who commanded a B-24 crew that flew numerous missions over Germany. His other major works include Undaunted Courage about the Lewis and Clark Expedition and Nothing Like It in the World about the construction of the Pacific Railroad. His final book, This Vast Land, a historical novel about the Lewis & Clark expedition written for young readers, was published posthumously in 2003.
Ambrose's most popular single work was Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West (1996), which stayed on the New York Times best seller list for a combined, hardcover and paperback, 126 weeks. Ambrose consolidated research on the Corps of Discovery's expedition conducted in the previous thirty years and "synthesized it skillfully to enrich our understanding and appreciation of this grand epic," according to Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., who reviewed the book for the New York Times. Ken Burns, who produced and directed a PBS documentary on Lewis & Clark declared that Ambrose "takes one of the great, but also one of the most superficially considered, stories in American history and breathes fresh life into it."
In addition to twenty-seven self-authored books, Ambrose co-authored, edited, and contributed to many more and was a frequent contributor to magazines such as American Heritage. He, also, reviewed the works of other historians in the Journal of Southern History, Military Affairs, American Historical Review, Journal of American History, and Foreign Affairs. He served as a contributing editor to MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, also.
Television, film, and other activities
Ambrose featured in the 1973-74 ITV television series, The World at War, which detailed the history of World War II.
He served as the historical consultant for the movie Saving Private Ryan. Tom Hanks, who starred in the movie, said he "pored over D-Day" and Band of Brothers in researching his role. Hanks also credited Ambrose's books with providing extensive detail, particularly regarding D-Day landings.
The HBO mini-series, Band of Brothers (2001), for which he was an executive producer, helped sustain the fresh interest in World War II that had been stimulated by the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 1994 and the 60th anniversary in 2004. Ambrose served as executive producer for Price for Peace, a documentary concerning the war in the Pacific theater during World War II, and for Moments of Truth, a TV documentary containing interviews with World War II veterans.
In addition, Ambrose served as a commentator for Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, a documentary by Ken Burns. He provided commentary in twenty made-for TV documentaries, covering diverse topics, such as World War II, Lewis & Clark, and America's prominence in the 20th century. He also appeared as a guest on numerous TV programs or stations, including The Charlie Rose Show, C-Span programming, CNN programming, NBC's Today Show, CNBC's Hardball, and various programming on The History Channel and the National Geographic Channel. Ambrose's association with National Geographic stemmed, in part, from his designation as an Explorer-in-Residence by the Society.
In addition to his academic work and publishing, Ambrose operated a historical tour business, acting as a tour guide to European locales of World War II. Also, he served on the board of directors for American Rivers and was a member of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Council.
National World War II Museum
Ambrose's work for the Eisenhower Center, specifically his work with D-Day veterans, inspired him to co-found the National D-Day Museum in New Orleans with another historian and UNO professor Gordon H. "Nick" Mueller. Ambrose initiated fundraising by donating $500,000. "He dreamt of a museum that reflected his deep regard for our nation's citizen soldiers, the workers on the Home Front and the sacrifices and hardships they endured to achieve victory." He secured large contributions from the federal government, state of Louisiana, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, and many smaller donations from former students, who answered a plea made by Ambrose in the New Orleans Times-Picayune. In 2003, Congress designated the museum as "America's National World War II Museum," acknowledging an expanded scope and mission for the museum. "The Stephen E. Ambrose Memorial Fund continues to support the development of the museum's Center for Study of the American Spirit, its educational programs and oral history and publication initiatives."
Awards
In 1997, Ambrose received the St. Louis Literary Award from the Saint Louis University Library Associates. In 1998, he received the National Humanities Medal. In 1998, he was awarded the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize for lifetime achievement given by the Society for Military History. In 1998, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. In 2000, Ambrose received the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, the highest honorary award the Department of Defense offers to civilians. In 2001, he was awarded the Theodore Roosevelt Medal for Distinguished Service from the Theodore Roosevelt Association. Ambrose won an Emmy as one of the producers for the mini-series Band of Brothers. Ambrose also received the George Marshall Award, the Abraham Lincoln Literary Award, the Bob Hope Award from the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, and the Will Rogers Memorial Award.
Upon Ambrose's death, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana offered a resolution in the Senate, which received unanimous consent, saluting the "excellence of Stephen Ambrose at capturing the greatness of the American spirit in words."
Personal life, final years, and death
He married his first wife, Judith Dorlester, in 1957, and they had two children, Stephenie and Barry. Judith died in 1965, when Ambrose was 29. Ambrose married his second wife, Moira Buckley (1939–2009), in 1967 and adopted her three children, Andrew, Grace, and Hugh. Moira was an active assistant in his writing and academic projects. After retiring, he maintained homes in Helena, Montana, and Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. A longtime smoker, he was diagnosed with lung cancer in April 2002. His health deteriorated rapidly, and seven months after the diagnosis he died, at the age of 66. George McGovern, the primary focus of Ambrose's Wild Blue said, "He probably reached more readers than any other historian in our national history."
Legacy
Ambrose donated $500,000, half the amount needed, to the University of Wisconsin, to endow a chair in the name of William B. Hesseltine, Ambrose's mentor. The chair's position would focus on the teaching of American military history. When the chair became fully endowed, after Ambrose's death, it was renamed the Ambrose-Hesseltine Chair.
The Ambrose Professor of History title was established at the University of New Orleans after his death. The position is reserved for a military historian.
Each year the Rutgers University Living History Society awards the Stephen E. Ambrose Oral History Award to "an author or artist who has made significant use of oral history." Past winners include Tom Brokaw, Steven Spielberg, Studs Terkel, Michael Beschloss, and Ken Burns.
Criticism
Plagiarism
In 2002, Ambrose was accused of plagiarizing several passages in his book The Wild Blue.<ref>Williams, Robert Chadwell. The Historian's Toolbox: A Student's Guide to the Theory and Craft of History] Armonk NY: M E Sharpe Inc (2003) pp 88-89</ref> Fred Barnes reported in The Weekly Standard that Ambrose had taken passages from Wings of Morning: The Story of the Last American Bomber Shot Down over Germany in World War II, by Thomas Childers, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Ambrose had footnoted sources, but had not enclosed in quotation marks numerous passages from Childers's book."How the Ambrose Story Developed," History News Network, June 2002.
Ambrose asserted that only a few sentences in all his numerous books were the work of other authors. He offered this defense:
A Forbes investigation of his work found cases of plagiarism involving passages in at least six books, with a similar pattern going all the way back to his doctoral dissertation. The History News Network lists seven of Ambrose's more than 40 works—The Wild Blue, Undaunted Courage, Nothing Like It In the World, Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, Citizen Soldiers, The Supreme Commander, and Crazy Horse and Custer—contained content from twelve authors without appropriate attribution from Ambrose.
Factual errors and disputed characterizations
Pacific Railroad
A front-page article published in The Sacramento Bee on January 1, 2001, entitled "Area Historians Rail Against Inaccuracies in Book", listed more than sixty instances identified as "significant errors, misstatements, and made-up quotes" in Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863–1869, Ambrose's non-academic popular history about the construction of the Pacific Railroad between Council Bluffs, Iowa/Omaha, Nebraska, and the San Francisco Bay at Alameda/Oakland via Sacramento, California, which was published in August 2000. The discrepancies were documented in a detailed "fact-checking" paper compiled in December 2000 by three Western US railroad historians who are also experienced researchers, consultants, and collectors specializing in the Pacific Railroad and related topics.Graves, G.J., Strobridge, E.T., & Sweet, C.N.The Sins of Stephen E. Ambrose The Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum (CPRR.org), December 19, 2000
On January 11, 2001, Washington Post columnist Lloyd Grove reported in his column The Reliable Source, that a co-worker had found a "serious historical error" in the same book that "a chastened Ambrose" promised to correct in future editions. A number of journal reviews also sharply criticized the research and fact checking in the book. Reviewer Walter Nugent observed that it contained "annoying slips" such as mislabeled maps, inaccurate dates, geographical errors, and misidentified word origins, while railroad historian Don L. Hofsommer agreed that the book "confuses facts" and that "The research might best be characterized as 'once over lightly'."
The Eisenhower controversy
In the introduction to Ambrose's biography of Eisenhower, he claims that the former president approached him after having read his previous biography of the American general Henry Halleck,
but Tim Rives, Deputy Director of the Eisenhower Presidential Center, says it was Ambrose who contacted Eisenhower and suggested the project, as shown by a letter from Ambrose found in the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum. In his response, Eisenhower stated that "the confidence I have derived from your work by reading your two books—especially the one on Halleck—give reasons why I should be ready to help out so far as I can." The Halleck biography "still sits on a shelf" at the Eisenhower National Historic Site in Gettysburg.
After Eisenhower's death in 1969, Ambrose made repeated claims to have had a unique and extraordinarily close relationship with him over the final five years of the former President's life. In an extensive 1998 interview, before a group of high school students, Ambrose stated that he spent "a lot of time with Ike, really a lot, hundreds and hundreds of hours." Ambrose claimed he interviewed Eisenhower on a wide range of subjects, and that he had been with him "on a daily basis for a couple years" before his death "doing interviews and talking about his life." The former president's diary and telephone records show that the pair met only three times, for a total of less than five hours. Rives has stated that interview dates Ambrose cites in his 1970 book, The Supreme Commander, cannot be reconciled with Eisenhower's personal schedule, but Rives discovered, upon further investigation, a "hidden" relationship between the two men. Eisenhower enlisted Ambrose in his efforts to preserve his legacy and counteract criticisms of his presidency, particularly those charging that Eisenhower's actions at the end of World War II produced the Cold War. Ambrose wrote a review and book supporting the former general, with Eisenhower providing direction and comments during the process. Rives could not square the questionable interview dates cited by Ambrose in later works, but uncovered a relationship with Eisenhower that was "too complicated" to be described by Ambrose's critics.
Works
Sole author
Halleck: Lincoln's Chief of Staff, Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press (1962)
Upton and the Army, Louisiana State University Press (1964)
Duty, Honor, Country: A History of West Point, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press (1966)
[https://archive.org/details/supremecommander00ambr The Supreme Commander: the War Years of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, New York: Doubleday (1970)
Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors, New York: Doubleday (1975)
Ike's Spies: Eisenhower and the Espionage Establishment, New York: Doubleday (1981)
Eisenhower Volume 1: Soldier, General of the Army, President-Elect, 1890-1952, New York: Simon & Schuster (1983)
Eisenhower Volume 2: The President, New York: Simon & Schuster (1984)
Pegasus Bridge: June 6, 1944, New York: Simon & Schuster (1985)
Nixon: The Education of a Politician, 1913-1962, New York: Simon & Schuster (1987)
Eisenhower: Soldier and President, New York: Simon & Schuster (1990) (a one-volume condensation of the 1983-84 two-volume Eisenhower biography)
Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962-1972, New York: Simon & Schuster (1990)
Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, 1973-1990, New York: Simon & Schuster (1991)
Band of Brothers, E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne: From Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest (1992)
D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II, New York, Simon & Schuster (1994)
Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, New York: Simon & Schuster (1996)
Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944 - May 7, 1945, New York: Simon & Schuster (1997)
Americans at War, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi (1997)
The Victors: Eisenhower and his Boys - The Men of World War II, New York: Simon & Schuster (1998)
Comrades: Brothers, Fathers, Heroes, Sons, Pals, New York: Simon & Schuster (1999)
Nothing Like It in the World: The Men who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863-1869, New York: Simon & Schuster (2000)
The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys who Flew the B-24s over Germany, New York: Simon & Schuster (2001)
To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian, New York: Simon & Schuster (2002)
This Vast Land, New York: Simon & Schuster, (2003)
With others
with Richard H. Immerman, Milton S. Eisenhower, Educational Statesman, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press (1983)
with Douglas Brinkley, Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy since 1938, New York: Penguin Books (1997)
with Sam Abell, Lewis and Clark: Voyage of Discovery, Washington DC: National Geographic Society, (1998, 2002)
with Douglas Brinkley, Witness to America (1999) ; 2010:
with Douglas Brinkley, The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation: From the Louisiana Purchase to Today (2002),
Edited works
Institutions in Modern America: Innovation in Structure and Process, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press (1967)
with James A. Barber, The Military and American Society: Essays and Readings, New York, NY: The Free Press (1972)
with Gunter Bischoff, Eisenhower and the German POWs: Facts Against Falsehood, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press (1992)
with Gunter Bischoff, Eisenhower" A Centenary Assessment, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press (1995)
American Heritage New History of World War II(original text by C.L. Sulzberger), New York, NY: Viking Press (1997)
References
Further reading
External links
WorldCat search of works by Stephen Ambrose
Stephen E. Ambrose at FantasticFiction.co.uk
Interview with Stephen Ambrose (1998)
Obituary in The Independent''
Obituary at website of the American Historical Association
Commentary dated December 19, 2000 contributed by G. J. "Chris" Graves, Edson T. Strobridge, and Charles N. Sweet regarding Stephen E. Ambrose's book "Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built The Transcontinental Railroad 1863 - 1869."
Booknotes interview with Ambrose on D-Day: June 6, 1944, June 5, 1994.
In Depth interview with Ambrose, November 5, 2000
1936 births
2002 deaths
American Congregationalists
American military historians
American military writers
Deaths from lung cancer
Deaths from cancer in Mississippi
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Historians of the American West
Historians of the United States
Johns Hopkins University faculty
Kansas State University faculty
Louisiana State University faculty
National Humanities Medal recipients
Naval War College faculty
Official biographers to the presidents of the United States
Writers from Decatur, Illinois
People from Moultrie County, Illinois
People from Helena, Montana
Military personnel from Illinois
Writers from New Orleans
People from Whitewater, Wisconsin
University of New Orleans faculty
University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Letters and Science alumni
Wisconsin Badgers football players
Writers from Wisconsin
Historians of World War II
21st-century American male writers
20th-century American historians
21st-century American historians
Historians of the American Civil War
People involved in plagiarism controversies
American male non-fiction writers | true | [
"Disaster on the Coastliner is a 1979 American made-for-television action drama film. It was directed by Richard C. Sarafian and starred Lloyd Bridges, Raymond Burr, Robert Fuller, Pat Hingle, E. G. Marshall, Yvette Mimieux, William Shatner, and Paul L. Smith. It originally aired on The ABC Sunday Night Movie on October 28, 1979.\n\nPlot\nA disgruntled railroad employee attempts to cause a collision between two passenger trains.\n\nCast \nLloyd Bridges - Al Mitchell \nRaymond Burr - Estes Hill \nRobert Fuller - Matt Leigh \nPat Hingle - John Marsh \nE. G. Marshall - Roy Snyder \nYvette Mimieux - Paula Harvey \nWilliam Shatner - Stuart Peters \nPaul L. Smith - Jim Waterman / Victor Prescott\nLane Smith - John Carlson\nSandy McPeak - Hennessey\n\nProduction \nThe film was shot on a railway line in Connecticut. At his own suggestion William Shatner did his own stunts, including standing atop an F40PH. Years later Shatner called the stunt \"the most truly dangerous stunt I ever did\" and couldn't imagine \"what [he] was thinking\" in suggesting it. Shatner compared it to the work he'd done in Kingdom of the Spiders, and wondered which was worse: \"standing on top of a speeding locomotive without any kind of safety cable or gluing tarantulas to your face?\" Jack Sessums worked on the miniature effects and had his work profiled in TV Guide.\n\nRelease \nDisaster on the Coastliner premiered on The ABC Sunday Night Movie on October 28, 1979. Although no DVD or VHS has been released in America, the movie's current owner, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, has made the movie available for streaming on Amazon Prime Video and Paramount plus in the United States.\n\nSee also\nList of television films produced for American Broadcasting Company\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n \n\nAmerican television films\nAmerican films\nEnglish-language films\n1970s action drama films\nFictional trains\nFilms set on trains\nFilms shot in Connecticut\nRail transport films\nAmerican action drama films\n1979 films\nFilms directed by Richard C. Sarafian",
"Peter Rogers (20 February 1914 – 14 April 2009) was an English film producer. He is best known for his involvement in the making of the Carry On series of films.\n\nLife and career\nRogers began his career as a journalist for his local paper, before graduating to scriptwriting religious informational films. He progressed to film production, working with director Gerald Thomas, the first work being a production for the Children's Film Foundation. Rogers is best known as producer of the Carry On series of British comedy films, beginning with Carry On Sergeant in 1958. There were 31 films in all. Rogers had also been linked with a further instalment, Carry On London, which has been in pre-production for several years, but since his death seems unlikely to be made.\n\nThe majority of Rogers' work, including all the Carry On films, were made at Pinewood Studios in Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, England. His other credits included Appointment with Venus starring David Niven, and Time Lock in which Sean Connery made one of his earliest film appearances.\n\nRogers' other production ventures include the television series Ivanhoe with Roger Moore and the film adaptation of the long-running sitcom Bless This House with Carry On regular Sid James.\n\nHis wife was the film producer Betty Box, responsible for the Doctor series of films. They did not have any children, but their godson was actor and theatre producer Marc Sinden (who appeared in Carry On Columbus), the son of Sir Donald Sinden, who starred for Betty Box in, amongst other films, Doctor in the House, Doctor at Large and Mad About Men. Peter and Betty lived for many years at a large home in Beaconsfield, \"Drummers Yard\", that had been purchased from the actor Dirk Bogarde.\n\nAn authorized biography, Mr Carry On: The Life and Work of Peter Rogers (BBC) by Morris Bright and Robert Ross (author of The Carry On Companion and the Monty Python Encyclopedia) was published in 2000, with extensive input from Rogers. It attempted to defend him against charges that he exploited the cast of the Carry On films, by paying the lead actors an unchanged £5,000 per film, from the first in 1958 to the penultimate movie.\n\nRogers attended the 50th anniversary of the Carry On films held at Pinewood Studios in March 2008. He died on 14 April 2009, having been ill for several months.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\nWhat a Carry On\nCarry On Films at The Whippit Inn\n Obituary, Daily Telegraph, 15 April 2009\n Obituary, The Times, 16 April 2009\n\n1914 births\n2009 deaths\nEnglish film producers\nPeople educated at King's School, Rochester\nPeople from Rochester, Kent\n20th-century English businesspeople"
] |
[
"Stephen E. Ambrose",
"Television, film, and other activities",
"What work did Stephen do in Television?",
"He served as the historical consultant for the movie Saving Private Ryan.",
"Did he work as a consultant on any other films?",
"Ambrose served as executive producer for Price for Peace, a documentary concerning the war in the Pacific theater during World War II,",
"What other films did he work on?",
"Moments of Truth, a TV documentary"
] | C_e608cccf1c024635807a29e8c150f222_1 | Did he receive any awards for his work? | 4 | Did Stephen E. Ambrose receive any awards for his work? | Stephen E. Ambrose | Ambrose was the lone historian featured in the 1973-74 ITV television series, The World at War, which detailed the history of World War II. He served as the historical consultant for the movie Saving Private Ryan. Tom Hanks, who starred in the movie, said he "pored over D-Day" and Band of Brothers in researching his role. Hanks also credited Ambrose's books with providing extensive detail, particularly regarding D-Day landings. The HBO mini-series, Band of Brothers (2001), for which he was an executive producer, helped sustain the fresh interest in World War II that had been stimulated by the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 1994 and the 60th anniversary in 2004. Ambrose served as executive producer for Price for Peace, a documentary concerning the war in the Pacific theater during World War II, and for Moments of Truth, a TV documentary containing interviews with World War II veterans. In addition, Ambrose served as a commentator for Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, a documentary by Ken Burns. He provided commentary in twenty made-for TV documentaries, covering diverse topics, such as World War II, Lewis & Clark, and America's prominence in the 20th century. He also appeared as a guest on numerous TV programs or stations, including The Charlie Rose Show, C-Span programming, CNN programming, NBC's Today Show, CNBC's Hardball, and various programming on The History Channel and the National Geographic Channel. Ambrose's association with National Geographic stemmed, in part, from his designation as an Explorer-in-Residence by the Society. In addition to his academic work and publishing, Ambrose operated a historical tour business, acting as a tour guide to European locales of World War II. Also, he served on the board of directors for American Rivers and was a member of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Council. CANNOTANSWER | Ambrose's association with National Geographic stemmed, in part, from his designation as an Explorer-in-Residence by the Society. | Stephen Edward Ambrose (January 10, 1936 – October 13, 2002) was an American historian, most noted for his biographies of U.S. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. He was a longtime professor of history at the University of New Orleans and the author of many bestselling volumes of American popular history.
There have been numerous well documented allegations of plagiarism, inaccuracies, and sloppiness in Ambrose's writings in addition to claims that he has made about his works. However, in a review of To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian for the New York Times, high school teacher William Everdell credited the historian with reaching "an important lay audience without endorsing its every prejudice."
Early life
Ambrose was born January 10, 1936, in Lovington, Illinois, to Rosepha Trippe Ambrose and Stephen Hedges Ambrose. His father was a physician who served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. Ambrose was raised in Whitewater, Wisconsin, where he graduated from Whitewater High School. His family also owned a farm in Lovington, Illinois, and vacation property in Marinette County, Wisconsin. He attended college at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he was a member of Chi Psi fraternity and played on the University of Wisconsin football team for three years.
Ambrose originally wanted to major in pre-medicine, but changed his major to history after hearing the first lecture in a U.S. history class entitled "Representative Americans" in his sophomore year. The course was taught by William B. Hesseltine, whom Ambrose credits with fundamentally shaping his writing and igniting his interest in history. While at Wisconsin, Ambrose was a member of the Navy and Army ROTC. He graduated with a B.A. in 1957. Ambrose received a master's degree in history from Louisiana State University in 1958, studying under T. Harry Williams. Ambrose then went on to earn a PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1963, under William B. Hesseltine.
Career
Academic positions
Ambrose was a history professor from 1960 until his retirement in 1995. From 1971 onward, he was on the faculty of the University of New Orleans, where he was named the Boyd Professor of History in 1989, an honor given only to faculty who attain "national or international distinction for outstanding teaching, research, or other creative achievement". During the 1969–1970 academic year, he was the Ernest J. King Professor of Maritime History at the Naval War College. While teaching at Kansas State University as the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of War and Peace during the 1970–1971 academic year, Ambrose participated in heckling of Richard Nixon during a speech the president gave on the KSU campus. Given pressure from the KSU administration and having job offers elsewhere, upon finishing out the year Ambrose offered to leave and the offer was accepted. His opposition to the Vietnam War stood in contrast to his research on "presidents and the military at a time when such topics were increasingly regarded by his colleagues as old fashioned and conservative." Ambrose also taught at Louisiana State University (assistant professor of history; 1960–1964) and Johns Hopkins University (associate professor of history; 1964–1969). He held visiting posts at Rutgers University, the University of California, Berkeley, and a number of European schools, including University College Dublin, where he taught as the Mary Ball Washington Professor of American History.
He founded the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans in 1989 serving as its director until 1994. "The mission of the Eisenhower Center is the study of the causes, conduct, and consequences of American national security policy and the use of force as an instrument of policy in the twentieth century." The center's first efforts, which Ambrose initiated, involved the collection of oral histories from World War II veterans about their experiences, particularly any participation in D-Day. By the time of publication of Ambrose's D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II, in 1994, the center had collected more than 1,200 oral histories. Ambrose donated $150,000 to the Center in 1998 to foster additional efforts to collect oral histories from World War II veterans.
Writings
Ambrose's earliest works concerned the American Civil War. He wrote biographies of the generals Emory Upton and Henry Halleck, the first of which was based on his dissertation.
Early in his career, Ambrose was mentored by World War II historian Forrest Pogue. In 1964, Ambrose took a position at Johns Hopkins as the Associate Editor of the Eisenhower Papers, a project aimed at organizing, cataloging and publishing Eisenhower's principal papers. From this work and discussions with Eisenhower emerged an article critical of Cornelius Ryan's The Last Battle, which had depicted Eisenhower as politically naîve, when at the end of World War II he allowed Soviet forces to take Berlin, thus shaping the Cold War that followed. Ambrose expanded this into a book, Eisenhower and Berlin, 1945: The Decision to Halt at the Elbe (1967). Ambrose was aided in the book's writing by comments and notes provided by Eisenhower, who read a draft of the book.
In 1964, Ambrose was commissioned to write the official biography of the former president and five-star general Dwight D. Eisenhower. This resulted in a book on Eisenhower's war years, The Supreme Commander (1970) and a two-volume full biography (published 1983 and 1984), which are considered "the standard" on the subject. Regarding the first volume, Gordon Harrison, writing for the New York Times, proclaimed, "It is Mr. Ambrose's special triumph that he has been able to fight through the memoranda, the directives, plans, reports, and official self-serving pieties of the World War II establishment to uncover the idiosyncratic people at its center." Ambrose also wrote a three-volume biography of Richard Nixon. Although Ambrose was a strong critic of Nixon, the biography was considered fair and just regarding Nixon's presidency.
A visit to a reunion of Easy Company veterans in 1988 prompted Ambrose to collect their stories, turning them into Band of Brothers, E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne: From Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest (1992). D-Day (1994), built upon additional oral histories, presented the battle from the view points of individual soldiers and became his first best seller. A reviewer for the Journal of Military History commended D-Day as the "most comprehensive discussion" of the sea, air, and land operations that coalesced on that day. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, writing for the New York Times, proclaimed that "Reading this history, you can understand why for so many of its participants, despite all the death surrounding them, life revealed itself in that moment at that place." Ambrose's Citizen Soldiers, which describes battles fought in northwest Europe from D-Day through the end of the war, utilized, again, extensive oral histories. Citizen Soldiers became a best seller, appearing on the New York Times best sellers lists for both hardcover and paperback editions in the same week. During the same week, in September 1998, D-Day and Undaunted Courage, Ambrose's 1996 book on Meriwether Lewis and the Corps of Discovery, appeared on the best seller list, also. He also wrote The Victors (1998), a distillation of material from other books detailing Eisenhower's wartime experiences and connections to the common soldier, and The Wild Blue, that looks at World War II aviation largely through the experiences of George McGovern, who commanded a B-24 crew that flew numerous missions over Germany. His other major works include Undaunted Courage about the Lewis and Clark Expedition and Nothing Like It in the World about the construction of the Pacific Railroad. His final book, This Vast Land, a historical novel about the Lewis & Clark expedition written for young readers, was published posthumously in 2003.
Ambrose's most popular single work was Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West (1996), which stayed on the New York Times best seller list for a combined, hardcover and paperback, 126 weeks. Ambrose consolidated research on the Corps of Discovery's expedition conducted in the previous thirty years and "synthesized it skillfully to enrich our understanding and appreciation of this grand epic," according to Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., who reviewed the book for the New York Times. Ken Burns, who produced and directed a PBS documentary on Lewis & Clark declared that Ambrose "takes one of the great, but also one of the most superficially considered, stories in American history and breathes fresh life into it."
In addition to twenty-seven self-authored books, Ambrose co-authored, edited, and contributed to many more and was a frequent contributor to magazines such as American Heritage. He, also, reviewed the works of other historians in the Journal of Southern History, Military Affairs, American Historical Review, Journal of American History, and Foreign Affairs. He served as a contributing editor to MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, also.
Television, film, and other activities
Ambrose featured in the 1973-74 ITV television series, The World at War, which detailed the history of World War II.
He served as the historical consultant for the movie Saving Private Ryan. Tom Hanks, who starred in the movie, said he "pored over D-Day" and Band of Brothers in researching his role. Hanks also credited Ambrose's books with providing extensive detail, particularly regarding D-Day landings.
The HBO mini-series, Band of Brothers (2001), for which he was an executive producer, helped sustain the fresh interest in World War II that had been stimulated by the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 1994 and the 60th anniversary in 2004. Ambrose served as executive producer for Price for Peace, a documentary concerning the war in the Pacific theater during World War II, and for Moments of Truth, a TV documentary containing interviews with World War II veterans.
In addition, Ambrose served as a commentator for Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, a documentary by Ken Burns. He provided commentary in twenty made-for TV documentaries, covering diverse topics, such as World War II, Lewis & Clark, and America's prominence in the 20th century. He also appeared as a guest on numerous TV programs or stations, including The Charlie Rose Show, C-Span programming, CNN programming, NBC's Today Show, CNBC's Hardball, and various programming on The History Channel and the National Geographic Channel. Ambrose's association with National Geographic stemmed, in part, from his designation as an Explorer-in-Residence by the Society.
In addition to his academic work and publishing, Ambrose operated a historical tour business, acting as a tour guide to European locales of World War II. Also, he served on the board of directors for American Rivers and was a member of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Council.
National World War II Museum
Ambrose's work for the Eisenhower Center, specifically his work with D-Day veterans, inspired him to co-found the National D-Day Museum in New Orleans with another historian and UNO professor Gordon H. "Nick" Mueller. Ambrose initiated fundraising by donating $500,000. "He dreamt of a museum that reflected his deep regard for our nation's citizen soldiers, the workers on the Home Front and the sacrifices and hardships they endured to achieve victory." He secured large contributions from the federal government, state of Louisiana, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, and many smaller donations from former students, who answered a plea made by Ambrose in the New Orleans Times-Picayune. In 2003, Congress designated the museum as "America's National World War II Museum," acknowledging an expanded scope and mission for the museum. "The Stephen E. Ambrose Memorial Fund continues to support the development of the museum's Center for Study of the American Spirit, its educational programs and oral history and publication initiatives."
Awards
In 1997, Ambrose received the St. Louis Literary Award from the Saint Louis University Library Associates. In 1998, he received the National Humanities Medal. In 1998, he was awarded the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize for lifetime achievement given by the Society for Military History. In 1998, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. In 2000, Ambrose received the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, the highest honorary award the Department of Defense offers to civilians. In 2001, he was awarded the Theodore Roosevelt Medal for Distinguished Service from the Theodore Roosevelt Association. Ambrose won an Emmy as one of the producers for the mini-series Band of Brothers. Ambrose also received the George Marshall Award, the Abraham Lincoln Literary Award, the Bob Hope Award from the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, and the Will Rogers Memorial Award.
Upon Ambrose's death, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana offered a resolution in the Senate, which received unanimous consent, saluting the "excellence of Stephen Ambrose at capturing the greatness of the American spirit in words."
Personal life, final years, and death
He married his first wife, Judith Dorlester, in 1957, and they had two children, Stephenie and Barry. Judith died in 1965, when Ambrose was 29. Ambrose married his second wife, Moira Buckley (1939–2009), in 1967 and adopted her three children, Andrew, Grace, and Hugh. Moira was an active assistant in his writing and academic projects. After retiring, he maintained homes in Helena, Montana, and Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. A longtime smoker, he was diagnosed with lung cancer in April 2002. His health deteriorated rapidly, and seven months after the diagnosis he died, at the age of 66. George McGovern, the primary focus of Ambrose's Wild Blue said, "He probably reached more readers than any other historian in our national history."
Legacy
Ambrose donated $500,000, half the amount needed, to the University of Wisconsin, to endow a chair in the name of William B. Hesseltine, Ambrose's mentor. The chair's position would focus on the teaching of American military history. When the chair became fully endowed, after Ambrose's death, it was renamed the Ambrose-Hesseltine Chair.
The Ambrose Professor of History title was established at the University of New Orleans after his death. The position is reserved for a military historian.
Each year the Rutgers University Living History Society awards the Stephen E. Ambrose Oral History Award to "an author or artist who has made significant use of oral history." Past winners include Tom Brokaw, Steven Spielberg, Studs Terkel, Michael Beschloss, and Ken Burns.
Criticism
Plagiarism
In 2002, Ambrose was accused of plagiarizing several passages in his book The Wild Blue.<ref>Williams, Robert Chadwell. The Historian's Toolbox: A Student's Guide to the Theory and Craft of History] Armonk NY: M E Sharpe Inc (2003) pp 88-89</ref> Fred Barnes reported in The Weekly Standard that Ambrose had taken passages from Wings of Morning: The Story of the Last American Bomber Shot Down over Germany in World War II, by Thomas Childers, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Ambrose had footnoted sources, but had not enclosed in quotation marks numerous passages from Childers's book."How the Ambrose Story Developed," History News Network, June 2002.
Ambrose asserted that only a few sentences in all his numerous books were the work of other authors. He offered this defense:
A Forbes investigation of his work found cases of plagiarism involving passages in at least six books, with a similar pattern going all the way back to his doctoral dissertation. The History News Network lists seven of Ambrose's more than 40 works—The Wild Blue, Undaunted Courage, Nothing Like It In the World, Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, Citizen Soldiers, The Supreme Commander, and Crazy Horse and Custer—contained content from twelve authors without appropriate attribution from Ambrose.
Factual errors and disputed characterizations
Pacific Railroad
A front-page article published in The Sacramento Bee on January 1, 2001, entitled "Area Historians Rail Against Inaccuracies in Book", listed more than sixty instances identified as "significant errors, misstatements, and made-up quotes" in Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863–1869, Ambrose's non-academic popular history about the construction of the Pacific Railroad between Council Bluffs, Iowa/Omaha, Nebraska, and the San Francisco Bay at Alameda/Oakland via Sacramento, California, which was published in August 2000. The discrepancies were documented in a detailed "fact-checking" paper compiled in December 2000 by three Western US railroad historians who are also experienced researchers, consultants, and collectors specializing in the Pacific Railroad and related topics.Graves, G.J., Strobridge, E.T., & Sweet, C.N.The Sins of Stephen E. Ambrose The Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum (CPRR.org), December 19, 2000
On January 11, 2001, Washington Post columnist Lloyd Grove reported in his column The Reliable Source, that a co-worker had found a "serious historical error" in the same book that "a chastened Ambrose" promised to correct in future editions. A number of journal reviews also sharply criticized the research and fact checking in the book. Reviewer Walter Nugent observed that it contained "annoying slips" such as mislabeled maps, inaccurate dates, geographical errors, and misidentified word origins, while railroad historian Don L. Hofsommer agreed that the book "confuses facts" and that "The research might best be characterized as 'once over lightly'."
The Eisenhower controversy
In the introduction to Ambrose's biography of Eisenhower, he claims that the former president approached him after having read his previous biography of the American general Henry Halleck,
but Tim Rives, Deputy Director of the Eisenhower Presidential Center, says it was Ambrose who contacted Eisenhower and suggested the project, as shown by a letter from Ambrose found in the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum. In his response, Eisenhower stated that "the confidence I have derived from your work by reading your two books—especially the one on Halleck—give reasons why I should be ready to help out so far as I can." The Halleck biography "still sits on a shelf" at the Eisenhower National Historic Site in Gettysburg.
After Eisenhower's death in 1969, Ambrose made repeated claims to have had a unique and extraordinarily close relationship with him over the final five years of the former President's life. In an extensive 1998 interview, before a group of high school students, Ambrose stated that he spent "a lot of time with Ike, really a lot, hundreds and hundreds of hours." Ambrose claimed he interviewed Eisenhower on a wide range of subjects, and that he had been with him "on a daily basis for a couple years" before his death "doing interviews and talking about his life." The former president's diary and telephone records show that the pair met only three times, for a total of less than five hours. Rives has stated that interview dates Ambrose cites in his 1970 book, The Supreme Commander, cannot be reconciled with Eisenhower's personal schedule, but Rives discovered, upon further investigation, a "hidden" relationship between the two men. Eisenhower enlisted Ambrose in his efforts to preserve his legacy and counteract criticisms of his presidency, particularly those charging that Eisenhower's actions at the end of World War II produced the Cold War. Ambrose wrote a review and book supporting the former general, with Eisenhower providing direction and comments during the process. Rives could not square the questionable interview dates cited by Ambrose in later works, but uncovered a relationship with Eisenhower that was "too complicated" to be described by Ambrose's critics.
Works
Sole author
Halleck: Lincoln's Chief of Staff, Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press (1962)
Upton and the Army, Louisiana State University Press (1964)
Duty, Honor, Country: A History of West Point, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press (1966)
[https://archive.org/details/supremecommander00ambr The Supreme Commander: the War Years of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, New York: Doubleday (1970)
Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors, New York: Doubleday (1975)
Ike's Spies: Eisenhower and the Espionage Establishment, New York: Doubleday (1981)
Eisenhower Volume 1: Soldier, General of the Army, President-Elect, 1890-1952, New York: Simon & Schuster (1983)
Eisenhower Volume 2: The President, New York: Simon & Schuster (1984)
Pegasus Bridge: June 6, 1944, New York: Simon & Schuster (1985)
Nixon: The Education of a Politician, 1913-1962, New York: Simon & Schuster (1987)
Eisenhower: Soldier and President, New York: Simon & Schuster (1990) (a one-volume condensation of the 1983-84 two-volume Eisenhower biography)
Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962-1972, New York: Simon & Schuster (1990)
Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, 1973-1990, New York: Simon & Schuster (1991)
Band of Brothers, E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne: From Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest (1992)
D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II, New York, Simon & Schuster (1994)
Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, New York: Simon & Schuster (1996)
Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944 - May 7, 1945, New York: Simon & Schuster (1997)
Americans at War, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi (1997)
The Victors: Eisenhower and his Boys - The Men of World War II, New York: Simon & Schuster (1998)
Comrades: Brothers, Fathers, Heroes, Sons, Pals, New York: Simon & Schuster (1999)
Nothing Like It in the World: The Men who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863-1869, New York: Simon & Schuster (2000)
The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys who Flew the B-24s over Germany, New York: Simon & Schuster (2001)
To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian, New York: Simon & Schuster (2002)
This Vast Land, New York: Simon & Schuster, (2003)
With others
with Richard H. Immerman, Milton S. Eisenhower, Educational Statesman, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press (1983)
with Douglas Brinkley, Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy since 1938, New York: Penguin Books (1997)
with Sam Abell, Lewis and Clark: Voyage of Discovery, Washington DC: National Geographic Society, (1998, 2002)
with Douglas Brinkley, Witness to America (1999) ; 2010:
with Douglas Brinkley, The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation: From the Louisiana Purchase to Today (2002),
Edited works
Institutions in Modern America: Innovation in Structure and Process, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press (1967)
with James A. Barber, The Military and American Society: Essays and Readings, New York, NY: The Free Press (1972)
with Gunter Bischoff, Eisenhower and the German POWs: Facts Against Falsehood, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press (1992)
with Gunter Bischoff, Eisenhower" A Centenary Assessment, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press (1995)
American Heritage New History of World War II(original text by C.L. Sulzberger), New York, NY: Viking Press (1997)
References
Further reading
External links
WorldCat search of works by Stephen Ambrose
Stephen E. Ambrose at FantasticFiction.co.uk
Interview with Stephen Ambrose (1998)
Obituary in The Independent''
Obituary at website of the American Historical Association
Commentary dated December 19, 2000 contributed by G. J. "Chris" Graves, Edson T. Strobridge, and Charles N. Sweet regarding Stephen E. Ambrose's book "Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built The Transcontinental Railroad 1863 - 1869."
Booknotes interview with Ambrose on D-Day: June 6, 1944, June 5, 1994.
In Depth interview with Ambrose, November 5, 2000
1936 births
2002 deaths
American Congregationalists
American military historians
American military writers
Deaths from lung cancer
Deaths from cancer in Mississippi
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Historians of the American West
Historians of the United States
Johns Hopkins University faculty
Kansas State University faculty
Louisiana State University faculty
National Humanities Medal recipients
Naval War College faculty
Official biographers to the presidents of the United States
Writers from Decatur, Illinois
People from Moultrie County, Illinois
People from Helena, Montana
Military personnel from Illinois
Writers from New Orleans
People from Whitewater, Wisconsin
University of New Orleans faculty
University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Letters and Science alumni
Wisconsin Badgers football players
Writers from Wisconsin
Historians of World War II
21st-century American male writers
20th-century American historians
21st-century American historians
Historians of the American Civil War
People involved in plagiarism controversies
American male non-fiction writers | true | [
"Below is a list of awards received by Twins since they were formed in 2001 as a cantopop girl group. They average to receive about 2-3 awards in each Hong Kong music awards. Their major accomplishment is in 2007 when they received the Asia Pacific Most Popular Female Artist Award from Jade Solid Gold Top 10 Awards.\n\nBecause of the Edison Chen photo scandal in 2008, Gillian took a short leave from the group. And thus the group did not record any songs or receive any awards between March 2008 to 2009.\n\nCommercial Radio Hong Kong Ultimate Song Chart Awards\nThe Ultimate Song Chart Awards Presentation (叱咤樂壇流行榜頒獎典禮) is a cantopop award ceremony from one of the famous channel in Commercial Radio Hong Kong known as Ultimate 903 (FM 90.3). Unlike other cantopop award ceremonies, this one is judged based on the popularity of the song/artist on the actual radio show.\n\nGlobal Chinese Music Awards\n\nIFPI Hong Kong Sales Awards\nIFPI Awards is given to artists base on the sales in Hong Kong at the end of the year.\n\nJade Solid Gold Top 10 Awards\nThe Jade Solid Gold Songs Awards Ceremony(十大勁歌金曲頒獎典禮) is held annually in Hong Kong since 1984. The awards are based on Jade Solid Gold show on TVB.\n\nMetro Radio Mandarin Music Awards\n\nMetro Showbiz Hit Awards\nThe Metro Showbiz Hit Awards (新城勁爆頒獎禮) is held in Hong Kong annually by Metro Showbiz radio station. It focus mostly in cantopop music.\n\nRTHK Top 10 Gold Songs Awards\nThe RTHK Top 10 Gold Songs Awards Ceremony(十大中文金曲頒獎音樂會) is held annually in Hong Kong since 1978. The awards are determined by Radio and Television Hong Kong based on the work of all Asian artists (mostly cantopop) for the previous year.\n\nSprite Music Awards\nThe Sprite Music Awards Ceremony is an annual event given by Sprite China for work artists performed in previous years; awards received on 2008 are actually for the work and accomplishment for 2007.\n\nReferences\n\nTwins\nCantopop",
"James Earl Jones is an American actor known for his appearances on stage and screen.\n\nJones is known as one of the few entertainers to have won the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony). Jones has received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations, a Grammy Award and three Tony Awards. While Jones has yet to win a competitive Oscar, Jones did receive the Honorary Academy Award in 2011. The award was presented to him by Sir Ben Kingsley. Jones gained worldwide recognition for his vocal performance as Darth Vader in the George Lucas space opera Star Wars films and for Mufasa in the Walt Disney animated film The Lion King (1994). Jones is known for his performances in films such as the political satire Dr. Strangelove (1964), the drama The Great White Hope (1970), the romance Claudine (1974), the drama Matewan (1987), the comedy Coming to America (1988), the sports drama Field of Dreams (1989), the spy thriller The Hunt for Red October (1990), and the drama Cry, the Beloved Country (1995).\n\nJones received his first Oscar nomination for Best Actor in 1969 for The Great White Hope. For his work in the theatre, he received four competitive Tony Award nominations for Best Actor in a Play winning twice for his performances as Jack Jefferson in The Great White Hope in 1969 and as Troy Maxson in August Wilson's Fences in 1987. In 2017 he received a Special Tony Award at the 71st Tony Awards for his Lifetime achievement in the theatre. For his work in television he received eight Primetime Emmy Award nominations winning twice for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie for Heat Wave and for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for Gabriel's Fire in 1991. He also has been nominated for three Grammy Awards winning in 1977 for Best Spoken Word Album for Great American Documents. In 2009, he received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award.\n\nEGOT\n\nAcademy Awards\n\nTony Awards\n\nEmmy Awards\n\nGrammy Awards\n\nIndustry awards\n\nGolden Globe Awards\n\nScreen Actors Guild Awards\n\nIndependent Spirit Award\n\nReferences \n\nEarl Jones, James"
] |
[
"Stephen E. Ambrose",
"Television, film, and other activities",
"What work did Stephen do in Television?",
"He served as the historical consultant for the movie Saving Private Ryan.",
"Did he work as a consultant on any other films?",
"Ambrose served as executive producer for Price for Peace, a documentary concerning the war in the Pacific theater during World War II,",
"What other films did he work on?",
"Moments of Truth, a TV documentary",
"Did he receive any awards for his work?",
"Ambrose's association with National Geographic stemmed, in part, from his designation as an Explorer-in-Residence by the Society."
] | C_e608cccf1c024635807a29e8c150f222_1 | What other activities did he participate in? | 5 | Aside from Explorer-in-Residence by the Society, what other activities did Stephen E. Ambrose participate in? | Stephen E. Ambrose | Ambrose was the lone historian featured in the 1973-74 ITV television series, The World at War, which detailed the history of World War II. He served as the historical consultant for the movie Saving Private Ryan. Tom Hanks, who starred in the movie, said he "pored over D-Day" and Band of Brothers in researching his role. Hanks also credited Ambrose's books with providing extensive detail, particularly regarding D-Day landings. The HBO mini-series, Band of Brothers (2001), for which he was an executive producer, helped sustain the fresh interest in World War II that had been stimulated by the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 1994 and the 60th anniversary in 2004. Ambrose served as executive producer for Price for Peace, a documentary concerning the war in the Pacific theater during World War II, and for Moments of Truth, a TV documentary containing interviews with World War II veterans. In addition, Ambrose served as a commentator for Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, a documentary by Ken Burns. He provided commentary in twenty made-for TV documentaries, covering diverse topics, such as World War II, Lewis & Clark, and America's prominence in the 20th century. He also appeared as a guest on numerous TV programs or stations, including The Charlie Rose Show, C-Span programming, CNN programming, NBC's Today Show, CNBC's Hardball, and various programming on The History Channel and the National Geographic Channel. Ambrose's association with National Geographic stemmed, in part, from his designation as an Explorer-in-Residence by the Society. In addition to his academic work and publishing, Ambrose operated a historical tour business, acting as a tour guide to European locales of World War II. Also, he served on the board of directors for American Rivers and was a member of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Council. CANNOTANSWER | Ambrose operated a historical tour business, | Stephen Edward Ambrose (January 10, 1936 – October 13, 2002) was an American historian, most noted for his biographies of U.S. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. He was a longtime professor of history at the University of New Orleans and the author of many bestselling volumes of American popular history.
There have been numerous well documented allegations of plagiarism, inaccuracies, and sloppiness in Ambrose's writings in addition to claims that he has made about his works. However, in a review of To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian for the New York Times, high school teacher William Everdell credited the historian with reaching "an important lay audience without endorsing its every prejudice."
Early life
Ambrose was born January 10, 1936, in Lovington, Illinois, to Rosepha Trippe Ambrose and Stephen Hedges Ambrose. His father was a physician who served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. Ambrose was raised in Whitewater, Wisconsin, where he graduated from Whitewater High School. His family also owned a farm in Lovington, Illinois, and vacation property in Marinette County, Wisconsin. He attended college at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he was a member of Chi Psi fraternity and played on the University of Wisconsin football team for three years.
Ambrose originally wanted to major in pre-medicine, but changed his major to history after hearing the first lecture in a U.S. history class entitled "Representative Americans" in his sophomore year. The course was taught by William B. Hesseltine, whom Ambrose credits with fundamentally shaping his writing and igniting his interest in history. While at Wisconsin, Ambrose was a member of the Navy and Army ROTC. He graduated with a B.A. in 1957. Ambrose received a master's degree in history from Louisiana State University in 1958, studying under T. Harry Williams. Ambrose then went on to earn a PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1963, under William B. Hesseltine.
Career
Academic positions
Ambrose was a history professor from 1960 until his retirement in 1995. From 1971 onward, he was on the faculty of the University of New Orleans, where he was named the Boyd Professor of History in 1989, an honor given only to faculty who attain "national or international distinction for outstanding teaching, research, or other creative achievement". During the 1969–1970 academic year, he was the Ernest J. King Professor of Maritime History at the Naval War College. While teaching at Kansas State University as the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of War and Peace during the 1970–1971 academic year, Ambrose participated in heckling of Richard Nixon during a speech the president gave on the KSU campus. Given pressure from the KSU administration and having job offers elsewhere, upon finishing out the year Ambrose offered to leave and the offer was accepted. His opposition to the Vietnam War stood in contrast to his research on "presidents and the military at a time when such topics were increasingly regarded by his colleagues as old fashioned and conservative." Ambrose also taught at Louisiana State University (assistant professor of history; 1960–1964) and Johns Hopkins University (associate professor of history; 1964–1969). He held visiting posts at Rutgers University, the University of California, Berkeley, and a number of European schools, including University College Dublin, where he taught as the Mary Ball Washington Professor of American History.
He founded the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans in 1989 serving as its director until 1994. "The mission of the Eisenhower Center is the study of the causes, conduct, and consequences of American national security policy and the use of force as an instrument of policy in the twentieth century." The center's first efforts, which Ambrose initiated, involved the collection of oral histories from World War II veterans about their experiences, particularly any participation in D-Day. By the time of publication of Ambrose's D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II, in 1994, the center had collected more than 1,200 oral histories. Ambrose donated $150,000 to the Center in 1998 to foster additional efforts to collect oral histories from World War II veterans.
Writings
Ambrose's earliest works concerned the American Civil War. He wrote biographies of the generals Emory Upton and Henry Halleck, the first of which was based on his dissertation.
Early in his career, Ambrose was mentored by World War II historian Forrest Pogue. In 1964, Ambrose took a position at Johns Hopkins as the Associate Editor of the Eisenhower Papers, a project aimed at organizing, cataloging and publishing Eisenhower's principal papers. From this work and discussions with Eisenhower emerged an article critical of Cornelius Ryan's The Last Battle, which had depicted Eisenhower as politically naîve, when at the end of World War II he allowed Soviet forces to take Berlin, thus shaping the Cold War that followed. Ambrose expanded this into a book, Eisenhower and Berlin, 1945: The Decision to Halt at the Elbe (1967). Ambrose was aided in the book's writing by comments and notes provided by Eisenhower, who read a draft of the book.
In 1964, Ambrose was commissioned to write the official biography of the former president and five-star general Dwight D. Eisenhower. This resulted in a book on Eisenhower's war years, The Supreme Commander (1970) and a two-volume full biography (published 1983 and 1984), which are considered "the standard" on the subject. Regarding the first volume, Gordon Harrison, writing for the New York Times, proclaimed, "It is Mr. Ambrose's special triumph that he has been able to fight through the memoranda, the directives, plans, reports, and official self-serving pieties of the World War II establishment to uncover the idiosyncratic people at its center." Ambrose also wrote a three-volume biography of Richard Nixon. Although Ambrose was a strong critic of Nixon, the biography was considered fair and just regarding Nixon's presidency.
A visit to a reunion of Easy Company veterans in 1988 prompted Ambrose to collect their stories, turning them into Band of Brothers, E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne: From Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest (1992). D-Day (1994), built upon additional oral histories, presented the battle from the view points of individual soldiers and became his first best seller. A reviewer for the Journal of Military History commended D-Day as the "most comprehensive discussion" of the sea, air, and land operations that coalesced on that day. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, writing for the New York Times, proclaimed that "Reading this history, you can understand why for so many of its participants, despite all the death surrounding them, life revealed itself in that moment at that place." Ambrose's Citizen Soldiers, which describes battles fought in northwest Europe from D-Day through the end of the war, utilized, again, extensive oral histories. Citizen Soldiers became a best seller, appearing on the New York Times best sellers lists for both hardcover and paperback editions in the same week. During the same week, in September 1998, D-Day and Undaunted Courage, Ambrose's 1996 book on Meriwether Lewis and the Corps of Discovery, appeared on the best seller list, also. He also wrote The Victors (1998), a distillation of material from other books detailing Eisenhower's wartime experiences and connections to the common soldier, and The Wild Blue, that looks at World War II aviation largely through the experiences of George McGovern, who commanded a B-24 crew that flew numerous missions over Germany. His other major works include Undaunted Courage about the Lewis and Clark Expedition and Nothing Like It in the World about the construction of the Pacific Railroad. His final book, This Vast Land, a historical novel about the Lewis & Clark expedition written for young readers, was published posthumously in 2003.
Ambrose's most popular single work was Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West (1996), which stayed on the New York Times best seller list for a combined, hardcover and paperback, 126 weeks. Ambrose consolidated research on the Corps of Discovery's expedition conducted in the previous thirty years and "synthesized it skillfully to enrich our understanding and appreciation of this grand epic," according to Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., who reviewed the book for the New York Times. Ken Burns, who produced and directed a PBS documentary on Lewis & Clark declared that Ambrose "takes one of the great, but also one of the most superficially considered, stories in American history and breathes fresh life into it."
In addition to twenty-seven self-authored books, Ambrose co-authored, edited, and contributed to many more and was a frequent contributor to magazines such as American Heritage. He, also, reviewed the works of other historians in the Journal of Southern History, Military Affairs, American Historical Review, Journal of American History, and Foreign Affairs. He served as a contributing editor to MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, also.
Television, film, and other activities
Ambrose featured in the 1973-74 ITV television series, The World at War, which detailed the history of World War II.
He served as the historical consultant for the movie Saving Private Ryan. Tom Hanks, who starred in the movie, said he "pored over D-Day" and Band of Brothers in researching his role. Hanks also credited Ambrose's books with providing extensive detail, particularly regarding D-Day landings.
The HBO mini-series, Band of Brothers (2001), for which he was an executive producer, helped sustain the fresh interest in World War II that had been stimulated by the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 1994 and the 60th anniversary in 2004. Ambrose served as executive producer for Price for Peace, a documentary concerning the war in the Pacific theater during World War II, and for Moments of Truth, a TV documentary containing interviews with World War II veterans.
In addition, Ambrose served as a commentator for Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, a documentary by Ken Burns. He provided commentary in twenty made-for TV documentaries, covering diverse topics, such as World War II, Lewis & Clark, and America's prominence in the 20th century. He also appeared as a guest on numerous TV programs or stations, including The Charlie Rose Show, C-Span programming, CNN programming, NBC's Today Show, CNBC's Hardball, and various programming on The History Channel and the National Geographic Channel. Ambrose's association with National Geographic stemmed, in part, from his designation as an Explorer-in-Residence by the Society.
In addition to his academic work and publishing, Ambrose operated a historical tour business, acting as a tour guide to European locales of World War II. Also, he served on the board of directors for American Rivers and was a member of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Council.
National World War II Museum
Ambrose's work for the Eisenhower Center, specifically his work with D-Day veterans, inspired him to co-found the National D-Day Museum in New Orleans with another historian and UNO professor Gordon H. "Nick" Mueller. Ambrose initiated fundraising by donating $500,000. "He dreamt of a museum that reflected his deep regard for our nation's citizen soldiers, the workers on the Home Front and the sacrifices and hardships they endured to achieve victory." He secured large contributions from the federal government, state of Louisiana, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, and many smaller donations from former students, who answered a plea made by Ambrose in the New Orleans Times-Picayune. In 2003, Congress designated the museum as "America's National World War II Museum," acknowledging an expanded scope and mission for the museum. "The Stephen E. Ambrose Memorial Fund continues to support the development of the museum's Center for Study of the American Spirit, its educational programs and oral history and publication initiatives."
Awards
In 1997, Ambrose received the St. Louis Literary Award from the Saint Louis University Library Associates. In 1998, he received the National Humanities Medal. In 1998, he was awarded the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize for lifetime achievement given by the Society for Military History. In 1998, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. In 2000, Ambrose received the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, the highest honorary award the Department of Defense offers to civilians. In 2001, he was awarded the Theodore Roosevelt Medal for Distinguished Service from the Theodore Roosevelt Association. Ambrose won an Emmy as one of the producers for the mini-series Band of Brothers. Ambrose also received the George Marshall Award, the Abraham Lincoln Literary Award, the Bob Hope Award from the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, and the Will Rogers Memorial Award.
Upon Ambrose's death, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana offered a resolution in the Senate, which received unanimous consent, saluting the "excellence of Stephen Ambrose at capturing the greatness of the American spirit in words."
Personal life, final years, and death
He married his first wife, Judith Dorlester, in 1957, and they had two children, Stephenie and Barry. Judith died in 1965, when Ambrose was 29. Ambrose married his second wife, Moira Buckley (1939–2009), in 1967 and adopted her three children, Andrew, Grace, and Hugh. Moira was an active assistant in his writing and academic projects. After retiring, he maintained homes in Helena, Montana, and Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. A longtime smoker, he was diagnosed with lung cancer in April 2002. His health deteriorated rapidly, and seven months after the diagnosis he died, at the age of 66. George McGovern, the primary focus of Ambrose's Wild Blue said, "He probably reached more readers than any other historian in our national history."
Legacy
Ambrose donated $500,000, half the amount needed, to the University of Wisconsin, to endow a chair in the name of William B. Hesseltine, Ambrose's mentor. The chair's position would focus on the teaching of American military history. When the chair became fully endowed, after Ambrose's death, it was renamed the Ambrose-Hesseltine Chair.
The Ambrose Professor of History title was established at the University of New Orleans after his death. The position is reserved for a military historian.
Each year the Rutgers University Living History Society awards the Stephen E. Ambrose Oral History Award to "an author or artist who has made significant use of oral history." Past winners include Tom Brokaw, Steven Spielberg, Studs Terkel, Michael Beschloss, and Ken Burns.
Criticism
Plagiarism
In 2002, Ambrose was accused of plagiarizing several passages in his book The Wild Blue.<ref>Williams, Robert Chadwell. The Historian's Toolbox: A Student's Guide to the Theory and Craft of History] Armonk NY: M E Sharpe Inc (2003) pp 88-89</ref> Fred Barnes reported in The Weekly Standard that Ambrose had taken passages from Wings of Morning: The Story of the Last American Bomber Shot Down over Germany in World War II, by Thomas Childers, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Ambrose had footnoted sources, but had not enclosed in quotation marks numerous passages from Childers's book."How the Ambrose Story Developed," History News Network, June 2002.
Ambrose asserted that only a few sentences in all his numerous books were the work of other authors. He offered this defense:
A Forbes investigation of his work found cases of plagiarism involving passages in at least six books, with a similar pattern going all the way back to his doctoral dissertation. The History News Network lists seven of Ambrose's more than 40 works—The Wild Blue, Undaunted Courage, Nothing Like It In the World, Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, Citizen Soldiers, The Supreme Commander, and Crazy Horse and Custer—contained content from twelve authors without appropriate attribution from Ambrose.
Factual errors and disputed characterizations
Pacific Railroad
A front-page article published in The Sacramento Bee on January 1, 2001, entitled "Area Historians Rail Against Inaccuracies in Book", listed more than sixty instances identified as "significant errors, misstatements, and made-up quotes" in Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863–1869, Ambrose's non-academic popular history about the construction of the Pacific Railroad between Council Bluffs, Iowa/Omaha, Nebraska, and the San Francisco Bay at Alameda/Oakland via Sacramento, California, which was published in August 2000. The discrepancies were documented in a detailed "fact-checking" paper compiled in December 2000 by three Western US railroad historians who are also experienced researchers, consultants, and collectors specializing in the Pacific Railroad and related topics.Graves, G.J., Strobridge, E.T., & Sweet, C.N.The Sins of Stephen E. Ambrose The Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum (CPRR.org), December 19, 2000
On January 11, 2001, Washington Post columnist Lloyd Grove reported in his column The Reliable Source, that a co-worker had found a "serious historical error" in the same book that "a chastened Ambrose" promised to correct in future editions. A number of journal reviews also sharply criticized the research and fact checking in the book. Reviewer Walter Nugent observed that it contained "annoying slips" such as mislabeled maps, inaccurate dates, geographical errors, and misidentified word origins, while railroad historian Don L. Hofsommer agreed that the book "confuses facts" and that "The research might best be characterized as 'once over lightly'."
The Eisenhower controversy
In the introduction to Ambrose's biography of Eisenhower, he claims that the former president approached him after having read his previous biography of the American general Henry Halleck,
but Tim Rives, Deputy Director of the Eisenhower Presidential Center, says it was Ambrose who contacted Eisenhower and suggested the project, as shown by a letter from Ambrose found in the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum. In his response, Eisenhower stated that "the confidence I have derived from your work by reading your two books—especially the one on Halleck—give reasons why I should be ready to help out so far as I can." The Halleck biography "still sits on a shelf" at the Eisenhower National Historic Site in Gettysburg.
After Eisenhower's death in 1969, Ambrose made repeated claims to have had a unique and extraordinarily close relationship with him over the final five years of the former President's life. In an extensive 1998 interview, before a group of high school students, Ambrose stated that he spent "a lot of time with Ike, really a lot, hundreds and hundreds of hours." Ambrose claimed he interviewed Eisenhower on a wide range of subjects, and that he had been with him "on a daily basis for a couple years" before his death "doing interviews and talking about his life." The former president's diary and telephone records show that the pair met only three times, for a total of less than five hours. Rives has stated that interview dates Ambrose cites in his 1970 book, The Supreme Commander, cannot be reconciled with Eisenhower's personal schedule, but Rives discovered, upon further investigation, a "hidden" relationship between the two men. Eisenhower enlisted Ambrose in his efforts to preserve his legacy and counteract criticisms of his presidency, particularly those charging that Eisenhower's actions at the end of World War II produced the Cold War. Ambrose wrote a review and book supporting the former general, with Eisenhower providing direction and comments during the process. Rives could not square the questionable interview dates cited by Ambrose in later works, but uncovered a relationship with Eisenhower that was "too complicated" to be described by Ambrose's critics.
Works
Sole author
Halleck: Lincoln's Chief of Staff, Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press (1962)
Upton and the Army, Louisiana State University Press (1964)
Duty, Honor, Country: A History of West Point, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press (1966)
[https://archive.org/details/supremecommander00ambr The Supreme Commander: the War Years of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, New York: Doubleday (1970)
Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors, New York: Doubleday (1975)
Ike's Spies: Eisenhower and the Espionage Establishment, New York: Doubleday (1981)
Eisenhower Volume 1: Soldier, General of the Army, President-Elect, 1890-1952, New York: Simon & Schuster (1983)
Eisenhower Volume 2: The President, New York: Simon & Schuster (1984)
Pegasus Bridge: June 6, 1944, New York: Simon & Schuster (1985)
Nixon: The Education of a Politician, 1913-1962, New York: Simon & Schuster (1987)
Eisenhower: Soldier and President, New York: Simon & Schuster (1990) (a one-volume condensation of the 1983-84 two-volume Eisenhower biography)
Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962-1972, New York: Simon & Schuster (1990)
Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, 1973-1990, New York: Simon & Schuster (1991)
Band of Brothers, E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne: From Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest (1992)
D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II, New York, Simon & Schuster (1994)
Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, New York: Simon & Schuster (1996)
Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944 - May 7, 1945, New York: Simon & Schuster (1997)
Americans at War, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi (1997)
The Victors: Eisenhower and his Boys - The Men of World War II, New York: Simon & Schuster (1998)
Comrades: Brothers, Fathers, Heroes, Sons, Pals, New York: Simon & Schuster (1999)
Nothing Like It in the World: The Men who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863-1869, New York: Simon & Schuster (2000)
The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys who Flew the B-24s over Germany, New York: Simon & Schuster (2001)
To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian, New York: Simon & Schuster (2002)
This Vast Land, New York: Simon & Schuster, (2003)
With others
with Richard H. Immerman, Milton S. Eisenhower, Educational Statesman, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press (1983)
with Douglas Brinkley, Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy since 1938, New York: Penguin Books (1997)
with Sam Abell, Lewis and Clark: Voyage of Discovery, Washington DC: National Geographic Society, (1998, 2002)
with Douglas Brinkley, Witness to America (1999) ; 2010:
with Douglas Brinkley, The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation: From the Louisiana Purchase to Today (2002),
Edited works
Institutions in Modern America: Innovation in Structure and Process, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press (1967)
with James A. Barber, The Military and American Society: Essays and Readings, New York, NY: The Free Press (1972)
with Gunter Bischoff, Eisenhower and the German POWs: Facts Against Falsehood, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press (1992)
with Gunter Bischoff, Eisenhower" A Centenary Assessment, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press (1995)
American Heritage New History of World War II(original text by C.L. Sulzberger), New York, NY: Viking Press (1997)
References
Further reading
External links
WorldCat search of works by Stephen Ambrose
Stephen E. Ambrose at FantasticFiction.co.uk
Interview with Stephen Ambrose (1998)
Obituary in The Independent''
Obituary at website of the American Historical Association
Commentary dated December 19, 2000 contributed by G. J. "Chris" Graves, Edson T. Strobridge, and Charles N. Sweet regarding Stephen E. Ambrose's book "Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built The Transcontinental Railroad 1863 - 1869."
Booknotes interview with Ambrose on D-Day: June 6, 1944, June 5, 1994.
In Depth interview with Ambrose, November 5, 2000
1936 births
2002 deaths
American Congregationalists
American military historians
American military writers
Deaths from lung cancer
Deaths from cancer in Mississippi
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Historians of the American West
Historians of the United States
Johns Hopkins University faculty
Kansas State University faculty
Louisiana State University faculty
National Humanities Medal recipients
Naval War College faculty
Official biographers to the presidents of the United States
Writers from Decatur, Illinois
People from Moultrie County, Illinois
People from Helena, Montana
Military personnel from Illinois
Writers from New Orleans
People from Whitewater, Wisconsin
University of New Orleans faculty
University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Letters and Science alumni
Wisconsin Badgers football players
Writers from Wisconsin
Historians of World War II
21st-century American male writers
20th-century American historians
21st-century American historians
Historians of the American Civil War
People involved in plagiarism controversies
American male non-fiction writers | true | [
"Calvine High School is a continuation high school located in Sacramento County, California directly next to Elk Grove, California. It is part of the Elk Grove Unified School District.\n\nSchool history \n\nCalvine gets its name from the California Vineyard Company, a huge grape growing enterprise of the early 1900s, located east of Bradshaw Road. Calvine Road leads from what is now Highway 99 to the land belonging to the company. Calvine was the outgrowth of two smaller high schools. They were Omochumnes High, with its Miwok Indian name, located near what is now the Education Center, and Pioneer High, which had been at two different locations during its lifespan. On April 25, 1992.\n\nExtra-curricular activities \n\nCalvine students have participated in many extra curricular activities such as Marsh Madness, which was a youth leadership program. This program helps train Calvine students to mentor elementary school students on all aspects of existing natural resources. Some other activities that Calvine students experience are things like “In a Blink of an Eye” which shows students what can happen when teenagers participate in illegal street racing; which is the loss of one's life. Another activity that students participate in is the trip to the nimbus fish hatchery where students observe the final stages of salmon migration.\n\nCalvine students participate in a rigorous service learning program using nearby areas for environmental studies. Students learn in a non-classroom environment while taking part in community enhancing projects fostering real world learning.\n\nSchool staff \nThe school currently employs eleven teachers.\n\nGoals \n\nCalvine High School is a credit recovery program for credit deficient students. Students are no longer required to pass the California High School Exit Exam.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n Calvine High School official web site\n Elk Grove City web site\n\nEducational institutions established in 1991\nHigh schools in Sacramento, California\nContinuation high schools in California\nPublic high schools in California\n1991 establishments in California",
"The Qatar men's national volleyball team represents Qatar in international volleyball competitions and friendly matches. As of 20 September 2021, the team was ranked 20th in the world. Qatar's best rank in Asian Championship 4th place, 2015 year.\n\nHistory\nQatar first appeared at the Asian Volleyball Championship in 1989. Qatar also finished fourth at the 2006 Asian Games which they hosted in Doha, after dropping their semifinal 3-1 to South Korea and the bronze medal match 3-2 to Saudi Arabia. Qatar jointly set the world record for the highest set score in its 45-43 victory over Venezuela on 11 June 2017.\n\nResults\n\nWorld Championship\n 1949 to 2018 – Did not participate or Did not qualify\n 2022 – Qualified\n\nWorld League\n 1990 to 2009 – Did not participate\n 2010 to 2015 – Did not qualify\n 2016 – 31st place\n 2017 – 32nd place\n\nAsian Championship\n 1975 – Did not participate\n 1979 – Did not participate\n 1983 – Did not participate\n 1987 – Did not participate\n 1989 – 19th place\n 1991 – Did not participate\n 1993 – 12th place\n 1995 – 10th place\n 1997 – 8th place\n 1999 – 13th place\n 2001 – 11th place\n 2003 – 11th place\n 2005 – 7th place\n 2007 – 11th place\n 2009 – 14th place\n 2011 – 12th place\n 2013 – 11th place\n 2015 – 4th place\n 2017 – 9th place\n 2019 – 9th place\n 2021 – 5th place\n\nAsian Games\n 1958 – Did not participate\n 1962 – Did not participate\n 1966 – Did not participate\n 1970 – Did not participate\n 1974 – Did not participate\n 1978 – Did not participate\n 1982 – 8th place\n 1986 – Did not participate\n 1990 – Did not participate\n 1994 – Did not participate\n 1998 – 10th place\n 2002 – 8th place\n 2006 – 4th place\n 2010 – 8th place\n 2014 – 6th place\n 2018 – 4th place\n\nAsian Cup\n 2008 – Did not qualify\n 2010 – Did not qualify\n 2012 – Did not qualify\n 2014 – Did not qualify\n 2016 – Qualified but later withdrew\n 2018 – Champions\n\nCurrent squad\nThe following is the Qatari roster in the 2017 World League.\n\nHead coach: Massimiliano Giaccardi\n\nReferences\n\nVolleyball\nNational men's volleyball teams\nVolleyball in Qatar\nMen's sport in Qatar"
] |
[
"Stephen E. Ambrose",
"Television, film, and other activities",
"What work did Stephen do in Television?",
"He served as the historical consultant for the movie Saving Private Ryan.",
"Did he work as a consultant on any other films?",
"Ambrose served as executive producer for Price for Peace, a documentary concerning the war in the Pacific theater during World War II,",
"What other films did he work on?",
"Moments of Truth, a TV documentary",
"Did he receive any awards for his work?",
"Ambrose's association with National Geographic stemmed, in part, from his designation as an Explorer-in-Residence by the Society.",
"What other activities did he participate in?",
"Ambrose operated a historical tour business,"
] | C_e608cccf1c024635807a29e8c150f222_1 | When did the historical tour business begin? | 6 | When did Stephen E. Ambrose's historical tour business begin? | Stephen E. Ambrose | Ambrose was the lone historian featured in the 1973-74 ITV television series, The World at War, which detailed the history of World War II. He served as the historical consultant for the movie Saving Private Ryan. Tom Hanks, who starred in the movie, said he "pored over D-Day" and Band of Brothers in researching his role. Hanks also credited Ambrose's books with providing extensive detail, particularly regarding D-Day landings. The HBO mini-series, Band of Brothers (2001), for which he was an executive producer, helped sustain the fresh interest in World War II that had been stimulated by the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 1994 and the 60th anniversary in 2004. Ambrose served as executive producer for Price for Peace, a documentary concerning the war in the Pacific theater during World War II, and for Moments of Truth, a TV documentary containing interviews with World War II veterans. In addition, Ambrose served as a commentator for Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, a documentary by Ken Burns. He provided commentary in twenty made-for TV documentaries, covering diverse topics, such as World War II, Lewis & Clark, and America's prominence in the 20th century. He also appeared as a guest on numerous TV programs or stations, including The Charlie Rose Show, C-Span programming, CNN programming, NBC's Today Show, CNBC's Hardball, and various programming on The History Channel and the National Geographic Channel. Ambrose's association with National Geographic stemmed, in part, from his designation as an Explorer-in-Residence by the Society. In addition to his academic work and publishing, Ambrose operated a historical tour business, acting as a tour guide to European locales of World War II. Also, he served on the board of directors for American Rivers and was a member of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Council. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Stephen Edward Ambrose (January 10, 1936 – October 13, 2002) was an American historian, most noted for his biographies of U.S. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. He was a longtime professor of history at the University of New Orleans and the author of many bestselling volumes of American popular history.
There have been numerous well documented allegations of plagiarism, inaccuracies, and sloppiness in Ambrose's writings in addition to claims that he has made about his works. However, in a review of To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian for the New York Times, high school teacher William Everdell credited the historian with reaching "an important lay audience without endorsing its every prejudice."
Early life
Ambrose was born January 10, 1936, in Lovington, Illinois, to Rosepha Trippe Ambrose and Stephen Hedges Ambrose. His father was a physician who served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. Ambrose was raised in Whitewater, Wisconsin, where he graduated from Whitewater High School. His family also owned a farm in Lovington, Illinois, and vacation property in Marinette County, Wisconsin. He attended college at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he was a member of Chi Psi fraternity and played on the University of Wisconsin football team for three years.
Ambrose originally wanted to major in pre-medicine, but changed his major to history after hearing the first lecture in a U.S. history class entitled "Representative Americans" in his sophomore year. The course was taught by William B. Hesseltine, whom Ambrose credits with fundamentally shaping his writing and igniting his interest in history. While at Wisconsin, Ambrose was a member of the Navy and Army ROTC. He graduated with a B.A. in 1957. Ambrose received a master's degree in history from Louisiana State University in 1958, studying under T. Harry Williams. Ambrose then went on to earn a PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1963, under William B. Hesseltine.
Career
Academic positions
Ambrose was a history professor from 1960 until his retirement in 1995. From 1971 onward, he was on the faculty of the University of New Orleans, where he was named the Boyd Professor of History in 1989, an honor given only to faculty who attain "national or international distinction for outstanding teaching, research, or other creative achievement". During the 1969–1970 academic year, he was the Ernest J. King Professor of Maritime History at the Naval War College. While teaching at Kansas State University as the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of War and Peace during the 1970–1971 academic year, Ambrose participated in heckling of Richard Nixon during a speech the president gave on the KSU campus. Given pressure from the KSU administration and having job offers elsewhere, upon finishing out the year Ambrose offered to leave and the offer was accepted. His opposition to the Vietnam War stood in contrast to his research on "presidents and the military at a time when such topics were increasingly regarded by his colleagues as old fashioned and conservative." Ambrose also taught at Louisiana State University (assistant professor of history; 1960–1964) and Johns Hopkins University (associate professor of history; 1964–1969). He held visiting posts at Rutgers University, the University of California, Berkeley, and a number of European schools, including University College Dublin, where he taught as the Mary Ball Washington Professor of American History.
He founded the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans in 1989 serving as its director until 1994. "The mission of the Eisenhower Center is the study of the causes, conduct, and consequences of American national security policy and the use of force as an instrument of policy in the twentieth century." The center's first efforts, which Ambrose initiated, involved the collection of oral histories from World War II veterans about their experiences, particularly any participation in D-Day. By the time of publication of Ambrose's D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II, in 1994, the center had collected more than 1,200 oral histories. Ambrose donated $150,000 to the Center in 1998 to foster additional efforts to collect oral histories from World War II veterans.
Writings
Ambrose's earliest works concerned the American Civil War. He wrote biographies of the generals Emory Upton and Henry Halleck, the first of which was based on his dissertation.
Early in his career, Ambrose was mentored by World War II historian Forrest Pogue. In 1964, Ambrose took a position at Johns Hopkins as the Associate Editor of the Eisenhower Papers, a project aimed at organizing, cataloging and publishing Eisenhower's principal papers. From this work and discussions with Eisenhower emerged an article critical of Cornelius Ryan's The Last Battle, which had depicted Eisenhower as politically naîve, when at the end of World War II he allowed Soviet forces to take Berlin, thus shaping the Cold War that followed. Ambrose expanded this into a book, Eisenhower and Berlin, 1945: The Decision to Halt at the Elbe (1967). Ambrose was aided in the book's writing by comments and notes provided by Eisenhower, who read a draft of the book.
In 1964, Ambrose was commissioned to write the official biography of the former president and five-star general Dwight D. Eisenhower. This resulted in a book on Eisenhower's war years, The Supreme Commander (1970) and a two-volume full biography (published 1983 and 1984), which are considered "the standard" on the subject. Regarding the first volume, Gordon Harrison, writing for the New York Times, proclaimed, "It is Mr. Ambrose's special triumph that he has been able to fight through the memoranda, the directives, plans, reports, and official self-serving pieties of the World War II establishment to uncover the idiosyncratic people at its center." Ambrose also wrote a three-volume biography of Richard Nixon. Although Ambrose was a strong critic of Nixon, the biography was considered fair and just regarding Nixon's presidency.
A visit to a reunion of Easy Company veterans in 1988 prompted Ambrose to collect their stories, turning them into Band of Brothers, E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne: From Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest (1992). D-Day (1994), built upon additional oral histories, presented the battle from the view points of individual soldiers and became his first best seller. A reviewer for the Journal of Military History commended D-Day as the "most comprehensive discussion" of the sea, air, and land operations that coalesced on that day. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, writing for the New York Times, proclaimed that "Reading this history, you can understand why for so many of its participants, despite all the death surrounding them, life revealed itself in that moment at that place." Ambrose's Citizen Soldiers, which describes battles fought in northwest Europe from D-Day through the end of the war, utilized, again, extensive oral histories. Citizen Soldiers became a best seller, appearing on the New York Times best sellers lists for both hardcover and paperback editions in the same week. During the same week, in September 1998, D-Day and Undaunted Courage, Ambrose's 1996 book on Meriwether Lewis and the Corps of Discovery, appeared on the best seller list, also. He also wrote The Victors (1998), a distillation of material from other books detailing Eisenhower's wartime experiences and connections to the common soldier, and The Wild Blue, that looks at World War II aviation largely through the experiences of George McGovern, who commanded a B-24 crew that flew numerous missions over Germany. His other major works include Undaunted Courage about the Lewis and Clark Expedition and Nothing Like It in the World about the construction of the Pacific Railroad. His final book, This Vast Land, a historical novel about the Lewis & Clark expedition written for young readers, was published posthumously in 2003.
Ambrose's most popular single work was Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West (1996), which stayed on the New York Times best seller list for a combined, hardcover and paperback, 126 weeks. Ambrose consolidated research on the Corps of Discovery's expedition conducted in the previous thirty years and "synthesized it skillfully to enrich our understanding and appreciation of this grand epic," according to Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., who reviewed the book for the New York Times. Ken Burns, who produced and directed a PBS documentary on Lewis & Clark declared that Ambrose "takes one of the great, but also one of the most superficially considered, stories in American history and breathes fresh life into it."
In addition to twenty-seven self-authored books, Ambrose co-authored, edited, and contributed to many more and was a frequent contributor to magazines such as American Heritage. He, also, reviewed the works of other historians in the Journal of Southern History, Military Affairs, American Historical Review, Journal of American History, and Foreign Affairs. He served as a contributing editor to MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, also.
Television, film, and other activities
Ambrose featured in the 1973-74 ITV television series, The World at War, which detailed the history of World War II.
He served as the historical consultant for the movie Saving Private Ryan. Tom Hanks, who starred in the movie, said he "pored over D-Day" and Band of Brothers in researching his role. Hanks also credited Ambrose's books with providing extensive detail, particularly regarding D-Day landings.
The HBO mini-series, Band of Brothers (2001), for which he was an executive producer, helped sustain the fresh interest in World War II that had been stimulated by the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 1994 and the 60th anniversary in 2004. Ambrose served as executive producer for Price for Peace, a documentary concerning the war in the Pacific theater during World War II, and for Moments of Truth, a TV documentary containing interviews with World War II veterans.
In addition, Ambrose served as a commentator for Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, a documentary by Ken Burns. He provided commentary in twenty made-for TV documentaries, covering diverse topics, such as World War II, Lewis & Clark, and America's prominence in the 20th century. He also appeared as a guest on numerous TV programs or stations, including The Charlie Rose Show, C-Span programming, CNN programming, NBC's Today Show, CNBC's Hardball, and various programming on The History Channel and the National Geographic Channel. Ambrose's association with National Geographic stemmed, in part, from his designation as an Explorer-in-Residence by the Society.
In addition to his academic work and publishing, Ambrose operated a historical tour business, acting as a tour guide to European locales of World War II. Also, he served on the board of directors for American Rivers and was a member of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Council.
National World War II Museum
Ambrose's work for the Eisenhower Center, specifically his work with D-Day veterans, inspired him to co-found the National D-Day Museum in New Orleans with another historian and UNO professor Gordon H. "Nick" Mueller. Ambrose initiated fundraising by donating $500,000. "He dreamt of a museum that reflected his deep regard for our nation's citizen soldiers, the workers on the Home Front and the sacrifices and hardships they endured to achieve victory." He secured large contributions from the federal government, state of Louisiana, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, and many smaller donations from former students, who answered a plea made by Ambrose in the New Orleans Times-Picayune. In 2003, Congress designated the museum as "America's National World War II Museum," acknowledging an expanded scope and mission for the museum. "The Stephen E. Ambrose Memorial Fund continues to support the development of the museum's Center for Study of the American Spirit, its educational programs and oral history and publication initiatives."
Awards
In 1997, Ambrose received the St. Louis Literary Award from the Saint Louis University Library Associates. In 1998, he received the National Humanities Medal. In 1998, he was awarded the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize for lifetime achievement given by the Society for Military History. In 1998, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. In 2000, Ambrose received the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, the highest honorary award the Department of Defense offers to civilians. In 2001, he was awarded the Theodore Roosevelt Medal for Distinguished Service from the Theodore Roosevelt Association. Ambrose won an Emmy as one of the producers for the mini-series Band of Brothers. Ambrose also received the George Marshall Award, the Abraham Lincoln Literary Award, the Bob Hope Award from the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, and the Will Rogers Memorial Award.
Upon Ambrose's death, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana offered a resolution in the Senate, which received unanimous consent, saluting the "excellence of Stephen Ambrose at capturing the greatness of the American spirit in words."
Personal life, final years, and death
He married his first wife, Judith Dorlester, in 1957, and they had two children, Stephenie and Barry. Judith died in 1965, when Ambrose was 29. Ambrose married his second wife, Moira Buckley (1939–2009), in 1967 and adopted her three children, Andrew, Grace, and Hugh. Moira was an active assistant in his writing and academic projects. After retiring, he maintained homes in Helena, Montana, and Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. A longtime smoker, he was diagnosed with lung cancer in April 2002. His health deteriorated rapidly, and seven months after the diagnosis he died, at the age of 66. George McGovern, the primary focus of Ambrose's Wild Blue said, "He probably reached more readers than any other historian in our national history."
Legacy
Ambrose donated $500,000, half the amount needed, to the University of Wisconsin, to endow a chair in the name of William B. Hesseltine, Ambrose's mentor. The chair's position would focus on the teaching of American military history. When the chair became fully endowed, after Ambrose's death, it was renamed the Ambrose-Hesseltine Chair.
The Ambrose Professor of History title was established at the University of New Orleans after his death. The position is reserved for a military historian.
Each year the Rutgers University Living History Society awards the Stephen E. Ambrose Oral History Award to "an author or artist who has made significant use of oral history." Past winners include Tom Brokaw, Steven Spielberg, Studs Terkel, Michael Beschloss, and Ken Burns.
Criticism
Plagiarism
In 2002, Ambrose was accused of plagiarizing several passages in his book The Wild Blue.<ref>Williams, Robert Chadwell. The Historian's Toolbox: A Student's Guide to the Theory and Craft of History] Armonk NY: M E Sharpe Inc (2003) pp 88-89</ref> Fred Barnes reported in The Weekly Standard that Ambrose had taken passages from Wings of Morning: The Story of the Last American Bomber Shot Down over Germany in World War II, by Thomas Childers, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Ambrose had footnoted sources, but had not enclosed in quotation marks numerous passages from Childers's book."How the Ambrose Story Developed," History News Network, June 2002.
Ambrose asserted that only a few sentences in all his numerous books were the work of other authors. He offered this defense:
A Forbes investigation of his work found cases of plagiarism involving passages in at least six books, with a similar pattern going all the way back to his doctoral dissertation. The History News Network lists seven of Ambrose's more than 40 works—The Wild Blue, Undaunted Courage, Nothing Like It In the World, Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, Citizen Soldiers, The Supreme Commander, and Crazy Horse and Custer—contained content from twelve authors without appropriate attribution from Ambrose.
Factual errors and disputed characterizations
Pacific Railroad
A front-page article published in The Sacramento Bee on January 1, 2001, entitled "Area Historians Rail Against Inaccuracies in Book", listed more than sixty instances identified as "significant errors, misstatements, and made-up quotes" in Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863–1869, Ambrose's non-academic popular history about the construction of the Pacific Railroad between Council Bluffs, Iowa/Omaha, Nebraska, and the San Francisco Bay at Alameda/Oakland via Sacramento, California, which was published in August 2000. The discrepancies were documented in a detailed "fact-checking" paper compiled in December 2000 by three Western US railroad historians who are also experienced researchers, consultants, and collectors specializing in the Pacific Railroad and related topics.Graves, G.J., Strobridge, E.T., & Sweet, C.N.The Sins of Stephen E. Ambrose The Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum (CPRR.org), December 19, 2000
On January 11, 2001, Washington Post columnist Lloyd Grove reported in his column The Reliable Source, that a co-worker had found a "serious historical error" in the same book that "a chastened Ambrose" promised to correct in future editions. A number of journal reviews also sharply criticized the research and fact checking in the book. Reviewer Walter Nugent observed that it contained "annoying slips" such as mislabeled maps, inaccurate dates, geographical errors, and misidentified word origins, while railroad historian Don L. Hofsommer agreed that the book "confuses facts" and that "The research might best be characterized as 'once over lightly'."
The Eisenhower controversy
In the introduction to Ambrose's biography of Eisenhower, he claims that the former president approached him after having read his previous biography of the American general Henry Halleck,
but Tim Rives, Deputy Director of the Eisenhower Presidential Center, says it was Ambrose who contacted Eisenhower and suggested the project, as shown by a letter from Ambrose found in the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum. In his response, Eisenhower stated that "the confidence I have derived from your work by reading your two books—especially the one on Halleck—give reasons why I should be ready to help out so far as I can." The Halleck biography "still sits on a shelf" at the Eisenhower National Historic Site in Gettysburg.
After Eisenhower's death in 1969, Ambrose made repeated claims to have had a unique and extraordinarily close relationship with him over the final five years of the former President's life. In an extensive 1998 interview, before a group of high school students, Ambrose stated that he spent "a lot of time with Ike, really a lot, hundreds and hundreds of hours." Ambrose claimed he interviewed Eisenhower on a wide range of subjects, and that he had been with him "on a daily basis for a couple years" before his death "doing interviews and talking about his life." The former president's diary and telephone records show that the pair met only three times, for a total of less than five hours. Rives has stated that interview dates Ambrose cites in his 1970 book, The Supreme Commander, cannot be reconciled with Eisenhower's personal schedule, but Rives discovered, upon further investigation, a "hidden" relationship between the two men. Eisenhower enlisted Ambrose in his efforts to preserve his legacy and counteract criticisms of his presidency, particularly those charging that Eisenhower's actions at the end of World War II produced the Cold War. Ambrose wrote a review and book supporting the former general, with Eisenhower providing direction and comments during the process. Rives could not square the questionable interview dates cited by Ambrose in later works, but uncovered a relationship with Eisenhower that was "too complicated" to be described by Ambrose's critics.
Works
Sole author
Halleck: Lincoln's Chief of Staff, Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press (1962)
Upton and the Army, Louisiana State University Press (1964)
Duty, Honor, Country: A History of West Point, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press (1966)
[https://archive.org/details/supremecommander00ambr The Supreme Commander: the War Years of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, New York: Doubleday (1970)
Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors, New York: Doubleday (1975)
Ike's Spies: Eisenhower and the Espionage Establishment, New York: Doubleday (1981)
Eisenhower Volume 1: Soldier, General of the Army, President-Elect, 1890-1952, New York: Simon & Schuster (1983)
Eisenhower Volume 2: The President, New York: Simon & Schuster (1984)
Pegasus Bridge: June 6, 1944, New York: Simon & Schuster (1985)
Nixon: The Education of a Politician, 1913-1962, New York: Simon & Schuster (1987)
Eisenhower: Soldier and President, New York: Simon & Schuster (1990) (a one-volume condensation of the 1983-84 two-volume Eisenhower biography)
Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962-1972, New York: Simon & Schuster (1990)
Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, 1973-1990, New York: Simon & Schuster (1991)
Band of Brothers, E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne: From Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest (1992)
D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II, New York, Simon & Schuster (1994)
Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, New York: Simon & Schuster (1996)
Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944 - May 7, 1945, New York: Simon & Schuster (1997)
Americans at War, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi (1997)
The Victors: Eisenhower and his Boys - The Men of World War II, New York: Simon & Schuster (1998)
Comrades: Brothers, Fathers, Heroes, Sons, Pals, New York: Simon & Schuster (1999)
Nothing Like It in the World: The Men who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863-1869, New York: Simon & Schuster (2000)
The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys who Flew the B-24s over Germany, New York: Simon & Schuster (2001)
To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian, New York: Simon & Schuster (2002)
This Vast Land, New York: Simon & Schuster, (2003)
With others
with Richard H. Immerman, Milton S. Eisenhower, Educational Statesman, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press (1983)
with Douglas Brinkley, Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy since 1938, New York: Penguin Books (1997)
with Sam Abell, Lewis and Clark: Voyage of Discovery, Washington DC: National Geographic Society, (1998, 2002)
with Douglas Brinkley, Witness to America (1999) ; 2010:
with Douglas Brinkley, The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation: From the Louisiana Purchase to Today (2002),
Edited works
Institutions in Modern America: Innovation in Structure and Process, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press (1967)
with James A. Barber, The Military and American Society: Essays and Readings, New York, NY: The Free Press (1972)
with Gunter Bischoff, Eisenhower and the German POWs: Facts Against Falsehood, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press (1992)
with Gunter Bischoff, Eisenhower" A Centenary Assessment, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press (1995)
American Heritage New History of World War II(original text by C.L. Sulzberger), New York, NY: Viking Press (1997)
References
Further reading
External links
WorldCat search of works by Stephen Ambrose
Stephen E. Ambrose at FantasticFiction.co.uk
Interview with Stephen Ambrose (1998)
Obituary in The Independent''
Obituary at website of the American Historical Association
Commentary dated December 19, 2000 contributed by G. J. "Chris" Graves, Edson T. Strobridge, and Charles N. Sweet regarding Stephen E. Ambrose's book "Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built The Transcontinental Railroad 1863 - 1869."
Booknotes interview with Ambrose on D-Day: June 6, 1944, June 5, 1994.
In Depth interview with Ambrose, November 5, 2000
1936 births
2002 deaths
American Congregationalists
American military historians
American military writers
Deaths from lung cancer
Deaths from cancer in Mississippi
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Historians of the American West
Historians of the United States
Johns Hopkins University faculty
Kansas State University faculty
Louisiana State University faculty
National Humanities Medal recipients
Naval War College faculty
Official biographers to the presidents of the United States
Writers from Decatur, Illinois
People from Moultrie County, Illinois
People from Helena, Montana
Military personnel from Illinois
Writers from New Orleans
People from Whitewater, Wisconsin
University of New Orleans faculty
University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Letters and Science alumni
Wisconsin Badgers football players
Writers from Wisconsin
Historians of World War II
21st-century American male writers
20th-century American historians
21st-century American historians
Historians of the American Civil War
People involved in plagiarism controversies
American male non-fiction writers | false | [
"Historical Collections of Ohio is a work of history published in one volume in 1847 by Henry Howe (1816–1893). Howe had spent more than a year traveling across the state of Ohio making sketches, interviewing people, and collecting data. The first edition sold more than 18,000 copies.\n\nIn the 1870s, many influential Ohioans asked Howe to update his work with another tour. In 1885, Howe did not have the money necessary to begin a tour of Ohio, so he was the first American to try the concept of advanced paying subscriptions, selling copies for $10, four years in advance of publication.\n\nHowe began a tour at President Hayes' home in Fremont Nov 21, 1885, and finished March 1887. It took two years before the first volume was issued, which was highly acclaimed, but sold poorly. He applied to the Ohio Legislature for assistance, and they bought 1200 copies for $12,000, allowing him to complete the three volume set, instead of the two originally planned, in 1891. Sales lagged, because everyone expected the State to give copies to schools and libraries. Howe was deeply in debt from the project when he died in October, 1893. The State, in the 71st General Assembly, agreed to buy the copyright and printing plates for $20,000, due to a petition from Senators Sherman, Brice, and Thurman, Governors Cox, Foster, Foraker, and McKinley, and many others, relieving Howe's widow of debt. The state re-printed the books for a number of years.\n\nOnline copies\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n\nHistory of Ohio\nHistory books about the United States",
"The No Sound Without Silence Tour is the third arena tour by Irish pop rock band The Script. Launched in support of their fourth studio album No Sound Without Silence (2014), the tour began in Tokyo on 16 January 2015 and visited Europe, North America, Asia, Africa and Oceania. The opening acts were American singer Phillip Phillips for the South African dates, and English singer Tinie Tempah for the European dates. Pharrell Williams served as a co-headliner for the Croke Park concert on 20 June 2015.\n\nOpening acts\nColton Avery (Europe, North America, Australia, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia)\nMary Lambert (North America)\nPhillip Phillips (South Africa)\nSilent Sanctuary (Philippines)\nTinie Tempah (Europe)\nPharrell Williams (Dublin)\nThe Wailers (Dublin)\nThe Sam Willows (Singapore)\nKensington (Band) (Europe)\n\nSetlist\nThis setlist is based on previous performances of the tour.\n\n \"Paint the Town Green\"\n \"Hail Rain or Sunshine\"\n \"Breakeven\"\n \"Before the Worst\"\n \"Superheroes\"\n \"We Cry\"\n \"If You Could See Me Now\"\n \"Man on a Wire\"\n \"Nothing\"\n \"Good Ol' Days\"\n \"Never Seen Anything (Quite Like You)\"\n \"The Man Who Can't Be Moved\"\n \"You Won't Feel A Thing\"\n \"It's Not Right For You\"\n \"Six Degrees of Separation\"\n \"The Energy Never Dies\"\n \"For the First Time\"\n \"No Good in Goodbye\"\n \"Hall of Fame\"\n\nAdditional information\nDuring the performance in Sheffield, The Script didn't perform \"We Cry\" due to a fan collapsing. Danny called for Paramedic to check on her, she was fine and they carried on.\n\nDuring the performance in Barcelona, The Script didn't perform \"The End Where I Begin\" or \"Nothing\". They also did not perform \"Six Degrees Of Separation\" and \"It's Not Right For You\".\n\nDuring the performance in Oakland, The Script didn't perform \"The End Where I Begin\", \"We Cry\", or \"Six Degrees of Separation\".\n\nDuring the performance in Toronto, The Script did not perform \"The End Where I Begin\" and \"Six Degrees of Separation\".\n\nDuring the performance im Hamburg, The Script did not perform \"Nothing\" and \"Never Seen Anything (Quite Like You)\".\n\nTour dates\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n\n2015 concert tours\nThe Script concert tours"
] |
[
"Stephen E. Ambrose",
"Television, film, and other activities",
"What work did Stephen do in Television?",
"He served as the historical consultant for the movie Saving Private Ryan.",
"Did he work as a consultant on any other films?",
"Ambrose served as executive producer for Price for Peace, a documentary concerning the war in the Pacific theater during World War II,",
"What other films did he work on?",
"Moments of Truth, a TV documentary",
"Did he receive any awards for his work?",
"Ambrose's association with National Geographic stemmed, in part, from his designation as an Explorer-in-Residence by the Society.",
"What other activities did he participate in?",
"Ambrose operated a historical tour business,",
"When did the historical tour business begin?",
"I don't know."
] | C_e608cccf1c024635807a29e8c150f222_1 | Were there any significant activities that took place? | 7 | Were there any significant activities that took place during Stephen E. Ambrose's historical tour business? | Stephen E. Ambrose | Ambrose was the lone historian featured in the 1973-74 ITV television series, The World at War, which detailed the history of World War II. He served as the historical consultant for the movie Saving Private Ryan. Tom Hanks, who starred in the movie, said he "pored over D-Day" and Band of Brothers in researching his role. Hanks also credited Ambrose's books with providing extensive detail, particularly regarding D-Day landings. The HBO mini-series, Band of Brothers (2001), for which he was an executive producer, helped sustain the fresh interest in World War II that had been stimulated by the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 1994 and the 60th anniversary in 2004. Ambrose served as executive producer for Price for Peace, a documentary concerning the war in the Pacific theater during World War II, and for Moments of Truth, a TV documentary containing interviews with World War II veterans. In addition, Ambrose served as a commentator for Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, a documentary by Ken Burns. He provided commentary in twenty made-for TV documentaries, covering diverse topics, such as World War II, Lewis & Clark, and America's prominence in the 20th century. He also appeared as a guest on numerous TV programs or stations, including The Charlie Rose Show, C-Span programming, CNN programming, NBC's Today Show, CNBC's Hardball, and various programming on The History Channel and the National Geographic Channel. Ambrose's association with National Geographic stemmed, in part, from his designation as an Explorer-in-Residence by the Society. In addition to his academic work and publishing, Ambrose operated a historical tour business, acting as a tour guide to European locales of World War II. Also, he served on the board of directors for American Rivers and was a member of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Council. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Stephen Edward Ambrose (January 10, 1936 – October 13, 2002) was an American historian, most noted for his biographies of U.S. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. He was a longtime professor of history at the University of New Orleans and the author of many bestselling volumes of American popular history.
There have been numerous well documented allegations of plagiarism, inaccuracies, and sloppiness in Ambrose's writings in addition to claims that he has made about his works. However, in a review of To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian for the New York Times, high school teacher William Everdell credited the historian with reaching "an important lay audience without endorsing its every prejudice."
Early life
Ambrose was born January 10, 1936, in Lovington, Illinois, to Rosepha Trippe Ambrose and Stephen Hedges Ambrose. His father was a physician who served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. Ambrose was raised in Whitewater, Wisconsin, where he graduated from Whitewater High School. His family also owned a farm in Lovington, Illinois, and vacation property in Marinette County, Wisconsin. He attended college at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he was a member of Chi Psi fraternity and played on the University of Wisconsin football team for three years.
Ambrose originally wanted to major in pre-medicine, but changed his major to history after hearing the first lecture in a U.S. history class entitled "Representative Americans" in his sophomore year. The course was taught by William B. Hesseltine, whom Ambrose credits with fundamentally shaping his writing and igniting his interest in history. While at Wisconsin, Ambrose was a member of the Navy and Army ROTC. He graduated with a B.A. in 1957. Ambrose received a master's degree in history from Louisiana State University in 1958, studying under T. Harry Williams. Ambrose then went on to earn a PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1963, under William B. Hesseltine.
Career
Academic positions
Ambrose was a history professor from 1960 until his retirement in 1995. From 1971 onward, he was on the faculty of the University of New Orleans, where he was named the Boyd Professor of History in 1989, an honor given only to faculty who attain "national or international distinction for outstanding teaching, research, or other creative achievement". During the 1969–1970 academic year, he was the Ernest J. King Professor of Maritime History at the Naval War College. While teaching at Kansas State University as the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of War and Peace during the 1970–1971 academic year, Ambrose participated in heckling of Richard Nixon during a speech the president gave on the KSU campus. Given pressure from the KSU administration and having job offers elsewhere, upon finishing out the year Ambrose offered to leave and the offer was accepted. His opposition to the Vietnam War stood in contrast to his research on "presidents and the military at a time when such topics were increasingly regarded by his colleagues as old fashioned and conservative." Ambrose also taught at Louisiana State University (assistant professor of history; 1960–1964) and Johns Hopkins University (associate professor of history; 1964–1969). He held visiting posts at Rutgers University, the University of California, Berkeley, and a number of European schools, including University College Dublin, where he taught as the Mary Ball Washington Professor of American History.
He founded the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans in 1989 serving as its director until 1994. "The mission of the Eisenhower Center is the study of the causes, conduct, and consequences of American national security policy and the use of force as an instrument of policy in the twentieth century." The center's first efforts, which Ambrose initiated, involved the collection of oral histories from World War II veterans about their experiences, particularly any participation in D-Day. By the time of publication of Ambrose's D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II, in 1994, the center had collected more than 1,200 oral histories. Ambrose donated $150,000 to the Center in 1998 to foster additional efforts to collect oral histories from World War II veterans.
Writings
Ambrose's earliest works concerned the American Civil War. He wrote biographies of the generals Emory Upton and Henry Halleck, the first of which was based on his dissertation.
Early in his career, Ambrose was mentored by World War II historian Forrest Pogue. In 1964, Ambrose took a position at Johns Hopkins as the Associate Editor of the Eisenhower Papers, a project aimed at organizing, cataloging and publishing Eisenhower's principal papers. From this work and discussions with Eisenhower emerged an article critical of Cornelius Ryan's The Last Battle, which had depicted Eisenhower as politically naîve, when at the end of World War II he allowed Soviet forces to take Berlin, thus shaping the Cold War that followed. Ambrose expanded this into a book, Eisenhower and Berlin, 1945: The Decision to Halt at the Elbe (1967). Ambrose was aided in the book's writing by comments and notes provided by Eisenhower, who read a draft of the book.
In 1964, Ambrose was commissioned to write the official biography of the former president and five-star general Dwight D. Eisenhower. This resulted in a book on Eisenhower's war years, The Supreme Commander (1970) and a two-volume full biography (published 1983 and 1984), which are considered "the standard" on the subject. Regarding the first volume, Gordon Harrison, writing for the New York Times, proclaimed, "It is Mr. Ambrose's special triumph that he has been able to fight through the memoranda, the directives, plans, reports, and official self-serving pieties of the World War II establishment to uncover the idiosyncratic people at its center." Ambrose also wrote a three-volume biography of Richard Nixon. Although Ambrose was a strong critic of Nixon, the biography was considered fair and just regarding Nixon's presidency.
A visit to a reunion of Easy Company veterans in 1988 prompted Ambrose to collect their stories, turning them into Band of Brothers, E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne: From Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest (1992). D-Day (1994), built upon additional oral histories, presented the battle from the view points of individual soldiers and became his first best seller. A reviewer for the Journal of Military History commended D-Day as the "most comprehensive discussion" of the sea, air, and land operations that coalesced on that day. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, writing for the New York Times, proclaimed that "Reading this history, you can understand why for so many of its participants, despite all the death surrounding them, life revealed itself in that moment at that place." Ambrose's Citizen Soldiers, which describes battles fought in northwest Europe from D-Day through the end of the war, utilized, again, extensive oral histories. Citizen Soldiers became a best seller, appearing on the New York Times best sellers lists for both hardcover and paperback editions in the same week. During the same week, in September 1998, D-Day and Undaunted Courage, Ambrose's 1996 book on Meriwether Lewis and the Corps of Discovery, appeared on the best seller list, also. He also wrote The Victors (1998), a distillation of material from other books detailing Eisenhower's wartime experiences and connections to the common soldier, and The Wild Blue, that looks at World War II aviation largely through the experiences of George McGovern, who commanded a B-24 crew that flew numerous missions over Germany. His other major works include Undaunted Courage about the Lewis and Clark Expedition and Nothing Like It in the World about the construction of the Pacific Railroad. His final book, This Vast Land, a historical novel about the Lewis & Clark expedition written for young readers, was published posthumously in 2003.
Ambrose's most popular single work was Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West (1996), which stayed on the New York Times best seller list for a combined, hardcover and paperback, 126 weeks. Ambrose consolidated research on the Corps of Discovery's expedition conducted in the previous thirty years and "synthesized it skillfully to enrich our understanding and appreciation of this grand epic," according to Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., who reviewed the book for the New York Times. Ken Burns, who produced and directed a PBS documentary on Lewis & Clark declared that Ambrose "takes one of the great, but also one of the most superficially considered, stories in American history and breathes fresh life into it."
In addition to twenty-seven self-authored books, Ambrose co-authored, edited, and contributed to many more and was a frequent contributor to magazines such as American Heritage. He, also, reviewed the works of other historians in the Journal of Southern History, Military Affairs, American Historical Review, Journal of American History, and Foreign Affairs. He served as a contributing editor to MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, also.
Television, film, and other activities
Ambrose featured in the 1973-74 ITV television series, The World at War, which detailed the history of World War II.
He served as the historical consultant for the movie Saving Private Ryan. Tom Hanks, who starred in the movie, said he "pored over D-Day" and Band of Brothers in researching his role. Hanks also credited Ambrose's books with providing extensive detail, particularly regarding D-Day landings.
The HBO mini-series, Band of Brothers (2001), for which he was an executive producer, helped sustain the fresh interest in World War II that had been stimulated by the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 1994 and the 60th anniversary in 2004. Ambrose served as executive producer for Price for Peace, a documentary concerning the war in the Pacific theater during World War II, and for Moments of Truth, a TV documentary containing interviews with World War II veterans.
In addition, Ambrose served as a commentator for Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, a documentary by Ken Burns. He provided commentary in twenty made-for TV documentaries, covering diverse topics, such as World War II, Lewis & Clark, and America's prominence in the 20th century. He also appeared as a guest on numerous TV programs or stations, including The Charlie Rose Show, C-Span programming, CNN programming, NBC's Today Show, CNBC's Hardball, and various programming on The History Channel and the National Geographic Channel. Ambrose's association with National Geographic stemmed, in part, from his designation as an Explorer-in-Residence by the Society.
In addition to his academic work and publishing, Ambrose operated a historical tour business, acting as a tour guide to European locales of World War II. Also, he served on the board of directors for American Rivers and was a member of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Council.
National World War II Museum
Ambrose's work for the Eisenhower Center, specifically his work with D-Day veterans, inspired him to co-found the National D-Day Museum in New Orleans with another historian and UNO professor Gordon H. "Nick" Mueller. Ambrose initiated fundraising by donating $500,000. "He dreamt of a museum that reflected his deep regard for our nation's citizen soldiers, the workers on the Home Front and the sacrifices and hardships they endured to achieve victory." He secured large contributions from the federal government, state of Louisiana, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, and many smaller donations from former students, who answered a plea made by Ambrose in the New Orleans Times-Picayune. In 2003, Congress designated the museum as "America's National World War II Museum," acknowledging an expanded scope and mission for the museum. "The Stephen E. Ambrose Memorial Fund continues to support the development of the museum's Center for Study of the American Spirit, its educational programs and oral history and publication initiatives."
Awards
In 1997, Ambrose received the St. Louis Literary Award from the Saint Louis University Library Associates. In 1998, he received the National Humanities Medal. In 1998, he was awarded the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize for lifetime achievement given by the Society for Military History. In 1998, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. In 2000, Ambrose received the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, the highest honorary award the Department of Defense offers to civilians. In 2001, he was awarded the Theodore Roosevelt Medal for Distinguished Service from the Theodore Roosevelt Association. Ambrose won an Emmy as one of the producers for the mini-series Band of Brothers. Ambrose also received the George Marshall Award, the Abraham Lincoln Literary Award, the Bob Hope Award from the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, and the Will Rogers Memorial Award.
Upon Ambrose's death, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana offered a resolution in the Senate, which received unanimous consent, saluting the "excellence of Stephen Ambrose at capturing the greatness of the American spirit in words."
Personal life, final years, and death
He married his first wife, Judith Dorlester, in 1957, and they had two children, Stephenie and Barry. Judith died in 1965, when Ambrose was 29. Ambrose married his second wife, Moira Buckley (1939–2009), in 1967 and adopted her three children, Andrew, Grace, and Hugh. Moira was an active assistant in his writing and academic projects. After retiring, he maintained homes in Helena, Montana, and Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. A longtime smoker, he was diagnosed with lung cancer in April 2002. His health deteriorated rapidly, and seven months after the diagnosis he died, at the age of 66. George McGovern, the primary focus of Ambrose's Wild Blue said, "He probably reached more readers than any other historian in our national history."
Legacy
Ambrose donated $500,000, half the amount needed, to the University of Wisconsin, to endow a chair in the name of William B. Hesseltine, Ambrose's mentor. The chair's position would focus on the teaching of American military history. When the chair became fully endowed, after Ambrose's death, it was renamed the Ambrose-Hesseltine Chair.
The Ambrose Professor of History title was established at the University of New Orleans after his death. The position is reserved for a military historian.
Each year the Rutgers University Living History Society awards the Stephen E. Ambrose Oral History Award to "an author or artist who has made significant use of oral history." Past winners include Tom Brokaw, Steven Spielberg, Studs Terkel, Michael Beschloss, and Ken Burns.
Criticism
Plagiarism
In 2002, Ambrose was accused of plagiarizing several passages in his book The Wild Blue.<ref>Williams, Robert Chadwell. The Historian's Toolbox: A Student's Guide to the Theory and Craft of History] Armonk NY: M E Sharpe Inc (2003) pp 88-89</ref> Fred Barnes reported in The Weekly Standard that Ambrose had taken passages from Wings of Morning: The Story of the Last American Bomber Shot Down over Germany in World War II, by Thomas Childers, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Ambrose had footnoted sources, but had not enclosed in quotation marks numerous passages from Childers's book."How the Ambrose Story Developed," History News Network, June 2002.
Ambrose asserted that only a few sentences in all his numerous books were the work of other authors. He offered this defense:
A Forbes investigation of his work found cases of plagiarism involving passages in at least six books, with a similar pattern going all the way back to his doctoral dissertation. The History News Network lists seven of Ambrose's more than 40 works—The Wild Blue, Undaunted Courage, Nothing Like It In the World, Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, Citizen Soldiers, The Supreme Commander, and Crazy Horse and Custer—contained content from twelve authors without appropriate attribution from Ambrose.
Factual errors and disputed characterizations
Pacific Railroad
A front-page article published in The Sacramento Bee on January 1, 2001, entitled "Area Historians Rail Against Inaccuracies in Book", listed more than sixty instances identified as "significant errors, misstatements, and made-up quotes" in Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863–1869, Ambrose's non-academic popular history about the construction of the Pacific Railroad between Council Bluffs, Iowa/Omaha, Nebraska, and the San Francisco Bay at Alameda/Oakland via Sacramento, California, which was published in August 2000. The discrepancies were documented in a detailed "fact-checking" paper compiled in December 2000 by three Western US railroad historians who are also experienced researchers, consultants, and collectors specializing in the Pacific Railroad and related topics.Graves, G.J., Strobridge, E.T., & Sweet, C.N.The Sins of Stephen E. Ambrose The Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum (CPRR.org), December 19, 2000
On January 11, 2001, Washington Post columnist Lloyd Grove reported in his column The Reliable Source, that a co-worker had found a "serious historical error" in the same book that "a chastened Ambrose" promised to correct in future editions. A number of journal reviews also sharply criticized the research and fact checking in the book. Reviewer Walter Nugent observed that it contained "annoying slips" such as mislabeled maps, inaccurate dates, geographical errors, and misidentified word origins, while railroad historian Don L. Hofsommer agreed that the book "confuses facts" and that "The research might best be characterized as 'once over lightly'."
The Eisenhower controversy
In the introduction to Ambrose's biography of Eisenhower, he claims that the former president approached him after having read his previous biography of the American general Henry Halleck,
but Tim Rives, Deputy Director of the Eisenhower Presidential Center, says it was Ambrose who contacted Eisenhower and suggested the project, as shown by a letter from Ambrose found in the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum. In his response, Eisenhower stated that "the confidence I have derived from your work by reading your two books—especially the one on Halleck—give reasons why I should be ready to help out so far as I can." The Halleck biography "still sits on a shelf" at the Eisenhower National Historic Site in Gettysburg.
After Eisenhower's death in 1969, Ambrose made repeated claims to have had a unique and extraordinarily close relationship with him over the final five years of the former President's life. In an extensive 1998 interview, before a group of high school students, Ambrose stated that he spent "a lot of time with Ike, really a lot, hundreds and hundreds of hours." Ambrose claimed he interviewed Eisenhower on a wide range of subjects, and that he had been with him "on a daily basis for a couple years" before his death "doing interviews and talking about his life." The former president's diary and telephone records show that the pair met only three times, for a total of less than five hours. Rives has stated that interview dates Ambrose cites in his 1970 book, The Supreme Commander, cannot be reconciled with Eisenhower's personal schedule, but Rives discovered, upon further investigation, a "hidden" relationship between the two men. Eisenhower enlisted Ambrose in his efforts to preserve his legacy and counteract criticisms of his presidency, particularly those charging that Eisenhower's actions at the end of World War II produced the Cold War. Ambrose wrote a review and book supporting the former general, with Eisenhower providing direction and comments during the process. Rives could not square the questionable interview dates cited by Ambrose in later works, but uncovered a relationship with Eisenhower that was "too complicated" to be described by Ambrose's critics.
Works
Sole author
Halleck: Lincoln's Chief of Staff, Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press (1962)
Upton and the Army, Louisiana State University Press (1964)
Duty, Honor, Country: A History of West Point, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press (1966)
[https://archive.org/details/supremecommander00ambr The Supreme Commander: the War Years of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, New York: Doubleday (1970)
Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors, New York: Doubleday (1975)
Ike's Spies: Eisenhower and the Espionage Establishment, New York: Doubleday (1981)
Eisenhower Volume 1: Soldier, General of the Army, President-Elect, 1890-1952, New York: Simon & Schuster (1983)
Eisenhower Volume 2: The President, New York: Simon & Schuster (1984)
Pegasus Bridge: June 6, 1944, New York: Simon & Schuster (1985)
Nixon: The Education of a Politician, 1913-1962, New York: Simon & Schuster (1987)
Eisenhower: Soldier and President, New York: Simon & Schuster (1990) (a one-volume condensation of the 1983-84 two-volume Eisenhower biography)
Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962-1972, New York: Simon & Schuster (1990)
Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, 1973-1990, New York: Simon & Schuster (1991)
Band of Brothers, E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne: From Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest (1992)
D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II, New York, Simon & Schuster (1994)
Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, New York: Simon & Schuster (1996)
Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944 - May 7, 1945, New York: Simon & Schuster (1997)
Americans at War, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi (1997)
The Victors: Eisenhower and his Boys - The Men of World War II, New York: Simon & Schuster (1998)
Comrades: Brothers, Fathers, Heroes, Sons, Pals, New York: Simon & Schuster (1999)
Nothing Like It in the World: The Men who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863-1869, New York: Simon & Schuster (2000)
The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys who Flew the B-24s over Germany, New York: Simon & Schuster (2001)
To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian, New York: Simon & Schuster (2002)
This Vast Land, New York: Simon & Schuster, (2003)
With others
with Richard H. Immerman, Milton S. Eisenhower, Educational Statesman, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press (1983)
with Douglas Brinkley, Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy since 1938, New York: Penguin Books (1997)
with Sam Abell, Lewis and Clark: Voyage of Discovery, Washington DC: National Geographic Society, (1998, 2002)
with Douglas Brinkley, Witness to America (1999) ; 2010:
with Douglas Brinkley, The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation: From the Louisiana Purchase to Today (2002),
Edited works
Institutions in Modern America: Innovation in Structure and Process, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press (1967)
with James A. Barber, The Military and American Society: Essays and Readings, New York, NY: The Free Press (1972)
with Gunter Bischoff, Eisenhower and the German POWs: Facts Against Falsehood, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press (1992)
with Gunter Bischoff, Eisenhower" A Centenary Assessment, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press (1995)
American Heritage New History of World War II(original text by C.L. Sulzberger), New York, NY: Viking Press (1997)
References
Further reading
External links
WorldCat search of works by Stephen Ambrose
Stephen E. Ambrose at FantasticFiction.co.uk
Interview with Stephen Ambrose (1998)
Obituary in The Independent''
Obituary at website of the American Historical Association
Commentary dated December 19, 2000 contributed by G. J. "Chris" Graves, Edson T. Strobridge, and Charles N. Sweet regarding Stephen E. Ambrose's book "Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built The Transcontinental Railroad 1863 - 1869."
Booknotes interview with Ambrose on D-Day: June 6, 1944, June 5, 1994.
In Depth interview with Ambrose, November 5, 2000
1936 births
2002 deaths
American Congregationalists
American military historians
American military writers
Deaths from lung cancer
Deaths from cancer in Mississippi
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Historians of the American West
Historians of the United States
Johns Hopkins University faculty
Kansas State University faculty
Louisiana State University faculty
National Humanities Medal recipients
Naval War College faculty
Official biographers to the presidents of the United States
Writers from Decatur, Illinois
People from Moultrie County, Illinois
People from Helena, Montana
Military personnel from Illinois
Writers from New Orleans
People from Whitewater, Wisconsin
University of New Orleans faculty
University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Letters and Science alumni
Wisconsin Badgers football players
Writers from Wisconsin
Historians of World War II
21st-century American male writers
20th-century American historians
21st-century American historians
Historians of the American Civil War
People involved in plagiarism controversies
American male non-fiction writers | false | [
"HM Prison Standford Hill (Sheppey Cluster) is a Category D men's prison, located close to the village of Eastchurch on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent. Standford Hill forms part of the Sheppey prisons cluster, which also includes HMP Elmley and HMP Swaleside. The prison is operated by Her Majesty's Prison Service.\n\nHistory\nStandford Hill was opened on the site of an ex Royal Air Force station, and was first used as a prison in 1950. The complex has been redeveloped since then, and the current buildings on the site date from 1986.\n\nIn December 2004, an inspection report from Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons stated that Standford Hill was not effective as a resettlement prison, and did not offer inmates worthwhile skills. The report also criticised the activities offered to prisoners. However inspectors did find \"'significant' progress had been made in safety and respect\" at the prison. Another inspection took place in December 2011 which found that outcomes were reasonable in most areas, yet there were still some significant areas of concern. The range of activities available was now considered to be good, but resettlement work was fragmented.\n\nIn January 2013 three inmates escaped from the prison. A further two prisoners absconded in June 2014. Another prisoner escaped in August 2014.\n\nThe prison today\n\nStandford Hill is a Category D open prison for adult males serving any sentence, with a maximum of 5 years to their release, and a maximum of 2 years to their parole eligibility date. The prison offers employment for inmates through its workshop, works, and horticulture departments, and also offers full and part-time education classes.\n\nNotable former inmates\n Jonathan Aitken\n Jim Devine\n Baron Taylor of Warwick\n Stephen Jackley\n Kenneth Noye\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n Ministry of Justice pages on Standford Hill\n\nStandford Hill\nStandford Hill\nStandford Hill\nStanford Hill\nStandford Hill",
"Like for like (LFL) growth is a measure of growth in sales, adjusted for new or divested businesses. This is a widely used indicator of retailers' current trading performance. The adjustment is important in businesses that show a significant dynamic of expansion, disposals or closures. To compare sales figures from different periods is only meaningful, as a measure of the effectiveness of the sales function, when using the same basis for measurement.\n\nOne method compares the latest year's sales only to those from activities or locations that were in effect the previous year as well. This method would ignore sales that were only possible this year, for reasons such as a merger or acquisition or the launch of a new product or store.\n\nHowever, there is a significant choice of alternative methods of calculation, which makes it difficult to compare figures quoted by different retailers. \n\nThe portion of current sales achieved through activities that are comparable to the activities of the previous year. Investopedia explains Like-For-Like Sales. Using like-for-like sales is a method of valuation that attempts to exclude any effects of expansion, acquisition, or other events that artificially enlarge the company's sales. For example, if you are trying to compare the turnover of company ABC from this year to last year, it makes sense to exclude from the equation any sales resulting from acquisitions this year.\n\nSee also\nBusiness-to-business\nB2G\n Consumer behaviour\n Department store\n Final goods\n Grey pound\n Point of sales\n Sales Promotion\n Retail concentration\n Retail design\n Retail software\n Retailtainment\n Sales density\n Shopping\n Visual merchandising\n Wardrobing\n Window shopping\n\nReferences\n\nFinancial ratios\nSales"
] |
[
"Stephen E. Ambrose",
"Television, film, and other activities",
"What work did Stephen do in Television?",
"He served as the historical consultant for the movie Saving Private Ryan.",
"Did he work as a consultant on any other films?",
"Ambrose served as executive producer for Price for Peace, a documentary concerning the war in the Pacific theater during World War II,",
"What other films did he work on?",
"Moments of Truth, a TV documentary",
"Did he receive any awards for his work?",
"Ambrose's association with National Geographic stemmed, in part, from his designation as an Explorer-in-Residence by the Society.",
"What other activities did he participate in?",
"Ambrose operated a historical tour business,",
"When did the historical tour business begin?",
"I don't know.",
"Were there any significant activities that took place?",
"I don't know."
] | C_e608cccf1c024635807a29e8c150f222_1 | Any other interesting information? | 8 | Aside from Stephen E. Ambrose's historical tour business, any other interesting information? | Stephen E. Ambrose | Ambrose was the lone historian featured in the 1973-74 ITV television series, The World at War, which detailed the history of World War II. He served as the historical consultant for the movie Saving Private Ryan. Tom Hanks, who starred in the movie, said he "pored over D-Day" and Band of Brothers in researching his role. Hanks also credited Ambrose's books with providing extensive detail, particularly regarding D-Day landings. The HBO mini-series, Band of Brothers (2001), for which he was an executive producer, helped sustain the fresh interest in World War II that had been stimulated by the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 1994 and the 60th anniversary in 2004. Ambrose served as executive producer for Price for Peace, a documentary concerning the war in the Pacific theater during World War II, and for Moments of Truth, a TV documentary containing interviews with World War II veterans. In addition, Ambrose served as a commentator for Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, a documentary by Ken Burns. He provided commentary in twenty made-for TV documentaries, covering diverse topics, such as World War II, Lewis & Clark, and America's prominence in the 20th century. He also appeared as a guest on numerous TV programs or stations, including The Charlie Rose Show, C-Span programming, CNN programming, NBC's Today Show, CNBC's Hardball, and various programming on The History Channel and the National Geographic Channel. Ambrose's association with National Geographic stemmed, in part, from his designation as an Explorer-in-Residence by the Society. In addition to his academic work and publishing, Ambrose operated a historical tour business, acting as a tour guide to European locales of World War II. Also, he served on the board of directors for American Rivers and was a member of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Council. CANNOTANSWER | Tom Hanks, who starred in the movie, said he "pored over D-Day" and Band of Brothers in researching his role. | Stephen Edward Ambrose (January 10, 1936 – October 13, 2002) was an American historian, most noted for his biographies of U.S. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. He was a longtime professor of history at the University of New Orleans and the author of many bestselling volumes of American popular history.
There have been numerous well documented allegations of plagiarism, inaccuracies, and sloppiness in Ambrose's writings in addition to claims that he has made about his works. However, in a review of To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian for the New York Times, high school teacher William Everdell credited the historian with reaching "an important lay audience without endorsing its every prejudice."
Early life
Ambrose was born January 10, 1936, in Lovington, Illinois, to Rosepha Trippe Ambrose and Stephen Hedges Ambrose. His father was a physician who served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. Ambrose was raised in Whitewater, Wisconsin, where he graduated from Whitewater High School. His family also owned a farm in Lovington, Illinois, and vacation property in Marinette County, Wisconsin. He attended college at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he was a member of Chi Psi fraternity and played on the University of Wisconsin football team for three years.
Ambrose originally wanted to major in pre-medicine, but changed his major to history after hearing the first lecture in a U.S. history class entitled "Representative Americans" in his sophomore year. The course was taught by William B. Hesseltine, whom Ambrose credits with fundamentally shaping his writing and igniting his interest in history. While at Wisconsin, Ambrose was a member of the Navy and Army ROTC. He graduated with a B.A. in 1957. Ambrose received a master's degree in history from Louisiana State University in 1958, studying under T. Harry Williams. Ambrose then went on to earn a PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1963, under William B. Hesseltine.
Career
Academic positions
Ambrose was a history professor from 1960 until his retirement in 1995. From 1971 onward, he was on the faculty of the University of New Orleans, where he was named the Boyd Professor of History in 1989, an honor given only to faculty who attain "national or international distinction for outstanding teaching, research, or other creative achievement". During the 1969–1970 academic year, he was the Ernest J. King Professor of Maritime History at the Naval War College. While teaching at Kansas State University as the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of War and Peace during the 1970–1971 academic year, Ambrose participated in heckling of Richard Nixon during a speech the president gave on the KSU campus. Given pressure from the KSU administration and having job offers elsewhere, upon finishing out the year Ambrose offered to leave and the offer was accepted. His opposition to the Vietnam War stood in contrast to his research on "presidents and the military at a time when such topics were increasingly regarded by his colleagues as old fashioned and conservative." Ambrose also taught at Louisiana State University (assistant professor of history; 1960–1964) and Johns Hopkins University (associate professor of history; 1964–1969). He held visiting posts at Rutgers University, the University of California, Berkeley, and a number of European schools, including University College Dublin, where he taught as the Mary Ball Washington Professor of American History.
He founded the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans in 1989 serving as its director until 1994. "The mission of the Eisenhower Center is the study of the causes, conduct, and consequences of American national security policy and the use of force as an instrument of policy in the twentieth century." The center's first efforts, which Ambrose initiated, involved the collection of oral histories from World War II veterans about their experiences, particularly any participation in D-Day. By the time of publication of Ambrose's D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II, in 1994, the center had collected more than 1,200 oral histories. Ambrose donated $150,000 to the Center in 1998 to foster additional efforts to collect oral histories from World War II veterans.
Writings
Ambrose's earliest works concerned the American Civil War. He wrote biographies of the generals Emory Upton and Henry Halleck, the first of which was based on his dissertation.
Early in his career, Ambrose was mentored by World War II historian Forrest Pogue. In 1964, Ambrose took a position at Johns Hopkins as the Associate Editor of the Eisenhower Papers, a project aimed at organizing, cataloging and publishing Eisenhower's principal papers. From this work and discussions with Eisenhower emerged an article critical of Cornelius Ryan's The Last Battle, which had depicted Eisenhower as politically naîve, when at the end of World War II he allowed Soviet forces to take Berlin, thus shaping the Cold War that followed. Ambrose expanded this into a book, Eisenhower and Berlin, 1945: The Decision to Halt at the Elbe (1967). Ambrose was aided in the book's writing by comments and notes provided by Eisenhower, who read a draft of the book.
In 1964, Ambrose was commissioned to write the official biography of the former president and five-star general Dwight D. Eisenhower. This resulted in a book on Eisenhower's war years, The Supreme Commander (1970) and a two-volume full biography (published 1983 and 1984), which are considered "the standard" on the subject. Regarding the first volume, Gordon Harrison, writing for the New York Times, proclaimed, "It is Mr. Ambrose's special triumph that he has been able to fight through the memoranda, the directives, plans, reports, and official self-serving pieties of the World War II establishment to uncover the idiosyncratic people at its center." Ambrose also wrote a three-volume biography of Richard Nixon. Although Ambrose was a strong critic of Nixon, the biography was considered fair and just regarding Nixon's presidency.
A visit to a reunion of Easy Company veterans in 1988 prompted Ambrose to collect their stories, turning them into Band of Brothers, E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne: From Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest (1992). D-Day (1994), built upon additional oral histories, presented the battle from the view points of individual soldiers and became his first best seller. A reviewer for the Journal of Military History commended D-Day as the "most comprehensive discussion" of the sea, air, and land operations that coalesced on that day. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, writing for the New York Times, proclaimed that "Reading this history, you can understand why for so many of its participants, despite all the death surrounding them, life revealed itself in that moment at that place." Ambrose's Citizen Soldiers, which describes battles fought in northwest Europe from D-Day through the end of the war, utilized, again, extensive oral histories. Citizen Soldiers became a best seller, appearing on the New York Times best sellers lists for both hardcover and paperback editions in the same week. During the same week, in September 1998, D-Day and Undaunted Courage, Ambrose's 1996 book on Meriwether Lewis and the Corps of Discovery, appeared on the best seller list, also. He also wrote The Victors (1998), a distillation of material from other books detailing Eisenhower's wartime experiences and connections to the common soldier, and The Wild Blue, that looks at World War II aviation largely through the experiences of George McGovern, who commanded a B-24 crew that flew numerous missions over Germany. His other major works include Undaunted Courage about the Lewis and Clark Expedition and Nothing Like It in the World about the construction of the Pacific Railroad. His final book, This Vast Land, a historical novel about the Lewis & Clark expedition written for young readers, was published posthumously in 2003.
Ambrose's most popular single work was Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West (1996), which stayed on the New York Times best seller list for a combined, hardcover and paperback, 126 weeks. Ambrose consolidated research on the Corps of Discovery's expedition conducted in the previous thirty years and "synthesized it skillfully to enrich our understanding and appreciation of this grand epic," according to Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., who reviewed the book for the New York Times. Ken Burns, who produced and directed a PBS documentary on Lewis & Clark declared that Ambrose "takes one of the great, but also one of the most superficially considered, stories in American history and breathes fresh life into it."
In addition to twenty-seven self-authored books, Ambrose co-authored, edited, and contributed to many more and was a frequent contributor to magazines such as American Heritage. He, also, reviewed the works of other historians in the Journal of Southern History, Military Affairs, American Historical Review, Journal of American History, and Foreign Affairs. He served as a contributing editor to MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, also.
Television, film, and other activities
Ambrose featured in the 1973-74 ITV television series, The World at War, which detailed the history of World War II.
He served as the historical consultant for the movie Saving Private Ryan. Tom Hanks, who starred in the movie, said he "pored over D-Day" and Band of Brothers in researching his role. Hanks also credited Ambrose's books with providing extensive detail, particularly regarding D-Day landings.
The HBO mini-series, Band of Brothers (2001), for which he was an executive producer, helped sustain the fresh interest in World War II that had been stimulated by the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 1994 and the 60th anniversary in 2004. Ambrose served as executive producer for Price for Peace, a documentary concerning the war in the Pacific theater during World War II, and for Moments of Truth, a TV documentary containing interviews with World War II veterans.
In addition, Ambrose served as a commentator for Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, a documentary by Ken Burns. He provided commentary in twenty made-for TV documentaries, covering diverse topics, such as World War II, Lewis & Clark, and America's prominence in the 20th century. He also appeared as a guest on numerous TV programs or stations, including The Charlie Rose Show, C-Span programming, CNN programming, NBC's Today Show, CNBC's Hardball, and various programming on The History Channel and the National Geographic Channel. Ambrose's association with National Geographic stemmed, in part, from his designation as an Explorer-in-Residence by the Society.
In addition to his academic work and publishing, Ambrose operated a historical tour business, acting as a tour guide to European locales of World War II. Also, he served on the board of directors for American Rivers and was a member of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Council.
National World War II Museum
Ambrose's work for the Eisenhower Center, specifically his work with D-Day veterans, inspired him to co-found the National D-Day Museum in New Orleans with another historian and UNO professor Gordon H. "Nick" Mueller. Ambrose initiated fundraising by donating $500,000. "He dreamt of a museum that reflected his deep regard for our nation's citizen soldiers, the workers on the Home Front and the sacrifices and hardships they endured to achieve victory." He secured large contributions from the federal government, state of Louisiana, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, and many smaller donations from former students, who answered a plea made by Ambrose in the New Orleans Times-Picayune. In 2003, Congress designated the museum as "America's National World War II Museum," acknowledging an expanded scope and mission for the museum. "The Stephen E. Ambrose Memorial Fund continues to support the development of the museum's Center for Study of the American Spirit, its educational programs and oral history and publication initiatives."
Awards
In 1997, Ambrose received the St. Louis Literary Award from the Saint Louis University Library Associates. In 1998, he received the National Humanities Medal. In 1998, he was awarded the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize for lifetime achievement given by the Society for Military History. In 1998, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. In 2000, Ambrose received the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, the highest honorary award the Department of Defense offers to civilians. In 2001, he was awarded the Theodore Roosevelt Medal for Distinguished Service from the Theodore Roosevelt Association. Ambrose won an Emmy as one of the producers for the mini-series Band of Brothers. Ambrose also received the George Marshall Award, the Abraham Lincoln Literary Award, the Bob Hope Award from the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, and the Will Rogers Memorial Award.
Upon Ambrose's death, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana offered a resolution in the Senate, which received unanimous consent, saluting the "excellence of Stephen Ambrose at capturing the greatness of the American spirit in words."
Personal life, final years, and death
He married his first wife, Judith Dorlester, in 1957, and they had two children, Stephenie and Barry. Judith died in 1965, when Ambrose was 29. Ambrose married his second wife, Moira Buckley (1939–2009), in 1967 and adopted her three children, Andrew, Grace, and Hugh. Moira was an active assistant in his writing and academic projects. After retiring, he maintained homes in Helena, Montana, and Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. A longtime smoker, he was diagnosed with lung cancer in April 2002. His health deteriorated rapidly, and seven months after the diagnosis he died, at the age of 66. George McGovern, the primary focus of Ambrose's Wild Blue said, "He probably reached more readers than any other historian in our national history."
Legacy
Ambrose donated $500,000, half the amount needed, to the University of Wisconsin, to endow a chair in the name of William B. Hesseltine, Ambrose's mentor. The chair's position would focus on the teaching of American military history. When the chair became fully endowed, after Ambrose's death, it was renamed the Ambrose-Hesseltine Chair.
The Ambrose Professor of History title was established at the University of New Orleans after his death. The position is reserved for a military historian.
Each year the Rutgers University Living History Society awards the Stephen E. Ambrose Oral History Award to "an author or artist who has made significant use of oral history." Past winners include Tom Brokaw, Steven Spielberg, Studs Terkel, Michael Beschloss, and Ken Burns.
Criticism
Plagiarism
In 2002, Ambrose was accused of plagiarizing several passages in his book The Wild Blue.<ref>Williams, Robert Chadwell. The Historian's Toolbox: A Student's Guide to the Theory and Craft of History] Armonk NY: M E Sharpe Inc (2003) pp 88-89</ref> Fred Barnes reported in The Weekly Standard that Ambrose had taken passages from Wings of Morning: The Story of the Last American Bomber Shot Down over Germany in World War II, by Thomas Childers, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Ambrose had footnoted sources, but had not enclosed in quotation marks numerous passages from Childers's book."How the Ambrose Story Developed," History News Network, June 2002.
Ambrose asserted that only a few sentences in all his numerous books were the work of other authors. He offered this defense:
A Forbes investigation of his work found cases of plagiarism involving passages in at least six books, with a similar pattern going all the way back to his doctoral dissertation. The History News Network lists seven of Ambrose's more than 40 works—The Wild Blue, Undaunted Courage, Nothing Like It In the World, Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, Citizen Soldiers, The Supreme Commander, and Crazy Horse and Custer—contained content from twelve authors without appropriate attribution from Ambrose.
Factual errors and disputed characterizations
Pacific Railroad
A front-page article published in The Sacramento Bee on January 1, 2001, entitled "Area Historians Rail Against Inaccuracies in Book", listed more than sixty instances identified as "significant errors, misstatements, and made-up quotes" in Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863–1869, Ambrose's non-academic popular history about the construction of the Pacific Railroad between Council Bluffs, Iowa/Omaha, Nebraska, and the San Francisco Bay at Alameda/Oakland via Sacramento, California, which was published in August 2000. The discrepancies were documented in a detailed "fact-checking" paper compiled in December 2000 by three Western US railroad historians who are also experienced researchers, consultants, and collectors specializing in the Pacific Railroad and related topics.Graves, G.J., Strobridge, E.T., & Sweet, C.N.The Sins of Stephen E. Ambrose The Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum (CPRR.org), December 19, 2000
On January 11, 2001, Washington Post columnist Lloyd Grove reported in his column The Reliable Source, that a co-worker had found a "serious historical error" in the same book that "a chastened Ambrose" promised to correct in future editions. A number of journal reviews also sharply criticized the research and fact checking in the book. Reviewer Walter Nugent observed that it contained "annoying slips" such as mislabeled maps, inaccurate dates, geographical errors, and misidentified word origins, while railroad historian Don L. Hofsommer agreed that the book "confuses facts" and that "The research might best be characterized as 'once over lightly'."
The Eisenhower controversy
In the introduction to Ambrose's biography of Eisenhower, he claims that the former president approached him after having read his previous biography of the American general Henry Halleck,
but Tim Rives, Deputy Director of the Eisenhower Presidential Center, says it was Ambrose who contacted Eisenhower and suggested the project, as shown by a letter from Ambrose found in the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum. In his response, Eisenhower stated that "the confidence I have derived from your work by reading your two books—especially the one on Halleck—give reasons why I should be ready to help out so far as I can." The Halleck biography "still sits on a shelf" at the Eisenhower National Historic Site in Gettysburg.
After Eisenhower's death in 1969, Ambrose made repeated claims to have had a unique and extraordinarily close relationship with him over the final five years of the former President's life. In an extensive 1998 interview, before a group of high school students, Ambrose stated that he spent "a lot of time with Ike, really a lot, hundreds and hundreds of hours." Ambrose claimed he interviewed Eisenhower on a wide range of subjects, and that he had been with him "on a daily basis for a couple years" before his death "doing interviews and talking about his life." The former president's diary and telephone records show that the pair met only three times, for a total of less than five hours. Rives has stated that interview dates Ambrose cites in his 1970 book, The Supreme Commander, cannot be reconciled with Eisenhower's personal schedule, but Rives discovered, upon further investigation, a "hidden" relationship between the two men. Eisenhower enlisted Ambrose in his efforts to preserve his legacy and counteract criticisms of his presidency, particularly those charging that Eisenhower's actions at the end of World War II produced the Cold War. Ambrose wrote a review and book supporting the former general, with Eisenhower providing direction and comments during the process. Rives could not square the questionable interview dates cited by Ambrose in later works, but uncovered a relationship with Eisenhower that was "too complicated" to be described by Ambrose's critics.
Works
Sole author
Halleck: Lincoln's Chief of Staff, Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press (1962)
Upton and the Army, Louisiana State University Press (1964)
Duty, Honor, Country: A History of West Point, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press (1966)
[https://archive.org/details/supremecommander00ambr The Supreme Commander: the War Years of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, New York: Doubleday (1970)
Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors, New York: Doubleday (1975)
Ike's Spies: Eisenhower and the Espionage Establishment, New York: Doubleday (1981)
Eisenhower Volume 1: Soldier, General of the Army, President-Elect, 1890-1952, New York: Simon & Schuster (1983)
Eisenhower Volume 2: The President, New York: Simon & Schuster (1984)
Pegasus Bridge: June 6, 1944, New York: Simon & Schuster (1985)
Nixon: The Education of a Politician, 1913-1962, New York: Simon & Schuster (1987)
Eisenhower: Soldier and President, New York: Simon & Schuster (1990) (a one-volume condensation of the 1983-84 two-volume Eisenhower biography)
Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962-1972, New York: Simon & Schuster (1990)
Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, 1973-1990, New York: Simon & Schuster (1991)
Band of Brothers, E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne: From Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest (1992)
D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II, New York, Simon & Schuster (1994)
Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, New York: Simon & Schuster (1996)
Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944 - May 7, 1945, New York: Simon & Schuster (1997)
Americans at War, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi (1997)
The Victors: Eisenhower and his Boys - The Men of World War II, New York: Simon & Schuster (1998)
Comrades: Brothers, Fathers, Heroes, Sons, Pals, New York: Simon & Schuster (1999)
Nothing Like It in the World: The Men who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863-1869, New York: Simon & Schuster (2000)
The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys who Flew the B-24s over Germany, New York: Simon & Schuster (2001)
To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian, New York: Simon & Schuster (2002)
This Vast Land, New York: Simon & Schuster, (2003)
With others
with Richard H. Immerman, Milton S. Eisenhower, Educational Statesman, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press (1983)
with Douglas Brinkley, Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy since 1938, New York: Penguin Books (1997)
with Sam Abell, Lewis and Clark: Voyage of Discovery, Washington DC: National Geographic Society, (1998, 2002)
with Douglas Brinkley, Witness to America (1999) ; 2010:
with Douglas Brinkley, The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation: From the Louisiana Purchase to Today (2002),
Edited works
Institutions in Modern America: Innovation in Structure and Process, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press (1967)
with James A. Barber, The Military and American Society: Essays and Readings, New York, NY: The Free Press (1972)
with Gunter Bischoff, Eisenhower and the German POWs: Facts Against Falsehood, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press (1992)
with Gunter Bischoff, Eisenhower" A Centenary Assessment, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press (1995)
American Heritage New History of World War II(original text by C.L. Sulzberger), New York, NY: Viking Press (1997)
References
Further reading
External links
WorldCat search of works by Stephen Ambrose
Stephen E. Ambrose at FantasticFiction.co.uk
Interview with Stephen Ambrose (1998)
Obituary in The Independent''
Obituary at website of the American Historical Association
Commentary dated December 19, 2000 contributed by G. J. "Chris" Graves, Edson T. Strobridge, and Charles N. Sweet regarding Stephen E. Ambrose's book "Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built The Transcontinental Railroad 1863 - 1869."
Booknotes interview with Ambrose on D-Day: June 6, 1944, June 5, 1994.
In Depth interview with Ambrose, November 5, 2000
1936 births
2002 deaths
American Congregationalists
American military historians
American military writers
Deaths from lung cancer
Deaths from cancer in Mississippi
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Historians of the American West
Historians of the United States
Johns Hopkins University faculty
Kansas State University faculty
Louisiana State University faculty
National Humanities Medal recipients
Naval War College faculty
Official biographers to the presidents of the United States
Writers from Decatur, Illinois
People from Moultrie County, Illinois
People from Helena, Montana
Military personnel from Illinois
Writers from New Orleans
People from Whitewater, Wisconsin
University of New Orleans faculty
University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Letters and Science alumni
Wisconsin Badgers football players
Writers from Wisconsin
Historians of World War II
21st-century American male writers
20th-century American historians
21st-century American historians
Historians of the American Civil War
People involved in plagiarism controversies
American male non-fiction writers | true | [
"A narrative technique (known for literary fictional narratives as a literary technique, literary device, or fictional device) is any of several specific methods the creator of a narrative uses to convey what they want—in other words, a strategy used in the making of a narrative to relay information to the audience and particularly to develop the narrative, usually in order to make it more complete, complex, or interesting. Literary techniques are distinguished from literary elements, which exist inherently in works of writing.\n\nSetting\n\nPlots\n\nPerspective\n\nStyle\n\nTheme\n\nCharacter\n\nSee also \n Plot device\n\nNotes\n\nReferences \n \n\n \nNarratology\nPoetic devices\nStyle (fiction)",
"SYSTAT was a command on the DEC TOPS-10 and RSTS/E computer operating systems by which one obtained the current general status of the running operating system. The commands showed the logged-on users, processes, I/O, and other interesting system management information.\n\nReferences\n\nDigital Equipment Corporation"
] |
[
"Gorillaz",
"Phase One: Celebrity Take Down (2000-03)"
] | C_fb5dadfb60c6438eb0f8405024d25b1c_0 | What did the album do in the charts? | 1 | What did the album do in the charts? | Gorillaz | The band's first release was the EP Tomorrow Comes Today, released in 2000. The band's first single was "Clint Eastwood" and was released on 5 March 2001, reaching No. 4 in the UK. It was produced by hip hop producer Dan the Automator and originally featured UK rap group Phi Life Cypher, but the version that appears on the album features American rapper Del the Funky Homosapien, known on the album as Del tha' Ghost Rapper, a spirit in the band's drummer Russel Hobbs. The Phi Life Cypher version of "Clint Eastwood" appears on the B-side album G Sides. Later that same month, their first full-length album, the self-titled Gorillaz, was released, producing four singles: "Clint Eastwood", "19-2000", "Tomorrow Comes Today", and "Rock the House". In June 2001, "19-2000" charted at No. 6 in the UK, and the song was used as the title theme for EA Sports FIFA video game FIFA Football 2002. The end of the year brought the song "911", a collaboration between Gorillaz and hip hop group D12 (without Eminem) and Terry Hall about the September 11 attacks. Meanwhile, G Sides, a compilation of the B-sides from the Tomorrow Comes Today EP and first three singles, was released in Japan on 12 December 2001 and quickly followed with international releases in early 2002. Gorillaz performed at the 2002 Brit Awards in London on 22 February, appearing in 3D animation on four large screens along with rap accompaniment by Phi Life Cypher. The band were nominated for four Brit Awards, including Best British Group, Best British Album and British Breakthrough Act, but did not win any awards. In November 2002, a DVD titled Phase One: Celebrity Take Down was released, giving the phase its name. The DVD contains the four Phase One promos, the abandoned video for "5/4", the Charts of Darkness documentary, the five Gorilla Bitez (comedic shorts starring the band characters), a tour of the website by the MEL 9000 server and more. The DVD's menu was designed much like the band's website and depicts an abandoned Kong Studios. Rumours were circulating at this time that the Gorillaz team were busy preparing a film, but Hewlett said that the film project had been abandoned: "We lost all interest in doing it as soon as we started meeting with studios and talking to these Hollywood executive types, we just weren't on the same page. We said, fuck it, we'll sit on the idea until we can do it ourselves, and maybe even raise the money ourselves." CANNOTANSWER | No. 4 in the UK. | Gorillaz are an English virtual band created in 1998 by musician Damon Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett, from London, England. The band primarily consists of four animated members: 2-D (vocals, keyboards), Murdoc Niccals (bass guitar), Noodle (guitar, keyboards, vocals), and Russel Hobbs (drums). Their fictional universe is presented in music videos, interviews and short cartoons. Gorillaz' music often features collaborations with a wide range of featured artists, with Albarn as the only permanent musical contributor.
With Gorillaz, Albarn departed from the distinct Britpop of his band Blur, exploring a variety of musical styles including hip hop, electronic music and world music through an "eccentrically postmodern" approach. The band's 2001 debut album Gorillaz, which featured dub, Latin and punk influences, went triple platinum in the UK and double platinum in Europe, with sales driven by the success of the album's lead single "Clint Eastwood". Their second studio album, Demon Days (2005), went six times platinum in the UK and double platinum in the US and spawned the successful lead single "Feel Good Inc.".
The band's third album, Plastic Beach (2010), featured environmentalist themes, a synth-pop approach and an expanded roster of featured artists. Their fourth album, The Fall (2010), was recorded on the road during the Escape to Plastic Beach Tour and released on 25 December 2010. During 2015, Remi Kabaka Jr. became a music producer for the band after more than 10 years providing the voice of Russel and was credited as such alongside Albarn and Hewlett in the official 2019 documentary Gorillaz: Reject False Icons. The band's fifth album, Humanz, was released after a seven-year hiatus on 28 April 2017. Their sixth album, The Now Now (2018), featured stripped-down production and a greater musical focus on Albarn. Gorillaz' latest project is Song Machine, a music-based web series with episodes that consist of standalone singles and accompanying music videos featuring different guests each episode, resulting in their seventh album, Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez (2020).
Gorillaz has presented itself live in a variety of different ways throughout the band's history, such as hiding the touring band from the audience's view in the early years of the project, projecting animated band members on stage via computer graphics and traditional live touring featuring a fully visible live band. The band have sold over 25 million records worldwide and are cited by Guinness World Records as the world's "Most Successful Virtual Band". They have won a Grammy Award, two MTV Video Music Awards, an NME Award and three MTV Europe Music Awards. They have also been nominated for 11 Brit Awards and won Best British Group at the 2018 Brit Awards.
History
Creation (1990–1999)
Musician Damon Albarn and comic artist Jamie Hewlett met in 1990 when guitarist Graham Coxon, a fan of Hewlett's work, asked him to interview Blur, which Albarn and Coxon had recently formed. The interview was published in Deadline magazine, home of Hewlett's comic strip Tank Girl. Hewlett initially thought Albarn was "arsey, a wanker;" and despite becoming acquaintances with the band, they often did not get on, especially after Hewlett began seeing Coxon's ex-girlfriend Jane Olliver. Despite this, Albarn and Hewlett started sharing a flat on Westbourne Grove in London in 1997. Hewlett had recently broken up with Olliver and Albarn was at the end of his highly publicised relationship with Justine Frischmann of Elastica.
The idea to create Gorillaz came about when Albarn and Hewlett were watching MTV. Hewlett said, "If you watch MTV for too long, it's a bit like hell – there's nothing of substance there. So we got this idea for a virtual band, something that would be a comment on that." Albarn recalled the idea similarly, saying "This was the beginning of the sort of boy band explosion... and it just felt so manufactured. And we were like, well let's make a manufactured band but make it kind of interesting." The band originally identified themselves as "Gorilla" and the first song they recorded was "Ghost Train", which was later released as a B-side on their single "Rock the House". The band's visual style is thought to have evolved from The 16s, a rejected comic strip Hewlett conceived with Tank Girl co-creator Alan Martin.
Although not released under the Gorillaz name, Albarn has said that "one of the first ever Gorillaz tunes" was Blur's 1997 single "On Your Own", which was released for their fifth studio album Blur.
Gorillaz (2000–03)
From 1998 to 2000, Albarn recorded for Gorillaz' self-titled debut album at his newly opened Studio 13 in London as well as at Geejam Studios in Jamaica. The sessions resulted in the band's first release, the EP Tomorrow Comes Today, released on 27 November 2000. This EP consisted mostly of tracks which later appeared on the album, and it also included the band's first music video for "Tomorrow Comes Today", which introduced the virtual band members for the first time.
With Gorillaz, Albarn began to branch out into other genres which he had not explored with Blur, such as hip-hop, dub and Latin music, a process he described as liberating: "One of the reasons I began Gorillaz is I had a lot of rhythms I never thought I could use with Blur. A lot of that stuff never really seemed to manifest itself in the music we made together as Blur." Albarn originally began work on the album by himself, however eventually invited American hip-hop producer Dan "the Automator" Nakamura to serve as producer on the album, explaining "I called Dan the Automator in after I'd done more than half of it and felt it would benefit from having somebody else's focus. So I just rang him and asked whether he was interested in helping me finish it off." Nakamura and Albarn had recently collaborated on Deltron 3030, the debut album by the hip-hop supergroup of the same name featuring rapper Del the Funky Homosapien and DJ Kid Koala, both of whom Nakamura recruited to assist in finishing Gorillaz material. Del featured on two tracks on the album, including the lead single "Clint Eastwood", while Kid Koala contributed turntables to various tracks. The album featured additional collaborations with Ibrahim Ferrer of Buena Vista Social Club, Miho Hatori of Cibo Matto and Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club, representing a pattern of collaboration with a wide range of artists which later became a staple of Gorillaz as a project.
Gorillaz was released on 26 March 2001 and was a major commercial success, debuting at #3 on the UK Albums Chart and #14 on the US Billboard 200, going on to sell over 7 million copies worldwide, powered by the success of the "Clint Eastwood" single. The album was promoted with the singles "Clint Eastwood", "19-2000" and "Rock the House", in addition to the previously released "Tomorrow Comes Today", with each single featuring a music video directed by Hewlett starring the virtual members. Hewlett also helmed the design of the band's website, which was presented as an interactive tour of the band's fictional "Kong Studios" home and recording studio, featuring interactive games and explorative elements. Following the release of the album, the band embarked on a brief tour of Europe, Japan and the United States to support the album in which a touring band featuring Albarn played completely obscured behind a giant screen on which Hewlett's accompanying visuals were projected. The virtual band member's voice actors were also present at some shows and spoke live to the audience to give the impression that the fictional band was present on stage. In later interviews, Albarn described the band's first tour as difficult due to the limitations imposed by the band playing behind a screen: "For someone who had just spent the last ten years out front being a frontman [with Blur], it was a really weird experience. And I have to say, some nights I just wanted to get a knife and just cut [the screen] and stick my head through." The album was followed by the B-sides compilation G-Sides released in December 2001.
On 7 December 2001, the band released the single "911" a collaboration with hip hop group D12 (without Eminem) and singer Terry Hall of the Specials about the September 11 attacks. At the 2002 Brit Awards the virtual members of Gorillaz "performed" for the first time, appearing in 3D animation on four large screens along with rap accompaniment by Phi Life Cypher, a production which reportedly cost £300,000 to create. The band were nominated for four Brit Awards, including Best British Group, Best British Album and British Breakthrough Act, but did not win any awards.
On 1 July 2002, a remix album titled Laika Come Home was released, containing most of the tracks from Gorillaz remixed in dub and reggae style by the DJ group Spacemonkeyz. On 18 November 2002, the band released the DVD Phase One: Celebrity Take Down, which contained all of the band's released visual content up to that point along with other extras.
After the success of the debut album, Albarn and Hewlett briefly explored the possibility of creating a Gorillaz theatrical film, but Hewlett claimed the duo later lost interest: "We lost all interest in doing it as soon as we started meeting with studios and talking to these Hollywood executive types, we just weren't on the same page. We said, fuck it, we'll sit on the idea until we can do it ourselves, and maybe even raise the money ourselves."
Demon Days (2004–07)
Albarn spent the majority of 2003 on tour with Blur in support of their newly released album Think Tank; however, upon completion of the tour, he decided to return to Gorillaz, reuniting with Hewlett to prepare for a second album. Hewlett explained that the duo chose to continue Gorillaz to prove that the project was not "a gimmick": "If you do it again, it's no longer a gimmick, and if it works then we've proved a point." The result was Demon Days, released on 11 May 2005. The album was another major commercial success, debuting at No. 1 on the UK Albums Charts and #6 on the US Billboard 200, and has since gone six times platinum in the UK, double platinum in the United States, and triple platinum in Australia, outperforming sales of the first album and becoming the band's most successful album to date. The album's success was partially driven by the success of the lead single "Feel Good Inc." featuring hip-hop group De La Soul, which topped Billboard'''s Alternative Songs chart in the U.S. for eight consecutive weeks and was featured in a commercial for Apple's iPod. The album was also supported by the later singles "Dare", "Dirty Harry", and the double A-side "Kids with Guns" / "El Mañana".Demon Days found the band taking a darker tone, partially influenced by a train journey Albarn had taken with his family through impoverished rural China. Albarn described the album as a concept album: "The whole album kind of tells the story of the night — staying up during the night — but it's also an allegory. It's what we're living in basically, the world in a state of night." Believing that the album needed "a slightly different approach" compared to the first album, Albarn enlisted American producer Brian Burton, better known by his stage name Danger Mouse, to produce the album, whom Albarn praised as "one of the best young producers in the world" after hearing his 2004 mashup album The Grey Album. Burton felt he and Albarn had a high degree of affinity with each other, stating in an interview on the creation of the album: "We never had any arguments. We even have that finish-each-other's-sentences thing happening. There are a lot of the same influences between us, like Ennio Morricone and psychedelic pop-rock, but he has 10 years on me, so I have some catching up to do. Where he can school me on new wave and punk of the late ’70s/early ’80s, I can school him on a lot of hip-hop. We’re very competitive and pushed each other." Similar to the first album, Demon Days features collaborations with several different artists, including Bootie Brown, Shaun Ryder, Ike Turner, MF Doom (who was recording with Danger Mouse as Danger Doom at the time) and Martina Topley-Bird, among others.
The band chose to forgo traditional live touring in support of Demon Days, instead limiting live performance during the album cycle to a five night residency in November 2005 at the Manchester Opera House billed as Demon Days Live. The concerts saw the band performing the album in full each night with most featured artists from the album present. Unlike the debut album's tour, the touring band was visible on stage in view of the audience but obscured by lighting in such a way that only their silhouettes were visible, with a screen above the band displaying Hewlett's visuals alongside each song. The residency was later repeated in April 2006 at New York City's Apollo Theater and the Manchester performances were later released on DVD as Demon Days: Live at the Manchester Opera House.
The virtual Gorillaz members "performed" at the 2005 MTV Europe Music Awards in November 2005 and again at the 48th Annual Grammy Awards in February 2006, appearing to perform on stage via Musion Eyeliner technology. Albarn later expressed disappointment at the execution of the performance, citing the low volume level required so as to not disturb the technology: "That was tough... They started and it was so quiet cause they've got this piece of film that you've got to pull over the stage so any bass frequencies would just mess up the illusion completely." At the Grammys, the band won Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals for "Feel Good Inc.", which was also nominated for Record of the Year. Albarn and Hewlett explored the idea of producing a full "live holographic tour" featuring the virtual Gorillaz appearing on stage with Munsion Eyeliner technology after the Grammys performance, but the tour was ultimately never realised due to the tremendous expense and logistical issues that would have resulted.
In October 2006, the band released the book Rise of the Ogre. Presented as an autobiography of the band ostensibly written by the fictional members and expanding on the band's fictional backstory and universe, the book was actually written by official Gorillaz script writer and live drummer Cass Browne and featured new artwork by Hewlett. Later the same month, the band released another DVD, Phase Two: Slowboat to Hades, compiling much of the band's visual content from the album cycle. A second B-sides compilation, D-Sides was released in November 2007, featuring B-sides and remixes associated with Demon Days as well as unreleased tracks from the sessions for the album. In April 2009, the documentary film Bananaz was released. Directed by Ceri Levy, the film documents the behind-the-scenes history of the band from 2000 to 2006.
Plastic Beach and The Fall (2008–13)
Albarn and Hewlett's next project together was the opera Monkey: Journey to the West based on the classical Chinese novel Journey to the West, which premiered at the 2007 Manchester International Festival. While not officially a Gorillaz project, Albarn mentioned in an interview that the project was "Gorillaz, really but we can't call it that for legal reasons".
After completing work on Monkey in late 2007, Albarn and Hewlett began working on a new Gorillaz project entitled Carousel, described by Albarn as being about "the mystical aspects of Britain". Hewlett described Carousel in a 2008 interview as "even bigger and more difficult than Monkey... It's sort of like a film but not with one narrative story. There's many stories, told around a bigger story, set to music, and done in live action, animation, all different styles. Originally it was a film but now we think it's a film and it's a stage thing as well. Damon's written around 70 songs for it, and I’ve got great plans for the visuals." The Carousel concept was eventually dropped with Albarn and Hewlett's work evolving into the third Gorillaz studio album Plastic Beach.
Drawing upon environmentalist themes, Plastic Beach was inspired by the idea of a "secret floating island deep in the South Pacific... made up of the detritus, debris and washed up remnants of humanity" inspired by marine pollution such as plastic that Albarn had found in a beach near one of his homes in Devon as well as the Great Pacific garbage patch. Unlike previous Gorillaz albums, Albarn made the decision to produce Plastic Beach by himself, with no co-producer. The album was recorded throughout 2008 and 2009 in London, New York City and Syria although production of the album was briefly interrupted so that Albarn could join Blur for a reunion tour in the summer of 2009, with Albarn explaining "there's no way you can do that and that [Blur and Gorillaz] at the same time." Plastic Beach saw Gorillaz move into a more electronic pop sound, with Albarn describing the album as "the most pop record I've ever made" and saying that he took special care to make the album's lyrics and melodies clear and focused compared to previous albums. Plastic Beach also featured the largest cast of collaborators featured yet on a Gorillaz album, fulfilling Albarn's goal of "work[ing] with an incredibly eclectic, surprising cast of people" including artists such as Snoop Dogg, Mos Def, Bobby Womack, Little Dragon, Lou Reed and Gruff Rhys among others, and also included orchestral contributions from Sinfonia Viva and the Lebanese National Symphony Orchestra. Albarn explained the expanded roster of featured artists represented his and Hewlett's new vision of Gorillaz as a project, explaining in a July 2008 interview that "Gorillaz now to us is not like four animated characters any more – it's more like an organisation of people doing new projects... That's my ideal model."
Released on 3 March 2010, Plastic Beach debuted at #2 on both the UK Albums Chart and the US Billboard 200 chart, the band's highest placing debut chart position. The album was supported by the lead single "Stylo" featuring Mos Def and Bobby Womack released in January 2010 and the later singles "On Melancholy Hill" and "Rhinestone Eyes". To promote the album, the band embarked on the Escape to Plastic Beach Tour, the band's first world tour and also their first live performances in which the touring band performed fully in view of the audience on stage with no visual obstructions. The tour, which featured many of the collaborative artists from Plastic Beach and saw the touring band wearing naval attire, was later described by Albarn as having been extremely costly to produce, with the band barely breaking even on the shows, saying "I loved doing it, but economically it was a fucking disaster." The tour was preceded by headline performances at several international music festivals, including the Coachella and Glastonbury festivals. On 21 November 2010, while still on tour, the band released the non-album single "Doncamatic" featuring British singer Daley.
During the North American leg of the Escape to Plastic Beach tour in the fall of 2010, Albarn continued recording Gorillaz songs entirely on his iPad. The recordings were later released as the album The Fall, first released digitally on Christmas Day 2010 and later given a physical release on 19 April 2011. The Fall is also co-produced by Stephen Sedgwick, the mixer engineer of the band. Albarn said the album served as a diary of the American leg of the tour, explaining that the tracks were presented exactly as they were on the day they were written and recorded with no additional production or overdubs: "I literally made it on the road. I didn't write it before, I didn't prepare it. I just did it day by day as a kind of diary of my experience in America. If I left it until the New Year to release it then the cynics out there would say, 'Oh well, it's been tampered with', but if I put it out now they'd know that I haven't done anything because I've been on tour ever since." The band later released a "Gorillaz edition" of the Korg iElectribe music production app for iPad, featuring many of the same samples and sounds used by Albarn to create The Fall.
On 23 February 2012, Gorillaz released "DoYaThing", a single to promote a Gorillaz-branded collection of Converse shoes which were released shortly after. The song was a part of Converse's "Three Artists, One Song" project, with the two additional collaborators being James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem and André 3000 of Outkast. Two different edits of the song were released: a four-and-a-half minute radio edit released on Converse's website and the full 13-minute version of the song released on the Gorillaz website. Hewlett returned to direct the single's music video, featuring fictionalized animated versions of Murphy and André interacting with the Gorillaz' virtual members. The song received positive reviews from critics, with particular praise given to André 3000's contributions to the track.
In April 2012, Albarn told The Guardian that he and Hewlett had fallen out and that future Gorillaz projects were "unlikely". Tension between the two had been building, partly due to a belief held by Hewlett that his contributions to Gorillaz were being minimised. Speaking to The Guardian in April 2017, Hewlett explained: "Damon had half the Clash on stage, and Bobby Womack and Mos Def and De La Soul, and fucking Hypnotic Brass Ensemble and Bashy and everyone else. It was the greatest band ever. And the screen on stage behind them seemed to get smaller every day. I'd say, ‘Have we got a new screen?’ and the tour manager was like, ‘No, it's the same screen.’ Because it seemed to me like it was getting smaller." Albarn gave his side of the story in a separate interview, saying "I think we were at a cross purposes somewhat on that last record [Plastic Beach], which is a shame. It was one of those things, the music and the videos weren't working as well together, but I felt we'd made a really good record and I was into it." On 25 April 2012, in an interview with Metro, Albarn was more optimistic about Gorillaz' future, saying that once he had worked out his differences with Hewlett, he was sure that they would make another record. In June 2013, Hewlett confirmed that he and Albarn planned to someday continue Gorillaz and record a follow-up album to Plastic Beach, saying "We'll come back to it when the time is right."
Hiatus and Humanz (2014–17)
Following the release of DoYaThing and the publicization of Albarn and Hewlett's fall-out in 2012, Gorillaz entered a multiyear hiatus. During the hiatus, Albarn released a solo album, Everyday Robots, scored stage productions and continued to record and tour with Blur, while Hewlett held art exhibitions and attempted to create a film project which was ultimately never realized. While on tour in support of Everyday Robots in 2014, Albarn signaled openness to returning to Gorillaz, telling The National Post that he "wouldn't mind having another stab at a Gorillaz record". Two months later he reported that he had "been writing quite a lot of songs on the road for Gorillaz". and at the end of 2014 confirmed in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald that he was planning to record another Gorillaz album. Speaking about his relationship with Hewlett, Albarn said that the pair's well-publicised fall-out had helped their relationship in the long term. Hewlett described the moment when he and Albarn agreed to continue Gorillaz at an afterparty after one of Albarn's solo shows in 2014: "We'd had a bit to drink, and he said, 'Do you want to do another one?' And I said, 'Do you?' and he said, 'Do you?' And I said, 'Yeah, sure.' I started work on it straight away, learning to draw the characters again. I played around by myself for eight months while he was performing with Blur in 2015."
Recording sessions for the band's fifth studio album Humanz began in late 2015 and continued through 2016, taking place in London, New York City, Paris and Jamaica. Albarn enlisted American hip-hop and house producer Anthony Khan, known by his stage name the Twilite Tone, to co-produce the album. Albarn chose Khan from a list of possible producers compiled by Parlophone, the band's record label after Albarn and Khan spoke via Skype. Humanz was also co-produced by Remi Kabaka Jr., a friend of Albarn's who had worked with him in the non-profit musical organization Africa Express and also has been the voice actor for the Gorillaz virtual band member Russel Hobbs since 2000. In conceptualizing the album, Albarn and Khan envisioned Humanz as being the soundtrack for "a party for the end of the world", with Albarn specifically imagining a future in which Donald Trump won the 2016 U.S. presidential election as context for the album's narrative (Trump becoming president was still considered an unlikely event at the time of recording), explaining "Let's use that as a kind of dark fantasy for this record, let's imagine the night Donald Trump wins the election and how we're all going to feel that night." Khan stated that "The idea of Donald Trump being president allowed us to create a narrative together. I suggested that the album should be about joy, pain and urgency. That was to be our state of mind before we even touched a keyboard or an MPC. Especially in American music, dare I say black music, there's a way of communicating joy that at the same time allows you to feel the struggle the person has been through. And the urgency is there because something needs to be done. So that was the mantra. I wanted to blend Damon, a Briton, with the joy and pain and struggle that African-American music can express." Humanz again featured a large cast of featured artists, including Popcaan, Vince Staples, DRAM, Jehnny Beth, Pusha T, Peven Everett, Danny Brown, Grace Jones and Mavis Staples, among others. The first track from the album released publicly was "Hallelujah Money" featuring Benjamin Clementine, released on 20 January 2017 with an accompanying video featuring Clementine. While not an official single, Albarn explained that the band chose to release the track on the day of Trump's inauguration because "It was meant to be something sung at the imaginary inauguration of Donald Trump, which turned out to be the real inauguration of Donald Trump, so we released it because we had imagined that happening and it did happen."Humanz was released on 28 April 2017, the band's first new studio album in 7 years. Featuring a "modern-sounding urban hip-hop/R&B sensibility", the album debuted at #2 on both the UK Album charts and the US Billboard 200. Humanz received generally positive reviews from critics, although received some criticism from fans and critics for what was perceived as a diminished presence from Albarn in contrast to the abundance of featured artists. The album was released in both standard and deluxe editions, with the deluxe edition featuring an additional 6 bonus tracks and was promoted by the lead single "Saturnz Barz" featuring Popcaan and the later single "Strobelite" featuring Peven Everett. The Hewlett-directed music video for "Saturnz Barz" made use of YouTube's 360-degree video format and reportedly cost $800,000 to create.
The band embarked on the Humanz Tour to support the album from the summer of 2017 to early 2018. Like the band's previous tour, the Humanz Tour featured the touring band in full view of the audience with a large screen behind them displaying Hewlett-created visuals and featured several of the different collaborative artists from the band's history. The tour was preceded by a handful of European warm-up shows, including the first Demon Dayz Festival held on 10 June 2017 at the Dreamland Margate theme park, a Gorillaz curated music festival which was later repeated in Los Angeles in October 2018. On 8 June 2017 the band released the non-album single "Sleeping Powder" with an accompanying music video and on 3 November 2017 a "Super Deluxe" version of Humanz, featuring an additional 14 unreleased tracks from the album's sessions, including alternative versions of previously released songs as well as the single "Garage Palace" featuring Little Simz.
The Now Now (2018–19)
Albarn continued recording while on the road during the Humanz Tour, and mentioned in an interview with Q Magazine in September 2017 that he was planning on releasing the material as a future Gorillaz album. Comparing the production of the album to The Fall, which was also recorded while the band was on tour, Albarn mentioned that "It will be a more complete record than The Fall, but hopefully have that spontaneity." Albarn signaled his desire to complete and release the album quickly, adding that "I really like the idea of making new music and playing it live almost simultaneously" and "If we're going to do more Gorillaz we don't want to wait seven years because, y'know, we're getting on a bit now. The band later debuted a new song "Idaho", which was later included on the album, at a concert in Seattle on 30 September 2017 with Albarn saying it had been written in the days prior.
During a break in the Humanz Tour in February 2018, Albarn returned to London where he worked with producer James Ford, known for his work with Arctic Monkeys and Florence and the Machine, and Kabaka Jr. to finish the newly written material, resulting in the band's sixth studio album The Now Now released on 29 June 2018. Featuring "simple, mostly upbeat songs" and 1980s new wave influences, the album was noted for its distinctly small list of featured artists compared to previous Gorillaz work, with only two tracks featuring any outside artists (the album's lead single "Humility" featuring George Benson and "Hollywood" featuring Snoop Dogg and Jamie Principle). Albarn mentioned that the few numbers of featured artists was partially due to the album's quick production, which in turn was a result of Albarn wanting to finish the album before the band's touring schedule resumed: "We've been very lucky to be offered all the festivals this year on the back of the last record [Humanz]... but I didn't want to do that unless I had something new to work with, so the only option was to make another record really quickly and not have lots of guests on it, because that takes a long time to organize; just do it all myself, really." Albarn also explained that with The Now Now he sought to make a Gorillaz album "where I'm just singing for once" and that the album is "pretty much just me singing, very sort of in the world of 2-D."
In the fictional Gorillaz storyline, the band introduced Ace from Cartoon Network's animated series The Powerpuff Girls as a temporary bassist of the band during The Now Now album cycle, filling in for the imprisoned Murdoc Niccals. Explaining the crossover in an interview with the BBC, Albarn said "We were massive fans of The Powerpuff Girls when they came out, the energy of that cartoon was really cool, and we kind of know the creator of it (Craig McCracken). It was a very organic thing."
The band's remaining 2018 live dates were billed as The Now Now Tour to support the album, and included a performance in Tokyo on 22 June 2018 billed as "The Now Now World Premiere" in which the band played the full album live for the first and only time, a performance which was later broadcast by Boiler Room. On 16 December 2019, the documentary Gorillaz: Reject False Icons was screened worldwide on a one-day theatrical release. Filmed and directed by Hewlett's son Denholm, the documentary showcases a behind-the-scenes look at the production of Humanz and The Now Now as well as the album's associated tours. One week after the film's theatrical release, a "Director's Cut" version of the film featuring additional footage was released on the official Gorillaz YouTube channel in three parts. In the credits for Reject False Icons, Kabaka Jr. was listed as an official member of the band (labeled as "A&R/Producer") alongside Albarn and Hewlett for the first time.
Song Machine project and Meanwhile EP (2020–present)
On 29 January 2020, the band announced its new project, Song Machine. Eschewing the typical album format of releasing music, Song Machine is instead a web series that sees the band releasing one new song a month as "episodes" to the series, with 11 episodes releasing to comprise the first "season". Elaborating on the idea behind Song Machine in a radio interview shortly after the announcement of the project, Albarn explained that "We no longer kind of see ourselves as constrained to making albums. We can now make episodes and seasons." Each episode features previously unannounced guest musicians on new Gorillaz material, with the first being "Momentary Bliss", which was released on 31 January and features both British rapper Slowthai and the Kent-based punk rock duo Slaves.
Upon the premiere of "Momentary Bliss", Albarn revealed that the group had been in the studio with Schoolboy Q and Sampa the Great among others, although he did say that these songs were likely to be saved for future episodes of Song Machine. The group also teased a possible collaboration with Australian band Tame Impala on Instagram.
On 27 February, the band released the second episode of Song Machine entitled "Désolé". The song features Malian singer Fatoumata Diawara. The third episode, "Aries", released on 9 April and featured Peter Hook and Georgia. The fourth track "How Far?" featuring Tony Allen and Skepta was released 2 May. This song was released without an accompanying music video as a tribute to Allen, who died on 30 April.
On 26 May, Gorillaz announced the release of a new book titled Gorillaz Almanac. The book comes in three editions: standard, deluxe and super deluxe, all of which are set to release on 23 October but has since been delayed to 22 December with a physical release of season one of Song Machine included with each copy.
On 9 June, the band released "Friday 13th", the fourth episode of Song Machine. The track features French-British rapper Octavian.
On 20 July, the band released "Pac-Man", the fifth episode of Song Machine, in honour of Pac-Man's 40th anniversary. The track features American rapper Schoolboy Q.
On 9 September, the band released "Strange Timez", the sixth episode of Song Machine. The track features Robert Smith, from the Cure. Gorillaz also announced the title and tracklist for Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez, released on 23 October 2020, featuring further guest appearances from Elton John, 6lack, JPEGMafia, Kano, Roxani Arias, Moonchild Sanelly and Chai, among others.
On 1 October, the band released "The Pink Phantom", the seventh episode of Song Machine. The track features Elton John and American rapper 6lack.
Before the release of Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez, Gorillaz started a radio show on Apple Music called Song Machine Radio where each virtual character has a turn to invite special guests and play some of their favourite tunes.
A few days from the release of Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez, Albarn confirmed that the band already has a song for Season Two of Song Machine prepared for release, and also mentioned that the second part of the project will be released earlier than expected.
On 5 November, the band released "The Valley of the Pagans", the eighth episode of Song Machine. The track features American singer Beck. The music video is somewhat notorious for being the first major studio production filmed in Grand Theft Auto V. The video ends with a reference to previous album, Plastic Beach. For unknown reasons, the music video on the official Gorillaz YouTube channel was set to private just a few days after its initial premiere. On 9 March 2021, Gorillaz uploaded an alternative version of the music video to their official YouTube channel, which does not feature any gameplay from Grand Theft Auto V.
On 24 December, the band released "The Lost Chord", the ninth and final episode of the first season of Song Machine. The track features British musician Leee John.
On 26 March 2021, the band celebrated its debut album's 20th anniversary with oncoming reissues of their catalog and teases of non-fungible tokens; due to its impact on climate change, the latter was met with criticism by various sources and fans—some noting that the act contradicts the environmental themes of Plastic Beach. The band also announced a boxset, the G Collection, containing six of their studio albums—excluding The Fall—for Record Store Day.
On 10 August 2021, Gorillaz debuted three new songs, "Meanwhile" (featuring British rapper Jelani Blackman), "Jimmy Jimmy" (featuring British rapper AJ Tracey), and "Déjà Vu" (featuring Jamaican-British singer Alicaì Harley), during a free concert at The O2 Arena in London, England exclusively for National Health Service employees and their families. They then performed them again at the subsequent concert open to the public the next day (both of which served as the first live audience concerts of the Song Machine Tour). These three songs were announced to be tracks from a new EP entitled Meanwhile, with the cover originally published on TikTok.
On 17 September 2021, Albarn revealed that he had recorded a new Gorillaz song with Bad Bunny while in Jamaica, and it will be the first single for a new album, influenced by Latin America, releasing next year.
Style and legacy
Writers and critics have variously described Gorillaz as art pop, alternative rock, hip hop, electronic, trip hop, pop, dark pop, alternative hip hop, rap rock, indie rock, bedroom pop, dance-rock, new wave, funk, worldbeat, and experimental rock. The band's aesthetic and general approach has been described as postmodern. According to AllMusic, Gorillaz blend Britpop and hip-hop, while The Guardian described the band as "a sort of dub/hip-hop/lo-fi indie/world music hybrid". According to PopMatters, the band's early work foreshadowed "the melding of hip-hop, rock, and electronic elements in pop music" that grew in significance in the next decade.
Gorillaz’ main musical influences include Massive Attack, the Specials, Big Audio Dynamite, Public Image Ltd, Tom Tom Club, Fun Boy Three, Unkle, A Tribe Called Quest, and De La Soul, as well as The Human League, The Kinks, XTC, Simple Minds, Sonic Youth, Pavement, Ween, Portishead, Beck, Wire, Fela Kuti, Sly and the Family Stone, Earth Wind and Fire, Augustus Pablo, Zapp, and DJ Kool Herc. Gorillaz’ primary visual influences include Hanna-Barbera, Looney Tunes, Mad magazine, The Simpsons, 2000 AD, and Métal hurlant (Heavy Metal). Furthermore, Hewlett has also cited European artists such as Carl Giles, Ronald Searle, Moebius, Tanino Liberatore, Mike McMahon, and Brendan McCarthy. The idea for Gorillaz was inspired by the many cartoon bands that came before them in the 1960s such as the Banana Splits, the Archies, Josie and the Pussycats, and Alvin and the Chipmunks, and real bands with fictional stage personas like ABC (circa How to Be a ... Zillionaire!) and Silicon Teens.Charts of Darkness. Dazed Film & TV (2001)
Musical artists who have been influenced by Gorillaz include Major Lazer, Dethklok, Rat Boy, Chromeo, Flume, Foster the People, The 1975, 5 Seconds of Summer, Awolnation, Paramore, Grimes, Kesha, A.G. Cook, Finneas, Oliver Tree, Flatbush Zombies, Vic Mensa, IDK, Trippie Redd, The Internet, ASAP Rocky, Lupe Fiasco, Brockhampton and Odd Future. Gorillaz have also influenced animated series such as The Amazing World of Gumball, Glitch Techs, Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Motorcity, Tron: Uprising, Teen Titans, and Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, as well as video games like Borderlands, Sunset Overdrive, No Straight Roads, Battlefield, and League of Legends.
Gorillaz have collaborated with a number of brands, including Motorola, O2, Internet Explorer 9, Converse, and Jaguar Cars. They have also been featured in fashion magazines such as Maxim, Nylon, and Numéro. The band's use of the internet and digital media for promotion as early as 2000 has been touched on in retrospective reviews for being ahead of its time. Dazed magazine has summarised Gorillaz's impact as "completely reinvent[ing] the notion of what a band could be".
Members
Virtual members
Murdoc Niccals – bass, drum machine (1998–present; hiatus 2018)
2-D – vocals, keyboards (1998–present)
Noodle – guitar, keyboards, vocals (1998–2006; 2010–present)
Russel Hobbs – drums, percussion (1998–2006; 2012–present)
Former virtual members
Paula Cracker – guitar (1998)
Cyborg Noodle – guitar, vocals (2008–10)
Ace – bass (2018)
Virtual members timeline
Touring members
Touring members timeline
Studio contributors
Damon Albarn – vocals, instrumentation, songwriting, production, executive production (1998–present)
Jamie Hewlett – songwriting, executive production, artwork, character design, video direction, visuals, FX (1998–present)
Stephen Sedgwick – mixing, engineering, production (2004–present)
Remi Kabaka Jr. – songwriting, production, percussion, drum programming (2015–present)
John Davis – mastering, engineering (2015–present)
Samuel Egglenton – assistance, engineering (2015–present)
Former studio contributors
Excluding small appearances by touring members.
Junior Dan – bass (1998–2001)
Jason Cox – production, percussion, drum programming, mixing, bass, additional guitars (1998–2010)
Simon Tong – additional guitar (2004–10)
Howie Weinberg – mastering, engineering (2004–10)
Mick Jones – guitars (2008–11)
Paul Simonon – bass (2008–11)
James Ford – instrumentation, songwriting, production (2018–20)
Studio contributors timeline
Discography
Studio albums
Gorillaz (2001)
Demon Days (2005)
Plastic Beach (2010)
The Fall (2010)
Humanz (2017)
The Now Now (2018)
Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez'' (2020)
Tours
Gorillaz Live (2001–2002)
Demon Days Live (2005–2006)
Escape to Plastic Beach Tour (2010)
Humanz Tour (2017–2018)
The Now Now Tour (2018)
Song Machine Tour (2021–2022)
Awards and nominations
Notes
References
External links
Gorillaz at Youtube
Animated musical groups
Recorded music characters
Musical groups established in 1998
English electronic music groups
English alternative rock groups
Electronica music groups
Trip hop groups
Fictional musical groups
English indie rock groups
Dance-rock musical groups
English hip hop groups
Rap rock groups
Alternative hip hop groups
British world music groups
English pop music groups
Brit Award winners
Grammy Award winners
MTV Europe Music Award winners
Parlophone artists
Virgin Records artists
Warner Records artists
1998 establishments in England
Bands with fictional stage personas
Warner Music Group artists
Art pop musicians
Virtual influencers | false | [
"What You Need is the tenth studio album by American contemporary R&B singer Stacy Lattisaw, released October 17, 1989 via Motown Records. It did not chart on the Billboard 200, but it peaked at #16 on the Billboard R&B chart. It was also Lattisaw's final album before she retired from the music industry.\n\nFour singles were released from the album: \"What You Need\", \"Where Do We Go from Here\", \"Dance for You\" and \"I Don't Have the Heart\". \"Where Do We Go from Here\" was the most successful single from the album, peaking at #1 on the Billboard R&B singles chart in 1990.\n\nTrack listing\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n \n\n1989 albums\nStacy Lattisaw albums\nAlbums produced by Timmy Regisford\nMotown albums",
"Ivy is the debut studio album by German singer Ivy Quainoo. Released by Warner Music on 2 March 2012 in German-speaking Europe following her win of the first series of The Voice of Germany, it features production by Marek Pompetzki, Paul NZA, Cecil Remmler, Ivo Moring, Thorsten Brötzmann, and Hoss Power. It charted in Austria, Germany and Switzerland, reaching the top 10 of both the German and the Swiss Albums Charts. Ivy spawned the singles \"Do You Like What You See\", \"You Got Me\" and \"Who You Are\".\n\nSingles\n\"Do You Like What You See\" was the first single released from the album. It was released on 3 February 2012. The song reached number 2 in Germany, number 8 in Austria and number 12 in Switzerland. \"You Got Me\" was released on 7 June 2012 as the second single from the album. The album's third and final single, \"Who You Are\", was released on 16 November 2012.\n\nPromotion\nIn support of the album, Quainoo embarked on The Ivy Quainoo Tour from May to June 2012. The opening act was Mic Donet.\n\nTrack listing\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nCertifications\n\nRelease history\n\nReferences\n\n2012 debut albums"
] |
[
"Gorillaz",
"Phase One: Celebrity Take Down (2000-03)",
"What did the album do in the charts?",
"No. 4 in the UK."
] | C_fb5dadfb60c6438eb0f8405024d25b1c_0 | Was this their first album? | 2 | Was "Celebrity Take Down" Gorillaz, Phase One first album? | Gorillaz | The band's first release was the EP Tomorrow Comes Today, released in 2000. The band's first single was "Clint Eastwood" and was released on 5 March 2001, reaching No. 4 in the UK. It was produced by hip hop producer Dan the Automator and originally featured UK rap group Phi Life Cypher, but the version that appears on the album features American rapper Del the Funky Homosapien, known on the album as Del tha' Ghost Rapper, a spirit in the band's drummer Russel Hobbs. The Phi Life Cypher version of "Clint Eastwood" appears on the B-side album G Sides. Later that same month, their first full-length album, the self-titled Gorillaz, was released, producing four singles: "Clint Eastwood", "19-2000", "Tomorrow Comes Today", and "Rock the House". In June 2001, "19-2000" charted at No. 6 in the UK, and the song was used as the title theme for EA Sports FIFA video game FIFA Football 2002. The end of the year brought the song "911", a collaboration between Gorillaz and hip hop group D12 (without Eminem) and Terry Hall about the September 11 attacks. Meanwhile, G Sides, a compilation of the B-sides from the Tomorrow Comes Today EP and first three singles, was released in Japan on 12 December 2001 and quickly followed with international releases in early 2002. Gorillaz performed at the 2002 Brit Awards in London on 22 February, appearing in 3D animation on four large screens along with rap accompaniment by Phi Life Cypher. The band were nominated for four Brit Awards, including Best British Group, Best British Album and British Breakthrough Act, but did not win any awards. In November 2002, a DVD titled Phase One: Celebrity Take Down was released, giving the phase its name. The DVD contains the four Phase One promos, the abandoned video for "5/4", the Charts of Darkness documentary, the five Gorilla Bitez (comedic shorts starring the band characters), a tour of the website by the MEL 9000 server and more. The DVD's menu was designed much like the band's website and depicts an abandoned Kong Studios. Rumours were circulating at this time that the Gorillaz team were busy preparing a film, but Hewlett said that the film project had been abandoned: "We lost all interest in doing it as soon as we started meeting with studios and talking to these Hollywood executive types, we just weren't on the same page. We said, fuck it, we'll sit on the idea until we can do it ourselves, and maybe even raise the money ourselves." CANNOTANSWER | Clint Eastwood | Gorillaz are an English virtual band created in 1998 by musician Damon Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett, from London, England. The band primarily consists of four animated members: 2-D (vocals, keyboards), Murdoc Niccals (bass guitar), Noodle (guitar, keyboards, vocals), and Russel Hobbs (drums). Their fictional universe is presented in music videos, interviews and short cartoons. Gorillaz' music often features collaborations with a wide range of featured artists, with Albarn as the only permanent musical contributor.
With Gorillaz, Albarn departed from the distinct Britpop of his band Blur, exploring a variety of musical styles including hip hop, electronic music and world music through an "eccentrically postmodern" approach. The band's 2001 debut album Gorillaz, which featured dub, Latin and punk influences, went triple platinum in the UK and double platinum in Europe, with sales driven by the success of the album's lead single "Clint Eastwood". Their second studio album, Demon Days (2005), went six times platinum in the UK and double platinum in the US and spawned the successful lead single "Feel Good Inc.".
The band's third album, Plastic Beach (2010), featured environmentalist themes, a synth-pop approach and an expanded roster of featured artists. Their fourth album, The Fall (2010), was recorded on the road during the Escape to Plastic Beach Tour and released on 25 December 2010. During 2015, Remi Kabaka Jr. became a music producer for the band after more than 10 years providing the voice of Russel and was credited as such alongside Albarn and Hewlett in the official 2019 documentary Gorillaz: Reject False Icons. The band's fifth album, Humanz, was released after a seven-year hiatus on 28 April 2017. Their sixth album, The Now Now (2018), featured stripped-down production and a greater musical focus on Albarn. Gorillaz' latest project is Song Machine, a music-based web series with episodes that consist of standalone singles and accompanying music videos featuring different guests each episode, resulting in their seventh album, Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez (2020).
Gorillaz has presented itself live in a variety of different ways throughout the band's history, such as hiding the touring band from the audience's view in the early years of the project, projecting animated band members on stage via computer graphics and traditional live touring featuring a fully visible live band. The band have sold over 25 million records worldwide and are cited by Guinness World Records as the world's "Most Successful Virtual Band". They have won a Grammy Award, two MTV Video Music Awards, an NME Award and three MTV Europe Music Awards. They have also been nominated for 11 Brit Awards and won Best British Group at the 2018 Brit Awards.
History
Creation (1990–1999)
Musician Damon Albarn and comic artist Jamie Hewlett met in 1990 when guitarist Graham Coxon, a fan of Hewlett's work, asked him to interview Blur, which Albarn and Coxon had recently formed. The interview was published in Deadline magazine, home of Hewlett's comic strip Tank Girl. Hewlett initially thought Albarn was "arsey, a wanker;" and despite becoming acquaintances with the band, they often did not get on, especially after Hewlett began seeing Coxon's ex-girlfriend Jane Olliver. Despite this, Albarn and Hewlett started sharing a flat on Westbourne Grove in London in 1997. Hewlett had recently broken up with Olliver and Albarn was at the end of his highly publicised relationship with Justine Frischmann of Elastica.
The idea to create Gorillaz came about when Albarn and Hewlett were watching MTV. Hewlett said, "If you watch MTV for too long, it's a bit like hell – there's nothing of substance there. So we got this idea for a virtual band, something that would be a comment on that." Albarn recalled the idea similarly, saying "This was the beginning of the sort of boy band explosion... and it just felt so manufactured. And we were like, well let's make a manufactured band but make it kind of interesting." The band originally identified themselves as "Gorilla" and the first song they recorded was "Ghost Train", which was later released as a B-side on their single "Rock the House". The band's visual style is thought to have evolved from The 16s, a rejected comic strip Hewlett conceived with Tank Girl co-creator Alan Martin.
Although not released under the Gorillaz name, Albarn has said that "one of the first ever Gorillaz tunes" was Blur's 1997 single "On Your Own", which was released for their fifth studio album Blur.
Gorillaz (2000–03)
From 1998 to 2000, Albarn recorded for Gorillaz' self-titled debut album at his newly opened Studio 13 in London as well as at Geejam Studios in Jamaica. The sessions resulted in the band's first release, the EP Tomorrow Comes Today, released on 27 November 2000. This EP consisted mostly of tracks which later appeared on the album, and it also included the band's first music video for "Tomorrow Comes Today", which introduced the virtual band members for the first time.
With Gorillaz, Albarn began to branch out into other genres which he had not explored with Blur, such as hip-hop, dub and Latin music, a process he described as liberating: "One of the reasons I began Gorillaz is I had a lot of rhythms I never thought I could use with Blur. A lot of that stuff never really seemed to manifest itself in the music we made together as Blur." Albarn originally began work on the album by himself, however eventually invited American hip-hop producer Dan "the Automator" Nakamura to serve as producer on the album, explaining "I called Dan the Automator in after I'd done more than half of it and felt it would benefit from having somebody else's focus. So I just rang him and asked whether he was interested in helping me finish it off." Nakamura and Albarn had recently collaborated on Deltron 3030, the debut album by the hip-hop supergroup of the same name featuring rapper Del the Funky Homosapien and DJ Kid Koala, both of whom Nakamura recruited to assist in finishing Gorillaz material. Del featured on two tracks on the album, including the lead single "Clint Eastwood", while Kid Koala contributed turntables to various tracks. The album featured additional collaborations with Ibrahim Ferrer of Buena Vista Social Club, Miho Hatori of Cibo Matto and Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club, representing a pattern of collaboration with a wide range of artists which later became a staple of Gorillaz as a project.
Gorillaz was released on 26 March 2001 and was a major commercial success, debuting at #3 on the UK Albums Chart and #14 on the US Billboard 200, going on to sell over 7 million copies worldwide, powered by the success of the "Clint Eastwood" single. The album was promoted with the singles "Clint Eastwood", "19-2000" and "Rock the House", in addition to the previously released "Tomorrow Comes Today", with each single featuring a music video directed by Hewlett starring the virtual members. Hewlett also helmed the design of the band's website, which was presented as an interactive tour of the band's fictional "Kong Studios" home and recording studio, featuring interactive games and explorative elements. Following the release of the album, the band embarked on a brief tour of Europe, Japan and the United States to support the album in which a touring band featuring Albarn played completely obscured behind a giant screen on which Hewlett's accompanying visuals were projected. The virtual band member's voice actors were also present at some shows and spoke live to the audience to give the impression that the fictional band was present on stage. In later interviews, Albarn described the band's first tour as difficult due to the limitations imposed by the band playing behind a screen: "For someone who had just spent the last ten years out front being a frontman [with Blur], it was a really weird experience. And I have to say, some nights I just wanted to get a knife and just cut [the screen] and stick my head through." The album was followed by the B-sides compilation G-Sides released in December 2001.
On 7 December 2001, the band released the single "911" a collaboration with hip hop group D12 (without Eminem) and singer Terry Hall of the Specials about the September 11 attacks. At the 2002 Brit Awards the virtual members of Gorillaz "performed" for the first time, appearing in 3D animation on four large screens along with rap accompaniment by Phi Life Cypher, a production which reportedly cost £300,000 to create. The band were nominated for four Brit Awards, including Best British Group, Best British Album and British Breakthrough Act, but did not win any awards.
On 1 July 2002, a remix album titled Laika Come Home was released, containing most of the tracks from Gorillaz remixed in dub and reggae style by the DJ group Spacemonkeyz. On 18 November 2002, the band released the DVD Phase One: Celebrity Take Down, which contained all of the band's released visual content up to that point along with other extras.
After the success of the debut album, Albarn and Hewlett briefly explored the possibility of creating a Gorillaz theatrical film, but Hewlett claimed the duo later lost interest: "We lost all interest in doing it as soon as we started meeting with studios and talking to these Hollywood executive types, we just weren't on the same page. We said, fuck it, we'll sit on the idea until we can do it ourselves, and maybe even raise the money ourselves."
Demon Days (2004–07)
Albarn spent the majority of 2003 on tour with Blur in support of their newly released album Think Tank; however, upon completion of the tour, he decided to return to Gorillaz, reuniting with Hewlett to prepare for a second album. Hewlett explained that the duo chose to continue Gorillaz to prove that the project was not "a gimmick": "If you do it again, it's no longer a gimmick, and if it works then we've proved a point." The result was Demon Days, released on 11 May 2005. The album was another major commercial success, debuting at No. 1 on the UK Albums Charts and #6 on the US Billboard 200, and has since gone six times platinum in the UK, double platinum in the United States, and triple platinum in Australia, outperforming sales of the first album and becoming the band's most successful album to date. The album's success was partially driven by the success of the lead single "Feel Good Inc." featuring hip-hop group De La Soul, which topped Billboard'''s Alternative Songs chart in the U.S. for eight consecutive weeks and was featured in a commercial for Apple's iPod. The album was also supported by the later singles "Dare", "Dirty Harry", and the double A-side "Kids with Guns" / "El Mañana".Demon Days found the band taking a darker tone, partially influenced by a train journey Albarn had taken with his family through impoverished rural China. Albarn described the album as a concept album: "The whole album kind of tells the story of the night — staying up during the night — but it's also an allegory. It's what we're living in basically, the world in a state of night." Believing that the album needed "a slightly different approach" compared to the first album, Albarn enlisted American producer Brian Burton, better known by his stage name Danger Mouse, to produce the album, whom Albarn praised as "one of the best young producers in the world" after hearing his 2004 mashup album The Grey Album. Burton felt he and Albarn had a high degree of affinity with each other, stating in an interview on the creation of the album: "We never had any arguments. We even have that finish-each-other's-sentences thing happening. There are a lot of the same influences between us, like Ennio Morricone and psychedelic pop-rock, but he has 10 years on me, so I have some catching up to do. Where he can school me on new wave and punk of the late ’70s/early ’80s, I can school him on a lot of hip-hop. We’re very competitive and pushed each other." Similar to the first album, Demon Days features collaborations with several different artists, including Bootie Brown, Shaun Ryder, Ike Turner, MF Doom (who was recording with Danger Mouse as Danger Doom at the time) and Martina Topley-Bird, among others.
The band chose to forgo traditional live touring in support of Demon Days, instead limiting live performance during the album cycle to a five night residency in November 2005 at the Manchester Opera House billed as Demon Days Live. The concerts saw the band performing the album in full each night with most featured artists from the album present. Unlike the debut album's tour, the touring band was visible on stage in view of the audience but obscured by lighting in such a way that only their silhouettes were visible, with a screen above the band displaying Hewlett's visuals alongside each song. The residency was later repeated in April 2006 at New York City's Apollo Theater and the Manchester performances were later released on DVD as Demon Days: Live at the Manchester Opera House.
The virtual Gorillaz members "performed" at the 2005 MTV Europe Music Awards in November 2005 and again at the 48th Annual Grammy Awards in February 2006, appearing to perform on stage via Musion Eyeliner technology. Albarn later expressed disappointment at the execution of the performance, citing the low volume level required so as to not disturb the technology: "That was tough... They started and it was so quiet cause they've got this piece of film that you've got to pull over the stage so any bass frequencies would just mess up the illusion completely." At the Grammys, the band won Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals for "Feel Good Inc.", which was also nominated for Record of the Year. Albarn and Hewlett explored the idea of producing a full "live holographic tour" featuring the virtual Gorillaz appearing on stage with Munsion Eyeliner technology after the Grammys performance, but the tour was ultimately never realised due to the tremendous expense and logistical issues that would have resulted.
In October 2006, the band released the book Rise of the Ogre. Presented as an autobiography of the band ostensibly written by the fictional members and expanding on the band's fictional backstory and universe, the book was actually written by official Gorillaz script writer and live drummer Cass Browne and featured new artwork by Hewlett. Later the same month, the band released another DVD, Phase Two: Slowboat to Hades, compiling much of the band's visual content from the album cycle. A second B-sides compilation, D-Sides was released in November 2007, featuring B-sides and remixes associated with Demon Days as well as unreleased tracks from the sessions for the album. In April 2009, the documentary film Bananaz was released. Directed by Ceri Levy, the film documents the behind-the-scenes history of the band from 2000 to 2006.
Plastic Beach and The Fall (2008–13)
Albarn and Hewlett's next project together was the opera Monkey: Journey to the West based on the classical Chinese novel Journey to the West, which premiered at the 2007 Manchester International Festival. While not officially a Gorillaz project, Albarn mentioned in an interview that the project was "Gorillaz, really but we can't call it that for legal reasons".
After completing work on Monkey in late 2007, Albarn and Hewlett began working on a new Gorillaz project entitled Carousel, described by Albarn as being about "the mystical aspects of Britain". Hewlett described Carousel in a 2008 interview as "even bigger and more difficult than Monkey... It's sort of like a film but not with one narrative story. There's many stories, told around a bigger story, set to music, and done in live action, animation, all different styles. Originally it was a film but now we think it's a film and it's a stage thing as well. Damon's written around 70 songs for it, and I’ve got great plans for the visuals." The Carousel concept was eventually dropped with Albarn and Hewlett's work evolving into the third Gorillaz studio album Plastic Beach.
Drawing upon environmentalist themes, Plastic Beach was inspired by the idea of a "secret floating island deep in the South Pacific... made up of the detritus, debris and washed up remnants of humanity" inspired by marine pollution such as plastic that Albarn had found in a beach near one of his homes in Devon as well as the Great Pacific garbage patch. Unlike previous Gorillaz albums, Albarn made the decision to produce Plastic Beach by himself, with no co-producer. The album was recorded throughout 2008 and 2009 in London, New York City and Syria although production of the album was briefly interrupted so that Albarn could join Blur for a reunion tour in the summer of 2009, with Albarn explaining "there's no way you can do that and that [Blur and Gorillaz] at the same time." Plastic Beach saw Gorillaz move into a more electronic pop sound, with Albarn describing the album as "the most pop record I've ever made" and saying that he took special care to make the album's lyrics and melodies clear and focused compared to previous albums. Plastic Beach also featured the largest cast of collaborators featured yet on a Gorillaz album, fulfilling Albarn's goal of "work[ing] with an incredibly eclectic, surprising cast of people" including artists such as Snoop Dogg, Mos Def, Bobby Womack, Little Dragon, Lou Reed and Gruff Rhys among others, and also included orchestral contributions from Sinfonia Viva and the Lebanese National Symphony Orchestra. Albarn explained the expanded roster of featured artists represented his and Hewlett's new vision of Gorillaz as a project, explaining in a July 2008 interview that "Gorillaz now to us is not like four animated characters any more – it's more like an organisation of people doing new projects... That's my ideal model."
Released on 3 March 2010, Plastic Beach debuted at #2 on both the UK Albums Chart and the US Billboard 200 chart, the band's highest placing debut chart position. The album was supported by the lead single "Stylo" featuring Mos Def and Bobby Womack released in January 2010 and the later singles "On Melancholy Hill" and "Rhinestone Eyes". To promote the album, the band embarked on the Escape to Plastic Beach Tour, the band's first world tour and also their first live performances in which the touring band performed fully in view of the audience on stage with no visual obstructions. The tour, which featured many of the collaborative artists from Plastic Beach and saw the touring band wearing naval attire, was later described by Albarn as having been extremely costly to produce, with the band barely breaking even on the shows, saying "I loved doing it, but economically it was a fucking disaster." The tour was preceded by headline performances at several international music festivals, including the Coachella and Glastonbury festivals. On 21 November 2010, while still on tour, the band released the non-album single "Doncamatic" featuring British singer Daley.
During the North American leg of the Escape to Plastic Beach tour in the fall of 2010, Albarn continued recording Gorillaz songs entirely on his iPad. The recordings were later released as the album The Fall, first released digitally on Christmas Day 2010 and later given a physical release on 19 April 2011. The Fall is also co-produced by Stephen Sedgwick, the mixer engineer of the band. Albarn said the album served as a diary of the American leg of the tour, explaining that the tracks were presented exactly as they were on the day they were written and recorded with no additional production or overdubs: "I literally made it on the road. I didn't write it before, I didn't prepare it. I just did it day by day as a kind of diary of my experience in America. If I left it until the New Year to release it then the cynics out there would say, 'Oh well, it's been tampered with', but if I put it out now they'd know that I haven't done anything because I've been on tour ever since." The band later released a "Gorillaz edition" of the Korg iElectribe music production app for iPad, featuring many of the same samples and sounds used by Albarn to create The Fall.
On 23 February 2012, Gorillaz released "DoYaThing", a single to promote a Gorillaz-branded collection of Converse shoes which were released shortly after. The song was a part of Converse's "Three Artists, One Song" project, with the two additional collaborators being James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem and André 3000 of Outkast. Two different edits of the song were released: a four-and-a-half minute radio edit released on Converse's website and the full 13-minute version of the song released on the Gorillaz website. Hewlett returned to direct the single's music video, featuring fictionalized animated versions of Murphy and André interacting with the Gorillaz' virtual members. The song received positive reviews from critics, with particular praise given to André 3000's contributions to the track.
In April 2012, Albarn told The Guardian that he and Hewlett had fallen out and that future Gorillaz projects were "unlikely". Tension between the two had been building, partly due to a belief held by Hewlett that his contributions to Gorillaz were being minimised. Speaking to The Guardian in April 2017, Hewlett explained: "Damon had half the Clash on stage, and Bobby Womack and Mos Def and De La Soul, and fucking Hypnotic Brass Ensemble and Bashy and everyone else. It was the greatest band ever. And the screen on stage behind them seemed to get smaller every day. I'd say, ‘Have we got a new screen?’ and the tour manager was like, ‘No, it's the same screen.’ Because it seemed to me like it was getting smaller." Albarn gave his side of the story in a separate interview, saying "I think we were at a cross purposes somewhat on that last record [Plastic Beach], which is a shame. It was one of those things, the music and the videos weren't working as well together, but I felt we'd made a really good record and I was into it." On 25 April 2012, in an interview with Metro, Albarn was more optimistic about Gorillaz' future, saying that once he had worked out his differences with Hewlett, he was sure that they would make another record. In June 2013, Hewlett confirmed that he and Albarn planned to someday continue Gorillaz and record a follow-up album to Plastic Beach, saying "We'll come back to it when the time is right."
Hiatus and Humanz (2014–17)
Following the release of DoYaThing and the publicization of Albarn and Hewlett's fall-out in 2012, Gorillaz entered a multiyear hiatus. During the hiatus, Albarn released a solo album, Everyday Robots, scored stage productions and continued to record and tour with Blur, while Hewlett held art exhibitions and attempted to create a film project which was ultimately never realized. While on tour in support of Everyday Robots in 2014, Albarn signaled openness to returning to Gorillaz, telling The National Post that he "wouldn't mind having another stab at a Gorillaz record". Two months later he reported that he had "been writing quite a lot of songs on the road for Gorillaz". and at the end of 2014 confirmed in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald that he was planning to record another Gorillaz album. Speaking about his relationship with Hewlett, Albarn said that the pair's well-publicised fall-out had helped their relationship in the long term. Hewlett described the moment when he and Albarn agreed to continue Gorillaz at an afterparty after one of Albarn's solo shows in 2014: "We'd had a bit to drink, and he said, 'Do you want to do another one?' And I said, 'Do you?' and he said, 'Do you?' And I said, 'Yeah, sure.' I started work on it straight away, learning to draw the characters again. I played around by myself for eight months while he was performing with Blur in 2015."
Recording sessions for the band's fifth studio album Humanz began in late 2015 and continued through 2016, taking place in London, New York City, Paris and Jamaica. Albarn enlisted American hip-hop and house producer Anthony Khan, known by his stage name the Twilite Tone, to co-produce the album. Albarn chose Khan from a list of possible producers compiled by Parlophone, the band's record label after Albarn and Khan spoke via Skype. Humanz was also co-produced by Remi Kabaka Jr., a friend of Albarn's who had worked with him in the non-profit musical organization Africa Express and also has been the voice actor for the Gorillaz virtual band member Russel Hobbs since 2000. In conceptualizing the album, Albarn and Khan envisioned Humanz as being the soundtrack for "a party for the end of the world", with Albarn specifically imagining a future in which Donald Trump won the 2016 U.S. presidential election as context for the album's narrative (Trump becoming president was still considered an unlikely event at the time of recording), explaining "Let's use that as a kind of dark fantasy for this record, let's imagine the night Donald Trump wins the election and how we're all going to feel that night." Khan stated that "The idea of Donald Trump being president allowed us to create a narrative together. I suggested that the album should be about joy, pain and urgency. That was to be our state of mind before we even touched a keyboard or an MPC. Especially in American music, dare I say black music, there's a way of communicating joy that at the same time allows you to feel the struggle the person has been through. And the urgency is there because something needs to be done. So that was the mantra. I wanted to blend Damon, a Briton, with the joy and pain and struggle that African-American music can express." Humanz again featured a large cast of featured artists, including Popcaan, Vince Staples, DRAM, Jehnny Beth, Pusha T, Peven Everett, Danny Brown, Grace Jones and Mavis Staples, among others. The first track from the album released publicly was "Hallelujah Money" featuring Benjamin Clementine, released on 20 January 2017 with an accompanying video featuring Clementine. While not an official single, Albarn explained that the band chose to release the track on the day of Trump's inauguration because "It was meant to be something sung at the imaginary inauguration of Donald Trump, which turned out to be the real inauguration of Donald Trump, so we released it because we had imagined that happening and it did happen."Humanz was released on 28 April 2017, the band's first new studio album in 7 years. Featuring a "modern-sounding urban hip-hop/R&B sensibility", the album debuted at #2 on both the UK Album charts and the US Billboard 200. Humanz received generally positive reviews from critics, although received some criticism from fans and critics for what was perceived as a diminished presence from Albarn in contrast to the abundance of featured artists. The album was released in both standard and deluxe editions, with the deluxe edition featuring an additional 6 bonus tracks and was promoted by the lead single "Saturnz Barz" featuring Popcaan and the later single "Strobelite" featuring Peven Everett. The Hewlett-directed music video for "Saturnz Barz" made use of YouTube's 360-degree video format and reportedly cost $800,000 to create.
The band embarked on the Humanz Tour to support the album from the summer of 2017 to early 2018. Like the band's previous tour, the Humanz Tour featured the touring band in full view of the audience with a large screen behind them displaying Hewlett-created visuals and featured several of the different collaborative artists from the band's history. The tour was preceded by a handful of European warm-up shows, including the first Demon Dayz Festival held on 10 June 2017 at the Dreamland Margate theme park, a Gorillaz curated music festival which was later repeated in Los Angeles in October 2018. On 8 June 2017 the band released the non-album single "Sleeping Powder" with an accompanying music video and on 3 November 2017 a "Super Deluxe" version of Humanz, featuring an additional 14 unreleased tracks from the album's sessions, including alternative versions of previously released songs as well as the single "Garage Palace" featuring Little Simz.
The Now Now (2018–19)
Albarn continued recording while on the road during the Humanz Tour, and mentioned in an interview with Q Magazine in September 2017 that he was planning on releasing the material as a future Gorillaz album. Comparing the production of the album to The Fall, which was also recorded while the band was on tour, Albarn mentioned that "It will be a more complete record than The Fall, but hopefully have that spontaneity." Albarn signaled his desire to complete and release the album quickly, adding that "I really like the idea of making new music and playing it live almost simultaneously" and "If we're going to do more Gorillaz we don't want to wait seven years because, y'know, we're getting on a bit now. The band later debuted a new song "Idaho", which was later included on the album, at a concert in Seattle on 30 September 2017 with Albarn saying it had been written in the days prior.
During a break in the Humanz Tour in February 2018, Albarn returned to London where he worked with producer James Ford, known for his work with Arctic Monkeys and Florence and the Machine, and Kabaka Jr. to finish the newly written material, resulting in the band's sixth studio album The Now Now released on 29 June 2018. Featuring "simple, mostly upbeat songs" and 1980s new wave influences, the album was noted for its distinctly small list of featured artists compared to previous Gorillaz work, with only two tracks featuring any outside artists (the album's lead single "Humility" featuring George Benson and "Hollywood" featuring Snoop Dogg and Jamie Principle). Albarn mentioned that the few numbers of featured artists was partially due to the album's quick production, which in turn was a result of Albarn wanting to finish the album before the band's touring schedule resumed: "We've been very lucky to be offered all the festivals this year on the back of the last record [Humanz]... but I didn't want to do that unless I had something new to work with, so the only option was to make another record really quickly and not have lots of guests on it, because that takes a long time to organize; just do it all myself, really." Albarn also explained that with The Now Now he sought to make a Gorillaz album "where I'm just singing for once" and that the album is "pretty much just me singing, very sort of in the world of 2-D."
In the fictional Gorillaz storyline, the band introduced Ace from Cartoon Network's animated series The Powerpuff Girls as a temporary bassist of the band during The Now Now album cycle, filling in for the imprisoned Murdoc Niccals. Explaining the crossover in an interview with the BBC, Albarn said "We were massive fans of The Powerpuff Girls when they came out, the energy of that cartoon was really cool, and we kind of know the creator of it (Craig McCracken). It was a very organic thing."
The band's remaining 2018 live dates were billed as The Now Now Tour to support the album, and included a performance in Tokyo on 22 June 2018 billed as "The Now Now World Premiere" in which the band played the full album live for the first and only time, a performance which was later broadcast by Boiler Room. On 16 December 2019, the documentary Gorillaz: Reject False Icons was screened worldwide on a one-day theatrical release. Filmed and directed by Hewlett's son Denholm, the documentary showcases a behind-the-scenes look at the production of Humanz and The Now Now as well as the album's associated tours. One week after the film's theatrical release, a "Director's Cut" version of the film featuring additional footage was released on the official Gorillaz YouTube channel in three parts. In the credits for Reject False Icons, Kabaka Jr. was listed as an official member of the band (labeled as "A&R/Producer") alongside Albarn and Hewlett for the first time.
Song Machine project and Meanwhile EP (2020–present)
On 29 January 2020, the band announced its new project, Song Machine. Eschewing the typical album format of releasing music, Song Machine is instead a web series that sees the band releasing one new song a month as "episodes" to the series, with 11 episodes releasing to comprise the first "season". Elaborating on the idea behind Song Machine in a radio interview shortly after the announcement of the project, Albarn explained that "We no longer kind of see ourselves as constrained to making albums. We can now make episodes and seasons." Each episode features previously unannounced guest musicians on new Gorillaz material, with the first being "Momentary Bliss", which was released on 31 January and features both British rapper Slowthai and the Kent-based punk rock duo Slaves.
Upon the premiere of "Momentary Bliss", Albarn revealed that the group had been in the studio with Schoolboy Q and Sampa the Great among others, although he did say that these songs were likely to be saved for future episodes of Song Machine. The group also teased a possible collaboration with Australian band Tame Impala on Instagram.
On 27 February, the band released the second episode of Song Machine entitled "Désolé". The song features Malian singer Fatoumata Diawara. The third episode, "Aries", released on 9 April and featured Peter Hook and Georgia. The fourth track "How Far?" featuring Tony Allen and Skepta was released 2 May. This song was released without an accompanying music video as a tribute to Allen, who died on 30 April.
On 26 May, Gorillaz announced the release of a new book titled Gorillaz Almanac. The book comes in three editions: standard, deluxe and super deluxe, all of which are set to release on 23 October but has since been delayed to 22 December with a physical release of season one of Song Machine included with each copy.
On 9 June, the band released "Friday 13th", the fourth episode of Song Machine. The track features French-British rapper Octavian.
On 20 July, the band released "Pac-Man", the fifth episode of Song Machine, in honour of Pac-Man's 40th anniversary. The track features American rapper Schoolboy Q.
On 9 September, the band released "Strange Timez", the sixth episode of Song Machine. The track features Robert Smith, from the Cure. Gorillaz also announced the title and tracklist for Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez, released on 23 October 2020, featuring further guest appearances from Elton John, 6lack, JPEGMafia, Kano, Roxani Arias, Moonchild Sanelly and Chai, among others.
On 1 October, the band released "The Pink Phantom", the seventh episode of Song Machine. The track features Elton John and American rapper 6lack.
Before the release of Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez, Gorillaz started a radio show on Apple Music called Song Machine Radio where each virtual character has a turn to invite special guests and play some of their favourite tunes.
A few days from the release of Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez, Albarn confirmed that the band already has a song for Season Two of Song Machine prepared for release, and also mentioned that the second part of the project will be released earlier than expected.
On 5 November, the band released "The Valley of the Pagans", the eighth episode of Song Machine. The track features American singer Beck. The music video is somewhat notorious for being the first major studio production filmed in Grand Theft Auto V. The video ends with a reference to previous album, Plastic Beach. For unknown reasons, the music video on the official Gorillaz YouTube channel was set to private just a few days after its initial premiere. On 9 March 2021, Gorillaz uploaded an alternative version of the music video to their official YouTube channel, which does not feature any gameplay from Grand Theft Auto V.
On 24 December, the band released "The Lost Chord", the ninth and final episode of the first season of Song Machine. The track features British musician Leee John.
On 26 March 2021, the band celebrated its debut album's 20th anniversary with oncoming reissues of their catalog and teases of non-fungible tokens; due to its impact on climate change, the latter was met with criticism by various sources and fans—some noting that the act contradicts the environmental themes of Plastic Beach. The band also announced a boxset, the G Collection, containing six of their studio albums—excluding The Fall—for Record Store Day.
On 10 August 2021, Gorillaz debuted three new songs, "Meanwhile" (featuring British rapper Jelani Blackman), "Jimmy Jimmy" (featuring British rapper AJ Tracey), and "Déjà Vu" (featuring Jamaican-British singer Alicaì Harley), during a free concert at The O2 Arena in London, England exclusively for National Health Service employees and their families. They then performed them again at the subsequent concert open to the public the next day (both of which served as the first live audience concerts of the Song Machine Tour). These three songs were announced to be tracks from a new EP entitled Meanwhile, with the cover originally published on TikTok.
On 17 September 2021, Albarn revealed that he had recorded a new Gorillaz song with Bad Bunny while in Jamaica, and it will be the first single for a new album, influenced by Latin America, releasing next year.
Style and legacy
Writers and critics have variously described Gorillaz as art pop, alternative rock, hip hop, electronic, trip hop, pop, dark pop, alternative hip hop, rap rock, indie rock, bedroom pop, dance-rock, new wave, funk, worldbeat, and experimental rock. The band's aesthetic and general approach has been described as postmodern. According to AllMusic, Gorillaz blend Britpop and hip-hop, while The Guardian described the band as "a sort of dub/hip-hop/lo-fi indie/world music hybrid". According to PopMatters, the band's early work foreshadowed "the melding of hip-hop, rock, and electronic elements in pop music" that grew in significance in the next decade.
Gorillaz’ main musical influences include Massive Attack, the Specials, Big Audio Dynamite, Public Image Ltd, Tom Tom Club, Fun Boy Three, Unkle, A Tribe Called Quest, and De La Soul, as well as The Human League, The Kinks, XTC, Simple Minds, Sonic Youth, Pavement, Ween, Portishead, Beck, Wire, Fela Kuti, Sly and the Family Stone, Earth Wind and Fire, Augustus Pablo, Zapp, and DJ Kool Herc. Gorillaz’ primary visual influences include Hanna-Barbera, Looney Tunes, Mad magazine, The Simpsons, 2000 AD, and Métal hurlant (Heavy Metal). Furthermore, Hewlett has also cited European artists such as Carl Giles, Ronald Searle, Moebius, Tanino Liberatore, Mike McMahon, and Brendan McCarthy. The idea for Gorillaz was inspired by the many cartoon bands that came before them in the 1960s such as the Banana Splits, the Archies, Josie and the Pussycats, and Alvin and the Chipmunks, and real bands with fictional stage personas like ABC (circa How to Be a ... Zillionaire!) and Silicon Teens.Charts of Darkness. Dazed Film & TV (2001)
Musical artists who have been influenced by Gorillaz include Major Lazer, Dethklok, Rat Boy, Chromeo, Flume, Foster the People, The 1975, 5 Seconds of Summer, Awolnation, Paramore, Grimes, Kesha, A.G. Cook, Finneas, Oliver Tree, Flatbush Zombies, Vic Mensa, IDK, Trippie Redd, The Internet, ASAP Rocky, Lupe Fiasco, Brockhampton and Odd Future. Gorillaz have also influenced animated series such as The Amazing World of Gumball, Glitch Techs, Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Motorcity, Tron: Uprising, Teen Titans, and Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, as well as video games like Borderlands, Sunset Overdrive, No Straight Roads, Battlefield, and League of Legends.
Gorillaz have collaborated with a number of brands, including Motorola, O2, Internet Explorer 9, Converse, and Jaguar Cars. They have also been featured in fashion magazines such as Maxim, Nylon, and Numéro. The band's use of the internet and digital media for promotion as early as 2000 has been touched on in retrospective reviews for being ahead of its time. Dazed magazine has summarised Gorillaz's impact as "completely reinvent[ing] the notion of what a band could be".
Members
Virtual members
Murdoc Niccals – bass, drum machine (1998–present; hiatus 2018)
2-D – vocals, keyboards (1998–present)
Noodle – guitar, keyboards, vocals (1998–2006; 2010–present)
Russel Hobbs – drums, percussion (1998–2006; 2012–present)
Former virtual members
Paula Cracker – guitar (1998)
Cyborg Noodle – guitar, vocals (2008–10)
Ace – bass (2018)
Virtual members timeline
Touring members
Touring members timeline
Studio contributors
Damon Albarn – vocals, instrumentation, songwriting, production, executive production (1998–present)
Jamie Hewlett – songwriting, executive production, artwork, character design, video direction, visuals, FX (1998–present)
Stephen Sedgwick – mixing, engineering, production (2004–present)
Remi Kabaka Jr. – songwriting, production, percussion, drum programming (2015–present)
John Davis – mastering, engineering (2015–present)
Samuel Egglenton – assistance, engineering (2015–present)
Former studio contributors
Excluding small appearances by touring members.
Junior Dan – bass (1998–2001)
Jason Cox – production, percussion, drum programming, mixing, bass, additional guitars (1998–2010)
Simon Tong – additional guitar (2004–10)
Howie Weinberg – mastering, engineering (2004–10)
Mick Jones – guitars (2008–11)
Paul Simonon – bass (2008–11)
James Ford – instrumentation, songwriting, production (2018–20)
Studio contributors timeline
Discography
Studio albums
Gorillaz (2001)
Demon Days (2005)
Plastic Beach (2010)
The Fall (2010)
Humanz (2017)
The Now Now (2018)
Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez'' (2020)
Tours
Gorillaz Live (2001–2002)
Demon Days Live (2005–2006)
Escape to Plastic Beach Tour (2010)
Humanz Tour (2017–2018)
The Now Now Tour (2018)
Song Machine Tour (2021–2022)
Awards and nominations
Notes
References
External links
Gorillaz at Youtube
Animated musical groups
Recorded music characters
Musical groups established in 1998
English electronic music groups
English alternative rock groups
Electronica music groups
Trip hop groups
Fictional musical groups
English indie rock groups
Dance-rock musical groups
English hip hop groups
Rap rock groups
Alternative hip hop groups
British world music groups
English pop music groups
Brit Award winners
Grammy Award winners
MTV Europe Music Award winners
Parlophone artists
Virgin Records artists
Warner Records artists
1998 establishments in England
Bands with fictional stage personas
Warner Music Group artists
Art pop musicians
Virtual influencers | true | [
"Parade is the seventeenth studio album by Japanese pop band Deen. It was released on 9 August 2017 under the Epic Records Japan label.\n\nBackground\nIt was released as \"25th debut anniversary's memorial album.\"\n\nThis album consist of two previously released singles, and . Both of these tracks and coupling song Shounen (from their single Love Forever, 1995) had received renewed album mixes and recordings with subtitles Album version and Parade Style.\n\nThe track Kizuna was released as digital single week before album release. Ex. member of Japanese pop band Garnet Crow, Hirohito Furui participated in recording production as an arranger (along with Kimi he no Parade) for first time since 2013.\n\nTheir only single which was released in 2016, Kioku no Kage didn't make it in this album, instead it was released in their compilation album DEEN The Best FOREVER Complete Singles++.\n\nShinji and Kouji in this album performs their own original songs Sensual Blues and Summer boy's tears.\n\nThis album was released in three formats: regular CD edition and limited A/B CD+DVD edition. The limited A edition includes BD footage of their live performance Deen Live Joy - Countdown Special- ~Maniac Night~ Vol.3. The limited B edition includes DVD with two music video clips from the album included singles and their making shoots.\n\nCharting\nThe album reached #22 in its first week and charted for 3 weeks.\n\nTrack listing\n\nReferences\n\nSony Music albums\nJapanese-language albums\n2017 albums\nDeen (band) albums",
"Alli Mia Fora (Greek: Άλλη μια φορά; ) is the final album by Greek musical group Antique. The album was released in November 2002 by V2 Records and it became gold in Greece, their first album to do so. In 2003, many of the songs from this album were included in English on their Swedish release titled Blue Love.\n\nTrack listing\n\nSingles\n\"Alli Mia Fora\"\nThe first single from the album was \"Alli Mia Fora\". The music video was directed by Kostas Kapetanidis. It was released as an English version called \"Time to Say Goodbye\" on their follow-up album Blue Love\n\n\"Moro Mou\"\nThe second single from the album was \"Moro Mou\". A mixed Greek and English version was released from Blue Love called \"Moro Mou (My Baby)\".\n\nExternal links \ninfo-grece.com\nLyrics\n\nAntique (band) albums\n2003 albums\nGreek-language albums\nV2 Records albums"
] |
[
"Gorillaz",
"Phase One: Celebrity Take Down (2000-03)",
"What did the album do in the charts?",
"No. 4 in the UK.",
"Was this their first album?",
"Clint Eastwood"
] | C_fb5dadfb60c6438eb0f8405024d25b1c_0 | Are there any other interesting aspects about this article? | 3 | Besides ranking No. 4 in the UK, are there any other interesting aspects about this article? | Gorillaz | The band's first release was the EP Tomorrow Comes Today, released in 2000. The band's first single was "Clint Eastwood" and was released on 5 March 2001, reaching No. 4 in the UK. It was produced by hip hop producer Dan the Automator and originally featured UK rap group Phi Life Cypher, but the version that appears on the album features American rapper Del the Funky Homosapien, known on the album as Del tha' Ghost Rapper, a spirit in the band's drummer Russel Hobbs. The Phi Life Cypher version of "Clint Eastwood" appears on the B-side album G Sides. Later that same month, their first full-length album, the self-titled Gorillaz, was released, producing four singles: "Clint Eastwood", "19-2000", "Tomorrow Comes Today", and "Rock the House". In June 2001, "19-2000" charted at No. 6 in the UK, and the song was used as the title theme for EA Sports FIFA video game FIFA Football 2002. The end of the year brought the song "911", a collaboration between Gorillaz and hip hop group D12 (without Eminem) and Terry Hall about the September 11 attacks. Meanwhile, G Sides, a compilation of the B-sides from the Tomorrow Comes Today EP and first three singles, was released in Japan on 12 December 2001 and quickly followed with international releases in early 2002. Gorillaz performed at the 2002 Brit Awards in London on 22 February, appearing in 3D animation on four large screens along with rap accompaniment by Phi Life Cypher. The band were nominated for four Brit Awards, including Best British Group, Best British Album and British Breakthrough Act, but did not win any awards. In November 2002, a DVD titled Phase One: Celebrity Take Down was released, giving the phase its name. The DVD contains the four Phase One promos, the abandoned video for "5/4", the Charts of Darkness documentary, the five Gorilla Bitez (comedic shorts starring the band characters), a tour of the website by the MEL 9000 server and more. The DVD's menu was designed much like the band's website and depicts an abandoned Kong Studios. Rumours were circulating at this time that the Gorillaz team were busy preparing a film, but Hewlett said that the film project had been abandoned: "We lost all interest in doing it as soon as we started meeting with studios and talking to these Hollywood executive types, we just weren't on the same page. We said, fuck it, we'll sit on the idea until we can do it ourselves, and maybe even raise the money ourselves." CANNOTANSWER | originally featured UK rap group Phi Life Cypher, | Gorillaz are an English virtual band created in 1998 by musician Damon Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett, from London, England. The band primarily consists of four animated members: 2-D (vocals, keyboards), Murdoc Niccals (bass guitar), Noodle (guitar, keyboards, vocals), and Russel Hobbs (drums). Their fictional universe is presented in music videos, interviews and short cartoons. Gorillaz' music often features collaborations with a wide range of featured artists, with Albarn as the only permanent musical contributor.
With Gorillaz, Albarn departed from the distinct Britpop of his band Blur, exploring a variety of musical styles including hip hop, electronic music and world music through an "eccentrically postmodern" approach. The band's 2001 debut album Gorillaz, which featured dub, Latin and punk influences, went triple platinum in the UK and double platinum in Europe, with sales driven by the success of the album's lead single "Clint Eastwood". Their second studio album, Demon Days (2005), went six times platinum in the UK and double platinum in the US and spawned the successful lead single "Feel Good Inc.".
The band's third album, Plastic Beach (2010), featured environmentalist themes, a synth-pop approach and an expanded roster of featured artists. Their fourth album, The Fall (2010), was recorded on the road during the Escape to Plastic Beach Tour and released on 25 December 2010. During 2015, Remi Kabaka Jr. became a music producer for the band after more than 10 years providing the voice of Russel and was credited as such alongside Albarn and Hewlett in the official 2019 documentary Gorillaz: Reject False Icons. The band's fifth album, Humanz, was released after a seven-year hiatus on 28 April 2017. Their sixth album, The Now Now (2018), featured stripped-down production and a greater musical focus on Albarn. Gorillaz' latest project is Song Machine, a music-based web series with episodes that consist of standalone singles and accompanying music videos featuring different guests each episode, resulting in their seventh album, Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez (2020).
Gorillaz has presented itself live in a variety of different ways throughout the band's history, such as hiding the touring band from the audience's view in the early years of the project, projecting animated band members on stage via computer graphics and traditional live touring featuring a fully visible live band. The band have sold over 25 million records worldwide and are cited by Guinness World Records as the world's "Most Successful Virtual Band". They have won a Grammy Award, two MTV Video Music Awards, an NME Award and three MTV Europe Music Awards. They have also been nominated for 11 Brit Awards and won Best British Group at the 2018 Brit Awards.
History
Creation (1990–1999)
Musician Damon Albarn and comic artist Jamie Hewlett met in 1990 when guitarist Graham Coxon, a fan of Hewlett's work, asked him to interview Blur, which Albarn and Coxon had recently formed. The interview was published in Deadline magazine, home of Hewlett's comic strip Tank Girl. Hewlett initially thought Albarn was "arsey, a wanker;" and despite becoming acquaintances with the band, they often did not get on, especially after Hewlett began seeing Coxon's ex-girlfriend Jane Olliver. Despite this, Albarn and Hewlett started sharing a flat on Westbourne Grove in London in 1997. Hewlett had recently broken up with Olliver and Albarn was at the end of his highly publicised relationship with Justine Frischmann of Elastica.
The idea to create Gorillaz came about when Albarn and Hewlett were watching MTV. Hewlett said, "If you watch MTV for too long, it's a bit like hell – there's nothing of substance there. So we got this idea for a virtual band, something that would be a comment on that." Albarn recalled the idea similarly, saying "This was the beginning of the sort of boy band explosion... and it just felt so manufactured. And we were like, well let's make a manufactured band but make it kind of interesting." The band originally identified themselves as "Gorilla" and the first song they recorded was "Ghost Train", which was later released as a B-side on their single "Rock the House". The band's visual style is thought to have evolved from The 16s, a rejected comic strip Hewlett conceived with Tank Girl co-creator Alan Martin.
Although not released under the Gorillaz name, Albarn has said that "one of the first ever Gorillaz tunes" was Blur's 1997 single "On Your Own", which was released for their fifth studio album Blur.
Gorillaz (2000–03)
From 1998 to 2000, Albarn recorded for Gorillaz' self-titled debut album at his newly opened Studio 13 in London as well as at Geejam Studios in Jamaica. The sessions resulted in the band's first release, the EP Tomorrow Comes Today, released on 27 November 2000. This EP consisted mostly of tracks which later appeared on the album, and it also included the band's first music video for "Tomorrow Comes Today", which introduced the virtual band members for the first time.
With Gorillaz, Albarn began to branch out into other genres which he had not explored with Blur, such as hip-hop, dub and Latin music, a process he described as liberating: "One of the reasons I began Gorillaz is I had a lot of rhythms I never thought I could use with Blur. A lot of that stuff never really seemed to manifest itself in the music we made together as Blur." Albarn originally began work on the album by himself, however eventually invited American hip-hop producer Dan "the Automator" Nakamura to serve as producer on the album, explaining "I called Dan the Automator in after I'd done more than half of it and felt it would benefit from having somebody else's focus. So I just rang him and asked whether he was interested in helping me finish it off." Nakamura and Albarn had recently collaborated on Deltron 3030, the debut album by the hip-hop supergroup of the same name featuring rapper Del the Funky Homosapien and DJ Kid Koala, both of whom Nakamura recruited to assist in finishing Gorillaz material. Del featured on two tracks on the album, including the lead single "Clint Eastwood", while Kid Koala contributed turntables to various tracks. The album featured additional collaborations with Ibrahim Ferrer of Buena Vista Social Club, Miho Hatori of Cibo Matto and Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club, representing a pattern of collaboration with a wide range of artists which later became a staple of Gorillaz as a project.
Gorillaz was released on 26 March 2001 and was a major commercial success, debuting at #3 on the UK Albums Chart and #14 on the US Billboard 200, going on to sell over 7 million copies worldwide, powered by the success of the "Clint Eastwood" single. The album was promoted with the singles "Clint Eastwood", "19-2000" and "Rock the House", in addition to the previously released "Tomorrow Comes Today", with each single featuring a music video directed by Hewlett starring the virtual members. Hewlett also helmed the design of the band's website, which was presented as an interactive tour of the band's fictional "Kong Studios" home and recording studio, featuring interactive games and explorative elements. Following the release of the album, the band embarked on a brief tour of Europe, Japan and the United States to support the album in which a touring band featuring Albarn played completely obscured behind a giant screen on which Hewlett's accompanying visuals were projected. The virtual band member's voice actors were also present at some shows and spoke live to the audience to give the impression that the fictional band was present on stage. In later interviews, Albarn described the band's first tour as difficult due to the limitations imposed by the band playing behind a screen: "For someone who had just spent the last ten years out front being a frontman [with Blur], it was a really weird experience. And I have to say, some nights I just wanted to get a knife and just cut [the screen] and stick my head through." The album was followed by the B-sides compilation G-Sides released in December 2001.
On 7 December 2001, the band released the single "911" a collaboration with hip hop group D12 (without Eminem) and singer Terry Hall of the Specials about the September 11 attacks. At the 2002 Brit Awards the virtual members of Gorillaz "performed" for the first time, appearing in 3D animation on four large screens along with rap accompaniment by Phi Life Cypher, a production which reportedly cost £300,000 to create. The band were nominated for four Brit Awards, including Best British Group, Best British Album and British Breakthrough Act, but did not win any awards.
On 1 July 2002, a remix album titled Laika Come Home was released, containing most of the tracks from Gorillaz remixed in dub and reggae style by the DJ group Spacemonkeyz. On 18 November 2002, the band released the DVD Phase One: Celebrity Take Down, which contained all of the band's released visual content up to that point along with other extras.
After the success of the debut album, Albarn and Hewlett briefly explored the possibility of creating a Gorillaz theatrical film, but Hewlett claimed the duo later lost interest: "We lost all interest in doing it as soon as we started meeting with studios and talking to these Hollywood executive types, we just weren't on the same page. We said, fuck it, we'll sit on the idea until we can do it ourselves, and maybe even raise the money ourselves."
Demon Days (2004–07)
Albarn spent the majority of 2003 on tour with Blur in support of their newly released album Think Tank; however, upon completion of the tour, he decided to return to Gorillaz, reuniting with Hewlett to prepare for a second album. Hewlett explained that the duo chose to continue Gorillaz to prove that the project was not "a gimmick": "If you do it again, it's no longer a gimmick, and if it works then we've proved a point." The result was Demon Days, released on 11 May 2005. The album was another major commercial success, debuting at No. 1 on the UK Albums Charts and #6 on the US Billboard 200, and has since gone six times platinum in the UK, double platinum in the United States, and triple platinum in Australia, outperforming sales of the first album and becoming the band's most successful album to date. The album's success was partially driven by the success of the lead single "Feel Good Inc." featuring hip-hop group De La Soul, which topped Billboard'''s Alternative Songs chart in the U.S. for eight consecutive weeks and was featured in a commercial for Apple's iPod. The album was also supported by the later singles "Dare", "Dirty Harry", and the double A-side "Kids with Guns" / "El Mañana".Demon Days found the band taking a darker tone, partially influenced by a train journey Albarn had taken with his family through impoverished rural China. Albarn described the album as a concept album: "The whole album kind of tells the story of the night — staying up during the night — but it's also an allegory. It's what we're living in basically, the world in a state of night." Believing that the album needed "a slightly different approach" compared to the first album, Albarn enlisted American producer Brian Burton, better known by his stage name Danger Mouse, to produce the album, whom Albarn praised as "one of the best young producers in the world" after hearing his 2004 mashup album The Grey Album. Burton felt he and Albarn had a high degree of affinity with each other, stating in an interview on the creation of the album: "We never had any arguments. We even have that finish-each-other's-sentences thing happening. There are a lot of the same influences between us, like Ennio Morricone and psychedelic pop-rock, but he has 10 years on me, so I have some catching up to do. Where he can school me on new wave and punk of the late ’70s/early ’80s, I can school him on a lot of hip-hop. We’re very competitive and pushed each other." Similar to the first album, Demon Days features collaborations with several different artists, including Bootie Brown, Shaun Ryder, Ike Turner, MF Doom (who was recording with Danger Mouse as Danger Doom at the time) and Martina Topley-Bird, among others.
The band chose to forgo traditional live touring in support of Demon Days, instead limiting live performance during the album cycle to a five night residency in November 2005 at the Manchester Opera House billed as Demon Days Live. The concerts saw the band performing the album in full each night with most featured artists from the album present. Unlike the debut album's tour, the touring band was visible on stage in view of the audience but obscured by lighting in such a way that only their silhouettes were visible, with a screen above the band displaying Hewlett's visuals alongside each song. The residency was later repeated in April 2006 at New York City's Apollo Theater and the Manchester performances were later released on DVD as Demon Days: Live at the Manchester Opera House.
The virtual Gorillaz members "performed" at the 2005 MTV Europe Music Awards in November 2005 and again at the 48th Annual Grammy Awards in February 2006, appearing to perform on stage via Musion Eyeliner technology. Albarn later expressed disappointment at the execution of the performance, citing the low volume level required so as to not disturb the technology: "That was tough... They started and it was so quiet cause they've got this piece of film that you've got to pull over the stage so any bass frequencies would just mess up the illusion completely." At the Grammys, the band won Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals for "Feel Good Inc.", which was also nominated for Record of the Year. Albarn and Hewlett explored the idea of producing a full "live holographic tour" featuring the virtual Gorillaz appearing on stage with Munsion Eyeliner technology after the Grammys performance, but the tour was ultimately never realised due to the tremendous expense and logistical issues that would have resulted.
In October 2006, the band released the book Rise of the Ogre. Presented as an autobiography of the band ostensibly written by the fictional members and expanding on the band's fictional backstory and universe, the book was actually written by official Gorillaz script writer and live drummer Cass Browne and featured new artwork by Hewlett. Later the same month, the band released another DVD, Phase Two: Slowboat to Hades, compiling much of the band's visual content from the album cycle. A second B-sides compilation, D-Sides was released in November 2007, featuring B-sides and remixes associated with Demon Days as well as unreleased tracks from the sessions for the album. In April 2009, the documentary film Bananaz was released. Directed by Ceri Levy, the film documents the behind-the-scenes history of the band from 2000 to 2006.
Plastic Beach and The Fall (2008–13)
Albarn and Hewlett's next project together was the opera Monkey: Journey to the West based on the classical Chinese novel Journey to the West, which premiered at the 2007 Manchester International Festival. While not officially a Gorillaz project, Albarn mentioned in an interview that the project was "Gorillaz, really but we can't call it that for legal reasons".
After completing work on Monkey in late 2007, Albarn and Hewlett began working on a new Gorillaz project entitled Carousel, described by Albarn as being about "the mystical aspects of Britain". Hewlett described Carousel in a 2008 interview as "even bigger and more difficult than Monkey... It's sort of like a film but not with one narrative story. There's many stories, told around a bigger story, set to music, and done in live action, animation, all different styles. Originally it was a film but now we think it's a film and it's a stage thing as well. Damon's written around 70 songs for it, and I’ve got great plans for the visuals." The Carousel concept was eventually dropped with Albarn and Hewlett's work evolving into the third Gorillaz studio album Plastic Beach.
Drawing upon environmentalist themes, Plastic Beach was inspired by the idea of a "secret floating island deep in the South Pacific... made up of the detritus, debris and washed up remnants of humanity" inspired by marine pollution such as plastic that Albarn had found in a beach near one of his homes in Devon as well as the Great Pacific garbage patch. Unlike previous Gorillaz albums, Albarn made the decision to produce Plastic Beach by himself, with no co-producer. The album was recorded throughout 2008 and 2009 in London, New York City and Syria although production of the album was briefly interrupted so that Albarn could join Blur for a reunion tour in the summer of 2009, with Albarn explaining "there's no way you can do that and that [Blur and Gorillaz] at the same time." Plastic Beach saw Gorillaz move into a more electronic pop sound, with Albarn describing the album as "the most pop record I've ever made" and saying that he took special care to make the album's lyrics and melodies clear and focused compared to previous albums. Plastic Beach also featured the largest cast of collaborators featured yet on a Gorillaz album, fulfilling Albarn's goal of "work[ing] with an incredibly eclectic, surprising cast of people" including artists such as Snoop Dogg, Mos Def, Bobby Womack, Little Dragon, Lou Reed and Gruff Rhys among others, and also included orchestral contributions from Sinfonia Viva and the Lebanese National Symphony Orchestra. Albarn explained the expanded roster of featured artists represented his and Hewlett's new vision of Gorillaz as a project, explaining in a July 2008 interview that "Gorillaz now to us is not like four animated characters any more – it's more like an organisation of people doing new projects... That's my ideal model."
Released on 3 March 2010, Plastic Beach debuted at #2 on both the UK Albums Chart and the US Billboard 200 chart, the band's highest placing debut chart position. The album was supported by the lead single "Stylo" featuring Mos Def and Bobby Womack released in January 2010 and the later singles "On Melancholy Hill" and "Rhinestone Eyes". To promote the album, the band embarked on the Escape to Plastic Beach Tour, the band's first world tour and also their first live performances in which the touring band performed fully in view of the audience on stage with no visual obstructions. The tour, which featured many of the collaborative artists from Plastic Beach and saw the touring band wearing naval attire, was later described by Albarn as having been extremely costly to produce, with the band barely breaking even on the shows, saying "I loved doing it, but economically it was a fucking disaster." The tour was preceded by headline performances at several international music festivals, including the Coachella and Glastonbury festivals. On 21 November 2010, while still on tour, the band released the non-album single "Doncamatic" featuring British singer Daley.
During the North American leg of the Escape to Plastic Beach tour in the fall of 2010, Albarn continued recording Gorillaz songs entirely on his iPad. The recordings were later released as the album The Fall, first released digitally on Christmas Day 2010 and later given a physical release on 19 April 2011. The Fall is also co-produced by Stephen Sedgwick, the mixer engineer of the band. Albarn said the album served as a diary of the American leg of the tour, explaining that the tracks were presented exactly as they were on the day they were written and recorded with no additional production or overdubs: "I literally made it on the road. I didn't write it before, I didn't prepare it. I just did it day by day as a kind of diary of my experience in America. If I left it until the New Year to release it then the cynics out there would say, 'Oh well, it's been tampered with', but if I put it out now they'd know that I haven't done anything because I've been on tour ever since." The band later released a "Gorillaz edition" of the Korg iElectribe music production app for iPad, featuring many of the same samples and sounds used by Albarn to create The Fall.
On 23 February 2012, Gorillaz released "DoYaThing", a single to promote a Gorillaz-branded collection of Converse shoes which were released shortly after. The song was a part of Converse's "Three Artists, One Song" project, with the two additional collaborators being James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem and André 3000 of Outkast. Two different edits of the song were released: a four-and-a-half minute radio edit released on Converse's website and the full 13-minute version of the song released on the Gorillaz website. Hewlett returned to direct the single's music video, featuring fictionalized animated versions of Murphy and André interacting with the Gorillaz' virtual members. The song received positive reviews from critics, with particular praise given to André 3000's contributions to the track.
In April 2012, Albarn told The Guardian that he and Hewlett had fallen out and that future Gorillaz projects were "unlikely". Tension between the two had been building, partly due to a belief held by Hewlett that his contributions to Gorillaz were being minimised. Speaking to The Guardian in April 2017, Hewlett explained: "Damon had half the Clash on stage, and Bobby Womack and Mos Def and De La Soul, and fucking Hypnotic Brass Ensemble and Bashy and everyone else. It was the greatest band ever. And the screen on stage behind them seemed to get smaller every day. I'd say, ‘Have we got a new screen?’ and the tour manager was like, ‘No, it's the same screen.’ Because it seemed to me like it was getting smaller." Albarn gave his side of the story in a separate interview, saying "I think we were at a cross purposes somewhat on that last record [Plastic Beach], which is a shame. It was one of those things, the music and the videos weren't working as well together, but I felt we'd made a really good record and I was into it." On 25 April 2012, in an interview with Metro, Albarn was more optimistic about Gorillaz' future, saying that once he had worked out his differences with Hewlett, he was sure that they would make another record. In June 2013, Hewlett confirmed that he and Albarn planned to someday continue Gorillaz and record a follow-up album to Plastic Beach, saying "We'll come back to it when the time is right."
Hiatus and Humanz (2014–17)
Following the release of DoYaThing and the publicization of Albarn and Hewlett's fall-out in 2012, Gorillaz entered a multiyear hiatus. During the hiatus, Albarn released a solo album, Everyday Robots, scored stage productions and continued to record and tour with Blur, while Hewlett held art exhibitions and attempted to create a film project which was ultimately never realized. While on tour in support of Everyday Robots in 2014, Albarn signaled openness to returning to Gorillaz, telling The National Post that he "wouldn't mind having another stab at a Gorillaz record". Two months later he reported that he had "been writing quite a lot of songs on the road for Gorillaz". and at the end of 2014 confirmed in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald that he was planning to record another Gorillaz album. Speaking about his relationship with Hewlett, Albarn said that the pair's well-publicised fall-out had helped their relationship in the long term. Hewlett described the moment when he and Albarn agreed to continue Gorillaz at an afterparty after one of Albarn's solo shows in 2014: "We'd had a bit to drink, and he said, 'Do you want to do another one?' And I said, 'Do you?' and he said, 'Do you?' And I said, 'Yeah, sure.' I started work on it straight away, learning to draw the characters again. I played around by myself for eight months while he was performing with Blur in 2015."
Recording sessions for the band's fifth studio album Humanz began in late 2015 and continued through 2016, taking place in London, New York City, Paris and Jamaica. Albarn enlisted American hip-hop and house producer Anthony Khan, known by his stage name the Twilite Tone, to co-produce the album. Albarn chose Khan from a list of possible producers compiled by Parlophone, the band's record label after Albarn and Khan spoke via Skype. Humanz was also co-produced by Remi Kabaka Jr., a friend of Albarn's who had worked with him in the non-profit musical organization Africa Express and also has been the voice actor for the Gorillaz virtual band member Russel Hobbs since 2000. In conceptualizing the album, Albarn and Khan envisioned Humanz as being the soundtrack for "a party for the end of the world", with Albarn specifically imagining a future in which Donald Trump won the 2016 U.S. presidential election as context for the album's narrative (Trump becoming president was still considered an unlikely event at the time of recording), explaining "Let's use that as a kind of dark fantasy for this record, let's imagine the night Donald Trump wins the election and how we're all going to feel that night." Khan stated that "The idea of Donald Trump being president allowed us to create a narrative together. I suggested that the album should be about joy, pain and urgency. That was to be our state of mind before we even touched a keyboard or an MPC. Especially in American music, dare I say black music, there's a way of communicating joy that at the same time allows you to feel the struggle the person has been through. And the urgency is there because something needs to be done. So that was the mantra. I wanted to blend Damon, a Briton, with the joy and pain and struggle that African-American music can express." Humanz again featured a large cast of featured artists, including Popcaan, Vince Staples, DRAM, Jehnny Beth, Pusha T, Peven Everett, Danny Brown, Grace Jones and Mavis Staples, among others. The first track from the album released publicly was "Hallelujah Money" featuring Benjamin Clementine, released on 20 January 2017 with an accompanying video featuring Clementine. While not an official single, Albarn explained that the band chose to release the track on the day of Trump's inauguration because "It was meant to be something sung at the imaginary inauguration of Donald Trump, which turned out to be the real inauguration of Donald Trump, so we released it because we had imagined that happening and it did happen."Humanz was released on 28 April 2017, the band's first new studio album in 7 years. Featuring a "modern-sounding urban hip-hop/R&B sensibility", the album debuted at #2 on both the UK Album charts and the US Billboard 200. Humanz received generally positive reviews from critics, although received some criticism from fans and critics for what was perceived as a diminished presence from Albarn in contrast to the abundance of featured artists. The album was released in both standard and deluxe editions, with the deluxe edition featuring an additional 6 bonus tracks and was promoted by the lead single "Saturnz Barz" featuring Popcaan and the later single "Strobelite" featuring Peven Everett. The Hewlett-directed music video for "Saturnz Barz" made use of YouTube's 360-degree video format and reportedly cost $800,000 to create.
The band embarked on the Humanz Tour to support the album from the summer of 2017 to early 2018. Like the band's previous tour, the Humanz Tour featured the touring band in full view of the audience with a large screen behind them displaying Hewlett-created visuals and featured several of the different collaborative artists from the band's history. The tour was preceded by a handful of European warm-up shows, including the first Demon Dayz Festival held on 10 June 2017 at the Dreamland Margate theme park, a Gorillaz curated music festival which was later repeated in Los Angeles in October 2018. On 8 June 2017 the band released the non-album single "Sleeping Powder" with an accompanying music video and on 3 November 2017 a "Super Deluxe" version of Humanz, featuring an additional 14 unreleased tracks from the album's sessions, including alternative versions of previously released songs as well as the single "Garage Palace" featuring Little Simz.
The Now Now (2018–19)
Albarn continued recording while on the road during the Humanz Tour, and mentioned in an interview with Q Magazine in September 2017 that he was planning on releasing the material as a future Gorillaz album. Comparing the production of the album to The Fall, which was also recorded while the band was on tour, Albarn mentioned that "It will be a more complete record than The Fall, but hopefully have that spontaneity." Albarn signaled his desire to complete and release the album quickly, adding that "I really like the idea of making new music and playing it live almost simultaneously" and "If we're going to do more Gorillaz we don't want to wait seven years because, y'know, we're getting on a bit now. The band later debuted a new song "Idaho", which was later included on the album, at a concert in Seattle on 30 September 2017 with Albarn saying it had been written in the days prior.
During a break in the Humanz Tour in February 2018, Albarn returned to London where he worked with producer James Ford, known for his work with Arctic Monkeys and Florence and the Machine, and Kabaka Jr. to finish the newly written material, resulting in the band's sixth studio album The Now Now released on 29 June 2018. Featuring "simple, mostly upbeat songs" and 1980s new wave influences, the album was noted for its distinctly small list of featured artists compared to previous Gorillaz work, with only two tracks featuring any outside artists (the album's lead single "Humility" featuring George Benson and "Hollywood" featuring Snoop Dogg and Jamie Principle). Albarn mentioned that the few numbers of featured artists was partially due to the album's quick production, which in turn was a result of Albarn wanting to finish the album before the band's touring schedule resumed: "We've been very lucky to be offered all the festivals this year on the back of the last record [Humanz]... but I didn't want to do that unless I had something new to work with, so the only option was to make another record really quickly and not have lots of guests on it, because that takes a long time to organize; just do it all myself, really." Albarn also explained that with The Now Now he sought to make a Gorillaz album "where I'm just singing for once" and that the album is "pretty much just me singing, very sort of in the world of 2-D."
In the fictional Gorillaz storyline, the band introduced Ace from Cartoon Network's animated series The Powerpuff Girls as a temporary bassist of the band during The Now Now album cycle, filling in for the imprisoned Murdoc Niccals. Explaining the crossover in an interview with the BBC, Albarn said "We were massive fans of The Powerpuff Girls when they came out, the energy of that cartoon was really cool, and we kind of know the creator of it (Craig McCracken). It was a very organic thing."
The band's remaining 2018 live dates were billed as The Now Now Tour to support the album, and included a performance in Tokyo on 22 June 2018 billed as "The Now Now World Premiere" in which the band played the full album live for the first and only time, a performance which was later broadcast by Boiler Room. On 16 December 2019, the documentary Gorillaz: Reject False Icons was screened worldwide on a one-day theatrical release. Filmed and directed by Hewlett's son Denholm, the documentary showcases a behind-the-scenes look at the production of Humanz and The Now Now as well as the album's associated tours. One week after the film's theatrical release, a "Director's Cut" version of the film featuring additional footage was released on the official Gorillaz YouTube channel in three parts. In the credits for Reject False Icons, Kabaka Jr. was listed as an official member of the band (labeled as "A&R/Producer") alongside Albarn and Hewlett for the first time.
Song Machine project and Meanwhile EP (2020–present)
On 29 January 2020, the band announced its new project, Song Machine. Eschewing the typical album format of releasing music, Song Machine is instead a web series that sees the band releasing one new song a month as "episodes" to the series, with 11 episodes releasing to comprise the first "season". Elaborating on the idea behind Song Machine in a radio interview shortly after the announcement of the project, Albarn explained that "We no longer kind of see ourselves as constrained to making albums. We can now make episodes and seasons." Each episode features previously unannounced guest musicians on new Gorillaz material, with the first being "Momentary Bliss", which was released on 31 January and features both British rapper Slowthai and the Kent-based punk rock duo Slaves.
Upon the premiere of "Momentary Bliss", Albarn revealed that the group had been in the studio with Schoolboy Q and Sampa the Great among others, although he did say that these songs were likely to be saved for future episodes of Song Machine. The group also teased a possible collaboration with Australian band Tame Impala on Instagram.
On 27 February, the band released the second episode of Song Machine entitled "Désolé". The song features Malian singer Fatoumata Diawara. The third episode, "Aries", released on 9 April and featured Peter Hook and Georgia. The fourth track "How Far?" featuring Tony Allen and Skepta was released 2 May. This song was released without an accompanying music video as a tribute to Allen, who died on 30 April.
On 26 May, Gorillaz announced the release of a new book titled Gorillaz Almanac. The book comes in three editions: standard, deluxe and super deluxe, all of which are set to release on 23 October but has since been delayed to 22 December with a physical release of season one of Song Machine included with each copy.
On 9 June, the band released "Friday 13th", the fourth episode of Song Machine. The track features French-British rapper Octavian.
On 20 July, the band released "Pac-Man", the fifth episode of Song Machine, in honour of Pac-Man's 40th anniversary. The track features American rapper Schoolboy Q.
On 9 September, the band released "Strange Timez", the sixth episode of Song Machine. The track features Robert Smith, from the Cure. Gorillaz also announced the title and tracklist for Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez, released on 23 October 2020, featuring further guest appearances from Elton John, 6lack, JPEGMafia, Kano, Roxani Arias, Moonchild Sanelly and Chai, among others.
On 1 October, the band released "The Pink Phantom", the seventh episode of Song Machine. The track features Elton John and American rapper 6lack.
Before the release of Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez, Gorillaz started a radio show on Apple Music called Song Machine Radio where each virtual character has a turn to invite special guests and play some of their favourite tunes.
A few days from the release of Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez, Albarn confirmed that the band already has a song for Season Two of Song Machine prepared for release, and also mentioned that the second part of the project will be released earlier than expected.
On 5 November, the band released "The Valley of the Pagans", the eighth episode of Song Machine. The track features American singer Beck. The music video is somewhat notorious for being the first major studio production filmed in Grand Theft Auto V. The video ends with a reference to previous album, Plastic Beach. For unknown reasons, the music video on the official Gorillaz YouTube channel was set to private just a few days after its initial premiere. On 9 March 2021, Gorillaz uploaded an alternative version of the music video to their official YouTube channel, which does not feature any gameplay from Grand Theft Auto V.
On 24 December, the band released "The Lost Chord", the ninth and final episode of the first season of Song Machine. The track features British musician Leee John.
On 26 March 2021, the band celebrated its debut album's 20th anniversary with oncoming reissues of their catalog and teases of non-fungible tokens; due to its impact on climate change, the latter was met with criticism by various sources and fans—some noting that the act contradicts the environmental themes of Plastic Beach. The band also announced a boxset, the G Collection, containing six of their studio albums—excluding The Fall—for Record Store Day.
On 10 August 2021, Gorillaz debuted three new songs, "Meanwhile" (featuring British rapper Jelani Blackman), "Jimmy Jimmy" (featuring British rapper AJ Tracey), and "Déjà Vu" (featuring Jamaican-British singer Alicaì Harley), during a free concert at The O2 Arena in London, England exclusively for National Health Service employees and their families. They then performed them again at the subsequent concert open to the public the next day (both of which served as the first live audience concerts of the Song Machine Tour). These three songs were announced to be tracks from a new EP entitled Meanwhile, with the cover originally published on TikTok.
On 17 September 2021, Albarn revealed that he had recorded a new Gorillaz song with Bad Bunny while in Jamaica, and it will be the first single for a new album, influenced by Latin America, releasing next year.
Style and legacy
Writers and critics have variously described Gorillaz as art pop, alternative rock, hip hop, electronic, trip hop, pop, dark pop, alternative hip hop, rap rock, indie rock, bedroom pop, dance-rock, new wave, funk, worldbeat, and experimental rock. The band's aesthetic and general approach has been described as postmodern. According to AllMusic, Gorillaz blend Britpop and hip-hop, while The Guardian described the band as "a sort of dub/hip-hop/lo-fi indie/world music hybrid". According to PopMatters, the band's early work foreshadowed "the melding of hip-hop, rock, and electronic elements in pop music" that grew in significance in the next decade.
Gorillaz’ main musical influences include Massive Attack, the Specials, Big Audio Dynamite, Public Image Ltd, Tom Tom Club, Fun Boy Three, Unkle, A Tribe Called Quest, and De La Soul, as well as The Human League, The Kinks, XTC, Simple Minds, Sonic Youth, Pavement, Ween, Portishead, Beck, Wire, Fela Kuti, Sly and the Family Stone, Earth Wind and Fire, Augustus Pablo, Zapp, and DJ Kool Herc. Gorillaz’ primary visual influences include Hanna-Barbera, Looney Tunes, Mad magazine, The Simpsons, 2000 AD, and Métal hurlant (Heavy Metal). Furthermore, Hewlett has also cited European artists such as Carl Giles, Ronald Searle, Moebius, Tanino Liberatore, Mike McMahon, and Brendan McCarthy. The idea for Gorillaz was inspired by the many cartoon bands that came before them in the 1960s such as the Banana Splits, the Archies, Josie and the Pussycats, and Alvin and the Chipmunks, and real bands with fictional stage personas like ABC (circa How to Be a ... Zillionaire!) and Silicon Teens.Charts of Darkness. Dazed Film & TV (2001)
Musical artists who have been influenced by Gorillaz include Major Lazer, Dethklok, Rat Boy, Chromeo, Flume, Foster the People, The 1975, 5 Seconds of Summer, Awolnation, Paramore, Grimes, Kesha, A.G. Cook, Finneas, Oliver Tree, Flatbush Zombies, Vic Mensa, IDK, Trippie Redd, The Internet, ASAP Rocky, Lupe Fiasco, Brockhampton and Odd Future. Gorillaz have also influenced animated series such as The Amazing World of Gumball, Glitch Techs, Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Motorcity, Tron: Uprising, Teen Titans, and Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, as well as video games like Borderlands, Sunset Overdrive, No Straight Roads, Battlefield, and League of Legends.
Gorillaz have collaborated with a number of brands, including Motorola, O2, Internet Explorer 9, Converse, and Jaguar Cars. They have also been featured in fashion magazines such as Maxim, Nylon, and Numéro. The band's use of the internet and digital media for promotion as early as 2000 has been touched on in retrospective reviews for being ahead of its time. Dazed magazine has summarised Gorillaz's impact as "completely reinvent[ing] the notion of what a band could be".
Members
Virtual members
Murdoc Niccals – bass, drum machine (1998–present; hiatus 2018)
2-D – vocals, keyboards (1998–present)
Noodle – guitar, keyboards, vocals (1998–2006; 2010–present)
Russel Hobbs – drums, percussion (1998–2006; 2012–present)
Former virtual members
Paula Cracker – guitar (1998)
Cyborg Noodle – guitar, vocals (2008–10)
Ace – bass (2018)
Virtual members timeline
Touring members
Touring members timeline
Studio contributors
Damon Albarn – vocals, instrumentation, songwriting, production, executive production (1998–present)
Jamie Hewlett – songwriting, executive production, artwork, character design, video direction, visuals, FX (1998–present)
Stephen Sedgwick – mixing, engineering, production (2004–present)
Remi Kabaka Jr. – songwriting, production, percussion, drum programming (2015–present)
John Davis – mastering, engineering (2015–present)
Samuel Egglenton – assistance, engineering (2015–present)
Former studio contributors
Excluding small appearances by touring members.
Junior Dan – bass (1998–2001)
Jason Cox – production, percussion, drum programming, mixing, bass, additional guitars (1998–2010)
Simon Tong – additional guitar (2004–10)
Howie Weinberg – mastering, engineering (2004–10)
Mick Jones – guitars (2008–11)
Paul Simonon – bass (2008–11)
James Ford – instrumentation, songwriting, production (2018–20)
Studio contributors timeline
Discography
Studio albums
Gorillaz (2001)
Demon Days (2005)
Plastic Beach (2010)
The Fall (2010)
Humanz (2017)
The Now Now (2018)
Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez'' (2020)
Tours
Gorillaz Live (2001–2002)
Demon Days Live (2005–2006)
Escape to Plastic Beach Tour (2010)
Humanz Tour (2017–2018)
The Now Now Tour (2018)
Song Machine Tour (2021–2022)
Awards and nominations
Notes
References
External links
Gorillaz at Youtube
Animated musical groups
Recorded music characters
Musical groups established in 1998
English electronic music groups
English alternative rock groups
Electronica music groups
Trip hop groups
Fictional musical groups
English indie rock groups
Dance-rock musical groups
English hip hop groups
Rap rock groups
Alternative hip hop groups
British world music groups
English pop music groups
Brit Award winners
Grammy Award winners
MTV Europe Music Award winners
Parlophone artists
Virgin Records artists
Warner Records artists
1998 establishments in England
Bands with fictional stage personas
Warner Music Group artists
Art pop musicians
Virtual influencers | 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"
] |
[
"Gorillaz",
"Phase One: Celebrity Take Down (2000-03)",
"What did the album do in the charts?",
"No. 4 in the UK.",
"Was this their first album?",
"Clint Eastwood",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"originally featured UK rap group Phi Life Cypher,"
] | C_fb5dadfb60c6438eb0f8405024d25b1c_0 | Anything else interesting? | 4 | Aside from featuring UK rap group Phi Life Cypher,anything else interesting? | Gorillaz | The band's first release was the EP Tomorrow Comes Today, released in 2000. The band's first single was "Clint Eastwood" and was released on 5 March 2001, reaching No. 4 in the UK. It was produced by hip hop producer Dan the Automator and originally featured UK rap group Phi Life Cypher, but the version that appears on the album features American rapper Del the Funky Homosapien, known on the album as Del tha' Ghost Rapper, a spirit in the band's drummer Russel Hobbs. The Phi Life Cypher version of "Clint Eastwood" appears on the B-side album G Sides. Later that same month, their first full-length album, the self-titled Gorillaz, was released, producing four singles: "Clint Eastwood", "19-2000", "Tomorrow Comes Today", and "Rock the House". In June 2001, "19-2000" charted at No. 6 in the UK, and the song was used as the title theme for EA Sports FIFA video game FIFA Football 2002. The end of the year brought the song "911", a collaboration between Gorillaz and hip hop group D12 (without Eminem) and Terry Hall about the September 11 attacks. Meanwhile, G Sides, a compilation of the B-sides from the Tomorrow Comes Today EP and first three singles, was released in Japan on 12 December 2001 and quickly followed with international releases in early 2002. Gorillaz performed at the 2002 Brit Awards in London on 22 February, appearing in 3D animation on four large screens along with rap accompaniment by Phi Life Cypher. The band were nominated for four Brit Awards, including Best British Group, Best British Album and British Breakthrough Act, but did not win any awards. In November 2002, a DVD titled Phase One: Celebrity Take Down was released, giving the phase its name. The DVD contains the four Phase One promos, the abandoned video for "5/4", the Charts of Darkness documentary, the five Gorilla Bitez (comedic shorts starring the band characters), a tour of the website by the MEL 9000 server and more. The DVD's menu was designed much like the band's website and depicts an abandoned Kong Studios. Rumours were circulating at this time that the Gorillaz team were busy preparing a film, but Hewlett said that the film project had been abandoned: "We lost all interest in doing it as soon as we started meeting with studios and talking to these Hollywood executive types, we just weren't on the same page. We said, fuck it, we'll sit on the idea until we can do it ourselves, and maybe even raise the money ourselves." CANNOTANSWER | version that appears on the album features American rapper Del the Funky Homosapien, | Gorillaz are an English virtual band created in 1998 by musician Damon Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett, from London, England. The band primarily consists of four animated members: 2-D (vocals, keyboards), Murdoc Niccals (bass guitar), Noodle (guitar, keyboards, vocals), and Russel Hobbs (drums). Their fictional universe is presented in music videos, interviews and short cartoons. Gorillaz' music often features collaborations with a wide range of featured artists, with Albarn as the only permanent musical contributor.
With Gorillaz, Albarn departed from the distinct Britpop of his band Blur, exploring a variety of musical styles including hip hop, electronic music and world music through an "eccentrically postmodern" approach. The band's 2001 debut album Gorillaz, which featured dub, Latin and punk influences, went triple platinum in the UK and double platinum in Europe, with sales driven by the success of the album's lead single "Clint Eastwood". Their second studio album, Demon Days (2005), went six times platinum in the UK and double platinum in the US and spawned the successful lead single "Feel Good Inc.".
The band's third album, Plastic Beach (2010), featured environmentalist themes, a synth-pop approach and an expanded roster of featured artists. Their fourth album, The Fall (2010), was recorded on the road during the Escape to Plastic Beach Tour and released on 25 December 2010. During 2015, Remi Kabaka Jr. became a music producer for the band after more than 10 years providing the voice of Russel and was credited as such alongside Albarn and Hewlett in the official 2019 documentary Gorillaz: Reject False Icons. The band's fifth album, Humanz, was released after a seven-year hiatus on 28 April 2017. Their sixth album, The Now Now (2018), featured stripped-down production and a greater musical focus on Albarn. Gorillaz' latest project is Song Machine, a music-based web series with episodes that consist of standalone singles and accompanying music videos featuring different guests each episode, resulting in their seventh album, Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez (2020).
Gorillaz has presented itself live in a variety of different ways throughout the band's history, such as hiding the touring band from the audience's view in the early years of the project, projecting animated band members on stage via computer graphics and traditional live touring featuring a fully visible live band. The band have sold over 25 million records worldwide and are cited by Guinness World Records as the world's "Most Successful Virtual Band". They have won a Grammy Award, two MTV Video Music Awards, an NME Award and three MTV Europe Music Awards. They have also been nominated for 11 Brit Awards and won Best British Group at the 2018 Brit Awards.
History
Creation (1990–1999)
Musician Damon Albarn and comic artist Jamie Hewlett met in 1990 when guitarist Graham Coxon, a fan of Hewlett's work, asked him to interview Blur, which Albarn and Coxon had recently formed. The interview was published in Deadline magazine, home of Hewlett's comic strip Tank Girl. Hewlett initially thought Albarn was "arsey, a wanker;" and despite becoming acquaintances with the band, they often did not get on, especially after Hewlett began seeing Coxon's ex-girlfriend Jane Olliver. Despite this, Albarn and Hewlett started sharing a flat on Westbourne Grove in London in 1997. Hewlett had recently broken up with Olliver and Albarn was at the end of his highly publicised relationship with Justine Frischmann of Elastica.
The idea to create Gorillaz came about when Albarn and Hewlett were watching MTV. Hewlett said, "If you watch MTV for too long, it's a bit like hell – there's nothing of substance there. So we got this idea for a virtual band, something that would be a comment on that." Albarn recalled the idea similarly, saying "This was the beginning of the sort of boy band explosion... and it just felt so manufactured. And we were like, well let's make a manufactured band but make it kind of interesting." The band originally identified themselves as "Gorilla" and the first song they recorded was "Ghost Train", which was later released as a B-side on their single "Rock the House". The band's visual style is thought to have evolved from The 16s, a rejected comic strip Hewlett conceived with Tank Girl co-creator Alan Martin.
Although not released under the Gorillaz name, Albarn has said that "one of the first ever Gorillaz tunes" was Blur's 1997 single "On Your Own", which was released for their fifth studio album Blur.
Gorillaz (2000–03)
From 1998 to 2000, Albarn recorded for Gorillaz' self-titled debut album at his newly opened Studio 13 in London as well as at Geejam Studios in Jamaica. The sessions resulted in the band's first release, the EP Tomorrow Comes Today, released on 27 November 2000. This EP consisted mostly of tracks which later appeared on the album, and it also included the band's first music video for "Tomorrow Comes Today", which introduced the virtual band members for the first time.
With Gorillaz, Albarn began to branch out into other genres which he had not explored with Blur, such as hip-hop, dub and Latin music, a process he described as liberating: "One of the reasons I began Gorillaz is I had a lot of rhythms I never thought I could use with Blur. A lot of that stuff never really seemed to manifest itself in the music we made together as Blur." Albarn originally began work on the album by himself, however eventually invited American hip-hop producer Dan "the Automator" Nakamura to serve as producer on the album, explaining "I called Dan the Automator in after I'd done more than half of it and felt it would benefit from having somebody else's focus. So I just rang him and asked whether he was interested in helping me finish it off." Nakamura and Albarn had recently collaborated on Deltron 3030, the debut album by the hip-hop supergroup of the same name featuring rapper Del the Funky Homosapien and DJ Kid Koala, both of whom Nakamura recruited to assist in finishing Gorillaz material. Del featured on two tracks on the album, including the lead single "Clint Eastwood", while Kid Koala contributed turntables to various tracks. The album featured additional collaborations with Ibrahim Ferrer of Buena Vista Social Club, Miho Hatori of Cibo Matto and Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club, representing a pattern of collaboration with a wide range of artists which later became a staple of Gorillaz as a project.
Gorillaz was released on 26 March 2001 and was a major commercial success, debuting at #3 on the UK Albums Chart and #14 on the US Billboard 200, going on to sell over 7 million copies worldwide, powered by the success of the "Clint Eastwood" single. The album was promoted with the singles "Clint Eastwood", "19-2000" and "Rock the House", in addition to the previously released "Tomorrow Comes Today", with each single featuring a music video directed by Hewlett starring the virtual members. Hewlett also helmed the design of the band's website, which was presented as an interactive tour of the band's fictional "Kong Studios" home and recording studio, featuring interactive games and explorative elements. Following the release of the album, the band embarked on a brief tour of Europe, Japan and the United States to support the album in which a touring band featuring Albarn played completely obscured behind a giant screen on which Hewlett's accompanying visuals were projected. The virtual band member's voice actors were also present at some shows and spoke live to the audience to give the impression that the fictional band was present on stage. In later interviews, Albarn described the band's first tour as difficult due to the limitations imposed by the band playing behind a screen: "For someone who had just spent the last ten years out front being a frontman [with Blur], it was a really weird experience. And I have to say, some nights I just wanted to get a knife and just cut [the screen] and stick my head through." The album was followed by the B-sides compilation G-Sides released in December 2001.
On 7 December 2001, the band released the single "911" a collaboration with hip hop group D12 (without Eminem) and singer Terry Hall of the Specials about the September 11 attacks. At the 2002 Brit Awards the virtual members of Gorillaz "performed" for the first time, appearing in 3D animation on four large screens along with rap accompaniment by Phi Life Cypher, a production which reportedly cost £300,000 to create. The band were nominated for four Brit Awards, including Best British Group, Best British Album and British Breakthrough Act, but did not win any awards.
On 1 July 2002, a remix album titled Laika Come Home was released, containing most of the tracks from Gorillaz remixed in dub and reggae style by the DJ group Spacemonkeyz. On 18 November 2002, the band released the DVD Phase One: Celebrity Take Down, which contained all of the band's released visual content up to that point along with other extras.
After the success of the debut album, Albarn and Hewlett briefly explored the possibility of creating a Gorillaz theatrical film, but Hewlett claimed the duo later lost interest: "We lost all interest in doing it as soon as we started meeting with studios and talking to these Hollywood executive types, we just weren't on the same page. We said, fuck it, we'll sit on the idea until we can do it ourselves, and maybe even raise the money ourselves."
Demon Days (2004–07)
Albarn spent the majority of 2003 on tour with Blur in support of their newly released album Think Tank; however, upon completion of the tour, he decided to return to Gorillaz, reuniting with Hewlett to prepare for a second album. Hewlett explained that the duo chose to continue Gorillaz to prove that the project was not "a gimmick": "If you do it again, it's no longer a gimmick, and if it works then we've proved a point." The result was Demon Days, released on 11 May 2005. The album was another major commercial success, debuting at No. 1 on the UK Albums Charts and #6 on the US Billboard 200, and has since gone six times platinum in the UK, double platinum in the United States, and triple platinum in Australia, outperforming sales of the first album and becoming the band's most successful album to date. The album's success was partially driven by the success of the lead single "Feel Good Inc." featuring hip-hop group De La Soul, which topped Billboard'''s Alternative Songs chart in the U.S. for eight consecutive weeks and was featured in a commercial for Apple's iPod. The album was also supported by the later singles "Dare", "Dirty Harry", and the double A-side "Kids with Guns" / "El Mañana".Demon Days found the band taking a darker tone, partially influenced by a train journey Albarn had taken with his family through impoverished rural China. Albarn described the album as a concept album: "The whole album kind of tells the story of the night — staying up during the night — but it's also an allegory. It's what we're living in basically, the world in a state of night." Believing that the album needed "a slightly different approach" compared to the first album, Albarn enlisted American producer Brian Burton, better known by his stage name Danger Mouse, to produce the album, whom Albarn praised as "one of the best young producers in the world" after hearing his 2004 mashup album The Grey Album. Burton felt he and Albarn had a high degree of affinity with each other, stating in an interview on the creation of the album: "We never had any arguments. We even have that finish-each-other's-sentences thing happening. There are a lot of the same influences between us, like Ennio Morricone and psychedelic pop-rock, but he has 10 years on me, so I have some catching up to do. Where he can school me on new wave and punk of the late ’70s/early ’80s, I can school him on a lot of hip-hop. We’re very competitive and pushed each other." Similar to the first album, Demon Days features collaborations with several different artists, including Bootie Brown, Shaun Ryder, Ike Turner, MF Doom (who was recording with Danger Mouse as Danger Doom at the time) and Martina Topley-Bird, among others.
The band chose to forgo traditional live touring in support of Demon Days, instead limiting live performance during the album cycle to a five night residency in November 2005 at the Manchester Opera House billed as Demon Days Live. The concerts saw the band performing the album in full each night with most featured artists from the album present. Unlike the debut album's tour, the touring band was visible on stage in view of the audience but obscured by lighting in such a way that only their silhouettes were visible, with a screen above the band displaying Hewlett's visuals alongside each song. The residency was later repeated in April 2006 at New York City's Apollo Theater and the Manchester performances were later released on DVD as Demon Days: Live at the Manchester Opera House.
The virtual Gorillaz members "performed" at the 2005 MTV Europe Music Awards in November 2005 and again at the 48th Annual Grammy Awards in February 2006, appearing to perform on stage via Musion Eyeliner technology. Albarn later expressed disappointment at the execution of the performance, citing the low volume level required so as to not disturb the technology: "That was tough... They started and it was so quiet cause they've got this piece of film that you've got to pull over the stage so any bass frequencies would just mess up the illusion completely." At the Grammys, the band won Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals for "Feel Good Inc.", which was also nominated for Record of the Year. Albarn and Hewlett explored the idea of producing a full "live holographic tour" featuring the virtual Gorillaz appearing on stage with Munsion Eyeliner technology after the Grammys performance, but the tour was ultimately never realised due to the tremendous expense and logistical issues that would have resulted.
In October 2006, the band released the book Rise of the Ogre. Presented as an autobiography of the band ostensibly written by the fictional members and expanding on the band's fictional backstory and universe, the book was actually written by official Gorillaz script writer and live drummer Cass Browne and featured new artwork by Hewlett. Later the same month, the band released another DVD, Phase Two: Slowboat to Hades, compiling much of the band's visual content from the album cycle. A second B-sides compilation, D-Sides was released in November 2007, featuring B-sides and remixes associated with Demon Days as well as unreleased tracks from the sessions for the album. In April 2009, the documentary film Bananaz was released. Directed by Ceri Levy, the film documents the behind-the-scenes history of the band from 2000 to 2006.
Plastic Beach and The Fall (2008–13)
Albarn and Hewlett's next project together was the opera Monkey: Journey to the West based on the classical Chinese novel Journey to the West, which premiered at the 2007 Manchester International Festival. While not officially a Gorillaz project, Albarn mentioned in an interview that the project was "Gorillaz, really but we can't call it that for legal reasons".
After completing work on Monkey in late 2007, Albarn and Hewlett began working on a new Gorillaz project entitled Carousel, described by Albarn as being about "the mystical aspects of Britain". Hewlett described Carousel in a 2008 interview as "even bigger and more difficult than Monkey... It's sort of like a film but not with one narrative story. There's many stories, told around a bigger story, set to music, and done in live action, animation, all different styles. Originally it was a film but now we think it's a film and it's a stage thing as well. Damon's written around 70 songs for it, and I’ve got great plans for the visuals." The Carousel concept was eventually dropped with Albarn and Hewlett's work evolving into the third Gorillaz studio album Plastic Beach.
Drawing upon environmentalist themes, Plastic Beach was inspired by the idea of a "secret floating island deep in the South Pacific... made up of the detritus, debris and washed up remnants of humanity" inspired by marine pollution such as plastic that Albarn had found in a beach near one of his homes in Devon as well as the Great Pacific garbage patch. Unlike previous Gorillaz albums, Albarn made the decision to produce Plastic Beach by himself, with no co-producer. The album was recorded throughout 2008 and 2009 in London, New York City and Syria although production of the album was briefly interrupted so that Albarn could join Blur for a reunion tour in the summer of 2009, with Albarn explaining "there's no way you can do that and that [Blur and Gorillaz] at the same time." Plastic Beach saw Gorillaz move into a more electronic pop sound, with Albarn describing the album as "the most pop record I've ever made" and saying that he took special care to make the album's lyrics and melodies clear and focused compared to previous albums. Plastic Beach also featured the largest cast of collaborators featured yet on a Gorillaz album, fulfilling Albarn's goal of "work[ing] with an incredibly eclectic, surprising cast of people" including artists such as Snoop Dogg, Mos Def, Bobby Womack, Little Dragon, Lou Reed and Gruff Rhys among others, and also included orchestral contributions from Sinfonia Viva and the Lebanese National Symphony Orchestra. Albarn explained the expanded roster of featured artists represented his and Hewlett's new vision of Gorillaz as a project, explaining in a July 2008 interview that "Gorillaz now to us is not like four animated characters any more – it's more like an organisation of people doing new projects... That's my ideal model."
Released on 3 March 2010, Plastic Beach debuted at #2 on both the UK Albums Chart and the US Billboard 200 chart, the band's highest placing debut chart position. The album was supported by the lead single "Stylo" featuring Mos Def and Bobby Womack released in January 2010 and the later singles "On Melancholy Hill" and "Rhinestone Eyes". To promote the album, the band embarked on the Escape to Plastic Beach Tour, the band's first world tour and also their first live performances in which the touring band performed fully in view of the audience on stage with no visual obstructions. The tour, which featured many of the collaborative artists from Plastic Beach and saw the touring band wearing naval attire, was later described by Albarn as having been extremely costly to produce, with the band barely breaking even on the shows, saying "I loved doing it, but economically it was a fucking disaster." The tour was preceded by headline performances at several international music festivals, including the Coachella and Glastonbury festivals. On 21 November 2010, while still on tour, the band released the non-album single "Doncamatic" featuring British singer Daley.
During the North American leg of the Escape to Plastic Beach tour in the fall of 2010, Albarn continued recording Gorillaz songs entirely on his iPad. The recordings were later released as the album The Fall, first released digitally on Christmas Day 2010 and later given a physical release on 19 April 2011. The Fall is also co-produced by Stephen Sedgwick, the mixer engineer of the band. Albarn said the album served as a diary of the American leg of the tour, explaining that the tracks were presented exactly as they were on the day they were written and recorded with no additional production or overdubs: "I literally made it on the road. I didn't write it before, I didn't prepare it. I just did it day by day as a kind of diary of my experience in America. If I left it until the New Year to release it then the cynics out there would say, 'Oh well, it's been tampered with', but if I put it out now they'd know that I haven't done anything because I've been on tour ever since." The band later released a "Gorillaz edition" of the Korg iElectribe music production app for iPad, featuring many of the same samples and sounds used by Albarn to create The Fall.
On 23 February 2012, Gorillaz released "DoYaThing", a single to promote a Gorillaz-branded collection of Converse shoes which were released shortly after. The song was a part of Converse's "Three Artists, One Song" project, with the two additional collaborators being James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem and André 3000 of Outkast. Two different edits of the song were released: a four-and-a-half minute radio edit released on Converse's website and the full 13-minute version of the song released on the Gorillaz website. Hewlett returned to direct the single's music video, featuring fictionalized animated versions of Murphy and André interacting with the Gorillaz' virtual members. The song received positive reviews from critics, with particular praise given to André 3000's contributions to the track.
In April 2012, Albarn told The Guardian that he and Hewlett had fallen out and that future Gorillaz projects were "unlikely". Tension between the two had been building, partly due to a belief held by Hewlett that his contributions to Gorillaz were being minimised. Speaking to The Guardian in April 2017, Hewlett explained: "Damon had half the Clash on stage, and Bobby Womack and Mos Def and De La Soul, and fucking Hypnotic Brass Ensemble and Bashy and everyone else. It was the greatest band ever. And the screen on stage behind them seemed to get smaller every day. I'd say, ‘Have we got a new screen?’ and the tour manager was like, ‘No, it's the same screen.’ Because it seemed to me like it was getting smaller." Albarn gave his side of the story in a separate interview, saying "I think we were at a cross purposes somewhat on that last record [Plastic Beach], which is a shame. It was one of those things, the music and the videos weren't working as well together, but I felt we'd made a really good record and I was into it." On 25 April 2012, in an interview with Metro, Albarn was more optimistic about Gorillaz' future, saying that once he had worked out his differences with Hewlett, he was sure that they would make another record. In June 2013, Hewlett confirmed that he and Albarn planned to someday continue Gorillaz and record a follow-up album to Plastic Beach, saying "We'll come back to it when the time is right."
Hiatus and Humanz (2014–17)
Following the release of DoYaThing and the publicization of Albarn and Hewlett's fall-out in 2012, Gorillaz entered a multiyear hiatus. During the hiatus, Albarn released a solo album, Everyday Robots, scored stage productions and continued to record and tour with Blur, while Hewlett held art exhibitions and attempted to create a film project which was ultimately never realized. While on tour in support of Everyday Robots in 2014, Albarn signaled openness to returning to Gorillaz, telling The National Post that he "wouldn't mind having another stab at a Gorillaz record". Two months later he reported that he had "been writing quite a lot of songs on the road for Gorillaz". and at the end of 2014 confirmed in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald that he was planning to record another Gorillaz album. Speaking about his relationship with Hewlett, Albarn said that the pair's well-publicised fall-out had helped their relationship in the long term. Hewlett described the moment when he and Albarn agreed to continue Gorillaz at an afterparty after one of Albarn's solo shows in 2014: "We'd had a bit to drink, and he said, 'Do you want to do another one?' And I said, 'Do you?' and he said, 'Do you?' And I said, 'Yeah, sure.' I started work on it straight away, learning to draw the characters again. I played around by myself for eight months while he was performing with Blur in 2015."
Recording sessions for the band's fifth studio album Humanz began in late 2015 and continued through 2016, taking place in London, New York City, Paris and Jamaica. Albarn enlisted American hip-hop and house producer Anthony Khan, known by his stage name the Twilite Tone, to co-produce the album. Albarn chose Khan from a list of possible producers compiled by Parlophone, the band's record label after Albarn and Khan spoke via Skype. Humanz was also co-produced by Remi Kabaka Jr., a friend of Albarn's who had worked with him in the non-profit musical organization Africa Express and also has been the voice actor for the Gorillaz virtual band member Russel Hobbs since 2000. In conceptualizing the album, Albarn and Khan envisioned Humanz as being the soundtrack for "a party for the end of the world", with Albarn specifically imagining a future in which Donald Trump won the 2016 U.S. presidential election as context for the album's narrative (Trump becoming president was still considered an unlikely event at the time of recording), explaining "Let's use that as a kind of dark fantasy for this record, let's imagine the night Donald Trump wins the election and how we're all going to feel that night." Khan stated that "The idea of Donald Trump being president allowed us to create a narrative together. I suggested that the album should be about joy, pain and urgency. That was to be our state of mind before we even touched a keyboard or an MPC. Especially in American music, dare I say black music, there's a way of communicating joy that at the same time allows you to feel the struggle the person has been through. And the urgency is there because something needs to be done. So that was the mantra. I wanted to blend Damon, a Briton, with the joy and pain and struggle that African-American music can express." Humanz again featured a large cast of featured artists, including Popcaan, Vince Staples, DRAM, Jehnny Beth, Pusha T, Peven Everett, Danny Brown, Grace Jones and Mavis Staples, among others. The first track from the album released publicly was "Hallelujah Money" featuring Benjamin Clementine, released on 20 January 2017 with an accompanying video featuring Clementine. While not an official single, Albarn explained that the band chose to release the track on the day of Trump's inauguration because "It was meant to be something sung at the imaginary inauguration of Donald Trump, which turned out to be the real inauguration of Donald Trump, so we released it because we had imagined that happening and it did happen."Humanz was released on 28 April 2017, the band's first new studio album in 7 years. Featuring a "modern-sounding urban hip-hop/R&B sensibility", the album debuted at #2 on both the UK Album charts and the US Billboard 200. Humanz received generally positive reviews from critics, although received some criticism from fans and critics for what was perceived as a diminished presence from Albarn in contrast to the abundance of featured artists. The album was released in both standard and deluxe editions, with the deluxe edition featuring an additional 6 bonus tracks and was promoted by the lead single "Saturnz Barz" featuring Popcaan and the later single "Strobelite" featuring Peven Everett. The Hewlett-directed music video for "Saturnz Barz" made use of YouTube's 360-degree video format and reportedly cost $800,000 to create.
The band embarked on the Humanz Tour to support the album from the summer of 2017 to early 2018. Like the band's previous tour, the Humanz Tour featured the touring band in full view of the audience with a large screen behind them displaying Hewlett-created visuals and featured several of the different collaborative artists from the band's history. The tour was preceded by a handful of European warm-up shows, including the first Demon Dayz Festival held on 10 June 2017 at the Dreamland Margate theme park, a Gorillaz curated music festival which was later repeated in Los Angeles in October 2018. On 8 June 2017 the band released the non-album single "Sleeping Powder" with an accompanying music video and on 3 November 2017 a "Super Deluxe" version of Humanz, featuring an additional 14 unreleased tracks from the album's sessions, including alternative versions of previously released songs as well as the single "Garage Palace" featuring Little Simz.
The Now Now (2018–19)
Albarn continued recording while on the road during the Humanz Tour, and mentioned in an interview with Q Magazine in September 2017 that he was planning on releasing the material as a future Gorillaz album. Comparing the production of the album to The Fall, which was also recorded while the band was on tour, Albarn mentioned that "It will be a more complete record than The Fall, but hopefully have that spontaneity." Albarn signaled his desire to complete and release the album quickly, adding that "I really like the idea of making new music and playing it live almost simultaneously" and "If we're going to do more Gorillaz we don't want to wait seven years because, y'know, we're getting on a bit now. The band later debuted a new song "Idaho", which was later included on the album, at a concert in Seattle on 30 September 2017 with Albarn saying it had been written in the days prior.
During a break in the Humanz Tour in February 2018, Albarn returned to London where he worked with producer James Ford, known for his work with Arctic Monkeys and Florence and the Machine, and Kabaka Jr. to finish the newly written material, resulting in the band's sixth studio album The Now Now released on 29 June 2018. Featuring "simple, mostly upbeat songs" and 1980s new wave influences, the album was noted for its distinctly small list of featured artists compared to previous Gorillaz work, with only two tracks featuring any outside artists (the album's lead single "Humility" featuring George Benson and "Hollywood" featuring Snoop Dogg and Jamie Principle). Albarn mentioned that the few numbers of featured artists was partially due to the album's quick production, which in turn was a result of Albarn wanting to finish the album before the band's touring schedule resumed: "We've been very lucky to be offered all the festivals this year on the back of the last record [Humanz]... but I didn't want to do that unless I had something new to work with, so the only option was to make another record really quickly and not have lots of guests on it, because that takes a long time to organize; just do it all myself, really." Albarn also explained that with The Now Now he sought to make a Gorillaz album "where I'm just singing for once" and that the album is "pretty much just me singing, very sort of in the world of 2-D."
In the fictional Gorillaz storyline, the band introduced Ace from Cartoon Network's animated series The Powerpuff Girls as a temporary bassist of the band during The Now Now album cycle, filling in for the imprisoned Murdoc Niccals. Explaining the crossover in an interview with the BBC, Albarn said "We were massive fans of The Powerpuff Girls when they came out, the energy of that cartoon was really cool, and we kind of know the creator of it (Craig McCracken). It was a very organic thing."
The band's remaining 2018 live dates were billed as The Now Now Tour to support the album, and included a performance in Tokyo on 22 June 2018 billed as "The Now Now World Premiere" in which the band played the full album live for the first and only time, a performance which was later broadcast by Boiler Room. On 16 December 2019, the documentary Gorillaz: Reject False Icons was screened worldwide on a one-day theatrical release. Filmed and directed by Hewlett's son Denholm, the documentary showcases a behind-the-scenes look at the production of Humanz and The Now Now as well as the album's associated tours. One week after the film's theatrical release, a "Director's Cut" version of the film featuring additional footage was released on the official Gorillaz YouTube channel in three parts. In the credits for Reject False Icons, Kabaka Jr. was listed as an official member of the band (labeled as "A&R/Producer") alongside Albarn and Hewlett for the first time.
Song Machine project and Meanwhile EP (2020–present)
On 29 January 2020, the band announced its new project, Song Machine. Eschewing the typical album format of releasing music, Song Machine is instead a web series that sees the band releasing one new song a month as "episodes" to the series, with 11 episodes releasing to comprise the first "season". Elaborating on the idea behind Song Machine in a radio interview shortly after the announcement of the project, Albarn explained that "We no longer kind of see ourselves as constrained to making albums. We can now make episodes and seasons." Each episode features previously unannounced guest musicians on new Gorillaz material, with the first being "Momentary Bliss", which was released on 31 January and features both British rapper Slowthai and the Kent-based punk rock duo Slaves.
Upon the premiere of "Momentary Bliss", Albarn revealed that the group had been in the studio with Schoolboy Q and Sampa the Great among others, although he did say that these songs were likely to be saved for future episodes of Song Machine. The group also teased a possible collaboration with Australian band Tame Impala on Instagram.
On 27 February, the band released the second episode of Song Machine entitled "Désolé". The song features Malian singer Fatoumata Diawara. The third episode, "Aries", released on 9 April and featured Peter Hook and Georgia. The fourth track "How Far?" featuring Tony Allen and Skepta was released 2 May. This song was released without an accompanying music video as a tribute to Allen, who died on 30 April.
On 26 May, Gorillaz announced the release of a new book titled Gorillaz Almanac. The book comes in three editions: standard, deluxe and super deluxe, all of which are set to release on 23 October but has since been delayed to 22 December with a physical release of season one of Song Machine included with each copy.
On 9 June, the band released "Friday 13th", the fourth episode of Song Machine. The track features French-British rapper Octavian.
On 20 July, the band released "Pac-Man", the fifth episode of Song Machine, in honour of Pac-Man's 40th anniversary. The track features American rapper Schoolboy Q.
On 9 September, the band released "Strange Timez", the sixth episode of Song Machine. The track features Robert Smith, from the Cure. Gorillaz also announced the title and tracklist for Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez, released on 23 October 2020, featuring further guest appearances from Elton John, 6lack, JPEGMafia, Kano, Roxani Arias, Moonchild Sanelly and Chai, among others.
On 1 October, the band released "The Pink Phantom", the seventh episode of Song Machine. The track features Elton John and American rapper 6lack.
Before the release of Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez, Gorillaz started a radio show on Apple Music called Song Machine Radio where each virtual character has a turn to invite special guests and play some of their favourite tunes.
A few days from the release of Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez, Albarn confirmed that the band already has a song for Season Two of Song Machine prepared for release, and also mentioned that the second part of the project will be released earlier than expected.
On 5 November, the band released "The Valley of the Pagans", the eighth episode of Song Machine. The track features American singer Beck. The music video is somewhat notorious for being the first major studio production filmed in Grand Theft Auto V. The video ends with a reference to previous album, Plastic Beach. For unknown reasons, the music video on the official Gorillaz YouTube channel was set to private just a few days after its initial premiere. On 9 March 2021, Gorillaz uploaded an alternative version of the music video to their official YouTube channel, which does not feature any gameplay from Grand Theft Auto V.
On 24 December, the band released "The Lost Chord", the ninth and final episode of the first season of Song Machine. The track features British musician Leee John.
On 26 March 2021, the band celebrated its debut album's 20th anniversary with oncoming reissues of their catalog and teases of non-fungible tokens; due to its impact on climate change, the latter was met with criticism by various sources and fans—some noting that the act contradicts the environmental themes of Plastic Beach. The band also announced a boxset, the G Collection, containing six of their studio albums—excluding The Fall—for Record Store Day.
On 10 August 2021, Gorillaz debuted three new songs, "Meanwhile" (featuring British rapper Jelani Blackman), "Jimmy Jimmy" (featuring British rapper AJ Tracey), and "Déjà Vu" (featuring Jamaican-British singer Alicaì Harley), during a free concert at The O2 Arena in London, England exclusively for National Health Service employees and their families. They then performed them again at the subsequent concert open to the public the next day (both of which served as the first live audience concerts of the Song Machine Tour). These three songs were announced to be tracks from a new EP entitled Meanwhile, with the cover originally published on TikTok.
On 17 September 2021, Albarn revealed that he had recorded a new Gorillaz song with Bad Bunny while in Jamaica, and it will be the first single for a new album, influenced by Latin America, releasing next year.
Style and legacy
Writers and critics have variously described Gorillaz as art pop, alternative rock, hip hop, electronic, trip hop, pop, dark pop, alternative hip hop, rap rock, indie rock, bedroom pop, dance-rock, new wave, funk, worldbeat, and experimental rock. The band's aesthetic and general approach has been described as postmodern. According to AllMusic, Gorillaz blend Britpop and hip-hop, while The Guardian described the band as "a sort of dub/hip-hop/lo-fi indie/world music hybrid". According to PopMatters, the band's early work foreshadowed "the melding of hip-hop, rock, and electronic elements in pop music" that grew in significance in the next decade.
Gorillaz’ main musical influences include Massive Attack, the Specials, Big Audio Dynamite, Public Image Ltd, Tom Tom Club, Fun Boy Three, Unkle, A Tribe Called Quest, and De La Soul, as well as The Human League, The Kinks, XTC, Simple Minds, Sonic Youth, Pavement, Ween, Portishead, Beck, Wire, Fela Kuti, Sly and the Family Stone, Earth Wind and Fire, Augustus Pablo, Zapp, and DJ Kool Herc. Gorillaz’ primary visual influences include Hanna-Barbera, Looney Tunes, Mad magazine, The Simpsons, 2000 AD, and Métal hurlant (Heavy Metal). Furthermore, Hewlett has also cited European artists such as Carl Giles, Ronald Searle, Moebius, Tanino Liberatore, Mike McMahon, and Brendan McCarthy. The idea for Gorillaz was inspired by the many cartoon bands that came before them in the 1960s such as the Banana Splits, the Archies, Josie and the Pussycats, and Alvin and the Chipmunks, and real bands with fictional stage personas like ABC (circa How to Be a ... Zillionaire!) and Silicon Teens.Charts of Darkness. Dazed Film & TV (2001)
Musical artists who have been influenced by Gorillaz include Major Lazer, Dethklok, Rat Boy, Chromeo, Flume, Foster the People, The 1975, 5 Seconds of Summer, Awolnation, Paramore, Grimes, Kesha, A.G. Cook, Finneas, Oliver Tree, Flatbush Zombies, Vic Mensa, IDK, Trippie Redd, The Internet, ASAP Rocky, Lupe Fiasco, Brockhampton and Odd Future. Gorillaz have also influenced animated series such as The Amazing World of Gumball, Glitch Techs, Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Motorcity, Tron: Uprising, Teen Titans, and Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, as well as video games like Borderlands, Sunset Overdrive, No Straight Roads, Battlefield, and League of Legends.
Gorillaz have collaborated with a number of brands, including Motorola, O2, Internet Explorer 9, Converse, and Jaguar Cars. They have also been featured in fashion magazines such as Maxim, Nylon, and Numéro. The band's use of the internet and digital media for promotion as early as 2000 has been touched on in retrospective reviews for being ahead of its time. Dazed magazine has summarised Gorillaz's impact as "completely reinvent[ing] the notion of what a band could be".
Members
Virtual members
Murdoc Niccals – bass, drum machine (1998–present; hiatus 2018)
2-D – vocals, keyboards (1998–present)
Noodle – guitar, keyboards, vocals (1998–2006; 2010–present)
Russel Hobbs – drums, percussion (1998–2006; 2012–present)
Former virtual members
Paula Cracker – guitar (1998)
Cyborg Noodle – guitar, vocals (2008–10)
Ace – bass (2018)
Virtual members timeline
Touring members
Touring members timeline
Studio contributors
Damon Albarn – vocals, instrumentation, songwriting, production, executive production (1998–present)
Jamie Hewlett – songwriting, executive production, artwork, character design, video direction, visuals, FX (1998–present)
Stephen Sedgwick – mixing, engineering, production (2004–present)
Remi Kabaka Jr. – songwriting, production, percussion, drum programming (2015–present)
John Davis – mastering, engineering (2015–present)
Samuel Egglenton – assistance, engineering (2015–present)
Former studio contributors
Excluding small appearances by touring members.
Junior Dan – bass (1998–2001)
Jason Cox – production, percussion, drum programming, mixing, bass, additional guitars (1998–2010)
Simon Tong – additional guitar (2004–10)
Howie Weinberg – mastering, engineering (2004–10)
Mick Jones – guitars (2008–11)
Paul Simonon – bass (2008–11)
James Ford – instrumentation, songwriting, production (2018–20)
Studio contributors timeline
Discography
Studio albums
Gorillaz (2001)
Demon Days (2005)
Plastic Beach (2010)
The Fall (2010)
Humanz (2017)
The Now Now (2018)
Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez'' (2020)
Tours
Gorillaz Live (2001–2002)
Demon Days Live (2005–2006)
Escape to Plastic Beach Tour (2010)
Humanz Tour (2017–2018)
The Now Now Tour (2018)
Song Machine Tour (2021–2022)
Awards and nominations
Notes
References
External links
Gorillaz at Youtube
Animated musical groups
Recorded music characters
Musical groups established in 1998
English electronic music groups
English alternative rock groups
Electronica music groups
Trip hop groups
Fictional musical groups
English indie rock groups
Dance-rock musical groups
English hip hop groups
Rap rock groups
Alternative hip hop groups
British world music groups
English pop music groups
Brit Award winners
Grammy Award winners
MTV Europe Music Award winners
Parlophone artists
Virgin Records artists
Warner Records artists
1998 establishments in England
Bands with fictional stage personas
Warner Music Group artists
Art pop musicians
Virtual influencers | false | [
"\"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",
"Say Anything may refer to:\n\nFilm and television\n Say Anything..., a 1989 American film by Cameron Crowe\n \"Say Anything\" (BoJack Horseman), a television episode\n\nMusic\n Say Anything (band), an American rock band\n Say Anything (album), a 2009 album by the band\n \"Say Anything\", a 2012 song by Say Anything from Anarchy, My Dear\n \"Say Anything\" (Marianas Trench song), 2006\n \"Say Anything\" (X Japan song), 1991\n \"Say Anything\", a song by Aimee Mann from Whatever, 1993\n \"Say Anything\", a song by the Bouncing Souls from The Bouncing Souls, 1997\n \"Say Anything\", a song by Good Charlotte from The Young and the Hopeless, 2002\n \"Say Anything\", a song by Girl in Red, 2018\n \"Say Anything\", a song by Will Young from Lexicon, 2019\n \"Say Anything (Else)\", a song by Cartel from Chroma, 2005\n\nOther uses\n Say Anything (party game), a 2008 board game published by North Star Games\n \"Say Anything\", a column in YM magazine\n\nSee also\n Say Something (disambiguation)"
] |
[
"Gorillaz",
"Phase One: Celebrity Take Down (2000-03)",
"What did the album do in the charts?",
"No. 4 in the UK.",
"Was this their first album?",
"Clint Eastwood",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"originally featured UK rap group Phi Life Cypher,",
"Anything else interesting?",
"version that appears on the album features American rapper Del the Funky Homosapien,"
] | C_fb5dadfb60c6438eb0f8405024d25b1c_0 | Next album? | 5 | Gorillaz, Phase One Next album? | Gorillaz | The band's first release was the EP Tomorrow Comes Today, released in 2000. The band's first single was "Clint Eastwood" and was released on 5 March 2001, reaching No. 4 in the UK. It was produced by hip hop producer Dan the Automator and originally featured UK rap group Phi Life Cypher, but the version that appears on the album features American rapper Del the Funky Homosapien, known on the album as Del tha' Ghost Rapper, a spirit in the band's drummer Russel Hobbs. The Phi Life Cypher version of "Clint Eastwood" appears on the B-side album G Sides. Later that same month, their first full-length album, the self-titled Gorillaz, was released, producing four singles: "Clint Eastwood", "19-2000", "Tomorrow Comes Today", and "Rock the House". In June 2001, "19-2000" charted at No. 6 in the UK, and the song was used as the title theme for EA Sports FIFA video game FIFA Football 2002. The end of the year brought the song "911", a collaboration between Gorillaz and hip hop group D12 (without Eminem) and Terry Hall about the September 11 attacks. Meanwhile, G Sides, a compilation of the B-sides from the Tomorrow Comes Today EP and first three singles, was released in Japan on 12 December 2001 and quickly followed with international releases in early 2002. Gorillaz performed at the 2002 Brit Awards in London on 22 February, appearing in 3D animation on four large screens along with rap accompaniment by Phi Life Cypher. The band were nominated for four Brit Awards, including Best British Group, Best British Album and British Breakthrough Act, but did not win any awards. In November 2002, a DVD titled Phase One: Celebrity Take Down was released, giving the phase its name. The DVD contains the four Phase One promos, the abandoned video for "5/4", the Charts of Darkness documentary, the five Gorilla Bitez (comedic shorts starring the band characters), a tour of the website by the MEL 9000 server and more. The DVD's menu was designed much like the band's website and depicts an abandoned Kong Studios. Rumours were circulating at this time that the Gorillaz team were busy preparing a film, but Hewlett said that the film project had been abandoned: "We lost all interest in doing it as soon as we started meeting with studios and talking to these Hollywood executive types, we just weren't on the same page. We said, fuck it, we'll sit on the idea until we can do it ourselves, and maybe even raise the money ourselves." CANNOTANSWER | The Phi Life Cypher | Gorillaz are an English virtual band created in 1998 by musician Damon Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett, from London, England. The band primarily consists of four animated members: 2-D (vocals, keyboards), Murdoc Niccals (bass guitar), Noodle (guitar, keyboards, vocals), and Russel Hobbs (drums). Their fictional universe is presented in music videos, interviews and short cartoons. Gorillaz' music often features collaborations with a wide range of featured artists, with Albarn as the only permanent musical contributor.
With Gorillaz, Albarn departed from the distinct Britpop of his band Blur, exploring a variety of musical styles including hip hop, electronic music and world music through an "eccentrically postmodern" approach. The band's 2001 debut album Gorillaz, which featured dub, Latin and punk influences, went triple platinum in the UK and double platinum in Europe, with sales driven by the success of the album's lead single "Clint Eastwood". Their second studio album, Demon Days (2005), went six times platinum in the UK and double platinum in the US and spawned the successful lead single "Feel Good Inc.".
The band's third album, Plastic Beach (2010), featured environmentalist themes, a synth-pop approach and an expanded roster of featured artists. Their fourth album, The Fall (2010), was recorded on the road during the Escape to Plastic Beach Tour and released on 25 December 2010. During 2015, Remi Kabaka Jr. became a music producer for the band after more than 10 years providing the voice of Russel and was credited as such alongside Albarn and Hewlett in the official 2019 documentary Gorillaz: Reject False Icons. The band's fifth album, Humanz, was released after a seven-year hiatus on 28 April 2017. Their sixth album, The Now Now (2018), featured stripped-down production and a greater musical focus on Albarn. Gorillaz' latest project is Song Machine, a music-based web series with episodes that consist of standalone singles and accompanying music videos featuring different guests each episode, resulting in their seventh album, Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez (2020).
Gorillaz has presented itself live in a variety of different ways throughout the band's history, such as hiding the touring band from the audience's view in the early years of the project, projecting animated band members on stage via computer graphics and traditional live touring featuring a fully visible live band. The band have sold over 25 million records worldwide and are cited by Guinness World Records as the world's "Most Successful Virtual Band". They have won a Grammy Award, two MTV Video Music Awards, an NME Award and three MTV Europe Music Awards. They have also been nominated for 11 Brit Awards and won Best British Group at the 2018 Brit Awards.
History
Creation (1990–1999)
Musician Damon Albarn and comic artist Jamie Hewlett met in 1990 when guitarist Graham Coxon, a fan of Hewlett's work, asked him to interview Blur, which Albarn and Coxon had recently formed. The interview was published in Deadline magazine, home of Hewlett's comic strip Tank Girl. Hewlett initially thought Albarn was "arsey, a wanker;" and despite becoming acquaintances with the band, they often did not get on, especially after Hewlett began seeing Coxon's ex-girlfriend Jane Olliver. Despite this, Albarn and Hewlett started sharing a flat on Westbourne Grove in London in 1997. Hewlett had recently broken up with Olliver and Albarn was at the end of his highly publicised relationship with Justine Frischmann of Elastica.
The idea to create Gorillaz came about when Albarn and Hewlett were watching MTV. Hewlett said, "If you watch MTV for too long, it's a bit like hell – there's nothing of substance there. So we got this idea for a virtual band, something that would be a comment on that." Albarn recalled the idea similarly, saying "This was the beginning of the sort of boy band explosion... and it just felt so manufactured. And we were like, well let's make a manufactured band but make it kind of interesting." The band originally identified themselves as "Gorilla" and the first song they recorded was "Ghost Train", which was later released as a B-side on their single "Rock the House". The band's visual style is thought to have evolved from The 16s, a rejected comic strip Hewlett conceived with Tank Girl co-creator Alan Martin.
Although not released under the Gorillaz name, Albarn has said that "one of the first ever Gorillaz tunes" was Blur's 1997 single "On Your Own", which was released for their fifth studio album Blur.
Gorillaz (2000–03)
From 1998 to 2000, Albarn recorded for Gorillaz' self-titled debut album at his newly opened Studio 13 in London as well as at Geejam Studios in Jamaica. The sessions resulted in the band's first release, the EP Tomorrow Comes Today, released on 27 November 2000. This EP consisted mostly of tracks which later appeared on the album, and it also included the band's first music video for "Tomorrow Comes Today", which introduced the virtual band members for the first time.
With Gorillaz, Albarn began to branch out into other genres which he had not explored with Blur, such as hip-hop, dub and Latin music, a process he described as liberating: "One of the reasons I began Gorillaz is I had a lot of rhythms I never thought I could use with Blur. A lot of that stuff never really seemed to manifest itself in the music we made together as Blur." Albarn originally began work on the album by himself, however eventually invited American hip-hop producer Dan "the Automator" Nakamura to serve as producer on the album, explaining "I called Dan the Automator in after I'd done more than half of it and felt it would benefit from having somebody else's focus. So I just rang him and asked whether he was interested in helping me finish it off." Nakamura and Albarn had recently collaborated on Deltron 3030, the debut album by the hip-hop supergroup of the same name featuring rapper Del the Funky Homosapien and DJ Kid Koala, both of whom Nakamura recruited to assist in finishing Gorillaz material. Del featured on two tracks on the album, including the lead single "Clint Eastwood", while Kid Koala contributed turntables to various tracks. The album featured additional collaborations with Ibrahim Ferrer of Buena Vista Social Club, Miho Hatori of Cibo Matto and Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club, representing a pattern of collaboration with a wide range of artists which later became a staple of Gorillaz as a project.
Gorillaz was released on 26 March 2001 and was a major commercial success, debuting at #3 on the UK Albums Chart and #14 on the US Billboard 200, going on to sell over 7 million copies worldwide, powered by the success of the "Clint Eastwood" single. The album was promoted with the singles "Clint Eastwood", "19-2000" and "Rock the House", in addition to the previously released "Tomorrow Comes Today", with each single featuring a music video directed by Hewlett starring the virtual members. Hewlett also helmed the design of the band's website, which was presented as an interactive tour of the band's fictional "Kong Studios" home and recording studio, featuring interactive games and explorative elements. Following the release of the album, the band embarked on a brief tour of Europe, Japan and the United States to support the album in which a touring band featuring Albarn played completely obscured behind a giant screen on which Hewlett's accompanying visuals were projected. The virtual band member's voice actors were also present at some shows and spoke live to the audience to give the impression that the fictional band was present on stage. In later interviews, Albarn described the band's first tour as difficult due to the limitations imposed by the band playing behind a screen: "For someone who had just spent the last ten years out front being a frontman [with Blur], it was a really weird experience. And I have to say, some nights I just wanted to get a knife and just cut [the screen] and stick my head through." The album was followed by the B-sides compilation G-Sides released in December 2001.
On 7 December 2001, the band released the single "911" a collaboration with hip hop group D12 (without Eminem) and singer Terry Hall of the Specials about the September 11 attacks. At the 2002 Brit Awards the virtual members of Gorillaz "performed" for the first time, appearing in 3D animation on four large screens along with rap accompaniment by Phi Life Cypher, a production which reportedly cost £300,000 to create. The band were nominated for four Brit Awards, including Best British Group, Best British Album and British Breakthrough Act, but did not win any awards.
On 1 July 2002, a remix album titled Laika Come Home was released, containing most of the tracks from Gorillaz remixed in dub and reggae style by the DJ group Spacemonkeyz. On 18 November 2002, the band released the DVD Phase One: Celebrity Take Down, which contained all of the band's released visual content up to that point along with other extras.
After the success of the debut album, Albarn and Hewlett briefly explored the possibility of creating a Gorillaz theatrical film, but Hewlett claimed the duo later lost interest: "We lost all interest in doing it as soon as we started meeting with studios and talking to these Hollywood executive types, we just weren't on the same page. We said, fuck it, we'll sit on the idea until we can do it ourselves, and maybe even raise the money ourselves."
Demon Days (2004–07)
Albarn spent the majority of 2003 on tour with Blur in support of their newly released album Think Tank; however, upon completion of the tour, he decided to return to Gorillaz, reuniting with Hewlett to prepare for a second album. Hewlett explained that the duo chose to continue Gorillaz to prove that the project was not "a gimmick": "If you do it again, it's no longer a gimmick, and if it works then we've proved a point." The result was Demon Days, released on 11 May 2005. The album was another major commercial success, debuting at No. 1 on the UK Albums Charts and #6 on the US Billboard 200, and has since gone six times platinum in the UK, double platinum in the United States, and triple platinum in Australia, outperforming sales of the first album and becoming the band's most successful album to date. The album's success was partially driven by the success of the lead single "Feel Good Inc." featuring hip-hop group De La Soul, which topped Billboard'''s Alternative Songs chart in the U.S. for eight consecutive weeks and was featured in a commercial for Apple's iPod. The album was also supported by the later singles "Dare", "Dirty Harry", and the double A-side "Kids with Guns" / "El Mañana".Demon Days found the band taking a darker tone, partially influenced by a train journey Albarn had taken with his family through impoverished rural China. Albarn described the album as a concept album: "The whole album kind of tells the story of the night — staying up during the night — but it's also an allegory. It's what we're living in basically, the world in a state of night." Believing that the album needed "a slightly different approach" compared to the first album, Albarn enlisted American producer Brian Burton, better known by his stage name Danger Mouse, to produce the album, whom Albarn praised as "one of the best young producers in the world" after hearing his 2004 mashup album The Grey Album. Burton felt he and Albarn had a high degree of affinity with each other, stating in an interview on the creation of the album: "We never had any arguments. We even have that finish-each-other's-sentences thing happening. There are a lot of the same influences between us, like Ennio Morricone and psychedelic pop-rock, but he has 10 years on me, so I have some catching up to do. Where he can school me on new wave and punk of the late ’70s/early ’80s, I can school him on a lot of hip-hop. We’re very competitive and pushed each other." Similar to the first album, Demon Days features collaborations with several different artists, including Bootie Brown, Shaun Ryder, Ike Turner, MF Doom (who was recording with Danger Mouse as Danger Doom at the time) and Martina Topley-Bird, among others.
The band chose to forgo traditional live touring in support of Demon Days, instead limiting live performance during the album cycle to a five night residency in November 2005 at the Manchester Opera House billed as Demon Days Live. The concerts saw the band performing the album in full each night with most featured artists from the album present. Unlike the debut album's tour, the touring band was visible on stage in view of the audience but obscured by lighting in such a way that only their silhouettes were visible, with a screen above the band displaying Hewlett's visuals alongside each song. The residency was later repeated in April 2006 at New York City's Apollo Theater and the Manchester performances were later released on DVD as Demon Days: Live at the Manchester Opera House.
The virtual Gorillaz members "performed" at the 2005 MTV Europe Music Awards in November 2005 and again at the 48th Annual Grammy Awards in February 2006, appearing to perform on stage via Musion Eyeliner technology. Albarn later expressed disappointment at the execution of the performance, citing the low volume level required so as to not disturb the technology: "That was tough... They started and it was so quiet cause they've got this piece of film that you've got to pull over the stage so any bass frequencies would just mess up the illusion completely." At the Grammys, the band won Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals for "Feel Good Inc.", which was also nominated for Record of the Year. Albarn and Hewlett explored the idea of producing a full "live holographic tour" featuring the virtual Gorillaz appearing on stage with Munsion Eyeliner technology after the Grammys performance, but the tour was ultimately never realised due to the tremendous expense and logistical issues that would have resulted.
In October 2006, the band released the book Rise of the Ogre. Presented as an autobiography of the band ostensibly written by the fictional members and expanding on the band's fictional backstory and universe, the book was actually written by official Gorillaz script writer and live drummer Cass Browne and featured new artwork by Hewlett. Later the same month, the band released another DVD, Phase Two: Slowboat to Hades, compiling much of the band's visual content from the album cycle. A second B-sides compilation, D-Sides was released in November 2007, featuring B-sides and remixes associated with Demon Days as well as unreleased tracks from the sessions for the album. In April 2009, the documentary film Bananaz was released. Directed by Ceri Levy, the film documents the behind-the-scenes history of the band from 2000 to 2006.
Plastic Beach and The Fall (2008–13)
Albarn and Hewlett's next project together was the opera Monkey: Journey to the West based on the classical Chinese novel Journey to the West, which premiered at the 2007 Manchester International Festival. While not officially a Gorillaz project, Albarn mentioned in an interview that the project was "Gorillaz, really but we can't call it that for legal reasons".
After completing work on Monkey in late 2007, Albarn and Hewlett began working on a new Gorillaz project entitled Carousel, described by Albarn as being about "the mystical aspects of Britain". Hewlett described Carousel in a 2008 interview as "even bigger and more difficult than Monkey... It's sort of like a film but not with one narrative story. There's many stories, told around a bigger story, set to music, and done in live action, animation, all different styles. Originally it was a film but now we think it's a film and it's a stage thing as well. Damon's written around 70 songs for it, and I’ve got great plans for the visuals." The Carousel concept was eventually dropped with Albarn and Hewlett's work evolving into the third Gorillaz studio album Plastic Beach.
Drawing upon environmentalist themes, Plastic Beach was inspired by the idea of a "secret floating island deep in the South Pacific... made up of the detritus, debris and washed up remnants of humanity" inspired by marine pollution such as plastic that Albarn had found in a beach near one of his homes in Devon as well as the Great Pacific garbage patch. Unlike previous Gorillaz albums, Albarn made the decision to produce Plastic Beach by himself, with no co-producer. The album was recorded throughout 2008 and 2009 in London, New York City and Syria although production of the album was briefly interrupted so that Albarn could join Blur for a reunion tour in the summer of 2009, with Albarn explaining "there's no way you can do that and that [Blur and Gorillaz] at the same time." Plastic Beach saw Gorillaz move into a more electronic pop sound, with Albarn describing the album as "the most pop record I've ever made" and saying that he took special care to make the album's lyrics and melodies clear and focused compared to previous albums. Plastic Beach also featured the largest cast of collaborators featured yet on a Gorillaz album, fulfilling Albarn's goal of "work[ing] with an incredibly eclectic, surprising cast of people" including artists such as Snoop Dogg, Mos Def, Bobby Womack, Little Dragon, Lou Reed and Gruff Rhys among others, and also included orchestral contributions from Sinfonia Viva and the Lebanese National Symphony Orchestra. Albarn explained the expanded roster of featured artists represented his and Hewlett's new vision of Gorillaz as a project, explaining in a July 2008 interview that "Gorillaz now to us is not like four animated characters any more – it's more like an organisation of people doing new projects... That's my ideal model."
Released on 3 March 2010, Plastic Beach debuted at #2 on both the UK Albums Chart and the US Billboard 200 chart, the band's highest placing debut chart position. The album was supported by the lead single "Stylo" featuring Mos Def and Bobby Womack released in January 2010 and the later singles "On Melancholy Hill" and "Rhinestone Eyes". To promote the album, the band embarked on the Escape to Plastic Beach Tour, the band's first world tour and also their first live performances in which the touring band performed fully in view of the audience on stage with no visual obstructions. The tour, which featured many of the collaborative artists from Plastic Beach and saw the touring band wearing naval attire, was later described by Albarn as having been extremely costly to produce, with the band barely breaking even on the shows, saying "I loved doing it, but economically it was a fucking disaster." The tour was preceded by headline performances at several international music festivals, including the Coachella and Glastonbury festivals. On 21 November 2010, while still on tour, the band released the non-album single "Doncamatic" featuring British singer Daley.
During the North American leg of the Escape to Plastic Beach tour in the fall of 2010, Albarn continued recording Gorillaz songs entirely on his iPad. The recordings were later released as the album The Fall, first released digitally on Christmas Day 2010 and later given a physical release on 19 April 2011. The Fall is also co-produced by Stephen Sedgwick, the mixer engineer of the band. Albarn said the album served as a diary of the American leg of the tour, explaining that the tracks were presented exactly as they were on the day they were written and recorded with no additional production or overdubs: "I literally made it on the road. I didn't write it before, I didn't prepare it. I just did it day by day as a kind of diary of my experience in America. If I left it until the New Year to release it then the cynics out there would say, 'Oh well, it's been tampered with', but if I put it out now they'd know that I haven't done anything because I've been on tour ever since." The band later released a "Gorillaz edition" of the Korg iElectribe music production app for iPad, featuring many of the same samples and sounds used by Albarn to create The Fall.
On 23 February 2012, Gorillaz released "DoYaThing", a single to promote a Gorillaz-branded collection of Converse shoes which were released shortly after. The song was a part of Converse's "Three Artists, One Song" project, with the two additional collaborators being James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem and André 3000 of Outkast. Two different edits of the song were released: a four-and-a-half minute radio edit released on Converse's website and the full 13-minute version of the song released on the Gorillaz website. Hewlett returned to direct the single's music video, featuring fictionalized animated versions of Murphy and André interacting with the Gorillaz' virtual members. The song received positive reviews from critics, with particular praise given to André 3000's contributions to the track.
In April 2012, Albarn told The Guardian that he and Hewlett had fallen out and that future Gorillaz projects were "unlikely". Tension between the two had been building, partly due to a belief held by Hewlett that his contributions to Gorillaz were being minimised. Speaking to The Guardian in April 2017, Hewlett explained: "Damon had half the Clash on stage, and Bobby Womack and Mos Def and De La Soul, and fucking Hypnotic Brass Ensemble and Bashy and everyone else. It was the greatest band ever. And the screen on stage behind them seemed to get smaller every day. I'd say, ‘Have we got a new screen?’ and the tour manager was like, ‘No, it's the same screen.’ Because it seemed to me like it was getting smaller." Albarn gave his side of the story in a separate interview, saying "I think we were at a cross purposes somewhat on that last record [Plastic Beach], which is a shame. It was one of those things, the music and the videos weren't working as well together, but I felt we'd made a really good record and I was into it." On 25 April 2012, in an interview with Metro, Albarn was more optimistic about Gorillaz' future, saying that once he had worked out his differences with Hewlett, he was sure that they would make another record. In June 2013, Hewlett confirmed that he and Albarn planned to someday continue Gorillaz and record a follow-up album to Plastic Beach, saying "We'll come back to it when the time is right."
Hiatus and Humanz (2014–17)
Following the release of DoYaThing and the publicization of Albarn and Hewlett's fall-out in 2012, Gorillaz entered a multiyear hiatus. During the hiatus, Albarn released a solo album, Everyday Robots, scored stage productions and continued to record and tour with Blur, while Hewlett held art exhibitions and attempted to create a film project which was ultimately never realized. While on tour in support of Everyday Robots in 2014, Albarn signaled openness to returning to Gorillaz, telling The National Post that he "wouldn't mind having another stab at a Gorillaz record". Two months later he reported that he had "been writing quite a lot of songs on the road for Gorillaz". and at the end of 2014 confirmed in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald that he was planning to record another Gorillaz album. Speaking about his relationship with Hewlett, Albarn said that the pair's well-publicised fall-out had helped their relationship in the long term. Hewlett described the moment when he and Albarn agreed to continue Gorillaz at an afterparty after one of Albarn's solo shows in 2014: "We'd had a bit to drink, and he said, 'Do you want to do another one?' And I said, 'Do you?' and he said, 'Do you?' And I said, 'Yeah, sure.' I started work on it straight away, learning to draw the characters again. I played around by myself for eight months while he was performing with Blur in 2015."
Recording sessions for the band's fifth studio album Humanz began in late 2015 and continued through 2016, taking place in London, New York City, Paris and Jamaica. Albarn enlisted American hip-hop and house producer Anthony Khan, known by his stage name the Twilite Tone, to co-produce the album. Albarn chose Khan from a list of possible producers compiled by Parlophone, the band's record label after Albarn and Khan spoke via Skype. Humanz was also co-produced by Remi Kabaka Jr., a friend of Albarn's who had worked with him in the non-profit musical organization Africa Express and also has been the voice actor for the Gorillaz virtual band member Russel Hobbs since 2000. In conceptualizing the album, Albarn and Khan envisioned Humanz as being the soundtrack for "a party for the end of the world", with Albarn specifically imagining a future in which Donald Trump won the 2016 U.S. presidential election as context for the album's narrative (Trump becoming president was still considered an unlikely event at the time of recording), explaining "Let's use that as a kind of dark fantasy for this record, let's imagine the night Donald Trump wins the election and how we're all going to feel that night." Khan stated that "The idea of Donald Trump being president allowed us to create a narrative together. I suggested that the album should be about joy, pain and urgency. That was to be our state of mind before we even touched a keyboard or an MPC. Especially in American music, dare I say black music, there's a way of communicating joy that at the same time allows you to feel the struggle the person has been through. And the urgency is there because something needs to be done. So that was the mantra. I wanted to blend Damon, a Briton, with the joy and pain and struggle that African-American music can express." Humanz again featured a large cast of featured artists, including Popcaan, Vince Staples, DRAM, Jehnny Beth, Pusha T, Peven Everett, Danny Brown, Grace Jones and Mavis Staples, among others. The first track from the album released publicly was "Hallelujah Money" featuring Benjamin Clementine, released on 20 January 2017 with an accompanying video featuring Clementine. While not an official single, Albarn explained that the band chose to release the track on the day of Trump's inauguration because "It was meant to be something sung at the imaginary inauguration of Donald Trump, which turned out to be the real inauguration of Donald Trump, so we released it because we had imagined that happening and it did happen."Humanz was released on 28 April 2017, the band's first new studio album in 7 years. Featuring a "modern-sounding urban hip-hop/R&B sensibility", the album debuted at #2 on both the UK Album charts and the US Billboard 200. Humanz received generally positive reviews from critics, although received some criticism from fans and critics for what was perceived as a diminished presence from Albarn in contrast to the abundance of featured artists. The album was released in both standard and deluxe editions, with the deluxe edition featuring an additional 6 bonus tracks and was promoted by the lead single "Saturnz Barz" featuring Popcaan and the later single "Strobelite" featuring Peven Everett. The Hewlett-directed music video for "Saturnz Barz" made use of YouTube's 360-degree video format and reportedly cost $800,000 to create.
The band embarked on the Humanz Tour to support the album from the summer of 2017 to early 2018. Like the band's previous tour, the Humanz Tour featured the touring band in full view of the audience with a large screen behind them displaying Hewlett-created visuals and featured several of the different collaborative artists from the band's history. The tour was preceded by a handful of European warm-up shows, including the first Demon Dayz Festival held on 10 June 2017 at the Dreamland Margate theme park, a Gorillaz curated music festival which was later repeated in Los Angeles in October 2018. On 8 June 2017 the band released the non-album single "Sleeping Powder" with an accompanying music video and on 3 November 2017 a "Super Deluxe" version of Humanz, featuring an additional 14 unreleased tracks from the album's sessions, including alternative versions of previously released songs as well as the single "Garage Palace" featuring Little Simz.
The Now Now (2018–19)
Albarn continued recording while on the road during the Humanz Tour, and mentioned in an interview with Q Magazine in September 2017 that he was planning on releasing the material as a future Gorillaz album. Comparing the production of the album to The Fall, which was also recorded while the band was on tour, Albarn mentioned that "It will be a more complete record than The Fall, but hopefully have that spontaneity." Albarn signaled his desire to complete and release the album quickly, adding that "I really like the idea of making new music and playing it live almost simultaneously" and "If we're going to do more Gorillaz we don't want to wait seven years because, y'know, we're getting on a bit now. The band later debuted a new song "Idaho", which was later included on the album, at a concert in Seattle on 30 September 2017 with Albarn saying it had been written in the days prior.
During a break in the Humanz Tour in February 2018, Albarn returned to London where he worked with producer James Ford, known for his work with Arctic Monkeys and Florence and the Machine, and Kabaka Jr. to finish the newly written material, resulting in the band's sixth studio album The Now Now released on 29 June 2018. Featuring "simple, mostly upbeat songs" and 1980s new wave influences, the album was noted for its distinctly small list of featured artists compared to previous Gorillaz work, with only two tracks featuring any outside artists (the album's lead single "Humility" featuring George Benson and "Hollywood" featuring Snoop Dogg and Jamie Principle). Albarn mentioned that the few numbers of featured artists was partially due to the album's quick production, which in turn was a result of Albarn wanting to finish the album before the band's touring schedule resumed: "We've been very lucky to be offered all the festivals this year on the back of the last record [Humanz]... but I didn't want to do that unless I had something new to work with, so the only option was to make another record really quickly and not have lots of guests on it, because that takes a long time to organize; just do it all myself, really." Albarn also explained that with The Now Now he sought to make a Gorillaz album "where I'm just singing for once" and that the album is "pretty much just me singing, very sort of in the world of 2-D."
In the fictional Gorillaz storyline, the band introduced Ace from Cartoon Network's animated series The Powerpuff Girls as a temporary bassist of the band during The Now Now album cycle, filling in for the imprisoned Murdoc Niccals. Explaining the crossover in an interview with the BBC, Albarn said "We were massive fans of The Powerpuff Girls when they came out, the energy of that cartoon was really cool, and we kind of know the creator of it (Craig McCracken). It was a very organic thing."
The band's remaining 2018 live dates were billed as The Now Now Tour to support the album, and included a performance in Tokyo on 22 June 2018 billed as "The Now Now World Premiere" in which the band played the full album live for the first and only time, a performance which was later broadcast by Boiler Room. On 16 December 2019, the documentary Gorillaz: Reject False Icons was screened worldwide on a one-day theatrical release. Filmed and directed by Hewlett's son Denholm, the documentary showcases a behind-the-scenes look at the production of Humanz and The Now Now as well as the album's associated tours. One week after the film's theatrical release, a "Director's Cut" version of the film featuring additional footage was released on the official Gorillaz YouTube channel in three parts. In the credits for Reject False Icons, Kabaka Jr. was listed as an official member of the band (labeled as "A&R/Producer") alongside Albarn and Hewlett for the first time.
Song Machine project and Meanwhile EP (2020–present)
On 29 January 2020, the band announced its new project, Song Machine. Eschewing the typical album format of releasing music, Song Machine is instead a web series that sees the band releasing one new song a month as "episodes" to the series, with 11 episodes releasing to comprise the first "season". Elaborating on the idea behind Song Machine in a radio interview shortly after the announcement of the project, Albarn explained that "We no longer kind of see ourselves as constrained to making albums. We can now make episodes and seasons." Each episode features previously unannounced guest musicians on new Gorillaz material, with the first being "Momentary Bliss", which was released on 31 January and features both British rapper Slowthai and the Kent-based punk rock duo Slaves.
Upon the premiere of "Momentary Bliss", Albarn revealed that the group had been in the studio with Schoolboy Q and Sampa the Great among others, although he did say that these songs were likely to be saved for future episodes of Song Machine. The group also teased a possible collaboration with Australian band Tame Impala on Instagram.
On 27 February, the band released the second episode of Song Machine entitled "Désolé". The song features Malian singer Fatoumata Diawara. The third episode, "Aries", released on 9 April and featured Peter Hook and Georgia. The fourth track "How Far?" featuring Tony Allen and Skepta was released 2 May. This song was released without an accompanying music video as a tribute to Allen, who died on 30 April.
On 26 May, Gorillaz announced the release of a new book titled Gorillaz Almanac. The book comes in three editions: standard, deluxe and super deluxe, all of which are set to release on 23 October but has since been delayed to 22 December with a physical release of season one of Song Machine included with each copy.
On 9 June, the band released "Friday 13th", the fourth episode of Song Machine. The track features French-British rapper Octavian.
On 20 July, the band released "Pac-Man", the fifth episode of Song Machine, in honour of Pac-Man's 40th anniversary. The track features American rapper Schoolboy Q.
On 9 September, the band released "Strange Timez", the sixth episode of Song Machine. The track features Robert Smith, from the Cure. Gorillaz also announced the title and tracklist for Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez, released on 23 October 2020, featuring further guest appearances from Elton John, 6lack, JPEGMafia, Kano, Roxani Arias, Moonchild Sanelly and Chai, among others.
On 1 October, the band released "The Pink Phantom", the seventh episode of Song Machine. The track features Elton John and American rapper 6lack.
Before the release of Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez, Gorillaz started a radio show on Apple Music called Song Machine Radio where each virtual character has a turn to invite special guests and play some of their favourite tunes.
A few days from the release of Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez, Albarn confirmed that the band already has a song for Season Two of Song Machine prepared for release, and also mentioned that the second part of the project will be released earlier than expected.
On 5 November, the band released "The Valley of the Pagans", the eighth episode of Song Machine. The track features American singer Beck. The music video is somewhat notorious for being the first major studio production filmed in Grand Theft Auto V. The video ends with a reference to previous album, Plastic Beach. For unknown reasons, the music video on the official Gorillaz YouTube channel was set to private just a few days after its initial premiere. On 9 March 2021, Gorillaz uploaded an alternative version of the music video to their official YouTube channel, which does not feature any gameplay from Grand Theft Auto V.
On 24 December, the band released "The Lost Chord", the ninth and final episode of the first season of Song Machine. The track features British musician Leee John.
On 26 March 2021, the band celebrated its debut album's 20th anniversary with oncoming reissues of their catalog and teases of non-fungible tokens; due to its impact on climate change, the latter was met with criticism by various sources and fans—some noting that the act contradicts the environmental themes of Plastic Beach. The band also announced a boxset, the G Collection, containing six of their studio albums—excluding The Fall—for Record Store Day.
On 10 August 2021, Gorillaz debuted three new songs, "Meanwhile" (featuring British rapper Jelani Blackman), "Jimmy Jimmy" (featuring British rapper AJ Tracey), and "Déjà Vu" (featuring Jamaican-British singer Alicaì Harley), during a free concert at The O2 Arena in London, England exclusively for National Health Service employees and their families. They then performed them again at the subsequent concert open to the public the next day (both of which served as the first live audience concerts of the Song Machine Tour). These three songs were announced to be tracks from a new EP entitled Meanwhile, with the cover originally published on TikTok.
On 17 September 2021, Albarn revealed that he had recorded a new Gorillaz song with Bad Bunny while in Jamaica, and it will be the first single for a new album, influenced by Latin America, releasing next year.
Style and legacy
Writers and critics have variously described Gorillaz as art pop, alternative rock, hip hop, electronic, trip hop, pop, dark pop, alternative hip hop, rap rock, indie rock, bedroom pop, dance-rock, new wave, funk, worldbeat, and experimental rock. The band's aesthetic and general approach has been described as postmodern. According to AllMusic, Gorillaz blend Britpop and hip-hop, while The Guardian described the band as "a sort of dub/hip-hop/lo-fi indie/world music hybrid". According to PopMatters, the band's early work foreshadowed "the melding of hip-hop, rock, and electronic elements in pop music" that grew in significance in the next decade.
Gorillaz’ main musical influences include Massive Attack, the Specials, Big Audio Dynamite, Public Image Ltd, Tom Tom Club, Fun Boy Three, Unkle, A Tribe Called Quest, and De La Soul, as well as The Human League, The Kinks, XTC, Simple Minds, Sonic Youth, Pavement, Ween, Portishead, Beck, Wire, Fela Kuti, Sly and the Family Stone, Earth Wind and Fire, Augustus Pablo, Zapp, and DJ Kool Herc. Gorillaz’ primary visual influences include Hanna-Barbera, Looney Tunes, Mad magazine, The Simpsons, 2000 AD, and Métal hurlant (Heavy Metal). Furthermore, Hewlett has also cited European artists such as Carl Giles, Ronald Searle, Moebius, Tanino Liberatore, Mike McMahon, and Brendan McCarthy. The idea for Gorillaz was inspired by the many cartoon bands that came before them in the 1960s such as the Banana Splits, the Archies, Josie and the Pussycats, and Alvin and the Chipmunks, and real bands with fictional stage personas like ABC (circa How to Be a ... Zillionaire!) and Silicon Teens.Charts of Darkness. Dazed Film & TV (2001)
Musical artists who have been influenced by Gorillaz include Major Lazer, Dethklok, Rat Boy, Chromeo, Flume, Foster the People, The 1975, 5 Seconds of Summer, Awolnation, Paramore, Grimes, Kesha, A.G. Cook, Finneas, Oliver Tree, Flatbush Zombies, Vic Mensa, IDK, Trippie Redd, The Internet, ASAP Rocky, Lupe Fiasco, Brockhampton and Odd Future. Gorillaz have also influenced animated series such as The Amazing World of Gumball, Glitch Techs, Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Motorcity, Tron: Uprising, Teen Titans, and Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, as well as video games like Borderlands, Sunset Overdrive, No Straight Roads, Battlefield, and League of Legends.
Gorillaz have collaborated with a number of brands, including Motorola, O2, Internet Explorer 9, Converse, and Jaguar Cars. They have also been featured in fashion magazines such as Maxim, Nylon, and Numéro. The band's use of the internet and digital media for promotion as early as 2000 has been touched on in retrospective reviews for being ahead of its time. Dazed magazine has summarised Gorillaz's impact as "completely reinvent[ing] the notion of what a band could be".
Members
Virtual members
Murdoc Niccals – bass, drum machine (1998–present; hiatus 2018)
2-D – vocals, keyboards (1998–present)
Noodle – guitar, keyboards, vocals (1998–2006; 2010–present)
Russel Hobbs – drums, percussion (1998–2006; 2012–present)
Former virtual members
Paula Cracker – guitar (1998)
Cyborg Noodle – guitar, vocals (2008–10)
Ace – bass (2018)
Virtual members timeline
Touring members
Touring members timeline
Studio contributors
Damon Albarn – vocals, instrumentation, songwriting, production, executive production (1998–present)
Jamie Hewlett – songwriting, executive production, artwork, character design, video direction, visuals, FX (1998–present)
Stephen Sedgwick – mixing, engineering, production (2004–present)
Remi Kabaka Jr. – songwriting, production, percussion, drum programming (2015–present)
John Davis – mastering, engineering (2015–present)
Samuel Egglenton – assistance, engineering (2015–present)
Former studio contributors
Excluding small appearances by touring members.
Junior Dan – bass (1998–2001)
Jason Cox – production, percussion, drum programming, mixing, bass, additional guitars (1998–2010)
Simon Tong – additional guitar (2004–10)
Howie Weinberg – mastering, engineering (2004–10)
Mick Jones – guitars (2008–11)
Paul Simonon – bass (2008–11)
James Ford – instrumentation, songwriting, production (2018–20)
Studio contributors timeline
Discography
Studio albums
Gorillaz (2001)
Demon Days (2005)
Plastic Beach (2010)
The Fall (2010)
Humanz (2017)
The Now Now (2018)
Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez'' (2020)
Tours
Gorillaz Live (2001–2002)
Demon Days Live (2005–2006)
Escape to Plastic Beach Tour (2010)
Humanz Tour (2017–2018)
The Now Now Tour (2018)
Song Machine Tour (2021–2022)
Awards and nominations
Notes
References
External links
Gorillaz at Youtube
Animated musical groups
Recorded music characters
Musical groups established in 1998
English electronic music groups
English alternative rock groups
Electronica music groups
Trip hop groups
Fictional musical groups
English indie rock groups
Dance-rock musical groups
English hip hop groups
Rap rock groups
Alternative hip hop groups
British world music groups
English pop music groups
Brit Award winners
Grammy Award winners
MTV Europe Music Award winners
Parlophone artists
Virgin Records artists
Warner Records artists
1998 establishments in England
Bands with fictional stage personas
Warner Music Group artists
Art pop musicians
Virtual influencers | false | [
"Next Exit is an American manga-influenced comic series.\n\nNext Exit may also refer to:\n Next Exit (album), a 1992 album by Grover Washington Jr.\n \"Next Exit\" (song), a song by Split Enz\n \"Next Exit,\" a song by Interpol from their album Antics\n \"Next Exit,\" a song by Unwound from their album Repetition\n Next Exit, a 2005 film starring Jorja Fox",
"The Next Step may refer to:\n\nMusic\nThe Next Step (Kurt Rosenwinkel album), 2001\nThe Next Step (People Under the Stairs album)\nThe Next Step (James Brown album), 2002\nThe Next Step, the backing band of Kamasi Washington on the 2005 album Live at 5th Street Dick's\n\nTelevision\nThe Next Step (1991 TV series), American technology magazine television show\nThe Next Step (2013 TV series), Canadian drama series about young dancers\n\"The Next Step\", a season 4 episode of the TV series Everwood\n\nOther uses\nThe Next Step, a newspaper published by the Revolutionary Communist Party in the UK from 1978 to 1988\n\nSee also\n\nNext Step (disambiguation)\n\nNext (disambiguation)\nStep (disambiguation)"
] |
[
"Gorillaz",
"Phase One: Celebrity Take Down (2000-03)",
"What did the album do in the charts?",
"No. 4 in the UK.",
"Was this their first album?",
"Clint Eastwood",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"originally featured UK rap group Phi Life Cypher,",
"Anything else interesting?",
"version that appears on the album features American rapper Del the Funky Homosapien,",
"Next album?",
"The Phi Life Cypher"
] | C_fb5dadfb60c6438eb0f8405024d25b1c_0 | Any other colaborators on the album? | 6 | Other than The Phi Life Cypher, any other collaborators on the album? | Gorillaz | The band's first release was the EP Tomorrow Comes Today, released in 2000. The band's first single was "Clint Eastwood" and was released on 5 March 2001, reaching No. 4 in the UK. It was produced by hip hop producer Dan the Automator and originally featured UK rap group Phi Life Cypher, but the version that appears on the album features American rapper Del the Funky Homosapien, known on the album as Del tha' Ghost Rapper, a spirit in the band's drummer Russel Hobbs. The Phi Life Cypher version of "Clint Eastwood" appears on the B-side album G Sides. Later that same month, their first full-length album, the self-titled Gorillaz, was released, producing four singles: "Clint Eastwood", "19-2000", "Tomorrow Comes Today", and "Rock the House". In June 2001, "19-2000" charted at No. 6 in the UK, and the song was used as the title theme for EA Sports FIFA video game FIFA Football 2002. The end of the year brought the song "911", a collaboration between Gorillaz and hip hop group D12 (without Eminem) and Terry Hall about the September 11 attacks. Meanwhile, G Sides, a compilation of the B-sides from the Tomorrow Comes Today EP and first three singles, was released in Japan on 12 December 2001 and quickly followed with international releases in early 2002. Gorillaz performed at the 2002 Brit Awards in London on 22 February, appearing in 3D animation on four large screens along with rap accompaniment by Phi Life Cypher. The band were nominated for four Brit Awards, including Best British Group, Best British Album and British Breakthrough Act, but did not win any awards. In November 2002, a DVD titled Phase One: Celebrity Take Down was released, giving the phase its name. The DVD contains the four Phase One promos, the abandoned video for "5/4", the Charts of Darkness documentary, the five Gorilla Bitez (comedic shorts starring the band characters), a tour of the website by the MEL 9000 server and more. The DVD's menu was designed much like the band's website and depicts an abandoned Kong Studios. Rumours were circulating at this time that the Gorillaz team were busy preparing a film, but Hewlett said that the film project had been abandoned: "We lost all interest in doing it as soon as we started meeting with studios and talking to these Hollywood executive types, we just weren't on the same page. We said, fuck it, we'll sit on the idea until we can do it ourselves, and maybe even raise the money ourselves." CANNOTANSWER | Russel Hobbs. | Gorillaz are an English virtual band created in 1998 by musician Damon Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett, from London, England. The band primarily consists of four animated members: 2-D (vocals, keyboards), Murdoc Niccals (bass guitar), Noodle (guitar, keyboards, vocals), and Russel Hobbs (drums). Their fictional universe is presented in music videos, interviews and short cartoons. Gorillaz' music often features collaborations with a wide range of featured artists, with Albarn as the only permanent musical contributor.
With Gorillaz, Albarn departed from the distinct Britpop of his band Blur, exploring a variety of musical styles including hip hop, electronic music and world music through an "eccentrically postmodern" approach. The band's 2001 debut album Gorillaz, which featured dub, Latin and punk influences, went triple platinum in the UK and double platinum in Europe, with sales driven by the success of the album's lead single "Clint Eastwood". Their second studio album, Demon Days (2005), went six times platinum in the UK and double platinum in the US and spawned the successful lead single "Feel Good Inc.".
The band's third album, Plastic Beach (2010), featured environmentalist themes, a synth-pop approach and an expanded roster of featured artists. Their fourth album, The Fall (2010), was recorded on the road during the Escape to Plastic Beach Tour and released on 25 December 2010. During 2015, Remi Kabaka Jr. became a music producer for the band after more than 10 years providing the voice of Russel and was credited as such alongside Albarn and Hewlett in the official 2019 documentary Gorillaz: Reject False Icons. The band's fifth album, Humanz, was released after a seven-year hiatus on 28 April 2017. Their sixth album, The Now Now (2018), featured stripped-down production and a greater musical focus on Albarn. Gorillaz' latest project is Song Machine, a music-based web series with episodes that consist of standalone singles and accompanying music videos featuring different guests each episode, resulting in their seventh album, Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez (2020).
Gorillaz has presented itself live in a variety of different ways throughout the band's history, such as hiding the touring band from the audience's view in the early years of the project, projecting animated band members on stage via computer graphics and traditional live touring featuring a fully visible live band. The band have sold over 25 million records worldwide and are cited by Guinness World Records as the world's "Most Successful Virtual Band". They have won a Grammy Award, two MTV Video Music Awards, an NME Award and three MTV Europe Music Awards. They have also been nominated for 11 Brit Awards and won Best British Group at the 2018 Brit Awards.
History
Creation (1990–1999)
Musician Damon Albarn and comic artist Jamie Hewlett met in 1990 when guitarist Graham Coxon, a fan of Hewlett's work, asked him to interview Blur, which Albarn and Coxon had recently formed. The interview was published in Deadline magazine, home of Hewlett's comic strip Tank Girl. Hewlett initially thought Albarn was "arsey, a wanker;" and despite becoming acquaintances with the band, they often did not get on, especially after Hewlett began seeing Coxon's ex-girlfriend Jane Olliver. Despite this, Albarn and Hewlett started sharing a flat on Westbourne Grove in London in 1997. Hewlett had recently broken up with Olliver and Albarn was at the end of his highly publicised relationship with Justine Frischmann of Elastica.
The idea to create Gorillaz came about when Albarn and Hewlett were watching MTV. Hewlett said, "If you watch MTV for too long, it's a bit like hell – there's nothing of substance there. So we got this idea for a virtual band, something that would be a comment on that." Albarn recalled the idea similarly, saying "This was the beginning of the sort of boy band explosion... and it just felt so manufactured. And we were like, well let's make a manufactured band but make it kind of interesting." The band originally identified themselves as "Gorilla" and the first song they recorded was "Ghost Train", which was later released as a B-side on their single "Rock the House". The band's visual style is thought to have evolved from The 16s, a rejected comic strip Hewlett conceived with Tank Girl co-creator Alan Martin.
Although not released under the Gorillaz name, Albarn has said that "one of the first ever Gorillaz tunes" was Blur's 1997 single "On Your Own", which was released for their fifth studio album Blur.
Gorillaz (2000–03)
From 1998 to 2000, Albarn recorded for Gorillaz' self-titled debut album at his newly opened Studio 13 in London as well as at Geejam Studios in Jamaica. The sessions resulted in the band's first release, the EP Tomorrow Comes Today, released on 27 November 2000. This EP consisted mostly of tracks which later appeared on the album, and it also included the band's first music video for "Tomorrow Comes Today", which introduced the virtual band members for the first time.
With Gorillaz, Albarn began to branch out into other genres which he had not explored with Blur, such as hip-hop, dub and Latin music, a process he described as liberating: "One of the reasons I began Gorillaz is I had a lot of rhythms I never thought I could use with Blur. A lot of that stuff never really seemed to manifest itself in the music we made together as Blur." Albarn originally began work on the album by himself, however eventually invited American hip-hop producer Dan "the Automator" Nakamura to serve as producer on the album, explaining "I called Dan the Automator in after I'd done more than half of it and felt it would benefit from having somebody else's focus. So I just rang him and asked whether he was interested in helping me finish it off." Nakamura and Albarn had recently collaborated on Deltron 3030, the debut album by the hip-hop supergroup of the same name featuring rapper Del the Funky Homosapien and DJ Kid Koala, both of whom Nakamura recruited to assist in finishing Gorillaz material. Del featured on two tracks on the album, including the lead single "Clint Eastwood", while Kid Koala contributed turntables to various tracks. The album featured additional collaborations with Ibrahim Ferrer of Buena Vista Social Club, Miho Hatori of Cibo Matto and Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club, representing a pattern of collaboration with a wide range of artists which later became a staple of Gorillaz as a project.
Gorillaz was released on 26 March 2001 and was a major commercial success, debuting at #3 on the UK Albums Chart and #14 on the US Billboard 200, going on to sell over 7 million copies worldwide, powered by the success of the "Clint Eastwood" single. The album was promoted with the singles "Clint Eastwood", "19-2000" and "Rock the House", in addition to the previously released "Tomorrow Comes Today", with each single featuring a music video directed by Hewlett starring the virtual members. Hewlett also helmed the design of the band's website, which was presented as an interactive tour of the band's fictional "Kong Studios" home and recording studio, featuring interactive games and explorative elements. Following the release of the album, the band embarked on a brief tour of Europe, Japan and the United States to support the album in which a touring band featuring Albarn played completely obscured behind a giant screen on which Hewlett's accompanying visuals were projected. The virtual band member's voice actors were also present at some shows and spoke live to the audience to give the impression that the fictional band was present on stage. In later interviews, Albarn described the band's first tour as difficult due to the limitations imposed by the band playing behind a screen: "For someone who had just spent the last ten years out front being a frontman [with Blur], it was a really weird experience. And I have to say, some nights I just wanted to get a knife and just cut [the screen] and stick my head through." The album was followed by the B-sides compilation G-Sides released in December 2001.
On 7 December 2001, the band released the single "911" a collaboration with hip hop group D12 (without Eminem) and singer Terry Hall of the Specials about the September 11 attacks. At the 2002 Brit Awards the virtual members of Gorillaz "performed" for the first time, appearing in 3D animation on four large screens along with rap accompaniment by Phi Life Cypher, a production which reportedly cost £300,000 to create. The band were nominated for four Brit Awards, including Best British Group, Best British Album and British Breakthrough Act, but did not win any awards.
On 1 July 2002, a remix album titled Laika Come Home was released, containing most of the tracks from Gorillaz remixed in dub and reggae style by the DJ group Spacemonkeyz. On 18 November 2002, the band released the DVD Phase One: Celebrity Take Down, which contained all of the band's released visual content up to that point along with other extras.
After the success of the debut album, Albarn and Hewlett briefly explored the possibility of creating a Gorillaz theatrical film, but Hewlett claimed the duo later lost interest: "We lost all interest in doing it as soon as we started meeting with studios and talking to these Hollywood executive types, we just weren't on the same page. We said, fuck it, we'll sit on the idea until we can do it ourselves, and maybe even raise the money ourselves."
Demon Days (2004–07)
Albarn spent the majority of 2003 on tour with Blur in support of their newly released album Think Tank; however, upon completion of the tour, he decided to return to Gorillaz, reuniting with Hewlett to prepare for a second album. Hewlett explained that the duo chose to continue Gorillaz to prove that the project was not "a gimmick": "If you do it again, it's no longer a gimmick, and if it works then we've proved a point." The result was Demon Days, released on 11 May 2005. The album was another major commercial success, debuting at No. 1 on the UK Albums Charts and #6 on the US Billboard 200, and has since gone six times platinum in the UK, double platinum in the United States, and triple platinum in Australia, outperforming sales of the first album and becoming the band's most successful album to date. The album's success was partially driven by the success of the lead single "Feel Good Inc." featuring hip-hop group De La Soul, which topped Billboard'''s Alternative Songs chart in the U.S. for eight consecutive weeks and was featured in a commercial for Apple's iPod. The album was also supported by the later singles "Dare", "Dirty Harry", and the double A-side "Kids with Guns" / "El Mañana".Demon Days found the band taking a darker tone, partially influenced by a train journey Albarn had taken with his family through impoverished rural China. Albarn described the album as a concept album: "The whole album kind of tells the story of the night — staying up during the night — but it's also an allegory. It's what we're living in basically, the world in a state of night." Believing that the album needed "a slightly different approach" compared to the first album, Albarn enlisted American producer Brian Burton, better known by his stage name Danger Mouse, to produce the album, whom Albarn praised as "one of the best young producers in the world" after hearing his 2004 mashup album The Grey Album. Burton felt he and Albarn had a high degree of affinity with each other, stating in an interview on the creation of the album: "We never had any arguments. We even have that finish-each-other's-sentences thing happening. There are a lot of the same influences between us, like Ennio Morricone and psychedelic pop-rock, but he has 10 years on me, so I have some catching up to do. Where he can school me on new wave and punk of the late ’70s/early ’80s, I can school him on a lot of hip-hop. We’re very competitive and pushed each other." Similar to the first album, Demon Days features collaborations with several different artists, including Bootie Brown, Shaun Ryder, Ike Turner, MF Doom (who was recording with Danger Mouse as Danger Doom at the time) and Martina Topley-Bird, among others.
The band chose to forgo traditional live touring in support of Demon Days, instead limiting live performance during the album cycle to a five night residency in November 2005 at the Manchester Opera House billed as Demon Days Live. The concerts saw the band performing the album in full each night with most featured artists from the album present. Unlike the debut album's tour, the touring band was visible on stage in view of the audience but obscured by lighting in such a way that only their silhouettes were visible, with a screen above the band displaying Hewlett's visuals alongside each song. The residency was later repeated in April 2006 at New York City's Apollo Theater and the Manchester performances were later released on DVD as Demon Days: Live at the Manchester Opera House.
The virtual Gorillaz members "performed" at the 2005 MTV Europe Music Awards in November 2005 and again at the 48th Annual Grammy Awards in February 2006, appearing to perform on stage via Musion Eyeliner technology. Albarn later expressed disappointment at the execution of the performance, citing the low volume level required so as to not disturb the technology: "That was tough... They started and it was so quiet cause they've got this piece of film that you've got to pull over the stage so any bass frequencies would just mess up the illusion completely." At the Grammys, the band won Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals for "Feel Good Inc.", which was also nominated for Record of the Year. Albarn and Hewlett explored the idea of producing a full "live holographic tour" featuring the virtual Gorillaz appearing on stage with Munsion Eyeliner technology after the Grammys performance, but the tour was ultimately never realised due to the tremendous expense and logistical issues that would have resulted.
In October 2006, the band released the book Rise of the Ogre. Presented as an autobiography of the band ostensibly written by the fictional members and expanding on the band's fictional backstory and universe, the book was actually written by official Gorillaz script writer and live drummer Cass Browne and featured new artwork by Hewlett. Later the same month, the band released another DVD, Phase Two: Slowboat to Hades, compiling much of the band's visual content from the album cycle. A second B-sides compilation, D-Sides was released in November 2007, featuring B-sides and remixes associated with Demon Days as well as unreleased tracks from the sessions for the album. In April 2009, the documentary film Bananaz was released. Directed by Ceri Levy, the film documents the behind-the-scenes history of the band from 2000 to 2006.
Plastic Beach and The Fall (2008–13)
Albarn and Hewlett's next project together was the opera Monkey: Journey to the West based on the classical Chinese novel Journey to the West, which premiered at the 2007 Manchester International Festival. While not officially a Gorillaz project, Albarn mentioned in an interview that the project was "Gorillaz, really but we can't call it that for legal reasons".
After completing work on Monkey in late 2007, Albarn and Hewlett began working on a new Gorillaz project entitled Carousel, described by Albarn as being about "the mystical aspects of Britain". Hewlett described Carousel in a 2008 interview as "even bigger and more difficult than Monkey... It's sort of like a film but not with one narrative story. There's many stories, told around a bigger story, set to music, and done in live action, animation, all different styles. Originally it was a film but now we think it's a film and it's a stage thing as well. Damon's written around 70 songs for it, and I’ve got great plans for the visuals." The Carousel concept was eventually dropped with Albarn and Hewlett's work evolving into the third Gorillaz studio album Plastic Beach.
Drawing upon environmentalist themes, Plastic Beach was inspired by the idea of a "secret floating island deep in the South Pacific... made up of the detritus, debris and washed up remnants of humanity" inspired by marine pollution such as plastic that Albarn had found in a beach near one of his homes in Devon as well as the Great Pacific garbage patch. Unlike previous Gorillaz albums, Albarn made the decision to produce Plastic Beach by himself, with no co-producer. The album was recorded throughout 2008 and 2009 in London, New York City and Syria although production of the album was briefly interrupted so that Albarn could join Blur for a reunion tour in the summer of 2009, with Albarn explaining "there's no way you can do that and that [Blur and Gorillaz] at the same time." Plastic Beach saw Gorillaz move into a more electronic pop sound, with Albarn describing the album as "the most pop record I've ever made" and saying that he took special care to make the album's lyrics and melodies clear and focused compared to previous albums. Plastic Beach also featured the largest cast of collaborators featured yet on a Gorillaz album, fulfilling Albarn's goal of "work[ing] with an incredibly eclectic, surprising cast of people" including artists such as Snoop Dogg, Mos Def, Bobby Womack, Little Dragon, Lou Reed and Gruff Rhys among others, and also included orchestral contributions from Sinfonia Viva and the Lebanese National Symphony Orchestra. Albarn explained the expanded roster of featured artists represented his and Hewlett's new vision of Gorillaz as a project, explaining in a July 2008 interview that "Gorillaz now to us is not like four animated characters any more – it's more like an organisation of people doing new projects... That's my ideal model."
Released on 3 March 2010, Plastic Beach debuted at #2 on both the UK Albums Chart and the US Billboard 200 chart, the band's highest placing debut chart position. The album was supported by the lead single "Stylo" featuring Mos Def and Bobby Womack released in January 2010 and the later singles "On Melancholy Hill" and "Rhinestone Eyes". To promote the album, the band embarked on the Escape to Plastic Beach Tour, the band's first world tour and also their first live performances in which the touring band performed fully in view of the audience on stage with no visual obstructions. The tour, which featured many of the collaborative artists from Plastic Beach and saw the touring band wearing naval attire, was later described by Albarn as having been extremely costly to produce, with the band barely breaking even on the shows, saying "I loved doing it, but economically it was a fucking disaster." The tour was preceded by headline performances at several international music festivals, including the Coachella and Glastonbury festivals. On 21 November 2010, while still on tour, the band released the non-album single "Doncamatic" featuring British singer Daley.
During the North American leg of the Escape to Plastic Beach tour in the fall of 2010, Albarn continued recording Gorillaz songs entirely on his iPad. The recordings were later released as the album The Fall, first released digitally on Christmas Day 2010 and later given a physical release on 19 April 2011. The Fall is also co-produced by Stephen Sedgwick, the mixer engineer of the band. Albarn said the album served as a diary of the American leg of the tour, explaining that the tracks were presented exactly as they were on the day they were written and recorded with no additional production or overdubs: "I literally made it on the road. I didn't write it before, I didn't prepare it. I just did it day by day as a kind of diary of my experience in America. If I left it until the New Year to release it then the cynics out there would say, 'Oh well, it's been tampered with', but if I put it out now they'd know that I haven't done anything because I've been on tour ever since." The band later released a "Gorillaz edition" of the Korg iElectribe music production app for iPad, featuring many of the same samples and sounds used by Albarn to create The Fall.
On 23 February 2012, Gorillaz released "DoYaThing", a single to promote a Gorillaz-branded collection of Converse shoes which were released shortly after. The song was a part of Converse's "Three Artists, One Song" project, with the two additional collaborators being James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem and André 3000 of Outkast. Two different edits of the song were released: a four-and-a-half minute radio edit released on Converse's website and the full 13-minute version of the song released on the Gorillaz website. Hewlett returned to direct the single's music video, featuring fictionalized animated versions of Murphy and André interacting with the Gorillaz' virtual members. The song received positive reviews from critics, with particular praise given to André 3000's contributions to the track.
In April 2012, Albarn told The Guardian that he and Hewlett had fallen out and that future Gorillaz projects were "unlikely". Tension between the two had been building, partly due to a belief held by Hewlett that his contributions to Gorillaz were being minimised. Speaking to The Guardian in April 2017, Hewlett explained: "Damon had half the Clash on stage, and Bobby Womack and Mos Def and De La Soul, and fucking Hypnotic Brass Ensemble and Bashy and everyone else. It was the greatest band ever. And the screen on stage behind them seemed to get smaller every day. I'd say, ‘Have we got a new screen?’ and the tour manager was like, ‘No, it's the same screen.’ Because it seemed to me like it was getting smaller." Albarn gave his side of the story in a separate interview, saying "I think we were at a cross purposes somewhat on that last record [Plastic Beach], which is a shame. It was one of those things, the music and the videos weren't working as well together, but I felt we'd made a really good record and I was into it." On 25 April 2012, in an interview with Metro, Albarn was more optimistic about Gorillaz' future, saying that once he had worked out his differences with Hewlett, he was sure that they would make another record. In June 2013, Hewlett confirmed that he and Albarn planned to someday continue Gorillaz and record a follow-up album to Plastic Beach, saying "We'll come back to it when the time is right."
Hiatus and Humanz (2014–17)
Following the release of DoYaThing and the publicization of Albarn and Hewlett's fall-out in 2012, Gorillaz entered a multiyear hiatus. During the hiatus, Albarn released a solo album, Everyday Robots, scored stage productions and continued to record and tour with Blur, while Hewlett held art exhibitions and attempted to create a film project which was ultimately never realized. While on tour in support of Everyday Robots in 2014, Albarn signaled openness to returning to Gorillaz, telling The National Post that he "wouldn't mind having another stab at a Gorillaz record". Two months later he reported that he had "been writing quite a lot of songs on the road for Gorillaz". and at the end of 2014 confirmed in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald that he was planning to record another Gorillaz album. Speaking about his relationship with Hewlett, Albarn said that the pair's well-publicised fall-out had helped their relationship in the long term. Hewlett described the moment when he and Albarn agreed to continue Gorillaz at an afterparty after one of Albarn's solo shows in 2014: "We'd had a bit to drink, and he said, 'Do you want to do another one?' And I said, 'Do you?' and he said, 'Do you?' And I said, 'Yeah, sure.' I started work on it straight away, learning to draw the characters again. I played around by myself for eight months while he was performing with Blur in 2015."
Recording sessions for the band's fifth studio album Humanz began in late 2015 and continued through 2016, taking place in London, New York City, Paris and Jamaica. Albarn enlisted American hip-hop and house producer Anthony Khan, known by his stage name the Twilite Tone, to co-produce the album. Albarn chose Khan from a list of possible producers compiled by Parlophone, the band's record label after Albarn and Khan spoke via Skype. Humanz was also co-produced by Remi Kabaka Jr., a friend of Albarn's who had worked with him in the non-profit musical organization Africa Express and also has been the voice actor for the Gorillaz virtual band member Russel Hobbs since 2000. In conceptualizing the album, Albarn and Khan envisioned Humanz as being the soundtrack for "a party for the end of the world", with Albarn specifically imagining a future in which Donald Trump won the 2016 U.S. presidential election as context for the album's narrative (Trump becoming president was still considered an unlikely event at the time of recording), explaining "Let's use that as a kind of dark fantasy for this record, let's imagine the night Donald Trump wins the election and how we're all going to feel that night." Khan stated that "The idea of Donald Trump being president allowed us to create a narrative together. I suggested that the album should be about joy, pain and urgency. That was to be our state of mind before we even touched a keyboard or an MPC. Especially in American music, dare I say black music, there's a way of communicating joy that at the same time allows you to feel the struggle the person has been through. And the urgency is there because something needs to be done. So that was the mantra. I wanted to blend Damon, a Briton, with the joy and pain and struggle that African-American music can express." Humanz again featured a large cast of featured artists, including Popcaan, Vince Staples, DRAM, Jehnny Beth, Pusha T, Peven Everett, Danny Brown, Grace Jones and Mavis Staples, among others. The first track from the album released publicly was "Hallelujah Money" featuring Benjamin Clementine, released on 20 January 2017 with an accompanying video featuring Clementine. While not an official single, Albarn explained that the band chose to release the track on the day of Trump's inauguration because "It was meant to be something sung at the imaginary inauguration of Donald Trump, which turned out to be the real inauguration of Donald Trump, so we released it because we had imagined that happening and it did happen."Humanz was released on 28 April 2017, the band's first new studio album in 7 years. Featuring a "modern-sounding urban hip-hop/R&B sensibility", the album debuted at #2 on both the UK Album charts and the US Billboard 200. Humanz received generally positive reviews from critics, although received some criticism from fans and critics for what was perceived as a diminished presence from Albarn in contrast to the abundance of featured artists. The album was released in both standard and deluxe editions, with the deluxe edition featuring an additional 6 bonus tracks and was promoted by the lead single "Saturnz Barz" featuring Popcaan and the later single "Strobelite" featuring Peven Everett. The Hewlett-directed music video for "Saturnz Barz" made use of YouTube's 360-degree video format and reportedly cost $800,000 to create.
The band embarked on the Humanz Tour to support the album from the summer of 2017 to early 2018. Like the band's previous tour, the Humanz Tour featured the touring band in full view of the audience with a large screen behind them displaying Hewlett-created visuals and featured several of the different collaborative artists from the band's history. The tour was preceded by a handful of European warm-up shows, including the first Demon Dayz Festival held on 10 June 2017 at the Dreamland Margate theme park, a Gorillaz curated music festival which was later repeated in Los Angeles in October 2018. On 8 June 2017 the band released the non-album single "Sleeping Powder" with an accompanying music video and on 3 November 2017 a "Super Deluxe" version of Humanz, featuring an additional 14 unreleased tracks from the album's sessions, including alternative versions of previously released songs as well as the single "Garage Palace" featuring Little Simz.
The Now Now (2018–19)
Albarn continued recording while on the road during the Humanz Tour, and mentioned in an interview with Q Magazine in September 2017 that he was planning on releasing the material as a future Gorillaz album. Comparing the production of the album to The Fall, which was also recorded while the band was on tour, Albarn mentioned that "It will be a more complete record than The Fall, but hopefully have that spontaneity." Albarn signaled his desire to complete and release the album quickly, adding that "I really like the idea of making new music and playing it live almost simultaneously" and "If we're going to do more Gorillaz we don't want to wait seven years because, y'know, we're getting on a bit now. The band later debuted a new song "Idaho", which was later included on the album, at a concert in Seattle on 30 September 2017 with Albarn saying it had been written in the days prior.
During a break in the Humanz Tour in February 2018, Albarn returned to London where he worked with producer James Ford, known for his work with Arctic Monkeys and Florence and the Machine, and Kabaka Jr. to finish the newly written material, resulting in the band's sixth studio album The Now Now released on 29 June 2018. Featuring "simple, mostly upbeat songs" and 1980s new wave influences, the album was noted for its distinctly small list of featured artists compared to previous Gorillaz work, with only two tracks featuring any outside artists (the album's lead single "Humility" featuring George Benson and "Hollywood" featuring Snoop Dogg and Jamie Principle). Albarn mentioned that the few numbers of featured artists was partially due to the album's quick production, which in turn was a result of Albarn wanting to finish the album before the band's touring schedule resumed: "We've been very lucky to be offered all the festivals this year on the back of the last record [Humanz]... but I didn't want to do that unless I had something new to work with, so the only option was to make another record really quickly and not have lots of guests on it, because that takes a long time to organize; just do it all myself, really." Albarn also explained that with The Now Now he sought to make a Gorillaz album "where I'm just singing for once" and that the album is "pretty much just me singing, very sort of in the world of 2-D."
In the fictional Gorillaz storyline, the band introduced Ace from Cartoon Network's animated series The Powerpuff Girls as a temporary bassist of the band during The Now Now album cycle, filling in for the imprisoned Murdoc Niccals. Explaining the crossover in an interview with the BBC, Albarn said "We were massive fans of The Powerpuff Girls when they came out, the energy of that cartoon was really cool, and we kind of know the creator of it (Craig McCracken). It was a very organic thing."
The band's remaining 2018 live dates were billed as The Now Now Tour to support the album, and included a performance in Tokyo on 22 June 2018 billed as "The Now Now World Premiere" in which the band played the full album live for the first and only time, a performance which was later broadcast by Boiler Room. On 16 December 2019, the documentary Gorillaz: Reject False Icons was screened worldwide on a one-day theatrical release. Filmed and directed by Hewlett's son Denholm, the documentary showcases a behind-the-scenes look at the production of Humanz and The Now Now as well as the album's associated tours. One week after the film's theatrical release, a "Director's Cut" version of the film featuring additional footage was released on the official Gorillaz YouTube channel in three parts. In the credits for Reject False Icons, Kabaka Jr. was listed as an official member of the band (labeled as "A&R/Producer") alongside Albarn and Hewlett for the first time.
Song Machine project and Meanwhile EP (2020–present)
On 29 January 2020, the band announced its new project, Song Machine. Eschewing the typical album format of releasing music, Song Machine is instead a web series that sees the band releasing one new song a month as "episodes" to the series, with 11 episodes releasing to comprise the first "season". Elaborating on the idea behind Song Machine in a radio interview shortly after the announcement of the project, Albarn explained that "We no longer kind of see ourselves as constrained to making albums. We can now make episodes and seasons." Each episode features previously unannounced guest musicians on new Gorillaz material, with the first being "Momentary Bliss", which was released on 31 January and features both British rapper Slowthai and the Kent-based punk rock duo Slaves.
Upon the premiere of "Momentary Bliss", Albarn revealed that the group had been in the studio with Schoolboy Q and Sampa the Great among others, although he did say that these songs were likely to be saved for future episodes of Song Machine. The group also teased a possible collaboration with Australian band Tame Impala on Instagram.
On 27 February, the band released the second episode of Song Machine entitled "Désolé". The song features Malian singer Fatoumata Diawara. The third episode, "Aries", released on 9 April and featured Peter Hook and Georgia. The fourth track "How Far?" featuring Tony Allen and Skepta was released 2 May. This song was released without an accompanying music video as a tribute to Allen, who died on 30 April.
On 26 May, Gorillaz announced the release of a new book titled Gorillaz Almanac. The book comes in three editions: standard, deluxe and super deluxe, all of which are set to release on 23 October but has since been delayed to 22 December with a physical release of season one of Song Machine included with each copy.
On 9 June, the band released "Friday 13th", the fourth episode of Song Machine. The track features French-British rapper Octavian.
On 20 July, the band released "Pac-Man", the fifth episode of Song Machine, in honour of Pac-Man's 40th anniversary. The track features American rapper Schoolboy Q.
On 9 September, the band released "Strange Timez", the sixth episode of Song Machine. The track features Robert Smith, from the Cure. Gorillaz also announced the title and tracklist for Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez, released on 23 October 2020, featuring further guest appearances from Elton John, 6lack, JPEGMafia, Kano, Roxani Arias, Moonchild Sanelly and Chai, among others.
On 1 October, the band released "The Pink Phantom", the seventh episode of Song Machine. The track features Elton John and American rapper 6lack.
Before the release of Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez, Gorillaz started a radio show on Apple Music called Song Machine Radio where each virtual character has a turn to invite special guests and play some of their favourite tunes.
A few days from the release of Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez, Albarn confirmed that the band already has a song for Season Two of Song Machine prepared for release, and also mentioned that the second part of the project will be released earlier than expected.
On 5 November, the band released "The Valley of the Pagans", the eighth episode of Song Machine. The track features American singer Beck. The music video is somewhat notorious for being the first major studio production filmed in Grand Theft Auto V. The video ends with a reference to previous album, Plastic Beach. For unknown reasons, the music video on the official Gorillaz YouTube channel was set to private just a few days after its initial premiere. On 9 March 2021, Gorillaz uploaded an alternative version of the music video to their official YouTube channel, which does not feature any gameplay from Grand Theft Auto V.
On 24 December, the band released "The Lost Chord", the ninth and final episode of the first season of Song Machine. The track features British musician Leee John.
On 26 March 2021, the band celebrated its debut album's 20th anniversary with oncoming reissues of their catalog and teases of non-fungible tokens; due to its impact on climate change, the latter was met with criticism by various sources and fans—some noting that the act contradicts the environmental themes of Plastic Beach. The band also announced a boxset, the G Collection, containing six of their studio albums—excluding The Fall—for Record Store Day.
On 10 August 2021, Gorillaz debuted three new songs, "Meanwhile" (featuring British rapper Jelani Blackman), "Jimmy Jimmy" (featuring British rapper AJ Tracey), and "Déjà Vu" (featuring Jamaican-British singer Alicaì Harley), during a free concert at The O2 Arena in London, England exclusively for National Health Service employees and their families. They then performed them again at the subsequent concert open to the public the next day (both of which served as the first live audience concerts of the Song Machine Tour). These three songs were announced to be tracks from a new EP entitled Meanwhile, with the cover originally published on TikTok.
On 17 September 2021, Albarn revealed that he had recorded a new Gorillaz song with Bad Bunny while in Jamaica, and it will be the first single for a new album, influenced by Latin America, releasing next year.
Style and legacy
Writers and critics have variously described Gorillaz as art pop, alternative rock, hip hop, electronic, trip hop, pop, dark pop, alternative hip hop, rap rock, indie rock, bedroom pop, dance-rock, new wave, funk, worldbeat, and experimental rock. The band's aesthetic and general approach has been described as postmodern. According to AllMusic, Gorillaz blend Britpop and hip-hop, while The Guardian described the band as "a sort of dub/hip-hop/lo-fi indie/world music hybrid". According to PopMatters, the band's early work foreshadowed "the melding of hip-hop, rock, and electronic elements in pop music" that grew in significance in the next decade.
Gorillaz’ main musical influences include Massive Attack, the Specials, Big Audio Dynamite, Public Image Ltd, Tom Tom Club, Fun Boy Three, Unkle, A Tribe Called Quest, and De La Soul, as well as The Human League, The Kinks, XTC, Simple Minds, Sonic Youth, Pavement, Ween, Portishead, Beck, Wire, Fela Kuti, Sly and the Family Stone, Earth Wind and Fire, Augustus Pablo, Zapp, and DJ Kool Herc. Gorillaz’ primary visual influences include Hanna-Barbera, Looney Tunes, Mad magazine, The Simpsons, 2000 AD, and Métal hurlant (Heavy Metal). Furthermore, Hewlett has also cited European artists such as Carl Giles, Ronald Searle, Moebius, Tanino Liberatore, Mike McMahon, and Brendan McCarthy. The idea for Gorillaz was inspired by the many cartoon bands that came before them in the 1960s such as the Banana Splits, the Archies, Josie and the Pussycats, and Alvin and the Chipmunks, and real bands with fictional stage personas like ABC (circa How to Be a ... Zillionaire!) and Silicon Teens.Charts of Darkness. Dazed Film & TV (2001)
Musical artists who have been influenced by Gorillaz include Major Lazer, Dethklok, Rat Boy, Chromeo, Flume, Foster the People, The 1975, 5 Seconds of Summer, Awolnation, Paramore, Grimes, Kesha, A.G. Cook, Finneas, Oliver Tree, Flatbush Zombies, Vic Mensa, IDK, Trippie Redd, The Internet, ASAP Rocky, Lupe Fiasco, Brockhampton and Odd Future. Gorillaz have also influenced animated series such as The Amazing World of Gumball, Glitch Techs, Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Motorcity, Tron: Uprising, Teen Titans, and Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, as well as video games like Borderlands, Sunset Overdrive, No Straight Roads, Battlefield, and League of Legends.
Gorillaz have collaborated with a number of brands, including Motorola, O2, Internet Explorer 9, Converse, and Jaguar Cars. They have also been featured in fashion magazines such as Maxim, Nylon, and Numéro. The band's use of the internet and digital media for promotion as early as 2000 has been touched on in retrospective reviews for being ahead of its time. Dazed magazine has summarised Gorillaz's impact as "completely reinvent[ing] the notion of what a band could be".
Members
Virtual members
Murdoc Niccals – bass, drum machine (1998–present; hiatus 2018)
2-D – vocals, keyboards (1998–present)
Noodle – guitar, keyboards, vocals (1998–2006; 2010–present)
Russel Hobbs – drums, percussion (1998–2006; 2012–present)
Former virtual members
Paula Cracker – guitar (1998)
Cyborg Noodle – guitar, vocals (2008–10)
Ace – bass (2018)
Virtual members timeline
Touring members
Touring members timeline
Studio contributors
Damon Albarn – vocals, instrumentation, songwriting, production, executive production (1998–present)
Jamie Hewlett – songwriting, executive production, artwork, character design, video direction, visuals, FX (1998–present)
Stephen Sedgwick – mixing, engineering, production (2004–present)
Remi Kabaka Jr. – songwriting, production, percussion, drum programming (2015–present)
John Davis – mastering, engineering (2015–present)
Samuel Egglenton – assistance, engineering (2015–present)
Former studio contributors
Excluding small appearances by touring members.
Junior Dan – bass (1998–2001)
Jason Cox – production, percussion, drum programming, mixing, bass, additional guitars (1998–2010)
Simon Tong – additional guitar (2004–10)
Howie Weinberg – mastering, engineering (2004–10)
Mick Jones – guitars (2008–11)
Paul Simonon – bass (2008–11)
James Ford – instrumentation, songwriting, production (2018–20)
Studio contributors timeline
Discography
Studio albums
Gorillaz (2001)
Demon Days (2005)
Plastic Beach (2010)
The Fall (2010)
Humanz (2017)
The Now Now (2018)
Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez'' (2020)
Tours
Gorillaz Live (2001–2002)
Demon Days Live (2005–2006)
Escape to Plastic Beach Tour (2010)
Humanz Tour (2017–2018)
The Now Now Tour (2018)
Song Machine Tour (2021–2022)
Awards and nominations
Notes
References
External links
Gorillaz at Youtube
Animated musical groups
Recorded music characters
Musical groups established in 1998
English electronic music groups
English alternative rock groups
Electronica music groups
Trip hop groups
Fictional musical groups
English indie rock groups
Dance-rock musical groups
English hip hop groups
Rap rock groups
Alternative hip hop groups
British world music groups
English pop music groups
Brit Award winners
Grammy Award winners
MTV Europe Music Award winners
Parlophone artists
Virgin Records artists
Warner Records artists
1998 establishments in England
Bands with fictional stage personas
Warner Music Group artists
Art pop musicians
Virtual influencers | false | [
"Sweet Reggae Mix is the third and last remix album that was released on September 10, 2008 by Sweetbox. Two of the songs on the album are remixed and performed by Tina Harris, while the rest of them are performed by Jade Valerie. These remixes, however, are new mixes and have never before been released on any other album than this one. All of these songs in their original versions can be found on some of the other albums, and other remixes for some of them can be found on compilation albums, and even on other remix albums as well. The remix found on this album, titled \"A Whole New World (Reggae Disco Rocker's Remix)\" is the first remix of the original version to be officially released. The original version, however, is only released on the Complete Best album. Two other remixes, titled \"That Night (Young Lover's Mix)\" and \"Vaya Con Dios (Gold-Dust Remix)\" are also the first remixes to be made and released on any album.\n\nTrack listing \n Everything's Gonna Be Alright (Home Grown Remix) - 3:11\n Cinderella (Boom! Me Run Remix) - 3:22\n Somewhere (The Caveman's Remix) - 4:10\n A Whole New World (Reggae Disco Rocker's Remix) - 4:52\n Boyfriend (Digikal Rocky Remix) - 3:35\n Shout -Let It All Out- (\"DJ Genius\" Mix) - 3:47\n Every Step (Dancehall Remix) - 3:24\n Killing Me DJ (1 & Indivisable Ragga Dancehall Remix)\t- 3:46\n Vaya Con Dios (Gold-Dust Remix) - 3:05\n That Night (Young Lover's Mix) - 3:35\n For The Lonely (Dub's Lonely Dub) - 5:40\n Life Is Cool (Feel The Echo Remix) - 3:48\n\nReferences\n\n2008 albums",
"Boz is the debut album by Boz Scaggs, recorded under the name \"William R. Scaggs\" on September 30, 1965, in Stockholm, Sweden. It was released in Sweden by Karusell Grammofon AB and distributed in Europe by Polydor International. It was never released in any other country or in any other format, and went out of print soon after its initial pressings.\n\nTrack listing\nThe back of the album jacket lists two songs in the incorrect sequence. This track sequence lists the song titles as printed on the labels on the album itself. The album labels contain many songwriter credit errors. The songwriters listed below are correct.\n\nSide one\n \"Steamboat\" – 2:10 (Buddy Lucas) [Incorrectly listed on the album label as 'Leiber/Stoller']\n \"Baby Let Me Follow You Down\" – 2:19 (Gary Davis, Dave van Ronk, Eric von Schmidt) [Incorrectly listed on the album label as 'van Schmidt']\n \"Girl From The North Country\" – 3:33 (Bob Dylan)\n \"You're So Fine\" – 2:07 (Lance Finnie, Willie Schofield) [Incorrectly listed on the album label as 'le Vang']\n \"Got You On My Mind\" – 2:57 (Joe Thomas, Howard Biggs) [Incorrectly listed on the album label as 'Thomas/Briggs']\n \"That's All Right\" – 2:07 (Arthur Crudup) [Incorrectly listed on the album label as 'Allan Lumats']\n\nSide two\n \"Hey Baby\" – 2:30 (Bruce Channel, Margaret Cobb) [Incorrectly listed on the album label as 'Bruce Chanel']\n \"Gangster of Love\" – 2:19 (Johnny \"Guitar\" Watson)\n \"Let the Good Times Roll\" – 2:17 (Sam Theard, Fleecie Moore Jordan) [Incorrectly listed on the album label as 'Ray Charles/L. Jordan']\n \"How Long\" – 2:16 (Traditional; arranged by William R. Scaggs)\n \"Stormy Monday Blues\" – 3:38 (Aaron Thibadeaux \"T-Bone\" Walker)\n \"C.C. Rider\" – 2:22 (Traditional; arranged by William R. Scaggs)\n\nPersonnel\n Boz Scaggs - vocals, acoustic guitar, harmonica\n\nLyrics\nBoz Scaggs Lyrics & Information\n\n1965 debut albums\nBoz Scaggs albums\nPolydor Records albums"
] |
[
"Dražen Petrović",
"Yugoslavia"
] | C_87c16213bea04fa5ad751999800b87e8_0 | How old as he at national team apperance | 1 | How old was Dražen Petrović at the national team appearance | Dražen Petrović | Petrovic's national team debut came at the age of 15, at the Under-18 Balkan Championship in Turkey, where the Yugoslavian junior team won the bronze. The young man regularly played for the Yugoslavian national team in the Balkan Championships, also winning gold with the junior team and silver with the senior team. He also brought back the silver from the 1982 FIBA Europe Under-18 Championship in Bulgaria. The 1984 Summer Olympics were Petrovic's first competition of a grand scale with the Yugoslav senior national team, and the bronze medal won in Los Angeles that summer became his first Olympic medal. Third place was also earned at the 1986 FIBA World Championship, remembered for the last minute thriller in the semi-final game against the Soviet Union. At the 1987 EuroBasket, Petrovic again returned with bronze, as Yugoslavia lost to the hosts and gold medalists Greece. The University Games, held in Zagreb in 1987, saw the Yugoslavian squad with Petrovic win the gold. In the 1988 Summer Olympics, Yugoslavia with Petrovic, earned 2nd place, as they lost once more to the Soviet powerhouse. An excellent club season with Real Madrid was topped by Petrovic's 1989 accomplishment with the Yugoslav national team: at the EuroBasket in Zagreb, the young Yugoslavian team went all the way, defeating Greece more than comfortably in the championship game. Petrovic was the tournament's second leading scorer and most valuable player. The very next year, the summer in between the two most frustrating seasons of his professional career, as he struggled for playing time with the Trail Blazers, Petrovic was again making history with the national team, as Yugoslavia became world champions, after beating the Soviet Union for the gold in Buenos Aires, at the 1990 FIBA World Championship. CANNOTANSWER | 15, | Dražen Petrović (; 22 October 1964 – 7 June 1993) was a Yugoslav and Croatian professional basketball player. A shooting guard, he initially achieved success playing professional basketball in Europe in the 1980s, before joining the National Basketball Association (NBA) in 1989.
A star on multiple international basketball stages, Petrović earned two silver medals (1988, 1992) and one bronze (1984) at the Summer Olympic Games, a gold (1990) and a bronze (1986) at the FIBA World Cup, and a gold (1989) and a bronze (1987) at the FIBA EuroBasket. He was the MVP of the 1986 FIBA World Championship, and the MVP of the 1989 FIBA EuroBasket. With Cibona Zagreb, Petrović also won two consecutive EuroLeague championships in 1985 and 1986. He first represented Yugoslavia's senior national team and, later, Croatia's senior national team. He earned four Euroscars, and was named Mr. Europa twice. In 1985, he received the Golden Badge award for the best athlete of Yugoslavia.
Seeking a bigger arena after his career start in Europe, Petrović joined the NBA in 1989, as a member of the Portland Trail Blazers. After playing mostly off the bench that year, Petrović experienced a breakthrough following a trade to the New Jersey Nets. While starting for the Nets, he became one of the league's best shooting guards. He was named one of FIBA's 50 Greatest Players in 1991. On 7 June 1993, Petrović's career and life were cut short, after he died in a car accident, at the age of 28.
In 1993, Petrović's jersey number 3 was retired by the Nets, and the Dražen Petrović Basketball Hall was named after him in his honor. He also received the Olympic Order in 1993. In 2002, he was posthumously enshrined into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. In 2006, the Dražen Petrović Award was created in his honor. In 2007, he was posthumously inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame. He was named one of the 50 Greatest EuroLeague Contributors in 2008. In 2013, he was voted the best European Basketball player in history, by players at the 2013 FIBA EuroBasket.
Petrović is considered a crucial part of the vanguard to the present-day mass influx of European players into the NBA, and to this day he is viewed as a national hero in Croatia.
Early years
Born in Šibenik, Yugoslavia (present-day Croatia), Dražen Petrović was the second child of Jovan "Jole" Petrović, a police officer, and Biserka (), a librarian. His father was born in a Serb family in Zagora, near Trebinje in Bosnia and Herzegovina. His mother was born in Bilice, near Šibenik, and was from a traditional conservative Croat family, devoutly Roman Catholic. The couple's eldest child, Aleksandar, was the first to play basketball and rose to become one of the top point guards in former Yugoslavia. The Petrović brothers are second cousins to the Serbian basketball player Dejan Bodiroga.
Šibenka (1979–1983)
At the age of 13, Petrović started playing in the youth selections of the local club Šibenka; at the age of 15, he had already made the club's first team, just as Šibenka had earned a place in the Yugoslav national first division. With young Petrović as the star of the team, Šibenka reached the final of the third level Pan-European club competition, the FIBA Radivoj Korać Cup twice (1981–82 and 1982–83), where they lost to the French League club Limoges CSP both times. In 1983, the 18-year-old Petrović hit two free throws in Šibenka's victory over Bosna Sarajevo in the final playoff game of the Yugoslavian League's 1982–83 season's club championship. However, on the day after the club won the championship, the Basketball Federation of Yugoslavia stripped the title from Šibenka, because of irregularities in refereeing. The league's championship was then awarded to Bosna, after Šibenka refused to play in a rematch.
Petrović increased his scoring numbers in each successive season that he played with Šibenka. In the 1979–80 Yugoslav FFL season, he scored 13 points in 16 games, for an average of 0.8 points per game. In the 1980–81 Yugoslav FFL season, he scored 39 points in 20 games, for an average of 2.0 points per game. In the 1981–82 Yugoslav FFL season, he scored 392 points in 24 games, for an average of 16.3 points per game. In the 1982–83 Yugoslav FFL season, he scored 758 points in 31 games, for an average of 24.5 points per game. In total, he scored 1,202 points in 91 games played with Šibenka in the Yugoslav first division, for a scoring average of 13.2 points per game.
Rise to European stardom
Cibona Zagreb (1984–1988)
1984–85 season
After a year's mandatory service in the Yugoslav military, Petrović joined his older brother Aco and moved to Cibona Zagreb, to form what was at that time, the best back court duo in Europe. In his first season in Cibona, Petrović won both the national Yugoslav League championship and the Yugoslav National Cup title. In national domestic league play, in the 1984–85 Yugoslav FFL season, Petrović scored a total of 878 points in 27 games played, for a scoring average of 32.5 points per game.
On 6 December 1984, in the 1984–85 season of Europe's top-level club competition, the FIBA European Champions Cup (EuroLeague), Petrović scored 44 points in a game against the Spanish League club Real Madrid. He scored 29 of the 44 points in the second half of the game. Petrović also scored 36 points in the league's 1985 Final against Real Madrid. Cibona won the game, by a score of 87–78, and the win brought the club their first top-tier level European Champions Cup title. That season, in Europe's top-level club competition, which eventually became known as the EuroLeague, Petrović scored a total of 463 points in 15 games played, for a scoring average of 30.9 points per game.
1985–86 season
On 5 October 1985, in a Yugoslav First Federal League game against Union Olimpija Ljubljana, Petrović scored 112 points, in Cibona's 158–77 blowout win. He scored 67 of the 112 points in the first half of the game. During the game, Petrović shot 40/60 from the field, 10/20 from 3-point range, and 22/22 from the free-throw line.
The 112 points scored was the most points ever scored in a single game in the history of the Yugoslav First Federal League. It broke the league's previous single-game scoring record of 74 points, which was set in 1962, by Radivoj Korać. Korać achieved that record while playing with OKK Beograd, in a game against Mladost Zagreb. However, the record was achieved under unusual circumstances.
Olimpija Ljubljana had failed to fulfill their player registration administrative obligations in time for the game. Olimpija general manager Radovan Lorbek was reportedly late with submitting a registration letter to the Basketball Federation of Yugoslavia (KSJ) headquarters in Belgrade. That rendered their entire men's first team roster ineligible for the Yugoslav First Federal League's regular season opening game, and forced them to instead field players for the game from their youth systems. Unfortunately, Olimpija didn't have an under-18 youth squad that season. So the club had to go to Zagreb to play the game with even younger players. In the end, the team that Olimpija took to Zagreb to play against Cibona, consisted of players in the under-16 and under-17 age groups, which included: Igor Đurović, Matjaž Strmole, Jože Maček, Dag Kralj, Tine Erjavec, Jure Zorčič, Gregor Stražiščar, Andrej Novina, and Tine Merzelj.
Cibona, for their part, decided to use a mixed roster for the game, consisting of players from their youth system, plus their senior men's team's twenty-one-year-old young superstar Dražen Petrović, who used the opportunity of playing against the inferior youth squad opposition to shatter Korać's single-game Yugoslav League scoring record of 74 points. Petrović ended up with 112 points scored in the game, despite the fact that before the game, he had reportedly announced his intention to exit from the game, once he had surpassed Korać's 74 points record. Petrović was one of only five Cibona players to get on the score sheet that day. The other four were eighteen-year-old Dražen Anzulović with 16 points, eighteen-year-old Vladimir Rizman with 14 points, nineteen-year-old Ivo Nakić with 12 points, and Ivan Šoštarec with 4 points.
Overall, in the 1985–86 Yugoslav FFL season, Petrović scored a total of 1,241 points in 30 games played, for a scoring average of 41.4 points per game. That season, Petrović also won another Yugoslav National Cup title with Cibona. On 7 February 1986, Petrović scored 55 points in a Yugoslav Cup game against Union Olimpija Ljubljana. He also scored 46 points in the 1986 Yugoslav Cup's Final against Cibona's old rivals Bosna Sarajevo.
On 4 December 1985, in a 1985–86 season FIBA European Champions Cup (EuroLeague) game against the Israeli Super League club Maccabi Tel Aviv, Petrović scored 44 points. In the same European Champions Cup season, on 11 December 1985, he had 47 points and 25 assists in a game against the then reigning Italian League champions Simac Milano. In another European Champions Cup game that season, on 16 January 1986, Petrović scored 49 points, and had 20 assists against the Spanish League club Real Madrid. On 22 January 1986, in a European Champions Cup game against the French League club Limoges, Petrović made ten 3-pointers, including seven in a row during a first-half stretch, for a final tally of 51 points and 10 assists in the game. The 51 points scored was also his personal career-high scored in a single EuroLeague game.
Eventually, Petrović won his second straight FIBA European Champions Cup (EuroLeague) title with Cibona, as he scored 22 points in the league's 1986 Final, in which Cibona defeated the USSR Premier League club Žalgiris Kaunas, which starred the legendary Arvydas Sabonis. In the 1985–86 European Champions Cup (EuroLeague) season, Petrović scored a total of 555 points in 15 games played, for a scoring average of 37.0 points per game.
1986–87 season
In the 1986–87 Yugoslav FFL season, Petrović scored a total of 932 points in 25 games played, for a scoring average of 37.3 points per game.
In that same season, Cibona competed in the European-wide secondary level FIBA European Cup Winners' Cup competition. Petrović led Cibona to the championship, as he scored 28 points against the Italian League club Scavolini Pesaro, in the league's 1986–87 season Final. It was the third straight European-wide club championship for Petrović and Cibona.
In the 1986–87 FIBA European Cup Winners Cup season, Petrović scored a total of 270 points in 8 games played, for a scoring average of 33.8 points per game.
1987–88 season
With Cibona, Petrović again won the Yugoslav National Cup title in 1988. In the 1987–88 Yugoslav FFL season, Petrović scored a total of 860 points in 24 games played, for a scoring average of 35.8 points per game.
In that same season, Cibona competed in Europe's third level club competition, the FIBA Korać Cup. On 14 October 1987, Petrović scored 62 points in a 1987–88 FIBA Korać Cup season game against the Finnish League club KTP Kotka. Petrović led Cibona to the Finals of the Korać Cup, where they lost to the Spanish League club Real Madrid. During the Korać Cup season, Petrović scored a total of 401 points in 12 games played, for a scoring average of 33.4 points per game.
During his four seasons with Cibona, Petrović scored a total of 3,911 points, in 106 games played in the national Yugoslav First Federal League, for a scoring average of 36.9 points per game. With Cibona, he also scored a total of 559 points, in 20 games played, for a scoring average of 28.0 points per game, in the Yugoslav Cup competition. In the three Pan-European club competitions that he played in with Cibona, he scored a total of 1,689 points in 50 games played, for a scoring average of 33.8 points per game.
With both Šibenka and Cibona, Petrović's career scoring numbers in the Yugoslav First Federal League were 5,113 points scored, in 197 games played, for a career scoring average of 26.0 points per game. In the top-level European-wide club competition, the FIBA European Champions Cup, which is now known as the EuroLeague, Petrović scored a career total of 1,018 points in 30 games played, for a career scoring average of 33.9 points per game.
Real Madrid (1988–1989)
After his string of very successful seasons with Cibona Zagreb, Petrović needed new challenges that Cibona and the Yugoslav First Federal League could no longer offer him. The NBA's Portland Trail Blazers had already used their third-round draft pick on the young Petrović, in the 1986 NBA draft, but he had decided to postpone his departure to the United States. In 1988, rather than go to the NBA, he instead signed with the Spanish League club Real Madrid, for around US$4 million in net income. At that time, Yugoslav sporting laws stipulated that players could not professionally move abroad until they had reached the age of 28. Petrović was still only 23 when he signed with Real Madrid. In 2014, José Antonio Arízaga, the sports agent who played a key role in Petrović's 1988 summer transfer from Cibona to Real, recalled a few details from the transaction: "I spoke to Mirko Novosel, Dražen's head coach at Cibona, and he told me two things. One, every problem in Yugoslavia can be taken care of with the right amount of money, and two, if Dražen leaves, every other player under 28 will be leaving and it'll be chaos. So, you can imagine all the individuals I had to bribe and all the places where I had to pay up, in order to circumvent this law".
1988–89 season
Petrović helped Real to win the title of the 1989 edition of the Spanish King's Cup, over their Catalan rivals, Barcelona. In the Spanish ACB League's Finals, Real Madrid narrowly lost to Barcelona, in the fifth and decisive game of the series. In the Spanish League's 1988–89 ACB season, Petrović was the league's regular season top scorer. Including the playoffs, he scored a total of 1,327 points, in 47 games played, for a scoring average of 28.2 points per game. Petrović's first season in Spain's ACB was also his last, but he still holds the ACB's single-game Finals records for the most points scored, with 42, and for the most three-pointers made, with 8.
In European-wide club competition, Real Madrid competed in the European secondary level FIBA European Cup Winners' Cup. On 14 March 1989, in the 1988–89 Cup Winners' Cup Final against the Italian League club Snaidero Caserta, Petrović tied his previous best scoring performance in a European-wide club competition with 62 points.
Petrović was pressured to join the NBA, by the Trail Blazers, who had drafted him 60th overall in 1986. Being motivated by the potential new challenges that the NBA presented, Petrović finally decided to try to establish himself in the league. He left Spain rather abruptly, at the end of the season; the Blazers assisted him in the process, by buying out his contract with Real Madrid, for as much as US$1.5 million. Petrović finally joined the Blazers for the 1989–90 season.
NBA career
Portland Trail Blazers (1989–1991)
The Blazers valued Petrović as a shooter, but were concerned that he might not possess the quickness to play guard or the foot speed to play defense. They brought him onto the team primarily as an outside threat to shoot three-pointers. In the Blazers' offensive scheme he was to set up behind the line, receive a passed ball and go directly up to release his shot. Petrović was an aggressive, attacking player who was used to creating his shot and shots for his teammates. Taking the ball out of his hands and making him a static shooter was foreign to him. Making matters worse, the Blazers already had a full rotation of guards, with a starting backcourt of Clyde Drexler and Terry Porter, and with veteran Danny Young as a reserve. Consequently, the reigning La Gazzetta dello Sport Euroscar European Player of the Year saw limited playing time. He had difficulty being productive in the limited role the Blazers had for him. In his rookie year during the 1989–90 NBA season, he averaged 7.4 points in 12 minutes per game. The following season veteran guard Danny Ainge was added to the team, and Petrović's playing time dropped further to 7 minutes a game. In many statements made prior to arriving in Portland, Petrović had said he saw a lack of playing time as the only possible obstacle to his success in the NBA. He was determined to be a success in basketball's highest arena. His lack of playing time during his second season in the league brought Petrović's frustration to a climax:
"I have nothing to say to Adelman any more and vice versa. Eighteen months have passed by, too long. I have to leave to prove how much I am worth. Never in my life did I sit on the bench and I don’t intend to do that in Portland."
At his insistence, 38 games into the season (20 of which held no playing time for Petrović), a three-way trade with the Denver Nuggets sent him to the New Jersey Nets in exchange for a first-round pick in the following draft and Walter Davis, who was sent from Denver to Portland.
New Jersey Nets (1991–1993)
On 23 January 1991, Petrović became a member of the New Jersey Nets. He joined a team that had not reached the playoffs since 1986, but had rookie Derrick Coleman, the number one selection from the 1990 draft. He was immediately given a role on the floor, with 20.5 minutes per game. His scoring over the remaining 43 games increased to 12.6 points per game, one of the league's best points-per-minute ratios. The following year, he and Coleman were joined by Kenny Anderson, giving the team a third talented new addition. Petrović was made a starter for the 1991–92 season, his first full season with the Nets. Petro, as the Americans had dubbed him, did not miss a single game. On 13 March 1992, Petrović scored 39 points while shooting 65% from the field, and 100% (3 of 3) from 3 point range, in a 110-108 win against the Boston Celtics. His determination, hard work and aggressive on-court demeanor established him as a team leader. In 36.9 minutes on the floor he averaged 20.6 points. Petrović led the Nets in field-goal shooting and free-throw shooting, and his field goal percentage of 51% placed him near the top of all NBA guards. More importantly, his success translated into success for the team. The Nets made the playoffs, recording 14 more wins than the previous year. On 23 April 1992, in Game 1 of their first round matchup against the Cleveland Cavaliers, Petrović scored a playoff career-high 40 points. The Nets would eventually lose the best of 5 series 3 games to 1. The following season saw Petrović increase his scoring average to 22.3 ppg, 11th best in the league.
On 6 December 1992, he was named MVP of the Week. On 4 February 1993, Petrović played a career-high 53 minutes and scored 35 points in an overtime win against the Seattle SuperSonics. For the second season in a row he shot 45% from the three-point arc. His field goal percentage of 52% was again near the top for all guards. American media honored him with a selection to the All-NBA Third Team. However, he did not receive an invitation to the 1993 All-Star game. Among the top 13 scorers in the NBA that season, he was the only one not invited.
In an interview on the Scoop B Radio Podcast, Petrović's Nets teammate, Chucky Brown marveled at Petrović's healing ability. Brown told Brandon Scoop B Robinson that he remembered Petrović spraining his knee and was slated to miss two months. Petrović rehabbed so hard that he ended up only missing two weeks.
Career statistics
NBA
Regular season
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|Portland
| 77 || 0 || 12.6 || .485 || .459 || .844 || 1.4 || 1.5 || .3 || .0 || 7.6
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|Portland
| 18 || 0 || 7.4 || .451 || .167 || .682 || 1.0 || 1.1 || .3 || .0 || 4.4
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 43 || 0 || 20.5 || .500 || .373 || .861 || 2.1 || 1.5 || .9 || .0 || 12.6
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 82 || 82 || 36.9 || .508 || .444 || .808 || 3.1 || 3.1 || 1.3 || .1 || 20.6
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 70 || 67 || 38.0 || .518 || .449 || .870 || 2.7 || 3.5 || 1.3 || .2 || 22.3
|- class="sortbottom"
| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"|Career
| 290 || 149 || 26.4 || .506 || .437 || .841 || 2.3 || 2.4 || .9 || .1 || 15.4
Playoffs
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|1990
| style="text-align:left;"|Portland
| 20 || 0 || 12.7 || .440 || .313 || .583 || 1.6 || 1.0 || .3 || .0 || 6.1
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|1992
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 4 || 4 || 40.8 || .539 || .333 || .846 || 2.5 || 3.3 || 1.0 || .3 || 24.3
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|1993
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 5 || 5 || 38.6 || .455 || .333 || .800 || 1.8 || 1.8 || .4 || .0 || 15.6
|- class="sortbottom"
| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"|Career
| 29 || 9 || 21.0 || .474 || .324 || .696 || 1.8 || 1.4 || .4 || .0 || 10.2
EuroLeague
|-
| style="text-align:left;background:#afe6ba;"|1984–85†
| style="text-align:left;"|Cibona Zagreb
| 15 || || || || || || || || || || 30.9 ||
|-
| style="text-align:left;background:#afe6ba;"|1985–86†
| style="text-align:left;"|Cibona Zagreb
| 15 || || || || || || || || || || 37.0 ||
|- class="sortbottom"
| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"|Career
| 30 || || || || || || || || || || ||
National team career
Yugoslavia
Petrović's national team debut came at the age of 15, at the Under-18 Balkan Championship in Turkey, where the Yugoslavia junior team won the bronze. The young man regularly played for the Yugoslavia national team in the Balkan Championships, also winning gold with the junior team and silver with the senior team. He also brought back the silver from the 1982 FIBA Europe Under-18 Championship in Bulgaria.
The 1984 Summer Olympics were Petrović's first competition of a grand scale with the Yugoslavia senior national team, and the bronze medal won in Los Angeles that summer became his first Olympic medal. Third place was also earned at the 1986 FIBA World Championship, remembered for the last minute thriller in the semi-final game against the Soviet Union. Petrović was named the MVP of the tournament. At the 1987 EuroBasket, Petrović again returned with bronze, as Yugoslavia lost to the hosts and gold medalists Greece. The University Games, held in Zagreb in 1987, saw the Yugoslavian squad with Petrović win the gold. In the 1988 Summer Olympics, Yugoslavia with Petrović, earned 2nd place, as they lost once more to the Soviet powerhouse.
An excellent club season with Real Madrid was topped by Petrović's 1989 accomplishment with the Yugoslavia national team: at the EuroBasket in Zagreb, the young Yugoslavian team went all the way, defeating Greece more than comfortably in the championship game. Petrović was the tournament's second leading scorer and Most Valuable Player. The very next year, the summer in between the two most frustrating seasons of his professional career, as he struggled for playing time with the Trail Blazers, Petrović was again making history with the national team, as Yugoslavia became world champions, after beating the Soviet Union for the gold in Buenos Aires, at the 1990 FIBA World Championship.
Overall, Petrović represented Yugoslavia's senior national team in 155 games, in which he scored a total of 3,258 points, for a career scoring average of 21.0 points per game.
Croatia
The 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, marked the first summer Olympics featuring the independent Croatia, and Petrović was the leader of the Croatian national basketball team at the Olympic basketball tournament. Losing only to the American Dream Team in the group stage, a strong and inspired Croatian team emerged victorious from the Semifinals against the revamped Soviet team, thanks to clutch free throws executed by Petrović, and faced off against the Americans for the gold. Urged on by Petrović's competitiveness and confidence, the Croatians fared well in the first ten minutes of the game, taking a 25–23 lead on a Franjo Arapović dunk and the subsequent made free throw. As the game progressed, however, the now-legendary team composed of NBA stars proved too tough for Croatia: the Americans won 117–85, sending Petrović, the game's leading scorer with 24 points, and his teammates, home with silver medals.
In the period during which Petrović played for the senior Croatian national team (1992–1993), he appeared in 40 games and scored a total of 1,002 points, for a career scoring average of 25.1 points per game. His highest single-game point tally came against Estonia, on 31 May 1993 (48 points). Counting the senior national team games that he played in with both Yugoslavia's and Croatia's national teams, Petrović scored a total of 4,260 points in 195 games played, for a career scoring average of 21.8 points per game.
Death and legacy
In the summer of 1993, after his best NBA season and the Nets' first-round elimination by the Cleveland Cavaliers, Petrović traveled to Berlin, where the Croatian national team was playing a qualification tournament for the 1993 EuroBasket. He was contemplating departure from the Nets, disappointed with the fact that the Nets had not yet extended his contract. He told American reporters that the lack of recognition in the league made him also consider leaving the NBA completely and playing club basketball in Greece. There were at least two Greek clubs ready to offer Petrović three-year contracts worth US$7.5 million net. Petrović decided to skip the connection flight back to Zagreb and drive with his girlfriend back to Croatia.
Petrović died in a traffic accident at about 5:20 p.m. on 7 June 1993. On the rain-drenched Autobahn 9, he was a passenger in a car that was cut off by a semi-truck at Denkendorf near Ingolstadt in the German state of Bavaria. According to the report of the Ingolstadt police, that afternoon a truck broke through the Autobahn median; the driver was trying to avoid a collision with a personal vehicle in his own lane and lost control of the truck, crashing through the median barrier and finally coming to a stop and blocking all three lanes of traffic going in the opposite direction. Seconds later, the Volkswagen Golf carrying a sleeping Petrović in the passenger seat crashed into the truck. Petrovic was ejected from the vehicle. Despite efforts to revive him, he succumbed to severe head injuries. According to the autopsy report, Petrovic died on impact. The driver, Klara Szalantzy, a Hungarian model and basketball player with whom Petrović was romantically involved, and Hilal Edebal, a female Turkish basketball player, sustained grave injuries. It was established that visibility on the road was very poor and that Petrović was not wearing a seatbelt.
Petrović's tomb at Mirogoj Cemetery instantly became a sanctuary for his compatriots. The Cibona stadium was renamed the Dražen Petrović Basketball Hall on 4 October 1993, and the city of Zagreb dedicated a square in his name, which was later followed by Šibenik and Vukovar, while Petrinja dedicated a street to him. Before Game 1 of the 1993 NBA Finals, the NBA held a moment of silence for Petrović, whose death occurred two days before the event began. The Nets retired his number 3 jersey on 11 November 1993. After 1994, the MVP award at the McDonald's Championship bore the name Dražen Petrović Trophy, and the Croatian Olympic Committee's award for young athletes was named for him in 2006. On 29 April 1995, a statue commemorating Petrović's significance to the world of sports was erected in front of the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland, thus making him only the second athlete to receive this honor. On 9 July 2001, having defeated Patrick Rafter to win the men's singles title at Wimbledon, Croatian tennis player Goran Ivanišević dedicated the win to Petrović; Ivanišević wore Petrović's Nets jersey amidst the 100,000 strong crowd celebrating his victory in Split. Petrović was inducted posthumously into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2002. In 2006, the 13th anniversary of Petrović's death was marked with the opening of the Dražen Petrović Memorial Center in Zagreb, dedicated to his life and achievements, with ten themed galleries of multimedia content outlining his entire career and a statue of Dražen in shooting position in front of it. Petrović was enshrined in the FIBA Hall of Fame in 2007.
The 2010 documentary, Once Brothers (part of the ESPN 30 for 30 series), portrays the achievements of the Yugoslavia national basketball team in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and how the Yugoslav Wars tore the team apart. It explores Petrović's broken friendship with Serbian/Yugoslav player Vlade Divac. In 2011, a statue of him as a little boy sitting on a bench with a ball was unveiled in Šibenik, and his old room was renovated the way it looked when he was young, as a first part of opening a Memorial Center in his hometown. During the 2012 Three Point Shootout, New Jersey Nets guard Anthony Morrow wore Petrović's jersey in the latter's honor. In 2015, Australian writer Todd Spehr released a 470-page biography on Petrović, titled Dražen: The Remarkable Life & Legacy of the Mozart of Basketball. On 3 June 2015, Croatian basketball journalists Marjan Crnogaj and Vlado Radicevic released a 487-page biography which global paperback edition was released on 14 October 2017.
Reactions
Accomplishments and awards
Club competitions
European Champions Cup
Champion: 1985, 1986
European Cup Winners' Cup
Champion: 1987, 1989
Yugoslavian Championship
Champion: 1985
Yugoslavian Cup
Winner: 1985, 1986, 1988
Spanish Cup
Winner: 1989
NBA Finals
Runner-up: 1990
Korać Cup
Runner-up: 1982, 1983, 1988
Spanish Championship
Runner-up: 1989
Personal
Yugoslav First League: most points scored by an individual, in a league game (112).
Spanish ACB League: most points scored by an individual, in a final series game (42).
Spanish ACB League: most 3-point field goals made by an individual, in a final series game (8).
NBA: second highest 3-point field goal percentage (.444) in 1991–92.
NBA: fourth highest field goal percentage among guards (.508) in 1991–92.
NBA: second highest 3-point field goal percentage (.449) 1992–93.
NBA: second highest field goal percentage among guards (.518) 1992–93.
NBA: third best career 3-point field goal percentage (.437).
National teams
Summer Olympics
: 1988, 1992
: 1984
FIBA World Championship
: 1990
: 1986
FIBA EuroBasket
: 1989
: 1987
Summer Universiade
: 1987
: 1983
Balkan Championship for Junior Men
: 1982
: 1982
Balkan Championship for Cadets
: 1981
Balkan Championship
: 1984
FIBA Europe Under-18 Championship
: 1982
Personal
Balkan Championship for Junior Men Best Player: 1982
FIBA World Cup MVP: 1986
FIBA EuroBasket MVP: 1989
Dražen Petrović Memorial Center
A museum named "The Dražen Petrović Memorial Center" was founded in his honor, and constitutes a co-operative effort led by the Dražen Petrović Foundation in conjunction with the Croatian government, the city of Zagreb and the Croatian Museum of Sports. The memorial center idea originated from Petrović's parents, Biserka and Jole Petrovic, and was supported with the contributions of Croatian architects Andrija Rusan and Niksa Bilic. All of the articles presented in the center have been collected and categorized by the Croatian Museum of Sports. The organization and operations of the center have been provided by the Dražen Petrović Foundation, which is led by Petrović's family. The Center contains his No. 3 New Jersey Nets jersey and the watch that stopped when he died in a car crash. The center features 1,000 memorabilia items and a video of his basketball highlights.
The official opening of the museum was held on 7 June 2006, while the official opening of the center to the public began at the end of December 2006. The square on which the center is operated upon has been renamed to Dražen Petrović Square in his honor. In 2013, former NBA MVP Derrick Rose visited the museum.
See also
List of basketball players who died during their careers
List of basketball players who have scored 100 points in a single game
Yugoslav First Federal Basketball League career stats leaders
References
Sources
External links
Drazen Petrovic Museum
Drazen Petrovic Yugoslavia FIBA Profile
Drazen Petrovic Croatia FIBA Profile
FIBA Europe Profile
Drazen Petrovic at the Basketball Hall of Fame
Euroleague.net 50 greatest contributors
In Honor of Dražen Petrović
FIBA Hall of Fame profile
1964 births
1993 deaths
1986 FIBA World Championship players
1990 FIBA World Championship players
Basketball players at the 1984 Summer Olympics
Basketball players at the 1988 Summer Olympics
Basketball players at the 1992 Summer Olympics
Basketball players from Šibenik
Burials at Mirogoj Cemetery
Croatian expatriate basketball people in Spain
Croatian expatriate basketball people in the United States
Croatian men's basketball players
Croatian people of Serbian descent
Euroscar award winners
FIBA EuroBasket-winning players
FIBA Hall of Fame inductees
FIBA World Championship-winning players
KK Cibona players
KK Šibenik players
Liga ACB players
Medalists at the 1983 Summer Universiade
Medalists at the 1984 Summer Olympics
Medalists at the 1988 Summer Olympics
Medalists at the 1992 Summer Olympics
Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductees
National Basketball Association players from Croatia
National Basketball Association players with retired numbers
New Jersey Nets players
Olympic basketball players of Croatia
Olympic basketball players of Yugoslavia
Olympic bronze medalists for Yugoslavia
Olympic medalists in basketball
Olympic silver medalists for Croatia
Olympic silver medalists for Yugoslavia
Portland Trail Blazers draft picks
Portland Trail Blazers players
Real Madrid Baloncesto players
Recipients of the Olympic Order
Road incident deaths in Germany
Shooting guards
Universiade gold medalists for Yugoslavia
Universiade medalists in basketball
Universiade silver medalists for Yugoslavia
Yugoslav expatriate sportspeople in Spain
Yugoslav expatriate sportspeople in the United States
Yugoslav men's basketball players | true | [
"Chimaerochloa is a genus of New Guinean plants in the grass family.\n\nThe genus name of Chimaerochloa is named after Chimera (mythology) as Linder noted; \"the grass takes an the appearance of different genera, depending on which character set is investigated. Thus, it can be regarded as a grass that changes its apperance, a chimaera\".\n\nThe genus was circumscribed by Hans Peter Linder in Ann. Missouri Bot. Gard. Vol.97 (Issue 3) on page 346 in 2010.\n\nSpecies\nThe only known species is Chimaerochloa archboldii.\n\nReferences\n\nDanthonioideae\nEndemic flora of New Guinea\nGrasses of Oceania\nMonotypic Poaceae genera",
"Sabhaapathy is a 2021 Indian Tamil-language comedy film directed by debutant R. Srinivasa Rao and produced by R K Entertainment. The film stars Santhanam and Preeti Verma in the lead roles and the music is composed by Sam C. S. The film released theatrically on 19 November 2021 to moderate reviews from critics but positive response from audience and ended up as a moderate failure in the box office. The satellite and streaming rights were sold to Colors Tamil and Amazon Prime Video respectively.\n\nCast \n\n Santhanam as Sabapathy\n Preeti Verma as Savithri (Saavi)\n M. S. Bhaskar as Ganapathy, Sabapathy’s father\n Sayaji Shinde as Lucky Raja\n Vamsi Krishna as Selvam\n Mayilsamy as Astrologer \n Uma Padmanabhan as Leelavathi, Sabapathy’s mother\n Swaminathan as Rajamani\n Prema Priya as Rajamani's wife\n 'Lollu Sabha' Maaran as Thief\n Pugazh as Ramani [ Extended Cameo apperance ]\n Vaishnavi Arulmozhi as Manju, Sabapathy's Sister\n Rama as Savithri’s mother\n Madurai Muthu as Savithri’s brother-in-law [ Cameo apperance ]\n Master Advaith as Young Sabapathy\n K. Bujji Babu as Gopal, vegetable cart \n Kothandam\n\nSoundtrack\n\nThe soundtrack and score was composed by Sam C. S.\n\nReception \n\nSiby Jeyya of India Herald wrote, \"Sabhaapathy is one of Santhanam's better films as a leading man.\" Sudhir Srinivasan of The New Indian Express wrote, \"Sabhaapathy, begins with the deep voice of a narrator who identifies himself as ‘vidhi’, claiming to ‘play’ with ‘innocent’ people like Sabhaapathy. I imagine that on the day I watched Sabhaapathy, Mr Vidhi had chosen me for his game.\" Suganth of The Times of India gave a rating of 2.5 out on 5 and wrote, \"Sabhaapathy is a middling affair. Like a dream that eludes you once you wake up, you forget it the moment you step out of the theatre.\" Sify gave a rating of 2 out on 5 and wrote as \"sabhaapathy is a below-average comedy entertainer that can be watched for the hilarious comedy combination between Santhanam and the MS Baskar!\" and the final verdict as \"Tedious\". Ranjani krishnakumar of Film Companion wrote, \"Sabhaapathy is a test of patience, even if you generally enjoy Santhanam's brand of humour.\"\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n \n\nIndian films\n2020s Tamil-language films\n2021 comedy-drama films\nIndian comedy-drama films"
] |
[
"Dražen Petrović",
"Yugoslavia",
"How old as he at national team apperance",
"15,"
] | C_87c16213bea04fa5ad751999800b87e8_0 | Are there any other interesting aspects about this article? | 2 | Are there any other interesting aspects about this article on Dražen Petrović other than his age? | Dražen Petrović | Petrovic's national team debut came at the age of 15, at the Under-18 Balkan Championship in Turkey, where the Yugoslavian junior team won the bronze. The young man regularly played for the Yugoslavian national team in the Balkan Championships, also winning gold with the junior team and silver with the senior team. He also brought back the silver from the 1982 FIBA Europe Under-18 Championship in Bulgaria. The 1984 Summer Olympics were Petrovic's first competition of a grand scale with the Yugoslav senior national team, and the bronze medal won in Los Angeles that summer became his first Olympic medal. Third place was also earned at the 1986 FIBA World Championship, remembered for the last minute thriller in the semi-final game against the Soviet Union. At the 1987 EuroBasket, Petrovic again returned with bronze, as Yugoslavia lost to the hosts and gold medalists Greece. The University Games, held in Zagreb in 1987, saw the Yugoslavian squad with Petrovic win the gold. In the 1988 Summer Olympics, Yugoslavia with Petrovic, earned 2nd place, as they lost once more to the Soviet powerhouse. An excellent club season with Real Madrid was topped by Petrovic's 1989 accomplishment with the Yugoslav national team: at the EuroBasket in Zagreb, the young Yugoslavian team went all the way, defeating Greece more than comfortably in the championship game. Petrovic was the tournament's second leading scorer and most valuable player. The very next year, the summer in between the two most frustrating seasons of his professional career, as he struggled for playing time with the Trail Blazers, Petrovic was again making history with the national team, as Yugoslavia became world champions, after beating the Soviet Union for the gold in Buenos Aires, at the 1990 FIBA World Championship. CANNOTANSWER | 1984 Summer Olympics were Petrovic's first competition of a grand scale with the Yugoslav senior national team, | Dražen Petrović (; 22 October 1964 – 7 June 1993) was a Yugoslav and Croatian professional basketball player. A shooting guard, he initially achieved success playing professional basketball in Europe in the 1980s, before joining the National Basketball Association (NBA) in 1989.
A star on multiple international basketball stages, Petrović earned two silver medals (1988, 1992) and one bronze (1984) at the Summer Olympic Games, a gold (1990) and a bronze (1986) at the FIBA World Cup, and a gold (1989) and a bronze (1987) at the FIBA EuroBasket. He was the MVP of the 1986 FIBA World Championship, and the MVP of the 1989 FIBA EuroBasket. With Cibona Zagreb, Petrović also won two consecutive EuroLeague championships in 1985 and 1986. He first represented Yugoslavia's senior national team and, later, Croatia's senior national team. He earned four Euroscars, and was named Mr. Europa twice. In 1985, he received the Golden Badge award for the best athlete of Yugoslavia.
Seeking a bigger arena after his career start in Europe, Petrović joined the NBA in 1989, as a member of the Portland Trail Blazers. After playing mostly off the bench that year, Petrović experienced a breakthrough following a trade to the New Jersey Nets. While starting for the Nets, he became one of the league's best shooting guards. He was named one of FIBA's 50 Greatest Players in 1991. On 7 June 1993, Petrović's career and life were cut short, after he died in a car accident, at the age of 28.
In 1993, Petrović's jersey number 3 was retired by the Nets, and the Dražen Petrović Basketball Hall was named after him in his honor. He also received the Olympic Order in 1993. In 2002, he was posthumously enshrined into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. In 2006, the Dražen Petrović Award was created in his honor. In 2007, he was posthumously inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame. He was named one of the 50 Greatest EuroLeague Contributors in 2008. In 2013, he was voted the best European Basketball player in history, by players at the 2013 FIBA EuroBasket.
Petrović is considered a crucial part of the vanguard to the present-day mass influx of European players into the NBA, and to this day he is viewed as a national hero in Croatia.
Early years
Born in Šibenik, Yugoslavia (present-day Croatia), Dražen Petrović was the second child of Jovan "Jole" Petrović, a police officer, and Biserka (), a librarian. His father was born in a Serb family in Zagora, near Trebinje in Bosnia and Herzegovina. His mother was born in Bilice, near Šibenik, and was from a traditional conservative Croat family, devoutly Roman Catholic. The couple's eldest child, Aleksandar, was the first to play basketball and rose to become one of the top point guards in former Yugoslavia. The Petrović brothers are second cousins to the Serbian basketball player Dejan Bodiroga.
Šibenka (1979–1983)
At the age of 13, Petrović started playing in the youth selections of the local club Šibenka; at the age of 15, he had already made the club's first team, just as Šibenka had earned a place in the Yugoslav national first division. With young Petrović as the star of the team, Šibenka reached the final of the third level Pan-European club competition, the FIBA Radivoj Korać Cup twice (1981–82 and 1982–83), where they lost to the French League club Limoges CSP both times. In 1983, the 18-year-old Petrović hit two free throws in Šibenka's victory over Bosna Sarajevo in the final playoff game of the Yugoslavian League's 1982–83 season's club championship. However, on the day after the club won the championship, the Basketball Federation of Yugoslavia stripped the title from Šibenka, because of irregularities in refereeing. The league's championship was then awarded to Bosna, after Šibenka refused to play in a rematch.
Petrović increased his scoring numbers in each successive season that he played with Šibenka. In the 1979–80 Yugoslav FFL season, he scored 13 points in 16 games, for an average of 0.8 points per game. In the 1980–81 Yugoslav FFL season, he scored 39 points in 20 games, for an average of 2.0 points per game. In the 1981–82 Yugoslav FFL season, he scored 392 points in 24 games, for an average of 16.3 points per game. In the 1982–83 Yugoslav FFL season, he scored 758 points in 31 games, for an average of 24.5 points per game. In total, he scored 1,202 points in 91 games played with Šibenka in the Yugoslav first division, for a scoring average of 13.2 points per game.
Rise to European stardom
Cibona Zagreb (1984–1988)
1984–85 season
After a year's mandatory service in the Yugoslav military, Petrović joined his older brother Aco and moved to Cibona Zagreb, to form what was at that time, the best back court duo in Europe. In his first season in Cibona, Petrović won both the national Yugoslav League championship and the Yugoslav National Cup title. In national domestic league play, in the 1984–85 Yugoslav FFL season, Petrović scored a total of 878 points in 27 games played, for a scoring average of 32.5 points per game.
On 6 December 1984, in the 1984–85 season of Europe's top-level club competition, the FIBA European Champions Cup (EuroLeague), Petrović scored 44 points in a game against the Spanish League club Real Madrid. He scored 29 of the 44 points in the second half of the game. Petrović also scored 36 points in the league's 1985 Final against Real Madrid. Cibona won the game, by a score of 87–78, and the win brought the club their first top-tier level European Champions Cup title. That season, in Europe's top-level club competition, which eventually became known as the EuroLeague, Petrović scored a total of 463 points in 15 games played, for a scoring average of 30.9 points per game.
1985–86 season
On 5 October 1985, in a Yugoslav First Federal League game against Union Olimpija Ljubljana, Petrović scored 112 points, in Cibona's 158–77 blowout win. He scored 67 of the 112 points in the first half of the game. During the game, Petrović shot 40/60 from the field, 10/20 from 3-point range, and 22/22 from the free-throw line.
The 112 points scored was the most points ever scored in a single game in the history of the Yugoslav First Federal League. It broke the league's previous single-game scoring record of 74 points, which was set in 1962, by Radivoj Korać. Korać achieved that record while playing with OKK Beograd, in a game against Mladost Zagreb. However, the record was achieved under unusual circumstances.
Olimpija Ljubljana had failed to fulfill their player registration administrative obligations in time for the game. Olimpija general manager Radovan Lorbek was reportedly late with submitting a registration letter to the Basketball Federation of Yugoslavia (KSJ) headquarters in Belgrade. That rendered their entire men's first team roster ineligible for the Yugoslav First Federal League's regular season opening game, and forced them to instead field players for the game from their youth systems. Unfortunately, Olimpija didn't have an under-18 youth squad that season. So the club had to go to Zagreb to play the game with even younger players. In the end, the team that Olimpija took to Zagreb to play against Cibona, consisted of players in the under-16 and under-17 age groups, which included: Igor Đurović, Matjaž Strmole, Jože Maček, Dag Kralj, Tine Erjavec, Jure Zorčič, Gregor Stražiščar, Andrej Novina, and Tine Merzelj.
Cibona, for their part, decided to use a mixed roster for the game, consisting of players from their youth system, plus their senior men's team's twenty-one-year-old young superstar Dražen Petrović, who used the opportunity of playing against the inferior youth squad opposition to shatter Korać's single-game Yugoslav League scoring record of 74 points. Petrović ended up with 112 points scored in the game, despite the fact that before the game, he had reportedly announced his intention to exit from the game, once he had surpassed Korać's 74 points record. Petrović was one of only five Cibona players to get on the score sheet that day. The other four were eighteen-year-old Dražen Anzulović with 16 points, eighteen-year-old Vladimir Rizman with 14 points, nineteen-year-old Ivo Nakić with 12 points, and Ivan Šoštarec with 4 points.
Overall, in the 1985–86 Yugoslav FFL season, Petrović scored a total of 1,241 points in 30 games played, for a scoring average of 41.4 points per game. That season, Petrović also won another Yugoslav National Cup title with Cibona. On 7 February 1986, Petrović scored 55 points in a Yugoslav Cup game against Union Olimpija Ljubljana. He also scored 46 points in the 1986 Yugoslav Cup's Final against Cibona's old rivals Bosna Sarajevo.
On 4 December 1985, in a 1985–86 season FIBA European Champions Cup (EuroLeague) game against the Israeli Super League club Maccabi Tel Aviv, Petrović scored 44 points. In the same European Champions Cup season, on 11 December 1985, he had 47 points and 25 assists in a game against the then reigning Italian League champions Simac Milano. In another European Champions Cup game that season, on 16 January 1986, Petrović scored 49 points, and had 20 assists against the Spanish League club Real Madrid. On 22 January 1986, in a European Champions Cup game against the French League club Limoges, Petrović made ten 3-pointers, including seven in a row during a first-half stretch, for a final tally of 51 points and 10 assists in the game. The 51 points scored was also his personal career-high scored in a single EuroLeague game.
Eventually, Petrović won his second straight FIBA European Champions Cup (EuroLeague) title with Cibona, as he scored 22 points in the league's 1986 Final, in which Cibona defeated the USSR Premier League club Žalgiris Kaunas, which starred the legendary Arvydas Sabonis. In the 1985–86 European Champions Cup (EuroLeague) season, Petrović scored a total of 555 points in 15 games played, for a scoring average of 37.0 points per game.
1986–87 season
In the 1986–87 Yugoslav FFL season, Petrović scored a total of 932 points in 25 games played, for a scoring average of 37.3 points per game.
In that same season, Cibona competed in the European-wide secondary level FIBA European Cup Winners' Cup competition. Petrović led Cibona to the championship, as he scored 28 points against the Italian League club Scavolini Pesaro, in the league's 1986–87 season Final. It was the third straight European-wide club championship for Petrović and Cibona.
In the 1986–87 FIBA European Cup Winners Cup season, Petrović scored a total of 270 points in 8 games played, for a scoring average of 33.8 points per game.
1987–88 season
With Cibona, Petrović again won the Yugoslav National Cup title in 1988. In the 1987–88 Yugoslav FFL season, Petrović scored a total of 860 points in 24 games played, for a scoring average of 35.8 points per game.
In that same season, Cibona competed in Europe's third level club competition, the FIBA Korać Cup. On 14 October 1987, Petrović scored 62 points in a 1987–88 FIBA Korać Cup season game against the Finnish League club KTP Kotka. Petrović led Cibona to the Finals of the Korać Cup, where they lost to the Spanish League club Real Madrid. During the Korać Cup season, Petrović scored a total of 401 points in 12 games played, for a scoring average of 33.4 points per game.
During his four seasons with Cibona, Petrović scored a total of 3,911 points, in 106 games played in the national Yugoslav First Federal League, for a scoring average of 36.9 points per game. With Cibona, he also scored a total of 559 points, in 20 games played, for a scoring average of 28.0 points per game, in the Yugoslav Cup competition. In the three Pan-European club competitions that he played in with Cibona, he scored a total of 1,689 points in 50 games played, for a scoring average of 33.8 points per game.
With both Šibenka and Cibona, Petrović's career scoring numbers in the Yugoslav First Federal League were 5,113 points scored, in 197 games played, for a career scoring average of 26.0 points per game. In the top-level European-wide club competition, the FIBA European Champions Cup, which is now known as the EuroLeague, Petrović scored a career total of 1,018 points in 30 games played, for a career scoring average of 33.9 points per game.
Real Madrid (1988–1989)
After his string of very successful seasons with Cibona Zagreb, Petrović needed new challenges that Cibona and the Yugoslav First Federal League could no longer offer him. The NBA's Portland Trail Blazers had already used their third-round draft pick on the young Petrović, in the 1986 NBA draft, but he had decided to postpone his departure to the United States. In 1988, rather than go to the NBA, he instead signed with the Spanish League club Real Madrid, for around US$4 million in net income. At that time, Yugoslav sporting laws stipulated that players could not professionally move abroad until they had reached the age of 28. Petrović was still only 23 when he signed with Real Madrid. In 2014, José Antonio Arízaga, the sports agent who played a key role in Petrović's 1988 summer transfer from Cibona to Real, recalled a few details from the transaction: "I spoke to Mirko Novosel, Dražen's head coach at Cibona, and he told me two things. One, every problem in Yugoslavia can be taken care of with the right amount of money, and two, if Dražen leaves, every other player under 28 will be leaving and it'll be chaos. So, you can imagine all the individuals I had to bribe and all the places where I had to pay up, in order to circumvent this law".
1988–89 season
Petrović helped Real to win the title of the 1989 edition of the Spanish King's Cup, over their Catalan rivals, Barcelona. In the Spanish ACB League's Finals, Real Madrid narrowly lost to Barcelona, in the fifth and decisive game of the series. In the Spanish League's 1988–89 ACB season, Petrović was the league's regular season top scorer. Including the playoffs, he scored a total of 1,327 points, in 47 games played, for a scoring average of 28.2 points per game. Petrović's first season in Spain's ACB was also his last, but he still holds the ACB's single-game Finals records for the most points scored, with 42, and for the most three-pointers made, with 8.
In European-wide club competition, Real Madrid competed in the European secondary level FIBA European Cup Winners' Cup. On 14 March 1989, in the 1988–89 Cup Winners' Cup Final against the Italian League club Snaidero Caserta, Petrović tied his previous best scoring performance in a European-wide club competition with 62 points.
Petrović was pressured to join the NBA, by the Trail Blazers, who had drafted him 60th overall in 1986. Being motivated by the potential new challenges that the NBA presented, Petrović finally decided to try to establish himself in the league. He left Spain rather abruptly, at the end of the season; the Blazers assisted him in the process, by buying out his contract with Real Madrid, for as much as US$1.5 million. Petrović finally joined the Blazers for the 1989–90 season.
NBA career
Portland Trail Blazers (1989–1991)
The Blazers valued Petrović as a shooter, but were concerned that he might not possess the quickness to play guard or the foot speed to play defense. They brought him onto the team primarily as an outside threat to shoot three-pointers. In the Blazers' offensive scheme he was to set up behind the line, receive a passed ball and go directly up to release his shot. Petrović was an aggressive, attacking player who was used to creating his shot and shots for his teammates. Taking the ball out of his hands and making him a static shooter was foreign to him. Making matters worse, the Blazers already had a full rotation of guards, with a starting backcourt of Clyde Drexler and Terry Porter, and with veteran Danny Young as a reserve. Consequently, the reigning La Gazzetta dello Sport Euroscar European Player of the Year saw limited playing time. He had difficulty being productive in the limited role the Blazers had for him. In his rookie year during the 1989–90 NBA season, he averaged 7.4 points in 12 minutes per game. The following season veteran guard Danny Ainge was added to the team, and Petrović's playing time dropped further to 7 minutes a game. In many statements made prior to arriving in Portland, Petrović had said he saw a lack of playing time as the only possible obstacle to his success in the NBA. He was determined to be a success in basketball's highest arena. His lack of playing time during his second season in the league brought Petrović's frustration to a climax:
"I have nothing to say to Adelman any more and vice versa. Eighteen months have passed by, too long. I have to leave to prove how much I am worth. Never in my life did I sit on the bench and I don’t intend to do that in Portland."
At his insistence, 38 games into the season (20 of which held no playing time for Petrović), a three-way trade with the Denver Nuggets sent him to the New Jersey Nets in exchange for a first-round pick in the following draft and Walter Davis, who was sent from Denver to Portland.
New Jersey Nets (1991–1993)
On 23 January 1991, Petrović became a member of the New Jersey Nets. He joined a team that had not reached the playoffs since 1986, but had rookie Derrick Coleman, the number one selection from the 1990 draft. He was immediately given a role on the floor, with 20.5 minutes per game. His scoring over the remaining 43 games increased to 12.6 points per game, one of the league's best points-per-minute ratios. The following year, he and Coleman were joined by Kenny Anderson, giving the team a third talented new addition. Petrović was made a starter for the 1991–92 season, his first full season with the Nets. Petro, as the Americans had dubbed him, did not miss a single game. On 13 March 1992, Petrović scored 39 points while shooting 65% from the field, and 100% (3 of 3) from 3 point range, in a 110-108 win against the Boston Celtics. His determination, hard work and aggressive on-court demeanor established him as a team leader. In 36.9 minutes on the floor he averaged 20.6 points. Petrović led the Nets in field-goal shooting and free-throw shooting, and his field goal percentage of 51% placed him near the top of all NBA guards. More importantly, his success translated into success for the team. The Nets made the playoffs, recording 14 more wins than the previous year. On 23 April 1992, in Game 1 of their first round matchup against the Cleveland Cavaliers, Petrović scored a playoff career-high 40 points. The Nets would eventually lose the best of 5 series 3 games to 1. The following season saw Petrović increase his scoring average to 22.3 ppg, 11th best in the league.
On 6 December 1992, he was named MVP of the Week. On 4 February 1993, Petrović played a career-high 53 minutes and scored 35 points in an overtime win against the Seattle SuperSonics. For the second season in a row he shot 45% from the three-point arc. His field goal percentage of 52% was again near the top for all guards. American media honored him with a selection to the All-NBA Third Team. However, he did not receive an invitation to the 1993 All-Star game. Among the top 13 scorers in the NBA that season, he was the only one not invited.
In an interview on the Scoop B Radio Podcast, Petrović's Nets teammate, Chucky Brown marveled at Petrović's healing ability. Brown told Brandon Scoop B Robinson that he remembered Petrović spraining his knee and was slated to miss two months. Petrović rehabbed so hard that he ended up only missing two weeks.
Career statistics
NBA
Regular season
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|Portland
| 77 || 0 || 12.6 || .485 || .459 || .844 || 1.4 || 1.5 || .3 || .0 || 7.6
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|Portland
| 18 || 0 || 7.4 || .451 || .167 || .682 || 1.0 || 1.1 || .3 || .0 || 4.4
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 43 || 0 || 20.5 || .500 || .373 || .861 || 2.1 || 1.5 || .9 || .0 || 12.6
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 82 || 82 || 36.9 || .508 || .444 || .808 || 3.1 || 3.1 || 1.3 || .1 || 20.6
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 70 || 67 || 38.0 || .518 || .449 || .870 || 2.7 || 3.5 || 1.3 || .2 || 22.3
|- class="sortbottom"
| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"|Career
| 290 || 149 || 26.4 || .506 || .437 || .841 || 2.3 || 2.4 || .9 || .1 || 15.4
Playoffs
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|1990
| style="text-align:left;"|Portland
| 20 || 0 || 12.7 || .440 || .313 || .583 || 1.6 || 1.0 || .3 || .0 || 6.1
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|1992
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 4 || 4 || 40.8 || .539 || .333 || .846 || 2.5 || 3.3 || 1.0 || .3 || 24.3
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|1993
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 5 || 5 || 38.6 || .455 || .333 || .800 || 1.8 || 1.8 || .4 || .0 || 15.6
|- class="sortbottom"
| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"|Career
| 29 || 9 || 21.0 || .474 || .324 || .696 || 1.8 || 1.4 || .4 || .0 || 10.2
EuroLeague
|-
| style="text-align:left;background:#afe6ba;"|1984–85†
| style="text-align:left;"|Cibona Zagreb
| 15 || || || || || || || || || || 30.9 ||
|-
| style="text-align:left;background:#afe6ba;"|1985–86†
| style="text-align:left;"|Cibona Zagreb
| 15 || || || || || || || || || || 37.0 ||
|- class="sortbottom"
| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"|Career
| 30 || || || || || || || || || || ||
National team career
Yugoslavia
Petrović's national team debut came at the age of 15, at the Under-18 Balkan Championship in Turkey, where the Yugoslavia junior team won the bronze. The young man regularly played for the Yugoslavia national team in the Balkan Championships, also winning gold with the junior team and silver with the senior team. He also brought back the silver from the 1982 FIBA Europe Under-18 Championship in Bulgaria.
The 1984 Summer Olympics were Petrović's first competition of a grand scale with the Yugoslavia senior national team, and the bronze medal won in Los Angeles that summer became his first Olympic medal. Third place was also earned at the 1986 FIBA World Championship, remembered for the last minute thriller in the semi-final game against the Soviet Union. Petrović was named the MVP of the tournament. At the 1987 EuroBasket, Petrović again returned with bronze, as Yugoslavia lost to the hosts and gold medalists Greece. The University Games, held in Zagreb in 1987, saw the Yugoslavian squad with Petrović win the gold. In the 1988 Summer Olympics, Yugoslavia with Petrović, earned 2nd place, as they lost once more to the Soviet powerhouse.
An excellent club season with Real Madrid was topped by Petrović's 1989 accomplishment with the Yugoslavia national team: at the EuroBasket in Zagreb, the young Yugoslavian team went all the way, defeating Greece more than comfortably in the championship game. Petrović was the tournament's second leading scorer and Most Valuable Player. The very next year, the summer in between the two most frustrating seasons of his professional career, as he struggled for playing time with the Trail Blazers, Petrović was again making history with the national team, as Yugoslavia became world champions, after beating the Soviet Union for the gold in Buenos Aires, at the 1990 FIBA World Championship.
Overall, Petrović represented Yugoslavia's senior national team in 155 games, in which he scored a total of 3,258 points, for a career scoring average of 21.0 points per game.
Croatia
The 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, marked the first summer Olympics featuring the independent Croatia, and Petrović was the leader of the Croatian national basketball team at the Olympic basketball tournament. Losing only to the American Dream Team in the group stage, a strong and inspired Croatian team emerged victorious from the Semifinals against the revamped Soviet team, thanks to clutch free throws executed by Petrović, and faced off against the Americans for the gold. Urged on by Petrović's competitiveness and confidence, the Croatians fared well in the first ten minutes of the game, taking a 25–23 lead on a Franjo Arapović dunk and the subsequent made free throw. As the game progressed, however, the now-legendary team composed of NBA stars proved too tough for Croatia: the Americans won 117–85, sending Petrović, the game's leading scorer with 24 points, and his teammates, home with silver medals.
In the period during which Petrović played for the senior Croatian national team (1992–1993), he appeared in 40 games and scored a total of 1,002 points, for a career scoring average of 25.1 points per game. His highest single-game point tally came against Estonia, on 31 May 1993 (48 points). Counting the senior national team games that he played in with both Yugoslavia's and Croatia's national teams, Petrović scored a total of 4,260 points in 195 games played, for a career scoring average of 21.8 points per game.
Death and legacy
In the summer of 1993, after his best NBA season and the Nets' first-round elimination by the Cleveland Cavaliers, Petrović traveled to Berlin, where the Croatian national team was playing a qualification tournament for the 1993 EuroBasket. He was contemplating departure from the Nets, disappointed with the fact that the Nets had not yet extended his contract. He told American reporters that the lack of recognition in the league made him also consider leaving the NBA completely and playing club basketball in Greece. There were at least two Greek clubs ready to offer Petrović three-year contracts worth US$7.5 million net. Petrović decided to skip the connection flight back to Zagreb and drive with his girlfriend back to Croatia.
Petrović died in a traffic accident at about 5:20 p.m. on 7 June 1993. On the rain-drenched Autobahn 9, he was a passenger in a car that was cut off by a semi-truck at Denkendorf near Ingolstadt in the German state of Bavaria. According to the report of the Ingolstadt police, that afternoon a truck broke through the Autobahn median; the driver was trying to avoid a collision with a personal vehicle in his own lane and lost control of the truck, crashing through the median barrier and finally coming to a stop and blocking all three lanes of traffic going in the opposite direction. Seconds later, the Volkswagen Golf carrying a sleeping Petrović in the passenger seat crashed into the truck. Petrovic was ejected from the vehicle. Despite efforts to revive him, he succumbed to severe head injuries. According to the autopsy report, Petrovic died on impact. The driver, Klara Szalantzy, a Hungarian model and basketball player with whom Petrović was romantically involved, and Hilal Edebal, a female Turkish basketball player, sustained grave injuries. It was established that visibility on the road was very poor and that Petrović was not wearing a seatbelt.
Petrović's tomb at Mirogoj Cemetery instantly became a sanctuary for his compatriots. The Cibona stadium was renamed the Dražen Petrović Basketball Hall on 4 October 1993, and the city of Zagreb dedicated a square in his name, which was later followed by Šibenik and Vukovar, while Petrinja dedicated a street to him. Before Game 1 of the 1993 NBA Finals, the NBA held a moment of silence for Petrović, whose death occurred two days before the event began. The Nets retired his number 3 jersey on 11 November 1993. After 1994, the MVP award at the McDonald's Championship bore the name Dražen Petrović Trophy, and the Croatian Olympic Committee's award for young athletes was named for him in 2006. On 29 April 1995, a statue commemorating Petrović's significance to the world of sports was erected in front of the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland, thus making him only the second athlete to receive this honor. On 9 July 2001, having defeated Patrick Rafter to win the men's singles title at Wimbledon, Croatian tennis player Goran Ivanišević dedicated the win to Petrović; Ivanišević wore Petrović's Nets jersey amidst the 100,000 strong crowd celebrating his victory in Split. Petrović was inducted posthumously into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2002. In 2006, the 13th anniversary of Petrović's death was marked with the opening of the Dražen Petrović Memorial Center in Zagreb, dedicated to his life and achievements, with ten themed galleries of multimedia content outlining his entire career and a statue of Dražen in shooting position in front of it. Petrović was enshrined in the FIBA Hall of Fame in 2007.
The 2010 documentary, Once Brothers (part of the ESPN 30 for 30 series), portrays the achievements of the Yugoslavia national basketball team in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and how the Yugoslav Wars tore the team apart. It explores Petrović's broken friendship with Serbian/Yugoslav player Vlade Divac. In 2011, a statue of him as a little boy sitting on a bench with a ball was unveiled in Šibenik, and his old room was renovated the way it looked when he was young, as a first part of opening a Memorial Center in his hometown. During the 2012 Three Point Shootout, New Jersey Nets guard Anthony Morrow wore Petrović's jersey in the latter's honor. In 2015, Australian writer Todd Spehr released a 470-page biography on Petrović, titled Dražen: The Remarkable Life & Legacy of the Mozart of Basketball. On 3 June 2015, Croatian basketball journalists Marjan Crnogaj and Vlado Radicevic released a 487-page biography which global paperback edition was released on 14 October 2017.
Reactions
Accomplishments and awards
Club competitions
European Champions Cup
Champion: 1985, 1986
European Cup Winners' Cup
Champion: 1987, 1989
Yugoslavian Championship
Champion: 1985
Yugoslavian Cup
Winner: 1985, 1986, 1988
Spanish Cup
Winner: 1989
NBA Finals
Runner-up: 1990
Korać Cup
Runner-up: 1982, 1983, 1988
Spanish Championship
Runner-up: 1989
Personal
Yugoslav First League: most points scored by an individual, in a league game (112).
Spanish ACB League: most points scored by an individual, in a final series game (42).
Spanish ACB League: most 3-point field goals made by an individual, in a final series game (8).
NBA: second highest 3-point field goal percentage (.444) in 1991–92.
NBA: fourth highest field goal percentage among guards (.508) in 1991–92.
NBA: second highest 3-point field goal percentage (.449) 1992–93.
NBA: second highest field goal percentage among guards (.518) 1992–93.
NBA: third best career 3-point field goal percentage (.437).
National teams
Summer Olympics
: 1988, 1992
: 1984
FIBA World Championship
: 1990
: 1986
FIBA EuroBasket
: 1989
: 1987
Summer Universiade
: 1987
: 1983
Balkan Championship for Junior Men
: 1982
: 1982
Balkan Championship for Cadets
: 1981
Balkan Championship
: 1984
FIBA Europe Under-18 Championship
: 1982
Personal
Balkan Championship for Junior Men Best Player: 1982
FIBA World Cup MVP: 1986
FIBA EuroBasket MVP: 1989
Dražen Petrović Memorial Center
A museum named "The Dražen Petrović Memorial Center" was founded in his honor, and constitutes a co-operative effort led by the Dražen Petrović Foundation in conjunction with the Croatian government, the city of Zagreb and the Croatian Museum of Sports. The memorial center idea originated from Petrović's parents, Biserka and Jole Petrovic, and was supported with the contributions of Croatian architects Andrija Rusan and Niksa Bilic. All of the articles presented in the center have been collected and categorized by the Croatian Museum of Sports. The organization and operations of the center have been provided by the Dražen Petrović Foundation, which is led by Petrović's family. The Center contains his No. 3 New Jersey Nets jersey and the watch that stopped when he died in a car crash. The center features 1,000 memorabilia items and a video of his basketball highlights.
The official opening of the museum was held on 7 June 2006, while the official opening of the center to the public began at the end of December 2006. The square on which the center is operated upon has been renamed to Dražen Petrović Square in his honor. In 2013, former NBA MVP Derrick Rose visited the museum.
See also
List of basketball players who died during their careers
List of basketball players who have scored 100 points in a single game
Yugoslav First Federal Basketball League career stats leaders
References
Sources
External links
Drazen Petrovic Museum
Drazen Petrovic Yugoslavia FIBA Profile
Drazen Petrovic Croatia FIBA Profile
FIBA Europe Profile
Drazen Petrovic at the Basketball Hall of Fame
Euroleague.net 50 greatest contributors
In Honor of Dražen Petrović
FIBA Hall of Fame profile
1964 births
1993 deaths
1986 FIBA World Championship players
1990 FIBA World Championship players
Basketball players at the 1984 Summer Olympics
Basketball players at the 1988 Summer Olympics
Basketball players at the 1992 Summer Olympics
Basketball players from Šibenik
Burials at Mirogoj Cemetery
Croatian expatriate basketball people in Spain
Croatian expatriate basketball people in the United States
Croatian men's basketball players
Croatian people of Serbian descent
Euroscar award winners
FIBA EuroBasket-winning players
FIBA Hall of Fame inductees
FIBA World Championship-winning players
KK Cibona players
KK Šibenik players
Liga ACB players
Medalists at the 1983 Summer Universiade
Medalists at the 1984 Summer Olympics
Medalists at the 1988 Summer Olympics
Medalists at the 1992 Summer Olympics
Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductees
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Recipients of the Olympic Order
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Shooting guards
Universiade gold medalists for Yugoslavia
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Universiade silver medalists for Yugoslavia
Yugoslav expatriate sportspeople in Spain
Yugoslav expatriate sportspeople in the United States
Yugoslav men's basketball players | 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"
] |
[
"Dražen Petrović",
"Yugoslavia",
"How old as he at national team apperance",
"15,",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"1984 Summer Olympics were Petrovic's first competition of a grand scale with the Yugoslav senior national team,"
] | C_87c16213bea04fa5ad751999800b87e8_0 | What place did they get | 3 | What place did the Yugoslav Senior National team get at the 1984 Summer Olympics? | Dražen Petrović | Petrovic's national team debut came at the age of 15, at the Under-18 Balkan Championship in Turkey, where the Yugoslavian junior team won the bronze. The young man regularly played for the Yugoslavian national team in the Balkan Championships, also winning gold with the junior team and silver with the senior team. He also brought back the silver from the 1982 FIBA Europe Under-18 Championship in Bulgaria. The 1984 Summer Olympics were Petrovic's first competition of a grand scale with the Yugoslav senior national team, and the bronze medal won in Los Angeles that summer became his first Olympic medal. Third place was also earned at the 1986 FIBA World Championship, remembered for the last minute thriller in the semi-final game against the Soviet Union. At the 1987 EuroBasket, Petrovic again returned with bronze, as Yugoslavia lost to the hosts and gold medalists Greece. The University Games, held in Zagreb in 1987, saw the Yugoslavian squad with Petrovic win the gold. In the 1988 Summer Olympics, Yugoslavia with Petrovic, earned 2nd place, as they lost once more to the Soviet powerhouse. An excellent club season with Real Madrid was topped by Petrovic's 1989 accomplishment with the Yugoslav national team: at the EuroBasket in Zagreb, the young Yugoslavian team went all the way, defeating Greece more than comfortably in the championship game. Petrovic was the tournament's second leading scorer and most valuable player. The very next year, the summer in between the two most frustrating seasons of his professional career, as he struggled for playing time with the Trail Blazers, Petrovic was again making history with the national team, as Yugoslavia became world champions, after beating the Soviet Union for the gold in Buenos Aires, at the 1990 FIBA World Championship. CANNOTANSWER | Third | Dražen Petrović (; 22 October 1964 – 7 June 1993) was a Yugoslav and Croatian professional basketball player. A shooting guard, he initially achieved success playing professional basketball in Europe in the 1980s, before joining the National Basketball Association (NBA) in 1989.
A star on multiple international basketball stages, Petrović earned two silver medals (1988, 1992) and one bronze (1984) at the Summer Olympic Games, a gold (1990) and a bronze (1986) at the FIBA World Cup, and a gold (1989) and a bronze (1987) at the FIBA EuroBasket. He was the MVP of the 1986 FIBA World Championship, and the MVP of the 1989 FIBA EuroBasket. With Cibona Zagreb, Petrović also won two consecutive EuroLeague championships in 1985 and 1986. He first represented Yugoslavia's senior national team and, later, Croatia's senior national team. He earned four Euroscars, and was named Mr. Europa twice. In 1985, he received the Golden Badge award for the best athlete of Yugoslavia.
Seeking a bigger arena after his career start in Europe, Petrović joined the NBA in 1989, as a member of the Portland Trail Blazers. After playing mostly off the bench that year, Petrović experienced a breakthrough following a trade to the New Jersey Nets. While starting for the Nets, he became one of the league's best shooting guards. He was named one of FIBA's 50 Greatest Players in 1991. On 7 June 1993, Petrović's career and life were cut short, after he died in a car accident, at the age of 28.
In 1993, Petrović's jersey number 3 was retired by the Nets, and the Dražen Petrović Basketball Hall was named after him in his honor. He also received the Olympic Order in 1993. In 2002, he was posthumously enshrined into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. In 2006, the Dražen Petrović Award was created in his honor. In 2007, he was posthumously inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame. He was named one of the 50 Greatest EuroLeague Contributors in 2008. In 2013, he was voted the best European Basketball player in history, by players at the 2013 FIBA EuroBasket.
Petrović is considered a crucial part of the vanguard to the present-day mass influx of European players into the NBA, and to this day he is viewed as a national hero in Croatia.
Early years
Born in Šibenik, Yugoslavia (present-day Croatia), Dražen Petrović was the second child of Jovan "Jole" Petrović, a police officer, and Biserka (), a librarian. His father was born in a Serb family in Zagora, near Trebinje in Bosnia and Herzegovina. His mother was born in Bilice, near Šibenik, and was from a traditional conservative Croat family, devoutly Roman Catholic. The couple's eldest child, Aleksandar, was the first to play basketball and rose to become one of the top point guards in former Yugoslavia. The Petrović brothers are second cousins to the Serbian basketball player Dejan Bodiroga.
Šibenka (1979–1983)
At the age of 13, Petrović started playing in the youth selections of the local club Šibenka; at the age of 15, he had already made the club's first team, just as Šibenka had earned a place in the Yugoslav national first division. With young Petrović as the star of the team, Šibenka reached the final of the third level Pan-European club competition, the FIBA Radivoj Korać Cup twice (1981–82 and 1982–83), where they lost to the French League club Limoges CSP both times. In 1983, the 18-year-old Petrović hit two free throws in Šibenka's victory over Bosna Sarajevo in the final playoff game of the Yugoslavian League's 1982–83 season's club championship. However, on the day after the club won the championship, the Basketball Federation of Yugoslavia stripped the title from Šibenka, because of irregularities in refereeing. The league's championship was then awarded to Bosna, after Šibenka refused to play in a rematch.
Petrović increased his scoring numbers in each successive season that he played with Šibenka. In the 1979–80 Yugoslav FFL season, he scored 13 points in 16 games, for an average of 0.8 points per game. In the 1980–81 Yugoslav FFL season, he scored 39 points in 20 games, for an average of 2.0 points per game. In the 1981–82 Yugoslav FFL season, he scored 392 points in 24 games, for an average of 16.3 points per game. In the 1982–83 Yugoslav FFL season, he scored 758 points in 31 games, for an average of 24.5 points per game. In total, he scored 1,202 points in 91 games played with Šibenka in the Yugoslav first division, for a scoring average of 13.2 points per game.
Rise to European stardom
Cibona Zagreb (1984–1988)
1984–85 season
After a year's mandatory service in the Yugoslav military, Petrović joined his older brother Aco and moved to Cibona Zagreb, to form what was at that time, the best back court duo in Europe. In his first season in Cibona, Petrović won both the national Yugoslav League championship and the Yugoslav National Cup title. In national domestic league play, in the 1984–85 Yugoslav FFL season, Petrović scored a total of 878 points in 27 games played, for a scoring average of 32.5 points per game.
On 6 December 1984, in the 1984–85 season of Europe's top-level club competition, the FIBA European Champions Cup (EuroLeague), Petrović scored 44 points in a game against the Spanish League club Real Madrid. He scored 29 of the 44 points in the second half of the game. Petrović also scored 36 points in the league's 1985 Final against Real Madrid. Cibona won the game, by a score of 87–78, and the win brought the club their first top-tier level European Champions Cup title. That season, in Europe's top-level club competition, which eventually became known as the EuroLeague, Petrović scored a total of 463 points in 15 games played, for a scoring average of 30.9 points per game.
1985–86 season
On 5 October 1985, in a Yugoslav First Federal League game against Union Olimpija Ljubljana, Petrović scored 112 points, in Cibona's 158–77 blowout win. He scored 67 of the 112 points in the first half of the game. During the game, Petrović shot 40/60 from the field, 10/20 from 3-point range, and 22/22 from the free-throw line.
The 112 points scored was the most points ever scored in a single game in the history of the Yugoslav First Federal League. It broke the league's previous single-game scoring record of 74 points, which was set in 1962, by Radivoj Korać. Korać achieved that record while playing with OKK Beograd, in a game against Mladost Zagreb. However, the record was achieved under unusual circumstances.
Olimpija Ljubljana had failed to fulfill their player registration administrative obligations in time for the game. Olimpija general manager Radovan Lorbek was reportedly late with submitting a registration letter to the Basketball Federation of Yugoslavia (KSJ) headquarters in Belgrade. That rendered their entire men's first team roster ineligible for the Yugoslav First Federal League's regular season opening game, and forced them to instead field players for the game from their youth systems. Unfortunately, Olimpija didn't have an under-18 youth squad that season. So the club had to go to Zagreb to play the game with even younger players. In the end, the team that Olimpija took to Zagreb to play against Cibona, consisted of players in the under-16 and under-17 age groups, which included: Igor Đurović, Matjaž Strmole, Jože Maček, Dag Kralj, Tine Erjavec, Jure Zorčič, Gregor Stražiščar, Andrej Novina, and Tine Merzelj.
Cibona, for their part, decided to use a mixed roster for the game, consisting of players from their youth system, plus their senior men's team's twenty-one-year-old young superstar Dražen Petrović, who used the opportunity of playing against the inferior youth squad opposition to shatter Korać's single-game Yugoslav League scoring record of 74 points. Petrović ended up with 112 points scored in the game, despite the fact that before the game, he had reportedly announced his intention to exit from the game, once he had surpassed Korać's 74 points record. Petrović was one of only five Cibona players to get on the score sheet that day. The other four were eighteen-year-old Dražen Anzulović with 16 points, eighteen-year-old Vladimir Rizman with 14 points, nineteen-year-old Ivo Nakić with 12 points, and Ivan Šoštarec with 4 points.
Overall, in the 1985–86 Yugoslav FFL season, Petrović scored a total of 1,241 points in 30 games played, for a scoring average of 41.4 points per game. That season, Petrović also won another Yugoslav National Cup title with Cibona. On 7 February 1986, Petrović scored 55 points in a Yugoslav Cup game against Union Olimpija Ljubljana. He also scored 46 points in the 1986 Yugoslav Cup's Final against Cibona's old rivals Bosna Sarajevo.
On 4 December 1985, in a 1985–86 season FIBA European Champions Cup (EuroLeague) game against the Israeli Super League club Maccabi Tel Aviv, Petrović scored 44 points. In the same European Champions Cup season, on 11 December 1985, he had 47 points and 25 assists in a game against the then reigning Italian League champions Simac Milano. In another European Champions Cup game that season, on 16 January 1986, Petrović scored 49 points, and had 20 assists against the Spanish League club Real Madrid. On 22 January 1986, in a European Champions Cup game against the French League club Limoges, Petrović made ten 3-pointers, including seven in a row during a first-half stretch, for a final tally of 51 points and 10 assists in the game. The 51 points scored was also his personal career-high scored in a single EuroLeague game.
Eventually, Petrović won his second straight FIBA European Champions Cup (EuroLeague) title with Cibona, as he scored 22 points in the league's 1986 Final, in which Cibona defeated the USSR Premier League club Žalgiris Kaunas, which starred the legendary Arvydas Sabonis. In the 1985–86 European Champions Cup (EuroLeague) season, Petrović scored a total of 555 points in 15 games played, for a scoring average of 37.0 points per game.
1986–87 season
In the 1986–87 Yugoslav FFL season, Petrović scored a total of 932 points in 25 games played, for a scoring average of 37.3 points per game.
In that same season, Cibona competed in the European-wide secondary level FIBA European Cup Winners' Cup competition. Petrović led Cibona to the championship, as he scored 28 points against the Italian League club Scavolini Pesaro, in the league's 1986–87 season Final. It was the third straight European-wide club championship for Petrović and Cibona.
In the 1986–87 FIBA European Cup Winners Cup season, Petrović scored a total of 270 points in 8 games played, for a scoring average of 33.8 points per game.
1987–88 season
With Cibona, Petrović again won the Yugoslav National Cup title in 1988. In the 1987–88 Yugoslav FFL season, Petrović scored a total of 860 points in 24 games played, for a scoring average of 35.8 points per game.
In that same season, Cibona competed in Europe's third level club competition, the FIBA Korać Cup. On 14 October 1987, Petrović scored 62 points in a 1987–88 FIBA Korać Cup season game against the Finnish League club KTP Kotka. Petrović led Cibona to the Finals of the Korać Cup, where they lost to the Spanish League club Real Madrid. During the Korać Cup season, Petrović scored a total of 401 points in 12 games played, for a scoring average of 33.4 points per game.
During his four seasons with Cibona, Petrović scored a total of 3,911 points, in 106 games played in the national Yugoslav First Federal League, for a scoring average of 36.9 points per game. With Cibona, he also scored a total of 559 points, in 20 games played, for a scoring average of 28.0 points per game, in the Yugoslav Cup competition. In the three Pan-European club competitions that he played in with Cibona, he scored a total of 1,689 points in 50 games played, for a scoring average of 33.8 points per game.
With both Šibenka and Cibona, Petrović's career scoring numbers in the Yugoslav First Federal League were 5,113 points scored, in 197 games played, for a career scoring average of 26.0 points per game. In the top-level European-wide club competition, the FIBA European Champions Cup, which is now known as the EuroLeague, Petrović scored a career total of 1,018 points in 30 games played, for a career scoring average of 33.9 points per game.
Real Madrid (1988–1989)
After his string of very successful seasons with Cibona Zagreb, Petrović needed new challenges that Cibona and the Yugoslav First Federal League could no longer offer him. The NBA's Portland Trail Blazers had already used their third-round draft pick on the young Petrović, in the 1986 NBA draft, but he had decided to postpone his departure to the United States. In 1988, rather than go to the NBA, he instead signed with the Spanish League club Real Madrid, for around US$4 million in net income. At that time, Yugoslav sporting laws stipulated that players could not professionally move abroad until they had reached the age of 28. Petrović was still only 23 when he signed with Real Madrid. In 2014, José Antonio Arízaga, the sports agent who played a key role in Petrović's 1988 summer transfer from Cibona to Real, recalled a few details from the transaction: "I spoke to Mirko Novosel, Dražen's head coach at Cibona, and he told me two things. One, every problem in Yugoslavia can be taken care of with the right amount of money, and two, if Dražen leaves, every other player under 28 will be leaving and it'll be chaos. So, you can imagine all the individuals I had to bribe and all the places where I had to pay up, in order to circumvent this law".
1988–89 season
Petrović helped Real to win the title of the 1989 edition of the Spanish King's Cup, over their Catalan rivals, Barcelona. In the Spanish ACB League's Finals, Real Madrid narrowly lost to Barcelona, in the fifth and decisive game of the series. In the Spanish League's 1988–89 ACB season, Petrović was the league's regular season top scorer. Including the playoffs, he scored a total of 1,327 points, in 47 games played, for a scoring average of 28.2 points per game. Petrović's first season in Spain's ACB was also his last, but he still holds the ACB's single-game Finals records for the most points scored, with 42, and for the most three-pointers made, with 8.
In European-wide club competition, Real Madrid competed in the European secondary level FIBA European Cup Winners' Cup. On 14 March 1989, in the 1988–89 Cup Winners' Cup Final against the Italian League club Snaidero Caserta, Petrović tied his previous best scoring performance in a European-wide club competition with 62 points.
Petrović was pressured to join the NBA, by the Trail Blazers, who had drafted him 60th overall in 1986. Being motivated by the potential new challenges that the NBA presented, Petrović finally decided to try to establish himself in the league. He left Spain rather abruptly, at the end of the season; the Blazers assisted him in the process, by buying out his contract with Real Madrid, for as much as US$1.5 million. Petrović finally joined the Blazers for the 1989–90 season.
NBA career
Portland Trail Blazers (1989–1991)
The Blazers valued Petrović as a shooter, but were concerned that he might not possess the quickness to play guard or the foot speed to play defense. They brought him onto the team primarily as an outside threat to shoot three-pointers. In the Blazers' offensive scheme he was to set up behind the line, receive a passed ball and go directly up to release his shot. Petrović was an aggressive, attacking player who was used to creating his shot and shots for his teammates. Taking the ball out of his hands and making him a static shooter was foreign to him. Making matters worse, the Blazers already had a full rotation of guards, with a starting backcourt of Clyde Drexler and Terry Porter, and with veteran Danny Young as a reserve. Consequently, the reigning La Gazzetta dello Sport Euroscar European Player of the Year saw limited playing time. He had difficulty being productive in the limited role the Blazers had for him. In his rookie year during the 1989–90 NBA season, he averaged 7.4 points in 12 minutes per game. The following season veteran guard Danny Ainge was added to the team, and Petrović's playing time dropped further to 7 minutes a game. In many statements made prior to arriving in Portland, Petrović had said he saw a lack of playing time as the only possible obstacle to his success in the NBA. He was determined to be a success in basketball's highest arena. His lack of playing time during his second season in the league brought Petrović's frustration to a climax:
"I have nothing to say to Adelman any more and vice versa. Eighteen months have passed by, too long. I have to leave to prove how much I am worth. Never in my life did I sit on the bench and I don’t intend to do that in Portland."
At his insistence, 38 games into the season (20 of which held no playing time for Petrović), a three-way trade with the Denver Nuggets sent him to the New Jersey Nets in exchange for a first-round pick in the following draft and Walter Davis, who was sent from Denver to Portland.
New Jersey Nets (1991–1993)
On 23 January 1991, Petrović became a member of the New Jersey Nets. He joined a team that had not reached the playoffs since 1986, but had rookie Derrick Coleman, the number one selection from the 1990 draft. He was immediately given a role on the floor, with 20.5 minutes per game. His scoring over the remaining 43 games increased to 12.6 points per game, one of the league's best points-per-minute ratios. The following year, he and Coleman were joined by Kenny Anderson, giving the team a third talented new addition. Petrović was made a starter for the 1991–92 season, his first full season with the Nets. Petro, as the Americans had dubbed him, did not miss a single game. On 13 March 1992, Petrović scored 39 points while shooting 65% from the field, and 100% (3 of 3) from 3 point range, in a 110-108 win against the Boston Celtics. His determination, hard work and aggressive on-court demeanor established him as a team leader. In 36.9 minutes on the floor he averaged 20.6 points. Petrović led the Nets in field-goal shooting and free-throw shooting, and his field goal percentage of 51% placed him near the top of all NBA guards. More importantly, his success translated into success for the team. The Nets made the playoffs, recording 14 more wins than the previous year. On 23 April 1992, in Game 1 of their first round matchup against the Cleveland Cavaliers, Petrović scored a playoff career-high 40 points. The Nets would eventually lose the best of 5 series 3 games to 1. The following season saw Petrović increase his scoring average to 22.3 ppg, 11th best in the league.
On 6 December 1992, he was named MVP of the Week. On 4 February 1993, Petrović played a career-high 53 minutes and scored 35 points in an overtime win against the Seattle SuperSonics. For the second season in a row he shot 45% from the three-point arc. His field goal percentage of 52% was again near the top for all guards. American media honored him with a selection to the All-NBA Third Team. However, he did not receive an invitation to the 1993 All-Star game. Among the top 13 scorers in the NBA that season, he was the only one not invited.
In an interview on the Scoop B Radio Podcast, Petrović's Nets teammate, Chucky Brown marveled at Petrović's healing ability. Brown told Brandon Scoop B Robinson that he remembered Petrović spraining his knee and was slated to miss two months. Petrović rehabbed so hard that he ended up only missing two weeks.
Career statistics
NBA
Regular season
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|Portland
| 77 || 0 || 12.6 || .485 || .459 || .844 || 1.4 || 1.5 || .3 || .0 || 7.6
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|Portland
| 18 || 0 || 7.4 || .451 || .167 || .682 || 1.0 || 1.1 || .3 || .0 || 4.4
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 43 || 0 || 20.5 || .500 || .373 || .861 || 2.1 || 1.5 || .9 || .0 || 12.6
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 82 || 82 || 36.9 || .508 || .444 || .808 || 3.1 || 3.1 || 1.3 || .1 || 20.6
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 70 || 67 || 38.0 || .518 || .449 || .870 || 2.7 || 3.5 || 1.3 || .2 || 22.3
|- class="sortbottom"
| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"|Career
| 290 || 149 || 26.4 || .506 || .437 || .841 || 2.3 || 2.4 || .9 || .1 || 15.4
Playoffs
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|1990
| style="text-align:left;"|Portland
| 20 || 0 || 12.7 || .440 || .313 || .583 || 1.6 || 1.0 || .3 || .0 || 6.1
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|1992
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 4 || 4 || 40.8 || .539 || .333 || .846 || 2.5 || 3.3 || 1.0 || .3 || 24.3
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|1993
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 5 || 5 || 38.6 || .455 || .333 || .800 || 1.8 || 1.8 || .4 || .0 || 15.6
|- class="sortbottom"
| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"|Career
| 29 || 9 || 21.0 || .474 || .324 || .696 || 1.8 || 1.4 || .4 || .0 || 10.2
EuroLeague
|-
| style="text-align:left;background:#afe6ba;"|1984–85†
| style="text-align:left;"|Cibona Zagreb
| 15 || || || || || || || || || || 30.9 ||
|-
| style="text-align:left;background:#afe6ba;"|1985–86†
| style="text-align:left;"|Cibona Zagreb
| 15 || || || || || || || || || || 37.0 ||
|- class="sortbottom"
| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"|Career
| 30 || || || || || || || || || || ||
National team career
Yugoslavia
Petrović's national team debut came at the age of 15, at the Under-18 Balkan Championship in Turkey, where the Yugoslavia junior team won the bronze. The young man regularly played for the Yugoslavia national team in the Balkan Championships, also winning gold with the junior team and silver with the senior team. He also brought back the silver from the 1982 FIBA Europe Under-18 Championship in Bulgaria.
The 1984 Summer Olympics were Petrović's first competition of a grand scale with the Yugoslavia senior national team, and the bronze medal won in Los Angeles that summer became his first Olympic medal. Third place was also earned at the 1986 FIBA World Championship, remembered for the last minute thriller in the semi-final game against the Soviet Union. Petrović was named the MVP of the tournament. At the 1987 EuroBasket, Petrović again returned with bronze, as Yugoslavia lost to the hosts and gold medalists Greece. The University Games, held in Zagreb in 1987, saw the Yugoslavian squad with Petrović win the gold. In the 1988 Summer Olympics, Yugoslavia with Petrović, earned 2nd place, as they lost once more to the Soviet powerhouse.
An excellent club season with Real Madrid was topped by Petrović's 1989 accomplishment with the Yugoslavia national team: at the EuroBasket in Zagreb, the young Yugoslavian team went all the way, defeating Greece more than comfortably in the championship game. Petrović was the tournament's second leading scorer and Most Valuable Player. The very next year, the summer in between the two most frustrating seasons of his professional career, as he struggled for playing time with the Trail Blazers, Petrović was again making history with the national team, as Yugoslavia became world champions, after beating the Soviet Union for the gold in Buenos Aires, at the 1990 FIBA World Championship.
Overall, Petrović represented Yugoslavia's senior national team in 155 games, in which he scored a total of 3,258 points, for a career scoring average of 21.0 points per game.
Croatia
The 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, marked the first summer Olympics featuring the independent Croatia, and Petrović was the leader of the Croatian national basketball team at the Olympic basketball tournament. Losing only to the American Dream Team in the group stage, a strong and inspired Croatian team emerged victorious from the Semifinals against the revamped Soviet team, thanks to clutch free throws executed by Petrović, and faced off against the Americans for the gold. Urged on by Petrović's competitiveness and confidence, the Croatians fared well in the first ten minutes of the game, taking a 25–23 lead on a Franjo Arapović dunk and the subsequent made free throw. As the game progressed, however, the now-legendary team composed of NBA stars proved too tough for Croatia: the Americans won 117–85, sending Petrović, the game's leading scorer with 24 points, and his teammates, home with silver medals.
In the period during which Petrović played for the senior Croatian national team (1992–1993), he appeared in 40 games and scored a total of 1,002 points, for a career scoring average of 25.1 points per game. His highest single-game point tally came against Estonia, on 31 May 1993 (48 points). Counting the senior national team games that he played in with both Yugoslavia's and Croatia's national teams, Petrović scored a total of 4,260 points in 195 games played, for a career scoring average of 21.8 points per game.
Death and legacy
In the summer of 1993, after his best NBA season and the Nets' first-round elimination by the Cleveland Cavaliers, Petrović traveled to Berlin, where the Croatian national team was playing a qualification tournament for the 1993 EuroBasket. He was contemplating departure from the Nets, disappointed with the fact that the Nets had not yet extended his contract. He told American reporters that the lack of recognition in the league made him also consider leaving the NBA completely and playing club basketball in Greece. There were at least two Greek clubs ready to offer Petrović three-year contracts worth US$7.5 million net. Petrović decided to skip the connection flight back to Zagreb and drive with his girlfriend back to Croatia.
Petrović died in a traffic accident at about 5:20 p.m. on 7 June 1993. On the rain-drenched Autobahn 9, he was a passenger in a car that was cut off by a semi-truck at Denkendorf near Ingolstadt in the German state of Bavaria. According to the report of the Ingolstadt police, that afternoon a truck broke through the Autobahn median; the driver was trying to avoid a collision with a personal vehicle in his own lane and lost control of the truck, crashing through the median barrier and finally coming to a stop and blocking all three lanes of traffic going in the opposite direction. Seconds later, the Volkswagen Golf carrying a sleeping Petrović in the passenger seat crashed into the truck. Petrovic was ejected from the vehicle. Despite efforts to revive him, he succumbed to severe head injuries. According to the autopsy report, Petrovic died on impact. The driver, Klara Szalantzy, a Hungarian model and basketball player with whom Petrović was romantically involved, and Hilal Edebal, a female Turkish basketball player, sustained grave injuries. It was established that visibility on the road was very poor and that Petrović was not wearing a seatbelt.
Petrović's tomb at Mirogoj Cemetery instantly became a sanctuary for his compatriots. The Cibona stadium was renamed the Dražen Petrović Basketball Hall on 4 October 1993, and the city of Zagreb dedicated a square in his name, which was later followed by Šibenik and Vukovar, while Petrinja dedicated a street to him. Before Game 1 of the 1993 NBA Finals, the NBA held a moment of silence for Petrović, whose death occurred two days before the event began. The Nets retired his number 3 jersey on 11 November 1993. After 1994, the MVP award at the McDonald's Championship bore the name Dražen Petrović Trophy, and the Croatian Olympic Committee's award for young athletes was named for him in 2006. On 29 April 1995, a statue commemorating Petrović's significance to the world of sports was erected in front of the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland, thus making him only the second athlete to receive this honor. On 9 July 2001, having defeated Patrick Rafter to win the men's singles title at Wimbledon, Croatian tennis player Goran Ivanišević dedicated the win to Petrović; Ivanišević wore Petrović's Nets jersey amidst the 100,000 strong crowd celebrating his victory in Split. Petrović was inducted posthumously into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2002. In 2006, the 13th anniversary of Petrović's death was marked with the opening of the Dražen Petrović Memorial Center in Zagreb, dedicated to his life and achievements, with ten themed galleries of multimedia content outlining his entire career and a statue of Dražen in shooting position in front of it. Petrović was enshrined in the FIBA Hall of Fame in 2007.
The 2010 documentary, Once Brothers (part of the ESPN 30 for 30 series), portrays the achievements of the Yugoslavia national basketball team in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and how the Yugoslav Wars tore the team apart. It explores Petrović's broken friendship with Serbian/Yugoslav player Vlade Divac. In 2011, a statue of him as a little boy sitting on a bench with a ball was unveiled in Šibenik, and his old room was renovated the way it looked when he was young, as a first part of opening a Memorial Center in his hometown. During the 2012 Three Point Shootout, New Jersey Nets guard Anthony Morrow wore Petrović's jersey in the latter's honor. In 2015, Australian writer Todd Spehr released a 470-page biography on Petrović, titled Dražen: The Remarkable Life & Legacy of the Mozart of Basketball. On 3 June 2015, Croatian basketball journalists Marjan Crnogaj and Vlado Radicevic released a 487-page biography which global paperback edition was released on 14 October 2017.
Reactions
Accomplishments and awards
Club competitions
European Champions Cup
Champion: 1985, 1986
European Cup Winners' Cup
Champion: 1987, 1989
Yugoslavian Championship
Champion: 1985
Yugoslavian Cup
Winner: 1985, 1986, 1988
Spanish Cup
Winner: 1989
NBA Finals
Runner-up: 1990
Korać Cup
Runner-up: 1982, 1983, 1988
Spanish Championship
Runner-up: 1989
Personal
Yugoslav First League: most points scored by an individual, in a league game (112).
Spanish ACB League: most points scored by an individual, in a final series game (42).
Spanish ACB League: most 3-point field goals made by an individual, in a final series game (8).
NBA: second highest 3-point field goal percentage (.444) in 1991–92.
NBA: fourth highest field goal percentage among guards (.508) in 1991–92.
NBA: second highest 3-point field goal percentage (.449) 1992–93.
NBA: second highest field goal percentage among guards (.518) 1992–93.
NBA: third best career 3-point field goal percentage (.437).
National teams
Summer Olympics
: 1988, 1992
: 1984
FIBA World Championship
: 1990
: 1986
FIBA EuroBasket
: 1989
: 1987
Summer Universiade
: 1987
: 1983
Balkan Championship for Junior Men
: 1982
: 1982
Balkan Championship for Cadets
: 1981
Balkan Championship
: 1984
FIBA Europe Under-18 Championship
: 1982
Personal
Balkan Championship for Junior Men Best Player: 1982
FIBA World Cup MVP: 1986
FIBA EuroBasket MVP: 1989
Dražen Petrović Memorial Center
A museum named "The Dražen Petrović Memorial Center" was founded in his honor, and constitutes a co-operative effort led by the Dražen Petrović Foundation in conjunction with the Croatian government, the city of Zagreb and the Croatian Museum of Sports. The memorial center idea originated from Petrović's parents, Biserka and Jole Petrovic, and was supported with the contributions of Croatian architects Andrija Rusan and Niksa Bilic. All of the articles presented in the center have been collected and categorized by the Croatian Museum of Sports. The organization and operations of the center have been provided by the Dražen Petrović Foundation, which is led by Petrović's family. The Center contains his No. 3 New Jersey Nets jersey and the watch that stopped when he died in a car crash. The center features 1,000 memorabilia items and a video of his basketball highlights.
The official opening of the museum was held on 7 June 2006, while the official opening of the center to the public began at the end of December 2006. The square on which the center is operated upon has been renamed to Dražen Petrović Square in his honor. In 2013, former NBA MVP Derrick Rose visited the museum.
See also
List of basketball players who died during their careers
List of basketball players who have scored 100 points in a single game
Yugoslav First Federal Basketball League career stats leaders
References
Sources
External links
Drazen Petrovic Museum
Drazen Petrovic Yugoslavia FIBA Profile
Drazen Petrovic Croatia FIBA Profile
FIBA Europe Profile
Drazen Petrovic at the Basketball Hall of Fame
Euroleague.net 50 greatest contributors
In Honor of Dražen Petrović
FIBA Hall of Fame profile
1964 births
1993 deaths
1986 FIBA World Championship players
1990 FIBA World Championship players
Basketball players at the 1984 Summer Olympics
Basketball players at the 1988 Summer Olympics
Basketball players at the 1992 Summer Olympics
Basketball players from Šibenik
Burials at Mirogoj Cemetery
Croatian expatriate basketball people in Spain
Croatian expatriate basketball people in the United States
Croatian men's basketball players
Croatian people of Serbian descent
Euroscar award winners
FIBA EuroBasket-winning players
FIBA Hall of Fame inductees
FIBA World Championship-winning players
KK Cibona players
KK Šibenik players
Liga ACB players
Medalists at the 1983 Summer Universiade
Medalists at the 1984 Summer Olympics
Medalists at the 1988 Summer Olympics
Medalists at the 1992 Summer Olympics
Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductees
National Basketball Association players from Croatia
National Basketball Association players with retired numbers
New Jersey Nets players
Olympic basketball players of Croatia
Olympic basketball players of Yugoslavia
Olympic bronze medalists for Yugoslavia
Olympic medalists in basketball
Olympic silver medalists for Croatia
Olympic silver medalists for Yugoslavia
Portland Trail Blazers draft picks
Portland Trail Blazers players
Real Madrid Baloncesto players
Recipients of the Olympic Order
Road incident deaths in Germany
Shooting guards
Universiade gold medalists for Yugoslavia
Universiade medalists in basketball
Universiade silver medalists for Yugoslavia
Yugoslav expatriate sportspeople in Spain
Yugoslav expatriate sportspeople in the United States
Yugoslav men's basketball players | true | [
"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",
"Imperial Arena or Imperial Ballroom is a multipurpose venue used as a ballroom, convention space, and a basketball arena located at Atlantis Paradise Island. It's most known for being the host of the Battle 4 Atlantis, a men's and women's early-season college basketball tournament that takes place in late November, around Thanksgiving.\n\nBasketball\nAlthough the ballroom opened in November 2007, it did undergo transformation until November 2011 when the inaugural Battle 4 Atlantis was played. The Ballroom is 50,000 square feet, has dimensions of 289' x 165' and has a 26' ceiling, making it one of the lowest ceilings for a college basketball venue.\n\nReception\nNC State head coach, Kevin Keatts compared the arena and its 3,500-seat capacity to playing in a smaller Division I venue where fans are packed into a more intimate environment. Keatts stated, \"It’s packed and it’s fun and can get going in there, it’s an exciting place to play.\"\n\nBaylor head coach and NCAA champion, Scott Drew said, \"When they walked in, they saw it (Imperial Arena), they saw the lighting, they saw what quality of floor it was, they were really excited to play here. You know what, sometimes when you do things different, it's really neat and something they'll always remember.\"\n\nReferences\n\nCollege basketball venues in the United States\nHotels in the Bahamas"
] |
[
"Dražen Petrović",
"Yugoslavia",
"How old as he at national team apperance",
"15,",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"1984 Summer Olympics were Petrovic's first competition of a grand scale with the Yugoslav senior national team,",
"What place did they get",
"Third"
] | C_87c16213bea04fa5ad751999800b87e8_0 | when did he do university games | 4 | when did Dražen Petrović do university games? | Dražen Petrović | Petrovic's national team debut came at the age of 15, at the Under-18 Balkan Championship in Turkey, where the Yugoslavian junior team won the bronze. The young man regularly played for the Yugoslavian national team in the Balkan Championships, also winning gold with the junior team and silver with the senior team. He also brought back the silver from the 1982 FIBA Europe Under-18 Championship in Bulgaria. The 1984 Summer Olympics were Petrovic's first competition of a grand scale with the Yugoslav senior national team, and the bronze medal won in Los Angeles that summer became his first Olympic medal. Third place was also earned at the 1986 FIBA World Championship, remembered for the last minute thriller in the semi-final game against the Soviet Union. At the 1987 EuroBasket, Petrovic again returned with bronze, as Yugoslavia lost to the hosts and gold medalists Greece. The University Games, held in Zagreb in 1987, saw the Yugoslavian squad with Petrovic win the gold. In the 1988 Summer Olympics, Yugoslavia with Petrovic, earned 2nd place, as they lost once more to the Soviet powerhouse. An excellent club season with Real Madrid was topped by Petrovic's 1989 accomplishment with the Yugoslav national team: at the EuroBasket in Zagreb, the young Yugoslavian team went all the way, defeating Greece more than comfortably in the championship game. Petrovic was the tournament's second leading scorer and most valuable player. The very next year, the summer in between the two most frustrating seasons of his professional career, as he struggled for playing time with the Trail Blazers, Petrovic was again making history with the national team, as Yugoslavia became world champions, after beating the Soviet Union for the gold in Buenos Aires, at the 1990 FIBA World Championship. CANNOTANSWER | The University Games, held in Zagreb in 1987, | Dražen Petrović (; 22 October 1964 – 7 June 1993) was a Yugoslav and Croatian professional basketball player. A shooting guard, he initially achieved success playing professional basketball in Europe in the 1980s, before joining the National Basketball Association (NBA) in 1989.
A star on multiple international basketball stages, Petrović earned two silver medals (1988, 1992) and one bronze (1984) at the Summer Olympic Games, a gold (1990) and a bronze (1986) at the FIBA World Cup, and a gold (1989) and a bronze (1987) at the FIBA EuroBasket. He was the MVP of the 1986 FIBA World Championship, and the MVP of the 1989 FIBA EuroBasket. With Cibona Zagreb, Petrović also won two consecutive EuroLeague championships in 1985 and 1986. He first represented Yugoslavia's senior national team and, later, Croatia's senior national team. He earned four Euroscars, and was named Mr. Europa twice. In 1985, he received the Golden Badge award for the best athlete of Yugoslavia.
Seeking a bigger arena after his career start in Europe, Petrović joined the NBA in 1989, as a member of the Portland Trail Blazers. After playing mostly off the bench that year, Petrović experienced a breakthrough following a trade to the New Jersey Nets. While starting for the Nets, he became one of the league's best shooting guards. He was named one of FIBA's 50 Greatest Players in 1991. On 7 June 1993, Petrović's career and life were cut short, after he died in a car accident, at the age of 28.
In 1993, Petrović's jersey number 3 was retired by the Nets, and the Dražen Petrović Basketball Hall was named after him in his honor. He also received the Olympic Order in 1993. In 2002, he was posthumously enshrined into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. In 2006, the Dražen Petrović Award was created in his honor. In 2007, he was posthumously inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame. He was named one of the 50 Greatest EuroLeague Contributors in 2008. In 2013, he was voted the best European Basketball player in history, by players at the 2013 FIBA EuroBasket.
Petrović is considered a crucial part of the vanguard to the present-day mass influx of European players into the NBA, and to this day he is viewed as a national hero in Croatia.
Early years
Born in Šibenik, Yugoslavia (present-day Croatia), Dražen Petrović was the second child of Jovan "Jole" Petrović, a police officer, and Biserka (), a librarian. His father was born in a Serb family in Zagora, near Trebinje in Bosnia and Herzegovina. His mother was born in Bilice, near Šibenik, and was from a traditional conservative Croat family, devoutly Roman Catholic. The couple's eldest child, Aleksandar, was the first to play basketball and rose to become one of the top point guards in former Yugoslavia. The Petrović brothers are second cousins to the Serbian basketball player Dejan Bodiroga.
Šibenka (1979–1983)
At the age of 13, Petrović started playing in the youth selections of the local club Šibenka; at the age of 15, he had already made the club's first team, just as Šibenka had earned a place in the Yugoslav national first division. With young Petrović as the star of the team, Šibenka reached the final of the third level Pan-European club competition, the FIBA Radivoj Korać Cup twice (1981–82 and 1982–83), where they lost to the French League club Limoges CSP both times. In 1983, the 18-year-old Petrović hit two free throws in Šibenka's victory over Bosna Sarajevo in the final playoff game of the Yugoslavian League's 1982–83 season's club championship. However, on the day after the club won the championship, the Basketball Federation of Yugoslavia stripped the title from Šibenka, because of irregularities in refereeing. The league's championship was then awarded to Bosna, after Šibenka refused to play in a rematch.
Petrović increased his scoring numbers in each successive season that he played with Šibenka. In the 1979–80 Yugoslav FFL season, he scored 13 points in 16 games, for an average of 0.8 points per game. In the 1980–81 Yugoslav FFL season, he scored 39 points in 20 games, for an average of 2.0 points per game. In the 1981–82 Yugoslav FFL season, he scored 392 points in 24 games, for an average of 16.3 points per game. In the 1982–83 Yugoslav FFL season, he scored 758 points in 31 games, for an average of 24.5 points per game. In total, he scored 1,202 points in 91 games played with Šibenka in the Yugoslav first division, for a scoring average of 13.2 points per game.
Rise to European stardom
Cibona Zagreb (1984–1988)
1984–85 season
After a year's mandatory service in the Yugoslav military, Petrović joined his older brother Aco and moved to Cibona Zagreb, to form what was at that time, the best back court duo in Europe. In his first season in Cibona, Petrović won both the national Yugoslav League championship and the Yugoslav National Cup title. In national domestic league play, in the 1984–85 Yugoslav FFL season, Petrović scored a total of 878 points in 27 games played, for a scoring average of 32.5 points per game.
On 6 December 1984, in the 1984–85 season of Europe's top-level club competition, the FIBA European Champions Cup (EuroLeague), Petrović scored 44 points in a game against the Spanish League club Real Madrid. He scored 29 of the 44 points in the second half of the game. Petrović also scored 36 points in the league's 1985 Final against Real Madrid. Cibona won the game, by a score of 87–78, and the win brought the club their first top-tier level European Champions Cup title. That season, in Europe's top-level club competition, which eventually became known as the EuroLeague, Petrović scored a total of 463 points in 15 games played, for a scoring average of 30.9 points per game.
1985–86 season
On 5 October 1985, in a Yugoslav First Federal League game against Union Olimpija Ljubljana, Petrović scored 112 points, in Cibona's 158–77 blowout win. He scored 67 of the 112 points in the first half of the game. During the game, Petrović shot 40/60 from the field, 10/20 from 3-point range, and 22/22 from the free-throw line.
The 112 points scored was the most points ever scored in a single game in the history of the Yugoslav First Federal League. It broke the league's previous single-game scoring record of 74 points, which was set in 1962, by Radivoj Korać. Korać achieved that record while playing with OKK Beograd, in a game against Mladost Zagreb. However, the record was achieved under unusual circumstances.
Olimpija Ljubljana had failed to fulfill their player registration administrative obligations in time for the game. Olimpija general manager Radovan Lorbek was reportedly late with submitting a registration letter to the Basketball Federation of Yugoslavia (KSJ) headquarters in Belgrade. That rendered their entire men's first team roster ineligible for the Yugoslav First Federal League's regular season opening game, and forced them to instead field players for the game from their youth systems. Unfortunately, Olimpija didn't have an under-18 youth squad that season. So the club had to go to Zagreb to play the game with even younger players. In the end, the team that Olimpija took to Zagreb to play against Cibona, consisted of players in the under-16 and under-17 age groups, which included: Igor Đurović, Matjaž Strmole, Jože Maček, Dag Kralj, Tine Erjavec, Jure Zorčič, Gregor Stražiščar, Andrej Novina, and Tine Merzelj.
Cibona, for their part, decided to use a mixed roster for the game, consisting of players from their youth system, plus their senior men's team's twenty-one-year-old young superstar Dražen Petrović, who used the opportunity of playing against the inferior youth squad opposition to shatter Korać's single-game Yugoslav League scoring record of 74 points. Petrović ended up with 112 points scored in the game, despite the fact that before the game, he had reportedly announced his intention to exit from the game, once he had surpassed Korać's 74 points record. Petrović was one of only five Cibona players to get on the score sheet that day. The other four were eighteen-year-old Dražen Anzulović with 16 points, eighteen-year-old Vladimir Rizman with 14 points, nineteen-year-old Ivo Nakić with 12 points, and Ivan Šoštarec with 4 points.
Overall, in the 1985–86 Yugoslav FFL season, Petrović scored a total of 1,241 points in 30 games played, for a scoring average of 41.4 points per game. That season, Petrović also won another Yugoslav National Cup title with Cibona. On 7 February 1986, Petrović scored 55 points in a Yugoslav Cup game against Union Olimpija Ljubljana. He also scored 46 points in the 1986 Yugoslav Cup's Final against Cibona's old rivals Bosna Sarajevo.
On 4 December 1985, in a 1985–86 season FIBA European Champions Cup (EuroLeague) game against the Israeli Super League club Maccabi Tel Aviv, Petrović scored 44 points. In the same European Champions Cup season, on 11 December 1985, he had 47 points and 25 assists in a game against the then reigning Italian League champions Simac Milano. In another European Champions Cup game that season, on 16 January 1986, Petrović scored 49 points, and had 20 assists against the Spanish League club Real Madrid. On 22 January 1986, in a European Champions Cup game against the French League club Limoges, Petrović made ten 3-pointers, including seven in a row during a first-half stretch, for a final tally of 51 points and 10 assists in the game. The 51 points scored was also his personal career-high scored in a single EuroLeague game.
Eventually, Petrović won his second straight FIBA European Champions Cup (EuroLeague) title with Cibona, as he scored 22 points in the league's 1986 Final, in which Cibona defeated the USSR Premier League club Žalgiris Kaunas, which starred the legendary Arvydas Sabonis. In the 1985–86 European Champions Cup (EuroLeague) season, Petrović scored a total of 555 points in 15 games played, for a scoring average of 37.0 points per game.
1986–87 season
In the 1986–87 Yugoslav FFL season, Petrović scored a total of 932 points in 25 games played, for a scoring average of 37.3 points per game.
In that same season, Cibona competed in the European-wide secondary level FIBA European Cup Winners' Cup competition. Petrović led Cibona to the championship, as he scored 28 points against the Italian League club Scavolini Pesaro, in the league's 1986–87 season Final. It was the third straight European-wide club championship for Petrović and Cibona.
In the 1986–87 FIBA European Cup Winners Cup season, Petrović scored a total of 270 points in 8 games played, for a scoring average of 33.8 points per game.
1987–88 season
With Cibona, Petrović again won the Yugoslav National Cup title in 1988. In the 1987–88 Yugoslav FFL season, Petrović scored a total of 860 points in 24 games played, for a scoring average of 35.8 points per game.
In that same season, Cibona competed in Europe's third level club competition, the FIBA Korać Cup. On 14 October 1987, Petrović scored 62 points in a 1987–88 FIBA Korać Cup season game against the Finnish League club KTP Kotka. Petrović led Cibona to the Finals of the Korać Cup, where they lost to the Spanish League club Real Madrid. During the Korać Cup season, Petrović scored a total of 401 points in 12 games played, for a scoring average of 33.4 points per game.
During his four seasons with Cibona, Petrović scored a total of 3,911 points, in 106 games played in the national Yugoslav First Federal League, for a scoring average of 36.9 points per game. With Cibona, he also scored a total of 559 points, in 20 games played, for a scoring average of 28.0 points per game, in the Yugoslav Cup competition. In the three Pan-European club competitions that he played in with Cibona, he scored a total of 1,689 points in 50 games played, for a scoring average of 33.8 points per game.
With both Šibenka and Cibona, Petrović's career scoring numbers in the Yugoslav First Federal League were 5,113 points scored, in 197 games played, for a career scoring average of 26.0 points per game. In the top-level European-wide club competition, the FIBA European Champions Cup, which is now known as the EuroLeague, Petrović scored a career total of 1,018 points in 30 games played, for a career scoring average of 33.9 points per game.
Real Madrid (1988–1989)
After his string of very successful seasons with Cibona Zagreb, Petrović needed new challenges that Cibona and the Yugoslav First Federal League could no longer offer him. The NBA's Portland Trail Blazers had already used their third-round draft pick on the young Petrović, in the 1986 NBA draft, but he had decided to postpone his departure to the United States. In 1988, rather than go to the NBA, he instead signed with the Spanish League club Real Madrid, for around US$4 million in net income. At that time, Yugoslav sporting laws stipulated that players could not professionally move abroad until they had reached the age of 28. Petrović was still only 23 when he signed with Real Madrid. In 2014, José Antonio Arízaga, the sports agent who played a key role in Petrović's 1988 summer transfer from Cibona to Real, recalled a few details from the transaction: "I spoke to Mirko Novosel, Dražen's head coach at Cibona, and he told me two things. One, every problem in Yugoslavia can be taken care of with the right amount of money, and two, if Dražen leaves, every other player under 28 will be leaving and it'll be chaos. So, you can imagine all the individuals I had to bribe and all the places where I had to pay up, in order to circumvent this law".
1988–89 season
Petrović helped Real to win the title of the 1989 edition of the Spanish King's Cup, over their Catalan rivals, Barcelona. In the Spanish ACB League's Finals, Real Madrid narrowly lost to Barcelona, in the fifth and decisive game of the series. In the Spanish League's 1988–89 ACB season, Petrović was the league's regular season top scorer. Including the playoffs, he scored a total of 1,327 points, in 47 games played, for a scoring average of 28.2 points per game. Petrović's first season in Spain's ACB was also his last, but he still holds the ACB's single-game Finals records for the most points scored, with 42, and for the most three-pointers made, with 8.
In European-wide club competition, Real Madrid competed in the European secondary level FIBA European Cup Winners' Cup. On 14 March 1989, in the 1988–89 Cup Winners' Cup Final against the Italian League club Snaidero Caserta, Petrović tied his previous best scoring performance in a European-wide club competition with 62 points.
Petrović was pressured to join the NBA, by the Trail Blazers, who had drafted him 60th overall in 1986. Being motivated by the potential new challenges that the NBA presented, Petrović finally decided to try to establish himself in the league. He left Spain rather abruptly, at the end of the season; the Blazers assisted him in the process, by buying out his contract with Real Madrid, for as much as US$1.5 million. Petrović finally joined the Blazers for the 1989–90 season.
NBA career
Portland Trail Blazers (1989–1991)
The Blazers valued Petrović as a shooter, but were concerned that he might not possess the quickness to play guard or the foot speed to play defense. They brought him onto the team primarily as an outside threat to shoot three-pointers. In the Blazers' offensive scheme he was to set up behind the line, receive a passed ball and go directly up to release his shot. Petrović was an aggressive, attacking player who was used to creating his shot and shots for his teammates. Taking the ball out of his hands and making him a static shooter was foreign to him. Making matters worse, the Blazers already had a full rotation of guards, with a starting backcourt of Clyde Drexler and Terry Porter, and with veteran Danny Young as a reserve. Consequently, the reigning La Gazzetta dello Sport Euroscar European Player of the Year saw limited playing time. He had difficulty being productive in the limited role the Blazers had for him. In his rookie year during the 1989–90 NBA season, he averaged 7.4 points in 12 minutes per game. The following season veteran guard Danny Ainge was added to the team, and Petrović's playing time dropped further to 7 minutes a game. In many statements made prior to arriving in Portland, Petrović had said he saw a lack of playing time as the only possible obstacle to his success in the NBA. He was determined to be a success in basketball's highest arena. His lack of playing time during his second season in the league brought Petrović's frustration to a climax:
"I have nothing to say to Adelman any more and vice versa. Eighteen months have passed by, too long. I have to leave to prove how much I am worth. Never in my life did I sit on the bench and I don’t intend to do that in Portland."
At his insistence, 38 games into the season (20 of which held no playing time for Petrović), a three-way trade with the Denver Nuggets sent him to the New Jersey Nets in exchange for a first-round pick in the following draft and Walter Davis, who was sent from Denver to Portland.
New Jersey Nets (1991–1993)
On 23 January 1991, Petrović became a member of the New Jersey Nets. He joined a team that had not reached the playoffs since 1986, but had rookie Derrick Coleman, the number one selection from the 1990 draft. He was immediately given a role on the floor, with 20.5 minutes per game. His scoring over the remaining 43 games increased to 12.6 points per game, one of the league's best points-per-minute ratios. The following year, he and Coleman were joined by Kenny Anderson, giving the team a third talented new addition. Petrović was made a starter for the 1991–92 season, his first full season with the Nets. Petro, as the Americans had dubbed him, did not miss a single game. On 13 March 1992, Petrović scored 39 points while shooting 65% from the field, and 100% (3 of 3) from 3 point range, in a 110-108 win against the Boston Celtics. His determination, hard work and aggressive on-court demeanor established him as a team leader. In 36.9 minutes on the floor he averaged 20.6 points. Petrović led the Nets in field-goal shooting and free-throw shooting, and his field goal percentage of 51% placed him near the top of all NBA guards. More importantly, his success translated into success for the team. The Nets made the playoffs, recording 14 more wins than the previous year. On 23 April 1992, in Game 1 of their first round matchup against the Cleveland Cavaliers, Petrović scored a playoff career-high 40 points. The Nets would eventually lose the best of 5 series 3 games to 1. The following season saw Petrović increase his scoring average to 22.3 ppg, 11th best in the league.
On 6 December 1992, he was named MVP of the Week. On 4 February 1993, Petrović played a career-high 53 minutes and scored 35 points in an overtime win against the Seattle SuperSonics. For the second season in a row he shot 45% from the three-point arc. His field goal percentage of 52% was again near the top for all guards. American media honored him with a selection to the All-NBA Third Team. However, he did not receive an invitation to the 1993 All-Star game. Among the top 13 scorers in the NBA that season, he was the only one not invited.
In an interview on the Scoop B Radio Podcast, Petrović's Nets teammate, Chucky Brown marveled at Petrović's healing ability. Brown told Brandon Scoop B Robinson that he remembered Petrović spraining his knee and was slated to miss two months. Petrović rehabbed so hard that he ended up only missing two weeks.
Career statistics
NBA
Regular season
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|Portland
| 77 || 0 || 12.6 || .485 || .459 || .844 || 1.4 || 1.5 || .3 || .0 || 7.6
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|Portland
| 18 || 0 || 7.4 || .451 || .167 || .682 || 1.0 || 1.1 || .3 || .0 || 4.4
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 43 || 0 || 20.5 || .500 || .373 || .861 || 2.1 || 1.5 || .9 || .0 || 12.6
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 82 || 82 || 36.9 || .508 || .444 || .808 || 3.1 || 3.1 || 1.3 || .1 || 20.6
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 70 || 67 || 38.0 || .518 || .449 || .870 || 2.7 || 3.5 || 1.3 || .2 || 22.3
|- class="sortbottom"
| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"|Career
| 290 || 149 || 26.4 || .506 || .437 || .841 || 2.3 || 2.4 || .9 || .1 || 15.4
Playoffs
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|1990
| style="text-align:left;"|Portland
| 20 || 0 || 12.7 || .440 || .313 || .583 || 1.6 || 1.0 || .3 || .0 || 6.1
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|1992
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 4 || 4 || 40.8 || .539 || .333 || .846 || 2.5 || 3.3 || 1.0 || .3 || 24.3
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|1993
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 5 || 5 || 38.6 || .455 || .333 || .800 || 1.8 || 1.8 || .4 || .0 || 15.6
|- class="sortbottom"
| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"|Career
| 29 || 9 || 21.0 || .474 || .324 || .696 || 1.8 || 1.4 || .4 || .0 || 10.2
EuroLeague
|-
| style="text-align:left;background:#afe6ba;"|1984–85†
| style="text-align:left;"|Cibona Zagreb
| 15 || || || || || || || || || || 30.9 ||
|-
| style="text-align:left;background:#afe6ba;"|1985–86†
| style="text-align:left;"|Cibona Zagreb
| 15 || || || || || || || || || || 37.0 ||
|- class="sortbottom"
| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"|Career
| 30 || || || || || || || || || || ||
National team career
Yugoslavia
Petrović's national team debut came at the age of 15, at the Under-18 Balkan Championship in Turkey, where the Yugoslavia junior team won the bronze. The young man regularly played for the Yugoslavia national team in the Balkan Championships, also winning gold with the junior team and silver with the senior team. He also brought back the silver from the 1982 FIBA Europe Under-18 Championship in Bulgaria.
The 1984 Summer Olympics were Petrović's first competition of a grand scale with the Yugoslavia senior national team, and the bronze medal won in Los Angeles that summer became his first Olympic medal. Third place was also earned at the 1986 FIBA World Championship, remembered for the last minute thriller in the semi-final game against the Soviet Union. Petrović was named the MVP of the tournament. At the 1987 EuroBasket, Petrović again returned with bronze, as Yugoslavia lost to the hosts and gold medalists Greece. The University Games, held in Zagreb in 1987, saw the Yugoslavian squad with Petrović win the gold. In the 1988 Summer Olympics, Yugoslavia with Petrović, earned 2nd place, as they lost once more to the Soviet powerhouse.
An excellent club season with Real Madrid was topped by Petrović's 1989 accomplishment with the Yugoslavia national team: at the EuroBasket in Zagreb, the young Yugoslavian team went all the way, defeating Greece more than comfortably in the championship game. Petrović was the tournament's second leading scorer and Most Valuable Player. The very next year, the summer in between the two most frustrating seasons of his professional career, as he struggled for playing time with the Trail Blazers, Petrović was again making history with the national team, as Yugoslavia became world champions, after beating the Soviet Union for the gold in Buenos Aires, at the 1990 FIBA World Championship.
Overall, Petrović represented Yugoslavia's senior national team in 155 games, in which he scored a total of 3,258 points, for a career scoring average of 21.0 points per game.
Croatia
The 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, marked the first summer Olympics featuring the independent Croatia, and Petrović was the leader of the Croatian national basketball team at the Olympic basketball tournament. Losing only to the American Dream Team in the group stage, a strong and inspired Croatian team emerged victorious from the Semifinals against the revamped Soviet team, thanks to clutch free throws executed by Petrović, and faced off against the Americans for the gold. Urged on by Petrović's competitiveness and confidence, the Croatians fared well in the first ten minutes of the game, taking a 25–23 lead on a Franjo Arapović dunk and the subsequent made free throw. As the game progressed, however, the now-legendary team composed of NBA stars proved too tough for Croatia: the Americans won 117–85, sending Petrović, the game's leading scorer with 24 points, and his teammates, home with silver medals.
In the period during which Petrović played for the senior Croatian national team (1992–1993), he appeared in 40 games and scored a total of 1,002 points, for a career scoring average of 25.1 points per game. His highest single-game point tally came against Estonia, on 31 May 1993 (48 points). Counting the senior national team games that he played in with both Yugoslavia's and Croatia's national teams, Petrović scored a total of 4,260 points in 195 games played, for a career scoring average of 21.8 points per game.
Death and legacy
In the summer of 1993, after his best NBA season and the Nets' first-round elimination by the Cleveland Cavaliers, Petrović traveled to Berlin, where the Croatian national team was playing a qualification tournament for the 1993 EuroBasket. He was contemplating departure from the Nets, disappointed with the fact that the Nets had not yet extended his contract. He told American reporters that the lack of recognition in the league made him also consider leaving the NBA completely and playing club basketball in Greece. There were at least two Greek clubs ready to offer Petrović three-year contracts worth US$7.5 million net. Petrović decided to skip the connection flight back to Zagreb and drive with his girlfriend back to Croatia.
Petrović died in a traffic accident at about 5:20 p.m. on 7 June 1993. On the rain-drenched Autobahn 9, he was a passenger in a car that was cut off by a semi-truck at Denkendorf near Ingolstadt in the German state of Bavaria. According to the report of the Ingolstadt police, that afternoon a truck broke through the Autobahn median; the driver was trying to avoid a collision with a personal vehicle in his own lane and lost control of the truck, crashing through the median barrier and finally coming to a stop and blocking all three lanes of traffic going in the opposite direction. Seconds later, the Volkswagen Golf carrying a sleeping Petrović in the passenger seat crashed into the truck. Petrovic was ejected from the vehicle. Despite efforts to revive him, he succumbed to severe head injuries. According to the autopsy report, Petrovic died on impact. The driver, Klara Szalantzy, a Hungarian model and basketball player with whom Petrović was romantically involved, and Hilal Edebal, a female Turkish basketball player, sustained grave injuries. It was established that visibility on the road was very poor and that Petrović was not wearing a seatbelt.
Petrović's tomb at Mirogoj Cemetery instantly became a sanctuary for his compatriots. The Cibona stadium was renamed the Dražen Petrović Basketball Hall on 4 October 1993, and the city of Zagreb dedicated a square in his name, which was later followed by Šibenik and Vukovar, while Petrinja dedicated a street to him. Before Game 1 of the 1993 NBA Finals, the NBA held a moment of silence for Petrović, whose death occurred two days before the event began. The Nets retired his number 3 jersey on 11 November 1993. After 1994, the MVP award at the McDonald's Championship bore the name Dražen Petrović Trophy, and the Croatian Olympic Committee's award for young athletes was named for him in 2006. On 29 April 1995, a statue commemorating Petrović's significance to the world of sports was erected in front of the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland, thus making him only the second athlete to receive this honor. On 9 July 2001, having defeated Patrick Rafter to win the men's singles title at Wimbledon, Croatian tennis player Goran Ivanišević dedicated the win to Petrović; Ivanišević wore Petrović's Nets jersey amidst the 100,000 strong crowd celebrating his victory in Split. Petrović was inducted posthumously into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2002. In 2006, the 13th anniversary of Petrović's death was marked with the opening of the Dražen Petrović Memorial Center in Zagreb, dedicated to his life and achievements, with ten themed galleries of multimedia content outlining his entire career and a statue of Dražen in shooting position in front of it. Petrović was enshrined in the FIBA Hall of Fame in 2007.
The 2010 documentary, Once Brothers (part of the ESPN 30 for 30 series), portrays the achievements of the Yugoslavia national basketball team in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and how the Yugoslav Wars tore the team apart. It explores Petrović's broken friendship with Serbian/Yugoslav player Vlade Divac. In 2011, a statue of him as a little boy sitting on a bench with a ball was unveiled in Šibenik, and his old room was renovated the way it looked when he was young, as a first part of opening a Memorial Center in his hometown. During the 2012 Three Point Shootout, New Jersey Nets guard Anthony Morrow wore Petrović's jersey in the latter's honor. In 2015, Australian writer Todd Spehr released a 470-page biography on Petrović, titled Dražen: The Remarkable Life & Legacy of the Mozart of Basketball. On 3 June 2015, Croatian basketball journalists Marjan Crnogaj and Vlado Radicevic released a 487-page biography which global paperback edition was released on 14 October 2017.
Reactions
Accomplishments and awards
Club competitions
European Champions Cup
Champion: 1985, 1986
European Cup Winners' Cup
Champion: 1987, 1989
Yugoslavian Championship
Champion: 1985
Yugoslavian Cup
Winner: 1985, 1986, 1988
Spanish Cup
Winner: 1989
NBA Finals
Runner-up: 1990
Korać Cup
Runner-up: 1982, 1983, 1988
Spanish Championship
Runner-up: 1989
Personal
Yugoslav First League: most points scored by an individual, in a league game (112).
Spanish ACB League: most points scored by an individual, in a final series game (42).
Spanish ACB League: most 3-point field goals made by an individual, in a final series game (8).
NBA: second highest 3-point field goal percentage (.444) in 1991–92.
NBA: fourth highest field goal percentage among guards (.508) in 1991–92.
NBA: second highest 3-point field goal percentage (.449) 1992–93.
NBA: second highest field goal percentage among guards (.518) 1992–93.
NBA: third best career 3-point field goal percentage (.437).
National teams
Summer Olympics
: 1988, 1992
: 1984
FIBA World Championship
: 1990
: 1986
FIBA EuroBasket
: 1989
: 1987
Summer Universiade
: 1987
: 1983
Balkan Championship for Junior Men
: 1982
: 1982
Balkan Championship for Cadets
: 1981
Balkan Championship
: 1984
FIBA Europe Under-18 Championship
: 1982
Personal
Balkan Championship for Junior Men Best Player: 1982
FIBA World Cup MVP: 1986
FIBA EuroBasket MVP: 1989
Dražen Petrović Memorial Center
A museum named "The Dražen Petrović Memorial Center" was founded in his honor, and constitutes a co-operative effort led by the Dražen Petrović Foundation in conjunction with the Croatian government, the city of Zagreb and the Croatian Museum of Sports. The memorial center idea originated from Petrović's parents, Biserka and Jole Petrovic, and was supported with the contributions of Croatian architects Andrija Rusan and Niksa Bilic. All of the articles presented in the center have been collected and categorized by the Croatian Museum of Sports. The organization and operations of the center have been provided by the Dražen Petrović Foundation, which is led by Petrović's family. The Center contains his No. 3 New Jersey Nets jersey and the watch that stopped when he died in a car crash. The center features 1,000 memorabilia items and a video of his basketball highlights.
The official opening of the museum was held on 7 June 2006, while the official opening of the center to the public began at the end of December 2006. The square on which the center is operated upon has been renamed to Dražen Petrović Square in his honor. In 2013, former NBA MVP Derrick Rose visited the museum.
See also
List of basketball players who died during their careers
List of basketball players who have scored 100 points in a single game
Yugoslav First Federal Basketball League career stats leaders
References
Sources
External links
Drazen Petrovic Museum
Drazen Petrovic Yugoslavia FIBA Profile
Drazen Petrovic Croatia FIBA Profile
FIBA Europe Profile
Drazen Petrovic at the Basketball Hall of Fame
Euroleague.net 50 greatest contributors
In Honor of Dražen Petrović
FIBA Hall of Fame profile
1964 births
1993 deaths
1986 FIBA World Championship players
1990 FIBA World Championship players
Basketball players at the 1984 Summer Olympics
Basketball players at the 1988 Summer Olympics
Basketball players at the 1992 Summer Olympics
Basketball players from Šibenik
Burials at Mirogoj Cemetery
Croatian expatriate basketball people in Spain
Croatian expatriate basketball people in the United States
Croatian men's basketball players
Croatian people of Serbian descent
Euroscar award winners
FIBA EuroBasket-winning players
FIBA Hall of Fame inductees
FIBA World Championship-winning players
KK Cibona players
KK Šibenik players
Liga ACB players
Medalists at the 1983 Summer Universiade
Medalists at the 1984 Summer Olympics
Medalists at the 1988 Summer Olympics
Medalists at the 1992 Summer Olympics
Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductees
National Basketball Association players from Croatia
National Basketball Association players with retired numbers
New Jersey Nets players
Olympic basketball players of Croatia
Olympic basketball players of Yugoslavia
Olympic bronze medalists for Yugoslavia
Olympic medalists in basketball
Olympic silver medalists for Croatia
Olympic silver medalists for Yugoslavia
Portland Trail Blazers draft picks
Portland Trail Blazers players
Real Madrid Baloncesto players
Recipients of the Olympic Order
Road incident deaths in Germany
Shooting guards
Universiade gold medalists for Yugoslavia
Universiade medalists in basketball
Universiade silver medalists for Yugoslavia
Yugoslav expatriate sportspeople in Spain
Yugoslav expatriate sportspeople in the United States
Yugoslav men's basketball players | true | [
"Kastriot \"Georges\" Mehdi (1934 in Cannes, France – November 6, 2018 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) was a Brazilian judoka of French ascendance, considered one of the most prominent practitioners of judo in Brazil.\n\nBiography\nBorn in Cannes, France, George originally came to Brazil on a vacation in 1949 and did not return. A trained judoka, he went to the jiu-jitsu school of Carlos Gracie, but left it after some time due to differences with the Gracie family. \n\nAccording to Armando Wriedt, in his youth in Brazil, Mehdi \"was lazy and undisciplined\".\n\nArmando describes his reason for going to Japan as such.\n\n″Armando: Yes, so anyway, one day, he did something different. A guy from the police caught his attention. “Hey, who are you?” He punched him and the guy fell to the ground. So, what did the guy do? He called his buddies over.\n\nArmando: All three came over. Who did this here? Get that guy, arrest the guy! They really beat up George, and I don’t even want to talk about it because it’s sad. They told him that if he did it again, you won’t be back, you will be dead. Well, he was scared. So, what did he do?\n\nArmando: He looked for Hermani from judo and said, “Hermani can you . . . So, Hermani suggested, you know what? George, I am going to take you to Japan. I can, because I’ve got friends in Japan and you can spend some time there…\".\n\nLearning under all Japan champion and Kyuzo Mifune trainee Yasuichi Matsumoto, Mehdi trained for five years at the Tenri University in Nara, meeting names like world middleweight champion Isao Okano and the great Masahiko Kimura. He actually had already met Matsumoto in Brazil, where Yasuichi had seen him do judo while on a tour of the world. He provided Mehdi with tuition room and board and spending money for 5 years. Additionally Mehdi trained at the Kodokan and Chuo University. The training in Japan only lasted 6 months as George went to attend his sick mother. Georges spent a total of 10 years in Japan and taught Judo in a high school in Japan, probably the first non Japanese to do so. When he died Mehdi was a 9th dan in Judo.\n\nJudo champion Okano said of Mehdi that \"if you took all the knowledge of all the instructors in this hall [the Olympics], it would not equal the knowledge of Sensei Mehdi\".\n\nCompetition career\nMehdi was referred to as the best judoka in Brazil, whom the Gracie family refused to face in judo competition. This was after the loss of George Gracie to Euclydes Hatem fearing that it might have a bad effect on their growing reputation. Georges Mehdi was challenged by the Gracie family to fight the BJJ practitioner, and Helio's student, Pedro Hemetério, that was nicknamed \"Okra Man\" for his victory over the Judoka Akio Hyoshiara. Georges did not accept the challenge, stating that; \"I don't want to fight Hemetério, because a Judoka is not on equal terms with a Jiu-jitsu fighter. While one is a sport, the other is a real fight.\" He was the Brazilian champ for seven years straight. He competed in the 5th world championships. At the age of 32 he was already a 4th dan in Judo. He received a silver medal and a bronze medal in the Pan American games in 1963 and 1967 respectively.\n\nMehdi was a witness to the Masahiko Kimura vs. Hélio Gracie fight and Helio's subsequent hospitalization, He stated that, unlike what the Gracie side claimed, Kimura was no giant, but about 5'6 and 185 lbs.\n\nTeaching career\nHe trained numerous individuals including Henrique Machado. George's students included Mario Sperry, Rickson Gracie, and Sylvio Behring.\n\nHe was fluent in French, English, Japanese, and Portuguese.\n\nDeath\nSensei Mehdi died November 6, 2018 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, aged 84.\n\nReferences\n\n1934 births\n2018 deaths\nFrench male judoka\nJudoka trainers\nMartial arts school founders\nBrazilian male judoka\nPan American Games medalists in judo\nPan American Games silver medalists for Brazil\nPan American Games bronze medalists for Brazil\nJudoka at the 1963 Pan American Games\nJudoka at the 1967 Pan American Games\nMedalists at the 1963 Pan American Games\nMedalists at the 1967 Pan American Games",
"William Murray \"Trip\" Hawkins III (born December 28, 1953) is an American entrepreneur and founder of Electronic Arts, The 3DO Company, and Digital Chocolate.\n\nCareer\nA fan of the Strat-O-Matic Football pen and paper games, Hawkins started his first business as a teenager trying to create a knockoff version. He borrowed $5,000 from his father to start up the venture, but, despite advertising his game in NFL Game Programs, the business failed. Eventually, Hawkins received his first computer and became interested in creating a digital football game, feeling that it would allow players to avoid the challenging math of the game which would all be handled internally. \nHawkins designed his own undergraduate major at Harvard University in Strategy and Applied Game Theory.\n\nAround this time, in 1975, Hawkins estimated that it would take home computer saturation seven years to make a viable career out of game design. Hawkins was the Director of Strategy and Marketing at Apple Computer in 1982 when he left to found Electronic Arts (EA), a video game publisher. EA was successful for many years under his leadership. He has been credited with spearheading the games industry's evolution from simple one-person creations to complex team projects during this time. One of Hawkins first big wins was to sign John Madden on as a spokesperson and a consultant to his company's football game which would eventually lead to the popular Madden NFL series of video games.\n\nAt this point, Electronic Arts was a computer software company which did not want to deal with Nintendo's strict licensing policies. He saw his opportunity when Sega released the Genesis. Not wanting to pay licensing fees, Hawkins hired a team to reverse engineer the system for his company to make unlicensed games on it. Hawkins eventually revealed his intentions to Sega, while offering a partnership to combat Nintendo telling them, \"You can sue, but we did the tech fair and square and have great lawyers. So make us an official licensee. And give us a reduced rate.\" Sega, anticipating that Hawkins would sell his research to other third-party companies, agreed and made them a partner.\n\nThough he remained chair of the board, Hawkins transitioned from EA in 1991 to form 3DO, a video game console company. He resigned from the board of EA in July, 1994. Meanwhile, 3DO was formed in partnership with several other companies including EA. Upon its release in 1993, the 3DO was the most powerful video game console at the time. It was also expensive at launch, initially costing US$599 (), compared to other major systems retailing for under $200. Sales were poor due to its exorbitant price and weak games that relied excessively on full motion video sequences (which were state-of-the-art for the time) at the expense of gameplay. Hopes for the system were further damaged in 1994 with the arrival of the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn, both of which were more expensive than the 3DO but had more modern hardware and stronger first party support. While acknowledging the 3DO's failure in the marketplace, Next Generation listed Hawkins in their \"75 Most Important People in the Games Industry of 1995\", calling him \"one of the game market's visionaries.\"\n\nIn 1996, 3DO stopped developing the system and transitioned into a video game developer, making games for the PlayStation, PC and other consoles. While remaining chairman and CEO of the company, Hawkins took on the additional role of creative director. Hawkins decided to make branding a focus and 6–to–9–month production timetables for games. As a result, quality suffered as did sales. Hawkins had used cash reserves to bail out the failing company before, but declined to do so a final time. Due to poor sales of its titles, it went bankrupt in May 2003. The defunct company sold most of its intellectual property, including the Might and Magic franchise, to publisher Ubisoft, while Trip Hawkins retained ownership of the 3DO console hardware and software.\n\nIn late 2003, Hawkins launched a new video game development company called Digital Chocolate. The company focused on developing games for handheld devices. He stepped down from the CEO position at Digital Chocolate in May, 2012.\n\nIn 2012, Hawkins joined the board of directors of Israeli technology company Extreme Reality, which is working on developing motion control software that can read a person's movement in 3D, but which only requires a 2D camera.\n\nOn March 20, 2013, NativeX, a mobile ad technology platform for games, announced Trip Hawkins as a senior advisor to their board of directors. Hawkins also joined the advisory board at Skillz, a mobile eSports platform, as a strategic advisor in December 2014.\n\nHis newest startup, If You Can Company, aims to foster social and emotional development (SEL) in children, teaching compassion and anti-bullying lessons. Their first game, \"IF...\", uses a free-to-play model and is meant for teachers and students in an educational environment.\n\nHawkins lives in Santa Barbara, California where he served from 2016–2019 as a professor of entrepreneurship and leadership at the University of California, Santa Barbara.\n\nHonors\nIn 2005, Hawkins became the eighth person to be inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n Trip Hawkins Instagram\n \n Trip Hawkins's contribution to the Hospice Mask Project\n Hawkins entry \"26 Most Fascinating Entrepreneurs\" from Inc.com\n Trip Hawkins speaks at Stanford University\n\nAmerican computer businesspeople\nApple Inc. employees\nElectronic Arts employees\nLiving people\nAmerican technology company founders\nHarvard University alumni\nAcademy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame inductees\nVideo game businesspeople\nStanford Graduate School of Business alumni\nAmerican technology chief executives\nUniversity of California, Santa Barbara faculty\n1953 births"
] |
[
"Dražen Petrović",
"Yugoslavia",
"How old as he at national team apperance",
"15,",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"1984 Summer Olympics were Petrovic's first competition of a grand scale with the Yugoslav senior national team,",
"What place did they get",
"Third",
"when did he do university games",
"The University Games, held in Zagreb in 1987,"
] | C_87c16213bea04fa5ad751999800b87e8_0 | who did they lose too | 5 | who did Dražen Petrović's team lose to at the University games held in Zagreb in 1987? | Dražen Petrović | Petrovic's national team debut came at the age of 15, at the Under-18 Balkan Championship in Turkey, where the Yugoslavian junior team won the bronze. The young man regularly played for the Yugoslavian national team in the Balkan Championships, also winning gold with the junior team and silver with the senior team. He also brought back the silver from the 1982 FIBA Europe Under-18 Championship in Bulgaria. The 1984 Summer Olympics were Petrovic's first competition of a grand scale with the Yugoslav senior national team, and the bronze medal won in Los Angeles that summer became his first Olympic medal. Third place was also earned at the 1986 FIBA World Championship, remembered for the last minute thriller in the semi-final game against the Soviet Union. At the 1987 EuroBasket, Petrovic again returned with bronze, as Yugoslavia lost to the hosts and gold medalists Greece. The University Games, held in Zagreb in 1987, saw the Yugoslavian squad with Petrovic win the gold. In the 1988 Summer Olympics, Yugoslavia with Petrovic, earned 2nd place, as they lost once more to the Soviet powerhouse. An excellent club season with Real Madrid was topped by Petrovic's 1989 accomplishment with the Yugoslav national team: at the EuroBasket in Zagreb, the young Yugoslavian team went all the way, defeating Greece more than comfortably in the championship game. Petrovic was the tournament's second leading scorer and most valuable player. The very next year, the summer in between the two most frustrating seasons of his professional career, as he struggled for playing time with the Trail Blazers, Petrovic was again making history with the national team, as Yugoslavia became world champions, after beating the Soviet Union for the gold in Buenos Aires, at the 1990 FIBA World Championship. CANNOTANSWER | semi-final game against the Soviet Union. At the 1987 EuroBasket, Petrovic again returned with bronze, as Yugoslavia lost to the hosts and gold medalists Greece. | Dražen Petrović (; 22 October 1964 – 7 June 1993) was a Yugoslav and Croatian professional basketball player. A shooting guard, he initially achieved success playing professional basketball in Europe in the 1980s, before joining the National Basketball Association (NBA) in 1989.
A star on multiple international basketball stages, Petrović earned two silver medals (1988, 1992) and one bronze (1984) at the Summer Olympic Games, a gold (1990) and a bronze (1986) at the FIBA World Cup, and a gold (1989) and a bronze (1987) at the FIBA EuroBasket. He was the MVP of the 1986 FIBA World Championship, and the MVP of the 1989 FIBA EuroBasket. With Cibona Zagreb, Petrović also won two consecutive EuroLeague championships in 1985 and 1986. He first represented Yugoslavia's senior national team and, later, Croatia's senior national team. He earned four Euroscars, and was named Mr. Europa twice. In 1985, he received the Golden Badge award for the best athlete of Yugoslavia.
Seeking a bigger arena after his career start in Europe, Petrović joined the NBA in 1989, as a member of the Portland Trail Blazers. After playing mostly off the bench that year, Petrović experienced a breakthrough following a trade to the New Jersey Nets. While starting for the Nets, he became one of the league's best shooting guards. He was named one of FIBA's 50 Greatest Players in 1991. On 7 June 1993, Petrović's career and life were cut short, after he died in a car accident, at the age of 28.
In 1993, Petrović's jersey number 3 was retired by the Nets, and the Dražen Petrović Basketball Hall was named after him in his honor. He also received the Olympic Order in 1993. In 2002, he was posthumously enshrined into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. In 2006, the Dražen Petrović Award was created in his honor. In 2007, he was posthumously inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame. He was named one of the 50 Greatest EuroLeague Contributors in 2008. In 2013, he was voted the best European Basketball player in history, by players at the 2013 FIBA EuroBasket.
Petrović is considered a crucial part of the vanguard to the present-day mass influx of European players into the NBA, and to this day he is viewed as a national hero in Croatia.
Early years
Born in Šibenik, Yugoslavia (present-day Croatia), Dražen Petrović was the second child of Jovan "Jole" Petrović, a police officer, and Biserka (), a librarian. His father was born in a Serb family in Zagora, near Trebinje in Bosnia and Herzegovina. His mother was born in Bilice, near Šibenik, and was from a traditional conservative Croat family, devoutly Roman Catholic. The couple's eldest child, Aleksandar, was the first to play basketball and rose to become one of the top point guards in former Yugoslavia. The Petrović brothers are second cousins to the Serbian basketball player Dejan Bodiroga.
Šibenka (1979–1983)
At the age of 13, Petrović started playing in the youth selections of the local club Šibenka; at the age of 15, he had already made the club's first team, just as Šibenka had earned a place in the Yugoslav national first division. With young Petrović as the star of the team, Šibenka reached the final of the third level Pan-European club competition, the FIBA Radivoj Korać Cup twice (1981–82 and 1982–83), where they lost to the French League club Limoges CSP both times. In 1983, the 18-year-old Petrović hit two free throws in Šibenka's victory over Bosna Sarajevo in the final playoff game of the Yugoslavian League's 1982–83 season's club championship. However, on the day after the club won the championship, the Basketball Federation of Yugoslavia stripped the title from Šibenka, because of irregularities in refereeing. The league's championship was then awarded to Bosna, after Šibenka refused to play in a rematch.
Petrović increased his scoring numbers in each successive season that he played with Šibenka. In the 1979–80 Yugoslav FFL season, he scored 13 points in 16 games, for an average of 0.8 points per game. In the 1980–81 Yugoslav FFL season, he scored 39 points in 20 games, for an average of 2.0 points per game. In the 1981–82 Yugoslav FFL season, he scored 392 points in 24 games, for an average of 16.3 points per game. In the 1982–83 Yugoslav FFL season, he scored 758 points in 31 games, for an average of 24.5 points per game. In total, he scored 1,202 points in 91 games played with Šibenka in the Yugoslav first division, for a scoring average of 13.2 points per game.
Rise to European stardom
Cibona Zagreb (1984–1988)
1984–85 season
After a year's mandatory service in the Yugoslav military, Petrović joined his older brother Aco and moved to Cibona Zagreb, to form what was at that time, the best back court duo in Europe. In his first season in Cibona, Petrović won both the national Yugoslav League championship and the Yugoslav National Cup title. In national domestic league play, in the 1984–85 Yugoslav FFL season, Petrović scored a total of 878 points in 27 games played, for a scoring average of 32.5 points per game.
On 6 December 1984, in the 1984–85 season of Europe's top-level club competition, the FIBA European Champions Cup (EuroLeague), Petrović scored 44 points in a game against the Spanish League club Real Madrid. He scored 29 of the 44 points in the second half of the game. Petrović also scored 36 points in the league's 1985 Final against Real Madrid. Cibona won the game, by a score of 87–78, and the win brought the club their first top-tier level European Champions Cup title. That season, in Europe's top-level club competition, which eventually became known as the EuroLeague, Petrović scored a total of 463 points in 15 games played, for a scoring average of 30.9 points per game.
1985–86 season
On 5 October 1985, in a Yugoslav First Federal League game against Union Olimpija Ljubljana, Petrović scored 112 points, in Cibona's 158–77 blowout win. He scored 67 of the 112 points in the first half of the game. During the game, Petrović shot 40/60 from the field, 10/20 from 3-point range, and 22/22 from the free-throw line.
The 112 points scored was the most points ever scored in a single game in the history of the Yugoslav First Federal League. It broke the league's previous single-game scoring record of 74 points, which was set in 1962, by Radivoj Korać. Korać achieved that record while playing with OKK Beograd, in a game against Mladost Zagreb. However, the record was achieved under unusual circumstances.
Olimpija Ljubljana had failed to fulfill their player registration administrative obligations in time for the game. Olimpija general manager Radovan Lorbek was reportedly late with submitting a registration letter to the Basketball Federation of Yugoslavia (KSJ) headquarters in Belgrade. That rendered their entire men's first team roster ineligible for the Yugoslav First Federal League's regular season opening game, and forced them to instead field players for the game from their youth systems. Unfortunately, Olimpija didn't have an under-18 youth squad that season. So the club had to go to Zagreb to play the game with even younger players. In the end, the team that Olimpija took to Zagreb to play against Cibona, consisted of players in the under-16 and under-17 age groups, which included: Igor Đurović, Matjaž Strmole, Jože Maček, Dag Kralj, Tine Erjavec, Jure Zorčič, Gregor Stražiščar, Andrej Novina, and Tine Merzelj.
Cibona, for their part, decided to use a mixed roster for the game, consisting of players from their youth system, plus their senior men's team's twenty-one-year-old young superstar Dražen Petrović, who used the opportunity of playing against the inferior youth squad opposition to shatter Korać's single-game Yugoslav League scoring record of 74 points. Petrović ended up with 112 points scored in the game, despite the fact that before the game, he had reportedly announced his intention to exit from the game, once he had surpassed Korać's 74 points record. Petrović was one of only five Cibona players to get on the score sheet that day. The other four were eighteen-year-old Dražen Anzulović with 16 points, eighteen-year-old Vladimir Rizman with 14 points, nineteen-year-old Ivo Nakić with 12 points, and Ivan Šoštarec with 4 points.
Overall, in the 1985–86 Yugoslav FFL season, Petrović scored a total of 1,241 points in 30 games played, for a scoring average of 41.4 points per game. That season, Petrović also won another Yugoslav National Cup title with Cibona. On 7 February 1986, Petrović scored 55 points in a Yugoslav Cup game against Union Olimpija Ljubljana. He also scored 46 points in the 1986 Yugoslav Cup's Final against Cibona's old rivals Bosna Sarajevo.
On 4 December 1985, in a 1985–86 season FIBA European Champions Cup (EuroLeague) game against the Israeli Super League club Maccabi Tel Aviv, Petrović scored 44 points. In the same European Champions Cup season, on 11 December 1985, he had 47 points and 25 assists in a game against the then reigning Italian League champions Simac Milano. In another European Champions Cup game that season, on 16 January 1986, Petrović scored 49 points, and had 20 assists against the Spanish League club Real Madrid. On 22 January 1986, in a European Champions Cup game against the French League club Limoges, Petrović made ten 3-pointers, including seven in a row during a first-half stretch, for a final tally of 51 points and 10 assists in the game. The 51 points scored was also his personal career-high scored in a single EuroLeague game.
Eventually, Petrović won his second straight FIBA European Champions Cup (EuroLeague) title with Cibona, as he scored 22 points in the league's 1986 Final, in which Cibona defeated the USSR Premier League club Žalgiris Kaunas, which starred the legendary Arvydas Sabonis. In the 1985–86 European Champions Cup (EuroLeague) season, Petrović scored a total of 555 points in 15 games played, for a scoring average of 37.0 points per game.
1986–87 season
In the 1986–87 Yugoslav FFL season, Petrović scored a total of 932 points in 25 games played, for a scoring average of 37.3 points per game.
In that same season, Cibona competed in the European-wide secondary level FIBA European Cup Winners' Cup competition. Petrović led Cibona to the championship, as he scored 28 points against the Italian League club Scavolini Pesaro, in the league's 1986–87 season Final. It was the third straight European-wide club championship for Petrović and Cibona.
In the 1986–87 FIBA European Cup Winners Cup season, Petrović scored a total of 270 points in 8 games played, for a scoring average of 33.8 points per game.
1987–88 season
With Cibona, Petrović again won the Yugoslav National Cup title in 1988. In the 1987–88 Yugoslav FFL season, Petrović scored a total of 860 points in 24 games played, for a scoring average of 35.8 points per game.
In that same season, Cibona competed in Europe's third level club competition, the FIBA Korać Cup. On 14 October 1987, Petrović scored 62 points in a 1987–88 FIBA Korać Cup season game against the Finnish League club KTP Kotka. Petrović led Cibona to the Finals of the Korać Cup, where they lost to the Spanish League club Real Madrid. During the Korać Cup season, Petrović scored a total of 401 points in 12 games played, for a scoring average of 33.4 points per game.
During his four seasons with Cibona, Petrović scored a total of 3,911 points, in 106 games played in the national Yugoslav First Federal League, for a scoring average of 36.9 points per game. With Cibona, he also scored a total of 559 points, in 20 games played, for a scoring average of 28.0 points per game, in the Yugoslav Cup competition. In the three Pan-European club competitions that he played in with Cibona, he scored a total of 1,689 points in 50 games played, for a scoring average of 33.8 points per game.
With both Šibenka and Cibona, Petrović's career scoring numbers in the Yugoslav First Federal League were 5,113 points scored, in 197 games played, for a career scoring average of 26.0 points per game. In the top-level European-wide club competition, the FIBA European Champions Cup, which is now known as the EuroLeague, Petrović scored a career total of 1,018 points in 30 games played, for a career scoring average of 33.9 points per game.
Real Madrid (1988–1989)
After his string of very successful seasons with Cibona Zagreb, Petrović needed new challenges that Cibona and the Yugoslav First Federal League could no longer offer him. The NBA's Portland Trail Blazers had already used their third-round draft pick on the young Petrović, in the 1986 NBA draft, but he had decided to postpone his departure to the United States. In 1988, rather than go to the NBA, he instead signed with the Spanish League club Real Madrid, for around US$4 million in net income. At that time, Yugoslav sporting laws stipulated that players could not professionally move abroad until they had reached the age of 28. Petrović was still only 23 when he signed with Real Madrid. In 2014, José Antonio Arízaga, the sports agent who played a key role in Petrović's 1988 summer transfer from Cibona to Real, recalled a few details from the transaction: "I spoke to Mirko Novosel, Dražen's head coach at Cibona, and he told me two things. One, every problem in Yugoslavia can be taken care of with the right amount of money, and two, if Dražen leaves, every other player under 28 will be leaving and it'll be chaos. So, you can imagine all the individuals I had to bribe and all the places where I had to pay up, in order to circumvent this law".
1988–89 season
Petrović helped Real to win the title of the 1989 edition of the Spanish King's Cup, over their Catalan rivals, Barcelona. In the Spanish ACB League's Finals, Real Madrid narrowly lost to Barcelona, in the fifth and decisive game of the series. In the Spanish League's 1988–89 ACB season, Petrović was the league's regular season top scorer. Including the playoffs, he scored a total of 1,327 points, in 47 games played, for a scoring average of 28.2 points per game. Petrović's first season in Spain's ACB was also his last, but he still holds the ACB's single-game Finals records for the most points scored, with 42, and for the most three-pointers made, with 8.
In European-wide club competition, Real Madrid competed in the European secondary level FIBA European Cup Winners' Cup. On 14 March 1989, in the 1988–89 Cup Winners' Cup Final against the Italian League club Snaidero Caserta, Petrović tied his previous best scoring performance in a European-wide club competition with 62 points.
Petrović was pressured to join the NBA, by the Trail Blazers, who had drafted him 60th overall in 1986. Being motivated by the potential new challenges that the NBA presented, Petrović finally decided to try to establish himself in the league. He left Spain rather abruptly, at the end of the season; the Blazers assisted him in the process, by buying out his contract with Real Madrid, for as much as US$1.5 million. Petrović finally joined the Blazers for the 1989–90 season.
NBA career
Portland Trail Blazers (1989–1991)
The Blazers valued Petrović as a shooter, but were concerned that he might not possess the quickness to play guard or the foot speed to play defense. They brought him onto the team primarily as an outside threat to shoot three-pointers. In the Blazers' offensive scheme he was to set up behind the line, receive a passed ball and go directly up to release his shot. Petrović was an aggressive, attacking player who was used to creating his shot and shots for his teammates. Taking the ball out of his hands and making him a static shooter was foreign to him. Making matters worse, the Blazers already had a full rotation of guards, with a starting backcourt of Clyde Drexler and Terry Porter, and with veteran Danny Young as a reserve. Consequently, the reigning La Gazzetta dello Sport Euroscar European Player of the Year saw limited playing time. He had difficulty being productive in the limited role the Blazers had for him. In his rookie year during the 1989–90 NBA season, he averaged 7.4 points in 12 minutes per game. The following season veteran guard Danny Ainge was added to the team, and Petrović's playing time dropped further to 7 minutes a game. In many statements made prior to arriving in Portland, Petrović had said he saw a lack of playing time as the only possible obstacle to his success in the NBA. He was determined to be a success in basketball's highest arena. His lack of playing time during his second season in the league brought Petrović's frustration to a climax:
"I have nothing to say to Adelman any more and vice versa. Eighteen months have passed by, too long. I have to leave to prove how much I am worth. Never in my life did I sit on the bench and I don’t intend to do that in Portland."
At his insistence, 38 games into the season (20 of which held no playing time for Petrović), a three-way trade with the Denver Nuggets sent him to the New Jersey Nets in exchange for a first-round pick in the following draft and Walter Davis, who was sent from Denver to Portland.
New Jersey Nets (1991–1993)
On 23 January 1991, Petrović became a member of the New Jersey Nets. He joined a team that had not reached the playoffs since 1986, but had rookie Derrick Coleman, the number one selection from the 1990 draft. He was immediately given a role on the floor, with 20.5 minutes per game. His scoring over the remaining 43 games increased to 12.6 points per game, one of the league's best points-per-minute ratios. The following year, he and Coleman were joined by Kenny Anderson, giving the team a third talented new addition. Petrović was made a starter for the 1991–92 season, his first full season with the Nets. Petro, as the Americans had dubbed him, did not miss a single game. On 13 March 1992, Petrović scored 39 points while shooting 65% from the field, and 100% (3 of 3) from 3 point range, in a 110-108 win against the Boston Celtics. His determination, hard work and aggressive on-court demeanor established him as a team leader. In 36.9 minutes on the floor he averaged 20.6 points. Petrović led the Nets in field-goal shooting and free-throw shooting, and his field goal percentage of 51% placed him near the top of all NBA guards. More importantly, his success translated into success for the team. The Nets made the playoffs, recording 14 more wins than the previous year. On 23 April 1992, in Game 1 of their first round matchup against the Cleveland Cavaliers, Petrović scored a playoff career-high 40 points. The Nets would eventually lose the best of 5 series 3 games to 1. The following season saw Petrović increase his scoring average to 22.3 ppg, 11th best in the league.
On 6 December 1992, he was named MVP of the Week. On 4 February 1993, Petrović played a career-high 53 minutes and scored 35 points in an overtime win against the Seattle SuperSonics. For the second season in a row he shot 45% from the three-point arc. His field goal percentage of 52% was again near the top for all guards. American media honored him with a selection to the All-NBA Third Team. However, he did not receive an invitation to the 1993 All-Star game. Among the top 13 scorers in the NBA that season, he was the only one not invited.
In an interview on the Scoop B Radio Podcast, Petrović's Nets teammate, Chucky Brown marveled at Petrović's healing ability. Brown told Brandon Scoop B Robinson that he remembered Petrović spraining his knee and was slated to miss two months. Petrović rehabbed so hard that he ended up only missing two weeks.
Career statistics
NBA
Regular season
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|Portland
| 77 || 0 || 12.6 || .485 || .459 || .844 || 1.4 || 1.5 || .3 || .0 || 7.6
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|Portland
| 18 || 0 || 7.4 || .451 || .167 || .682 || 1.0 || 1.1 || .3 || .0 || 4.4
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 43 || 0 || 20.5 || .500 || .373 || .861 || 2.1 || 1.5 || .9 || .0 || 12.6
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 82 || 82 || 36.9 || .508 || .444 || .808 || 3.1 || 3.1 || 1.3 || .1 || 20.6
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 70 || 67 || 38.0 || .518 || .449 || .870 || 2.7 || 3.5 || 1.3 || .2 || 22.3
|- class="sortbottom"
| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"|Career
| 290 || 149 || 26.4 || .506 || .437 || .841 || 2.3 || 2.4 || .9 || .1 || 15.4
Playoffs
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|1990
| style="text-align:left;"|Portland
| 20 || 0 || 12.7 || .440 || .313 || .583 || 1.6 || 1.0 || .3 || .0 || 6.1
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|1992
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 4 || 4 || 40.8 || .539 || .333 || .846 || 2.5 || 3.3 || 1.0 || .3 || 24.3
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|1993
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 5 || 5 || 38.6 || .455 || .333 || .800 || 1.8 || 1.8 || .4 || .0 || 15.6
|- class="sortbottom"
| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"|Career
| 29 || 9 || 21.0 || .474 || .324 || .696 || 1.8 || 1.4 || .4 || .0 || 10.2
EuroLeague
|-
| style="text-align:left;background:#afe6ba;"|1984–85†
| style="text-align:left;"|Cibona Zagreb
| 15 || || || || || || || || || || 30.9 ||
|-
| style="text-align:left;background:#afe6ba;"|1985–86†
| style="text-align:left;"|Cibona Zagreb
| 15 || || || || || || || || || || 37.0 ||
|- class="sortbottom"
| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"|Career
| 30 || || || || || || || || || || ||
National team career
Yugoslavia
Petrović's national team debut came at the age of 15, at the Under-18 Balkan Championship in Turkey, where the Yugoslavia junior team won the bronze. The young man regularly played for the Yugoslavia national team in the Balkan Championships, also winning gold with the junior team and silver with the senior team. He also brought back the silver from the 1982 FIBA Europe Under-18 Championship in Bulgaria.
The 1984 Summer Olympics were Petrović's first competition of a grand scale with the Yugoslavia senior national team, and the bronze medal won in Los Angeles that summer became his first Olympic medal. Third place was also earned at the 1986 FIBA World Championship, remembered for the last minute thriller in the semi-final game against the Soviet Union. Petrović was named the MVP of the tournament. At the 1987 EuroBasket, Petrović again returned with bronze, as Yugoslavia lost to the hosts and gold medalists Greece. The University Games, held in Zagreb in 1987, saw the Yugoslavian squad with Petrović win the gold. In the 1988 Summer Olympics, Yugoslavia with Petrović, earned 2nd place, as they lost once more to the Soviet powerhouse.
An excellent club season with Real Madrid was topped by Petrović's 1989 accomplishment with the Yugoslavia national team: at the EuroBasket in Zagreb, the young Yugoslavian team went all the way, defeating Greece more than comfortably in the championship game. Petrović was the tournament's second leading scorer and Most Valuable Player. The very next year, the summer in between the two most frustrating seasons of his professional career, as he struggled for playing time with the Trail Blazers, Petrović was again making history with the national team, as Yugoslavia became world champions, after beating the Soviet Union for the gold in Buenos Aires, at the 1990 FIBA World Championship.
Overall, Petrović represented Yugoslavia's senior national team in 155 games, in which he scored a total of 3,258 points, for a career scoring average of 21.0 points per game.
Croatia
The 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, marked the first summer Olympics featuring the independent Croatia, and Petrović was the leader of the Croatian national basketball team at the Olympic basketball tournament. Losing only to the American Dream Team in the group stage, a strong and inspired Croatian team emerged victorious from the Semifinals against the revamped Soviet team, thanks to clutch free throws executed by Petrović, and faced off against the Americans for the gold. Urged on by Petrović's competitiveness and confidence, the Croatians fared well in the first ten minutes of the game, taking a 25–23 lead on a Franjo Arapović dunk and the subsequent made free throw. As the game progressed, however, the now-legendary team composed of NBA stars proved too tough for Croatia: the Americans won 117–85, sending Petrović, the game's leading scorer with 24 points, and his teammates, home with silver medals.
In the period during which Petrović played for the senior Croatian national team (1992–1993), he appeared in 40 games and scored a total of 1,002 points, for a career scoring average of 25.1 points per game. His highest single-game point tally came against Estonia, on 31 May 1993 (48 points). Counting the senior national team games that he played in with both Yugoslavia's and Croatia's national teams, Petrović scored a total of 4,260 points in 195 games played, for a career scoring average of 21.8 points per game.
Death and legacy
In the summer of 1993, after his best NBA season and the Nets' first-round elimination by the Cleveland Cavaliers, Petrović traveled to Berlin, where the Croatian national team was playing a qualification tournament for the 1993 EuroBasket. He was contemplating departure from the Nets, disappointed with the fact that the Nets had not yet extended his contract. He told American reporters that the lack of recognition in the league made him also consider leaving the NBA completely and playing club basketball in Greece. There were at least two Greek clubs ready to offer Petrović three-year contracts worth US$7.5 million net. Petrović decided to skip the connection flight back to Zagreb and drive with his girlfriend back to Croatia.
Petrović died in a traffic accident at about 5:20 p.m. on 7 June 1993. On the rain-drenched Autobahn 9, he was a passenger in a car that was cut off by a semi-truck at Denkendorf near Ingolstadt in the German state of Bavaria. According to the report of the Ingolstadt police, that afternoon a truck broke through the Autobahn median; the driver was trying to avoid a collision with a personal vehicle in his own lane and lost control of the truck, crashing through the median barrier and finally coming to a stop and blocking all three lanes of traffic going in the opposite direction. Seconds later, the Volkswagen Golf carrying a sleeping Petrović in the passenger seat crashed into the truck. Petrovic was ejected from the vehicle. Despite efforts to revive him, he succumbed to severe head injuries. According to the autopsy report, Petrovic died on impact. The driver, Klara Szalantzy, a Hungarian model and basketball player with whom Petrović was romantically involved, and Hilal Edebal, a female Turkish basketball player, sustained grave injuries. It was established that visibility on the road was very poor and that Petrović was not wearing a seatbelt.
Petrović's tomb at Mirogoj Cemetery instantly became a sanctuary for his compatriots. The Cibona stadium was renamed the Dražen Petrović Basketball Hall on 4 October 1993, and the city of Zagreb dedicated a square in his name, which was later followed by Šibenik and Vukovar, while Petrinja dedicated a street to him. Before Game 1 of the 1993 NBA Finals, the NBA held a moment of silence for Petrović, whose death occurred two days before the event began. The Nets retired his number 3 jersey on 11 November 1993. After 1994, the MVP award at the McDonald's Championship bore the name Dražen Petrović Trophy, and the Croatian Olympic Committee's award for young athletes was named for him in 2006. On 29 April 1995, a statue commemorating Petrović's significance to the world of sports was erected in front of the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland, thus making him only the second athlete to receive this honor. On 9 July 2001, having defeated Patrick Rafter to win the men's singles title at Wimbledon, Croatian tennis player Goran Ivanišević dedicated the win to Petrović; Ivanišević wore Petrović's Nets jersey amidst the 100,000 strong crowd celebrating his victory in Split. Petrović was inducted posthumously into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2002. In 2006, the 13th anniversary of Petrović's death was marked with the opening of the Dražen Petrović Memorial Center in Zagreb, dedicated to his life and achievements, with ten themed galleries of multimedia content outlining his entire career and a statue of Dražen in shooting position in front of it. Petrović was enshrined in the FIBA Hall of Fame in 2007.
The 2010 documentary, Once Brothers (part of the ESPN 30 for 30 series), portrays the achievements of the Yugoslavia national basketball team in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and how the Yugoslav Wars tore the team apart. It explores Petrović's broken friendship with Serbian/Yugoslav player Vlade Divac. In 2011, a statue of him as a little boy sitting on a bench with a ball was unveiled in Šibenik, and his old room was renovated the way it looked when he was young, as a first part of opening a Memorial Center in his hometown. During the 2012 Three Point Shootout, New Jersey Nets guard Anthony Morrow wore Petrović's jersey in the latter's honor. In 2015, Australian writer Todd Spehr released a 470-page biography on Petrović, titled Dražen: The Remarkable Life & Legacy of the Mozart of Basketball. On 3 June 2015, Croatian basketball journalists Marjan Crnogaj and Vlado Radicevic released a 487-page biography which global paperback edition was released on 14 October 2017.
Reactions
Accomplishments and awards
Club competitions
European Champions Cup
Champion: 1985, 1986
European Cup Winners' Cup
Champion: 1987, 1989
Yugoslavian Championship
Champion: 1985
Yugoslavian Cup
Winner: 1985, 1986, 1988
Spanish Cup
Winner: 1989
NBA Finals
Runner-up: 1990
Korać Cup
Runner-up: 1982, 1983, 1988
Spanish Championship
Runner-up: 1989
Personal
Yugoslav First League: most points scored by an individual, in a league game (112).
Spanish ACB League: most points scored by an individual, in a final series game (42).
Spanish ACB League: most 3-point field goals made by an individual, in a final series game (8).
NBA: second highest 3-point field goal percentage (.444) in 1991–92.
NBA: fourth highest field goal percentage among guards (.508) in 1991–92.
NBA: second highest 3-point field goal percentage (.449) 1992–93.
NBA: second highest field goal percentage among guards (.518) 1992–93.
NBA: third best career 3-point field goal percentage (.437).
National teams
Summer Olympics
: 1988, 1992
: 1984
FIBA World Championship
: 1990
: 1986
FIBA EuroBasket
: 1989
: 1987
Summer Universiade
: 1987
: 1983
Balkan Championship for Junior Men
: 1982
: 1982
Balkan Championship for Cadets
: 1981
Balkan Championship
: 1984
FIBA Europe Under-18 Championship
: 1982
Personal
Balkan Championship for Junior Men Best Player: 1982
FIBA World Cup MVP: 1986
FIBA EuroBasket MVP: 1989
Dražen Petrović Memorial Center
A museum named "The Dražen Petrović Memorial Center" was founded in his honor, and constitutes a co-operative effort led by the Dražen Petrović Foundation in conjunction with the Croatian government, the city of Zagreb and the Croatian Museum of Sports. The memorial center idea originated from Petrović's parents, Biserka and Jole Petrovic, and was supported with the contributions of Croatian architects Andrija Rusan and Niksa Bilic. All of the articles presented in the center have been collected and categorized by the Croatian Museum of Sports. The organization and operations of the center have been provided by the Dražen Petrović Foundation, which is led by Petrović's family. The Center contains his No. 3 New Jersey Nets jersey and the watch that stopped when he died in a car crash. The center features 1,000 memorabilia items and a video of his basketball highlights.
The official opening of the museum was held on 7 June 2006, while the official opening of the center to the public began at the end of December 2006. The square on which the center is operated upon has been renamed to Dražen Petrović Square in his honor. In 2013, former NBA MVP Derrick Rose visited the museum.
See also
List of basketball players who died during their careers
List of basketball players who have scored 100 points in a single game
Yugoslav First Federal Basketball League career stats leaders
References
Sources
External links
Drazen Petrovic Museum
Drazen Petrovic Yugoslavia FIBA Profile
Drazen Petrovic Croatia FIBA Profile
FIBA Europe Profile
Drazen Petrovic at the Basketball Hall of Fame
Euroleague.net 50 greatest contributors
In Honor of Dražen Petrović
FIBA Hall of Fame profile
1964 births
1993 deaths
1986 FIBA World Championship players
1990 FIBA World Championship players
Basketball players at the 1984 Summer Olympics
Basketball players at the 1988 Summer Olympics
Basketball players at the 1992 Summer Olympics
Basketball players from Šibenik
Burials at Mirogoj Cemetery
Croatian expatriate basketball people in Spain
Croatian expatriate basketball people in the United States
Croatian men's basketball players
Croatian people of Serbian descent
Euroscar award winners
FIBA EuroBasket-winning players
FIBA Hall of Fame inductees
FIBA World Championship-winning players
KK Cibona players
KK Šibenik players
Liga ACB players
Medalists at the 1983 Summer Universiade
Medalists at the 1984 Summer Olympics
Medalists at the 1988 Summer Olympics
Medalists at the 1992 Summer Olympics
Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductees
National Basketball Association players from Croatia
National Basketball Association players with retired numbers
New Jersey Nets players
Olympic basketball players of Croatia
Olympic basketball players of Yugoslavia
Olympic bronze medalists for Yugoslavia
Olympic medalists in basketball
Olympic silver medalists for Croatia
Olympic silver medalists for Yugoslavia
Portland Trail Blazers draft picks
Portland Trail Blazers players
Real Madrid Baloncesto players
Recipients of the Olympic Order
Road incident deaths in Germany
Shooting guards
Universiade gold medalists for Yugoslavia
Universiade medalists in basketball
Universiade silver medalists for Yugoslavia
Yugoslav expatriate sportspeople in Spain
Yugoslav expatriate sportspeople in the United States
Yugoslav men's basketball players | false | [
"Conflict avoidance is a person's method of reacting to conflict, which attempts to avoid directly confronting the issue at hand. Methods of doing this can include changing the subject, putting off a discussion until later, or simply not bringing up the subject of contention. Conflict prevention can be used as a temporary measure to buy time or as permanent means of disposing of a matter. The latter may be indistinguishable from simple acquiescence to the other party, to the extent that those avoiding the conflict subordinates their own wishes to the party with whom they have the conflict. However, conflict prevention can also take the form of withdrawing from the relationship. Thus, avoidance scenarios can be either win-lose, lose-lose or possibly even win-win, if terminating the relationship is the best method of solving the problem.\n\nThe term \"conflict avoidance\" is sometimes used to describe conflict prevention. Bacal criticizes this use of terms by asking, \n\nTurner and Weed classify concealment as one of the three main types of responses to conflict, describing concealers as those who take no risk and so say nothing, concealing their views and feelings. Concealers are further divided into three types; namely:\nFeeling-swallowers who swallow their feelings. They smile even if the situation is causing them pain and distress. They behave thus because they consider the approval of other people important and feel that it would be dangerous to affront them by revealing their true feelings.\nSubject-changers who find the real issue too difficult to handle. They change the topic by finding something on which there can be some agreement with the conflicting party. According to Turner and Weed, this response style usually does not solve the problem; instead, it can create problems for the people who use this and for the organization in which such people are working.\nAvoiders who go out of their way to avoid conflicts.\n\nControversy\nThe Thomas–Kilmann grid views avoidance as a lose-lose proposition since it does not address the issue at hand. But other sources view avoidance as a useful means of disposing of very minor, non-recurring conflicts whose resolution would expend excessive amounts of time or resources.\n\nPersonality psychology research\nResearch in personality psychology has indicated that the personality trait of agreeableness--one of the five identifiable dimensions of personality--correlates with proclivity toward conflict avoidance.\n\nConflict avoidance in the workplace\nIn the workplace, managers sometimes avoid directly dealing with conflict among co-workers by simply separating them. In workplaces and other situations where continued contact with a person cannot be severed, workers may eschew confrontation as being too risky or uncomfortable, opting instead to avoid directly dealing with the situation by venting to others or engaging in passive aggressive methods of attack such as gossip. Unresolved conflict in the workplace has been linked to miscommunication resulting from confusion or refusal to cooperate, increased stress, reduced creative collaboration and team problem solving, and distrust. According to an East Bay Business Times article, some possible results of conflict-averse senior executives may include\n\nReferences\n\nConflict (process)",
"Heidi Noelle Guenther (January 11, 1975 – June 30, 1997) was an American ballerina from 1981 to her death in 1997. Guenther died from cardiac arrest which was believed to be caused by her eating disorder.\n\nBiography \nGuenther was born in San Francisco. She was raised in Los Osos, and trained at School of the American Ballet and Houston Ballet School during the summer. Guenther earned a full scholarship to the San Francisco Ballet School when she was twelve. She performed throughout high school and in 1994, performed in \"Symphony in C\" at the Kennedy Center.\n\nShe was first told to lose weight by the San Francisco Ballet School. In 1994 and in 1995, Artistic director Anna-Marie Holmes encouraged Guenther to lose weight, eventually going to 110 pounds. The weight loss did not stop here. Gunther continued to drop weight at an alarmingly quick rate. Guenther was soon promoted to the Boston Ballet in 1994 as an apprentice dancer. A colleague, Kyra Strasberg, called Guenther, \"a very, very talented dancer with a gorgeous light jump.\"\n\nGuenther broke her foot in the first season, as an apprentice. She did not seek medical attention, because she was afraid she would lose her contract. Instead she rested her foot when she wasn't dancing, causing her to gain five pounds. The Boston Ballet did urge her to not lose any more weight in an evaluation given in January 1997. At the time, the company was worried that she may have an eating disorder. Though the company noticed her weight loss they did not follow up with her about it. Boston Ballet did not address the issue that was an eating disorder. She was considered \"dangerously thin\" by the ballet's records. Holmes, however, told Guenther before she left for summer vacation starting in June 1995, that if she didn't lose the five pounds she gained, she would not gain a contract. Guenther wrote a note to herself for that summer vacation, renewing her commitment to lose weight, \"They always pick people for parts who are skinny.\" While the Boston Ballet did counsel her to gain weight, Guenther's mother noticed that the thinner her daughter was, the more dancing roles she was given. This added to the pressure already placed on Heidi to lose weight.\n\nDuring a family trip to Disneyland, Guenther died on June 30, 1997 of cardiac arrest at the age of 22. There was not an event that led up to her death. Heidi was sitting in the back seat of a vehicle when all of a sudden she was no longer breathing. Her death was speculated to be caused by her immense amount of weight loss.\n\nIn a later search, a stash of laxatives and herbal diet-aid pills were found in her possession. Along with the use of medication to lose weight, many of Heidi's friends stated that she had an unhealthy relationship with purging, as well as skipping meals. An autopsy showed no heart deformities and no abnormal substances in her blood. However, her heart wall was found to be abnormally thin. A week before her death, she told her family that her heart was \"racing\" and \"pounding,\" but she would not seek medical attention.\n\nHer family filed a wrongful death suit in 2000, against the Boston Ballet, for putting excessive pressure on Guenther to lose weight. Holmes was also named as a defendant in the suit, which was filed just before the statute of limitations expired. The suit was later rejected by the courts.\n\nLegacy \nGuenther's death \"was a wake-up call for everyone,\" causing ballet companies to treat eating disorders as a \"top priority.\" Immediately after her death, some American ballet companies said they would change their policies or offer extra information about eating disorders. Her death caused the Boston Ballet to begin nutrition counseling, onsite therapists, wellness seminars and help with weight control. Her family is attempting to start a foundation to help young athletes and dancers in honor of Guenther.\n\nReferences \n\nAmerican ballerinas\n1975 births\n1997 deaths\nDeaths from anorexia nervosa\nNeurological disease deaths in California\nPeople from San Francisco\nBoston Ballet dancers\nPeople from Los Osos, California\n20th-century American ballet dancers"
] |
[
"Dražen Petrović",
"Yugoslavia",
"How old as he at national team apperance",
"15,",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"1984 Summer Olympics were Petrovic's first competition of a grand scale with the Yugoslav senior national team,",
"What place did they get",
"Third",
"when did he do university games",
"The University Games, held in Zagreb in 1987,",
"who did they lose too",
"semi-final game against the Soviet Union. At the 1987 EuroBasket, Petrovic again returned with bronze, as Yugoslavia lost to the hosts and gold medalists Greece."
] | C_87c16213bea04fa5ad751999800b87e8_0 | Who topped them | 6 | Who topped Dražen Petrović's team at the 1987 EuroBasket event? | Dražen Petrović | Petrovic's national team debut came at the age of 15, at the Under-18 Balkan Championship in Turkey, where the Yugoslavian junior team won the bronze. The young man regularly played for the Yugoslavian national team in the Balkan Championships, also winning gold with the junior team and silver with the senior team. He also brought back the silver from the 1982 FIBA Europe Under-18 Championship in Bulgaria. The 1984 Summer Olympics were Petrovic's first competition of a grand scale with the Yugoslav senior national team, and the bronze medal won in Los Angeles that summer became his first Olympic medal. Third place was also earned at the 1986 FIBA World Championship, remembered for the last minute thriller in the semi-final game against the Soviet Union. At the 1987 EuroBasket, Petrovic again returned with bronze, as Yugoslavia lost to the hosts and gold medalists Greece. The University Games, held in Zagreb in 1987, saw the Yugoslavian squad with Petrovic win the gold. In the 1988 Summer Olympics, Yugoslavia with Petrovic, earned 2nd place, as they lost once more to the Soviet powerhouse. An excellent club season with Real Madrid was topped by Petrovic's 1989 accomplishment with the Yugoslav national team: at the EuroBasket in Zagreb, the young Yugoslavian team went all the way, defeating Greece more than comfortably in the championship game. Petrovic was the tournament's second leading scorer and most valuable player. The very next year, the summer in between the two most frustrating seasons of his professional career, as he struggled for playing time with the Trail Blazers, Petrovic was again making history with the national team, as Yugoslavia became world champions, after beating the Soviet Union for the gold in Buenos Aires, at the 1990 FIBA World Championship. CANNOTANSWER | An excellent club season with Real Madrid was topped by Petrovic's 1989 accomplishment with the Yugoslav national team: at the EuroBasket | Dražen Petrović (; 22 October 1964 – 7 June 1993) was a Yugoslav and Croatian professional basketball player. A shooting guard, he initially achieved success playing professional basketball in Europe in the 1980s, before joining the National Basketball Association (NBA) in 1989.
A star on multiple international basketball stages, Petrović earned two silver medals (1988, 1992) and one bronze (1984) at the Summer Olympic Games, a gold (1990) and a bronze (1986) at the FIBA World Cup, and a gold (1989) and a bronze (1987) at the FIBA EuroBasket. He was the MVP of the 1986 FIBA World Championship, and the MVP of the 1989 FIBA EuroBasket. With Cibona Zagreb, Petrović also won two consecutive EuroLeague championships in 1985 and 1986. He first represented Yugoslavia's senior national team and, later, Croatia's senior national team. He earned four Euroscars, and was named Mr. Europa twice. In 1985, he received the Golden Badge award for the best athlete of Yugoslavia.
Seeking a bigger arena after his career start in Europe, Petrović joined the NBA in 1989, as a member of the Portland Trail Blazers. After playing mostly off the bench that year, Petrović experienced a breakthrough following a trade to the New Jersey Nets. While starting for the Nets, he became one of the league's best shooting guards. He was named one of FIBA's 50 Greatest Players in 1991. On 7 June 1993, Petrović's career and life were cut short, after he died in a car accident, at the age of 28.
In 1993, Petrović's jersey number 3 was retired by the Nets, and the Dražen Petrović Basketball Hall was named after him in his honor. He also received the Olympic Order in 1993. In 2002, he was posthumously enshrined into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. In 2006, the Dražen Petrović Award was created in his honor. In 2007, he was posthumously inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame. He was named one of the 50 Greatest EuroLeague Contributors in 2008. In 2013, he was voted the best European Basketball player in history, by players at the 2013 FIBA EuroBasket.
Petrović is considered a crucial part of the vanguard to the present-day mass influx of European players into the NBA, and to this day he is viewed as a national hero in Croatia.
Early years
Born in Šibenik, Yugoslavia (present-day Croatia), Dražen Petrović was the second child of Jovan "Jole" Petrović, a police officer, and Biserka (), a librarian. His father was born in a Serb family in Zagora, near Trebinje in Bosnia and Herzegovina. His mother was born in Bilice, near Šibenik, and was from a traditional conservative Croat family, devoutly Roman Catholic. The couple's eldest child, Aleksandar, was the first to play basketball and rose to become one of the top point guards in former Yugoslavia. The Petrović brothers are second cousins to the Serbian basketball player Dejan Bodiroga.
Šibenka (1979–1983)
At the age of 13, Petrović started playing in the youth selections of the local club Šibenka; at the age of 15, he had already made the club's first team, just as Šibenka had earned a place in the Yugoslav national first division. With young Petrović as the star of the team, Šibenka reached the final of the third level Pan-European club competition, the FIBA Radivoj Korać Cup twice (1981–82 and 1982–83), where they lost to the French League club Limoges CSP both times. In 1983, the 18-year-old Petrović hit two free throws in Šibenka's victory over Bosna Sarajevo in the final playoff game of the Yugoslavian League's 1982–83 season's club championship. However, on the day after the club won the championship, the Basketball Federation of Yugoslavia stripped the title from Šibenka, because of irregularities in refereeing. The league's championship was then awarded to Bosna, after Šibenka refused to play in a rematch.
Petrović increased his scoring numbers in each successive season that he played with Šibenka. In the 1979–80 Yugoslav FFL season, he scored 13 points in 16 games, for an average of 0.8 points per game. In the 1980–81 Yugoslav FFL season, he scored 39 points in 20 games, for an average of 2.0 points per game. In the 1981–82 Yugoslav FFL season, he scored 392 points in 24 games, for an average of 16.3 points per game. In the 1982–83 Yugoslav FFL season, he scored 758 points in 31 games, for an average of 24.5 points per game. In total, he scored 1,202 points in 91 games played with Šibenka in the Yugoslav first division, for a scoring average of 13.2 points per game.
Rise to European stardom
Cibona Zagreb (1984–1988)
1984–85 season
After a year's mandatory service in the Yugoslav military, Petrović joined his older brother Aco and moved to Cibona Zagreb, to form what was at that time, the best back court duo in Europe. In his first season in Cibona, Petrović won both the national Yugoslav League championship and the Yugoslav National Cup title. In national domestic league play, in the 1984–85 Yugoslav FFL season, Petrović scored a total of 878 points in 27 games played, for a scoring average of 32.5 points per game.
On 6 December 1984, in the 1984–85 season of Europe's top-level club competition, the FIBA European Champions Cup (EuroLeague), Petrović scored 44 points in a game against the Spanish League club Real Madrid. He scored 29 of the 44 points in the second half of the game. Petrović also scored 36 points in the league's 1985 Final against Real Madrid. Cibona won the game, by a score of 87–78, and the win brought the club their first top-tier level European Champions Cup title. That season, in Europe's top-level club competition, which eventually became known as the EuroLeague, Petrović scored a total of 463 points in 15 games played, for a scoring average of 30.9 points per game.
1985–86 season
On 5 October 1985, in a Yugoslav First Federal League game against Union Olimpija Ljubljana, Petrović scored 112 points, in Cibona's 158–77 blowout win. He scored 67 of the 112 points in the first half of the game. During the game, Petrović shot 40/60 from the field, 10/20 from 3-point range, and 22/22 from the free-throw line.
The 112 points scored was the most points ever scored in a single game in the history of the Yugoslav First Federal League. It broke the league's previous single-game scoring record of 74 points, which was set in 1962, by Radivoj Korać. Korać achieved that record while playing with OKK Beograd, in a game against Mladost Zagreb. However, the record was achieved under unusual circumstances.
Olimpija Ljubljana had failed to fulfill their player registration administrative obligations in time for the game. Olimpija general manager Radovan Lorbek was reportedly late with submitting a registration letter to the Basketball Federation of Yugoslavia (KSJ) headquarters in Belgrade. That rendered their entire men's first team roster ineligible for the Yugoslav First Federal League's regular season opening game, and forced them to instead field players for the game from their youth systems. Unfortunately, Olimpija didn't have an under-18 youth squad that season. So the club had to go to Zagreb to play the game with even younger players. In the end, the team that Olimpija took to Zagreb to play against Cibona, consisted of players in the under-16 and under-17 age groups, which included: Igor Đurović, Matjaž Strmole, Jože Maček, Dag Kralj, Tine Erjavec, Jure Zorčič, Gregor Stražiščar, Andrej Novina, and Tine Merzelj.
Cibona, for their part, decided to use a mixed roster for the game, consisting of players from their youth system, plus their senior men's team's twenty-one-year-old young superstar Dražen Petrović, who used the opportunity of playing against the inferior youth squad opposition to shatter Korać's single-game Yugoslav League scoring record of 74 points. Petrović ended up with 112 points scored in the game, despite the fact that before the game, he had reportedly announced his intention to exit from the game, once he had surpassed Korać's 74 points record. Petrović was one of only five Cibona players to get on the score sheet that day. The other four were eighteen-year-old Dražen Anzulović with 16 points, eighteen-year-old Vladimir Rizman with 14 points, nineteen-year-old Ivo Nakić with 12 points, and Ivan Šoštarec with 4 points.
Overall, in the 1985–86 Yugoslav FFL season, Petrović scored a total of 1,241 points in 30 games played, for a scoring average of 41.4 points per game. That season, Petrović also won another Yugoslav National Cup title with Cibona. On 7 February 1986, Petrović scored 55 points in a Yugoslav Cup game against Union Olimpija Ljubljana. He also scored 46 points in the 1986 Yugoslav Cup's Final against Cibona's old rivals Bosna Sarajevo.
On 4 December 1985, in a 1985–86 season FIBA European Champions Cup (EuroLeague) game against the Israeli Super League club Maccabi Tel Aviv, Petrović scored 44 points. In the same European Champions Cup season, on 11 December 1985, he had 47 points and 25 assists in a game against the then reigning Italian League champions Simac Milano. In another European Champions Cup game that season, on 16 January 1986, Petrović scored 49 points, and had 20 assists against the Spanish League club Real Madrid. On 22 January 1986, in a European Champions Cup game against the French League club Limoges, Petrović made ten 3-pointers, including seven in a row during a first-half stretch, for a final tally of 51 points and 10 assists in the game. The 51 points scored was also his personal career-high scored in a single EuroLeague game.
Eventually, Petrović won his second straight FIBA European Champions Cup (EuroLeague) title with Cibona, as he scored 22 points in the league's 1986 Final, in which Cibona defeated the USSR Premier League club Žalgiris Kaunas, which starred the legendary Arvydas Sabonis. In the 1985–86 European Champions Cup (EuroLeague) season, Petrović scored a total of 555 points in 15 games played, for a scoring average of 37.0 points per game.
1986–87 season
In the 1986–87 Yugoslav FFL season, Petrović scored a total of 932 points in 25 games played, for a scoring average of 37.3 points per game.
In that same season, Cibona competed in the European-wide secondary level FIBA European Cup Winners' Cup competition. Petrović led Cibona to the championship, as he scored 28 points against the Italian League club Scavolini Pesaro, in the league's 1986–87 season Final. It was the third straight European-wide club championship for Petrović and Cibona.
In the 1986–87 FIBA European Cup Winners Cup season, Petrović scored a total of 270 points in 8 games played, for a scoring average of 33.8 points per game.
1987–88 season
With Cibona, Petrović again won the Yugoslav National Cup title in 1988. In the 1987–88 Yugoslav FFL season, Petrović scored a total of 860 points in 24 games played, for a scoring average of 35.8 points per game.
In that same season, Cibona competed in Europe's third level club competition, the FIBA Korać Cup. On 14 October 1987, Petrović scored 62 points in a 1987–88 FIBA Korać Cup season game against the Finnish League club KTP Kotka. Petrović led Cibona to the Finals of the Korać Cup, where they lost to the Spanish League club Real Madrid. During the Korać Cup season, Petrović scored a total of 401 points in 12 games played, for a scoring average of 33.4 points per game.
During his four seasons with Cibona, Petrović scored a total of 3,911 points, in 106 games played in the national Yugoslav First Federal League, for a scoring average of 36.9 points per game. With Cibona, he also scored a total of 559 points, in 20 games played, for a scoring average of 28.0 points per game, in the Yugoslav Cup competition. In the three Pan-European club competitions that he played in with Cibona, he scored a total of 1,689 points in 50 games played, for a scoring average of 33.8 points per game.
With both Šibenka and Cibona, Petrović's career scoring numbers in the Yugoslav First Federal League were 5,113 points scored, in 197 games played, for a career scoring average of 26.0 points per game. In the top-level European-wide club competition, the FIBA European Champions Cup, which is now known as the EuroLeague, Petrović scored a career total of 1,018 points in 30 games played, for a career scoring average of 33.9 points per game.
Real Madrid (1988–1989)
After his string of very successful seasons with Cibona Zagreb, Petrović needed new challenges that Cibona and the Yugoslav First Federal League could no longer offer him. The NBA's Portland Trail Blazers had already used their third-round draft pick on the young Petrović, in the 1986 NBA draft, but he had decided to postpone his departure to the United States. In 1988, rather than go to the NBA, he instead signed with the Spanish League club Real Madrid, for around US$4 million in net income. At that time, Yugoslav sporting laws stipulated that players could not professionally move abroad until they had reached the age of 28. Petrović was still only 23 when he signed with Real Madrid. In 2014, José Antonio Arízaga, the sports agent who played a key role in Petrović's 1988 summer transfer from Cibona to Real, recalled a few details from the transaction: "I spoke to Mirko Novosel, Dražen's head coach at Cibona, and he told me two things. One, every problem in Yugoslavia can be taken care of with the right amount of money, and two, if Dražen leaves, every other player under 28 will be leaving and it'll be chaos. So, you can imagine all the individuals I had to bribe and all the places where I had to pay up, in order to circumvent this law".
1988–89 season
Petrović helped Real to win the title of the 1989 edition of the Spanish King's Cup, over their Catalan rivals, Barcelona. In the Spanish ACB League's Finals, Real Madrid narrowly lost to Barcelona, in the fifth and decisive game of the series. In the Spanish League's 1988–89 ACB season, Petrović was the league's regular season top scorer. Including the playoffs, he scored a total of 1,327 points, in 47 games played, for a scoring average of 28.2 points per game. Petrović's first season in Spain's ACB was also his last, but he still holds the ACB's single-game Finals records for the most points scored, with 42, and for the most three-pointers made, with 8.
In European-wide club competition, Real Madrid competed in the European secondary level FIBA European Cup Winners' Cup. On 14 March 1989, in the 1988–89 Cup Winners' Cup Final against the Italian League club Snaidero Caserta, Petrović tied his previous best scoring performance in a European-wide club competition with 62 points.
Petrović was pressured to join the NBA, by the Trail Blazers, who had drafted him 60th overall in 1986. Being motivated by the potential new challenges that the NBA presented, Petrović finally decided to try to establish himself in the league. He left Spain rather abruptly, at the end of the season; the Blazers assisted him in the process, by buying out his contract with Real Madrid, for as much as US$1.5 million. Petrović finally joined the Blazers for the 1989–90 season.
NBA career
Portland Trail Blazers (1989–1991)
The Blazers valued Petrović as a shooter, but were concerned that he might not possess the quickness to play guard or the foot speed to play defense. They brought him onto the team primarily as an outside threat to shoot three-pointers. In the Blazers' offensive scheme he was to set up behind the line, receive a passed ball and go directly up to release his shot. Petrović was an aggressive, attacking player who was used to creating his shot and shots for his teammates. Taking the ball out of his hands and making him a static shooter was foreign to him. Making matters worse, the Blazers already had a full rotation of guards, with a starting backcourt of Clyde Drexler and Terry Porter, and with veteran Danny Young as a reserve. Consequently, the reigning La Gazzetta dello Sport Euroscar European Player of the Year saw limited playing time. He had difficulty being productive in the limited role the Blazers had for him. In his rookie year during the 1989–90 NBA season, he averaged 7.4 points in 12 minutes per game. The following season veteran guard Danny Ainge was added to the team, and Petrović's playing time dropped further to 7 minutes a game. In many statements made prior to arriving in Portland, Petrović had said he saw a lack of playing time as the only possible obstacle to his success in the NBA. He was determined to be a success in basketball's highest arena. His lack of playing time during his second season in the league brought Petrović's frustration to a climax:
"I have nothing to say to Adelman any more and vice versa. Eighteen months have passed by, too long. I have to leave to prove how much I am worth. Never in my life did I sit on the bench and I don’t intend to do that in Portland."
At his insistence, 38 games into the season (20 of which held no playing time for Petrović), a three-way trade with the Denver Nuggets sent him to the New Jersey Nets in exchange for a first-round pick in the following draft and Walter Davis, who was sent from Denver to Portland.
New Jersey Nets (1991–1993)
On 23 January 1991, Petrović became a member of the New Jersey Nets. He joined a team that had not reached the playoffs since 1986, but had rookie Derrick Coleman, the number one selection from the 1990 draft. He was immediately given a role on the floor, with 20.5 minutes per game. His scoring over the remaining 43 games increased to 12.6 points per game, one of the league's best points-per-minute ratios. The following year, he and Coleman were joined by Kenny Anderson, giving the team a third talented new addition. Petrović was made a starter for the 1991–92 season, his first full season with the Nets. Petro, as the Americans had dubbed him, did not miss a single game. On 13 March 1992, Petrović scored 39 points while shooting 65% from the field, and 100% (3 of 3) from 3 point range, in a 110-108 win against the Boston Celtics. His determination, hard work and aggressive on-court demeanor established him as a team leader. In 36.9 minutes on the floor he averaged 20.6 points. Petrović led the Nets in field-goal shooting and free-throw shooting, and his field goal percentage of 51% placed him near the top of all NBA guards. More importantly, his success translated into success for the team. The Nets made the playoffs, recording 14 more wins than the previous year. On 23 April 1992, in Game 1 of their first round matchup against the Cleveland Cavaliers, Petrović scored a playoff career-high 40 points. The Nets would eventually lose the best of 5 series 3 games to 1. The following season saw Petrović increase his scoring average to 22.3 ppg, 11th best in the league.
On 6 December 1992, he was named MVP of the Week. On 4 February 1993, Petrović played a career-high 53 minutes and scored 35 points in an overtime win against the Seattle SuperSonics. For the second season in a row he shot 45% from the three-point arc. His field goal percentage of 52% was again near the top for all guards. American media honored him with a selection to the All-NBA Third Team. However, he did not receive an invitation to the 1993 All-Star game. Among the top 13 scorers in the NBA that season, he was the only one not invited.
In an interview on the Scoop B Radio Podcast, Petrović's Nets teammate, Chucky Brown marveled at Petrović's healing ability. Brown told Brandon Scoop B Robinson that he remembered Petrović spraining his knee and was slated to miss two months. Petrović rehabbed so hard that he ended up only missing two weeks.
Career statistics
NBA
Regular season
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|Portland
| 77 || 0 || 12.6 || .485 || .459 || .844 || 1.4 || 1.5 || .3 || .0 || 7.6
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|Portland
| 18 || 0 || 7.4 || .451 || .167 || .682 || 1.0 || 1.1 || .3 || .0 || 4.4
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 43 || 0 || 20.5 || .500 || .373 || .861 || 2.1 || 1.5 || .9 || .0 || 12.6
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 82 || 82 || 36.9 || .508 || .444 || .808 || 3.1 || 3.1 || 1.3 || .1 || 20.6
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 70 || 67 || 38.0 || .518 || .449 || .870 || 2.7 || 3.5 || 1.3 || .2 || 22.3
|- class="sortbottom"
| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"|Career
| 290 || 149 || 26.4 || .506 || .437 || .841 || 2.3 || 2.4 || .9 || .1 || 15.4
Playoffs
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|1990
| style="text-align:left;"|Portland
| 20 || 0 || 12.7 || .440 || .313 || .583 || 1.6 || 1.0 || .3 || .0 || 6.1
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|1992
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 4 || 4 || 40.8 || .539 || .333 || .846 || 2.5 || 3.3 || 1.0 || .3 || 24.3
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|1993
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 5 || 5 || 38.6 || .455 || .333 || .800 || 1.8 || 1.8 || .4 || .0 || 15.6
|- class="sortbottom"
| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"|Career
| 29 || 9 || 21.0 || .474 || .324 || .696 || 1.8 || 1.4 || .4 || .0 || 10.2
EuroLeague
|-
| style="text-align:left;background:#afe6ba;"|1984–85†
| style="text-align:left;"|Cibona Zagreb
| 15 || || || || || || || || || || 30.9 ||
|-
| style="text-align:left;background:#afe6ba;"|1985–86†
| style="text-align:left;"|Cibona Zagreb
| 15 || || || || || || || || || || 37.0 ||
|- class="sortbottom"
| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"|Career
| 30 || || || || || || || || || || ||
National team career
Yugoslavia
Petrović's national team debut came at the age of 15, at the Under-18 Balkan Championship in Turkey, where the Yugoslavia junior team won the bronze. The young man regularly played for the Yugoslavia national team in the Balkan Championships, also winning gold with the junior team and silver with the senior team. He also brought back the silver from the 1982 FIBA Europe Under-18 Championship in Bulgaria.
The 1984 Summer Olympics were Petrović's first competition of a grand scale with the Yugoslavia senior national team, and the bronze medal won in Los Angeles that summer became his first Olympic medal. Third place was also earned at the 1986 FIBA World Championship, remembered for the last minute thriller in the semi-final game against the Soviet Union. Petrović was named the MVP of the tournament. At the 1987 EuroBasket, Petrović again returned with bronze, as Yugoslavia lost to the hosts and gold medalists Greece. The University Games, held in Zagreb in 1987, saw the Yugoslavian squad with Petrović win the gold. In the 1988 Summer Olympics, Yugoslavia with Petrović, earned 2nd place, as they lost once more to the Soviet powerhouse.
An excellent club season with Real Madrid was topped by Petrović's 1989 accomplishment with the Yugoslavia national team: at the EuroBasket in Zagreb, the young Yugoslavian team went all the way, defeating Greece more than comfortably in the championship game. Petrović was the tournament's second leading scorer and Most Valuable Player. The very next year, the summer in between the two most frustrating seasons of his professional career, as he struggled for playing time with the Trail Blazers, Petrović was again making history with the national team, as Yugoslavia became world champions, after beating the Soviet Union for the gold in Buenos Aires, at the 1990 FIBA World Championship.
Overall, Petrović represented Yugoslavia's senior national team in 155 games, in which he scored a total of 3,258 points, for a career scoring average of 21.0 points per game.
Croatia
The 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, marked the first summer Olympics featuring the independent Croatia, and Petrović was the leader of the Croatian national basketball team at the Olympic basketball tournament. Losing only to the American Dream Team in the group stage, a strong and inspired Croatian team emerged victorious from the Semifinals against the revamped Soviet team, thanks to clutch free throws executed by Petrović, and faced off against the Americans for the gold. Urged on by Petrović's competitiveness and confidence, the Croatians fared well in the first ten minutes of the game, taking a 25–23 lead on a Franjo Arapović dunk and the subsequent made free throw. As the game progressed, however, the now-legendary team composed of NBA stars proved too tough for Croatia: the Americans won 117–85, sending Petrović, the game's leading scorer with 24 points, and his teammates, home with silver medals.
In the period during which Petrović played for the senior Croatian national team (1992–1993), he appeared in 40 games and scored a total of 1,002 points, for a career scoring average of 25.1 points per game. His highest single-game point tally came against Estonia, on 31 May 1993 (48 points). Counting the senior national team games that he played in with both Yugoslavia's and Croatia's national teams, Petrović scored a total of 4,260 points in 195 games played, for a career scoring average of 21.8 points per game.
Death and legacy
In the summer of 1993, after his best NBA season and the Nets' first-round elimination by the Cleveland Cavaliers, Petrović traveled to Berlin, where the Croatian national team was playing a qualification tournament for the 1993 EuroBasket. He was contemplating departure from the Nets, disappointed with the fact that the Nets had not yet extended his contract. He told American reporters that the lack of recognition in the league made him also consider leaving the NBA completely and playing club basketball in Greece. There were at least two Greek clubs ready to offer Petrović three-year contracts worth US$7.5 million net. Petrović decided to skip the connection flight back to Zagreb and drive with his girlfriend back to Croatia.
Petrović died in a traffic accident at about 5:20 p.m. on 7 June 1993. On the rain-drenched Autobahn 9, he was a passenger in a car that was cut off by a semi-truck at Denkendorf near Ingolstadt in the German state of Bavaria. According to the report of the Ingolstadt police, that afternoon a truck broke through the Autobahn median; the driver was trying to avoid a collision with a personal vehicle in his own lane and lost control of the truck, crashing through the median barrier and finally coming to a stop and blocking all three lanes of traffic going in the opposite direction. Seconds later, the Volkswagen Golf carrying a sleeping Petrović in the passenger seat crashed into the truck. Petrovic was ejected from the vehicle. Despite efforts to revive him, he succumbed to severe head injuries. According to the autopsy report, Petrovic died on impact. The driver, Klara Szalantzy, a Hungarian model and basketball player with whom Petrović was romantically involved, and Hilal Edebal, a female Turkish basketball player, sustained grave injuries. It was established that visibility on the road was very poor and that Petrović was not wearing a seatbelt.
Petrović's tomb at Mirogoj Cemetery instantly became a sanctuary for his compatriots. The Cibona stadium was renamed the Dražen Petrović Basketball Hall on 4 October 1993, and the city of Zagreb dedicated a square in his name, which was later followed by Šibenik and Vukovar, while Petrinja dedicated a street to him. Before Game 1 of the 1993 NBA Finals, the NBA held a moment of silence for Petrović, whose death occurred two days before the event began. The Nets retired his number 3 jersey on 11 November 1993. After 1994, the MVP award at the McDonald's Championship bore the name Dražen Petrović Trophy, and the Croatian Olympic Committee's award for young athletes was named for him in 2006. On 29 April 1995, a statue commemorating Petrović's significance to the world of sports was erected in front of the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland, thus making him only the second athlete to receive this honor. On 9 July 2001, having defeated Patrick Rafter to win the men's singles title at Wimbledon, Croatian tennis player Goran Ivanišević dedicated the win to Petrović; Ivanišević wore Petrović's Nets jersey amidst the 100,000 strong crowd celebrating his victory in Split. Petrović was inducted posthumously into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2002. In 2006, the 13th anniversary of Petrović's death was marked with the opening of the Dražen Petrović Memorial Center in Zagreb, dedicated to his life and achievements, with ten themed galleries of multimedia content outlining his entire career and a statue of Dražen in shooting position in front of it. Petrović was enshrined in the FIBA Hall of Fame in 2007.
The 2010 documentary, Once Brothers (part of the ESPN 30 for 30 series), portrays the achievements of the Yugoslavia national basketball team in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and how the Yugoslav Wars tore the team apart. It explores Petrović's broken friendship with Serbian/Yugoslav player Vlade Divac. In 2011, a statue of him as a little boy sitting on a bench with a ball was unveiled in Šibenik, and his old room was renovated the way it looked when he was young, as a first part of opening a Memorial Center in his hometown. During the 2012 Three Point Shootout, New Jersey Nets guard Anthony Morrow wore Petrović's jersey in the latter's honor. In 2015, Australian writer Todd Spehr released a 470-page biography on Petrović, titled Dražen: The Remarkable Life & Legacy of the Mozart of Basketball. On 3 June 2015, Croatian basketball journalists Marjan Crnogaj and Vlado Radicevic released a 487-page biography which global paperback edition was released on 14 October 2017.
Reactions
Accomplishments and awards
Club competitions
European Champions Cup
Champion: 1985, 1986
European Cup Winners' Cup
Champion: 1987, 1989
Yugoslavian Championship
Champion: 1985
Yugoslavian Cup
Winner: 1985, 1986, 1988
Spanish Cup
Winner: 1989
NBA Finals
Runner-up: 1990
Korać Cup
Runner-up: 1982, 1983, 1988
Spanish Championship
Runner-up: 1989
Personal
Yugoslav First League: most points scored by an individual, in a league game (112).
Spanish ACB League: most points scored by an individual, in a final series game (42).
Spanish ACB League: most 3-point field goals made by an individual, in a final series game (8).
NBA: second highest 3-point field goal percentage (.444) in 1991–92.
NBA: fourth highest field goal percentage among guards (.508) in 1991–92.
NBA: second highest 3-point field goal percentage (.449) 1992–93.
NBA: second highest field goal percentage among guards (.518) 1992–93.
NBA: third best career 3-point field goal percentage (.437).
National teams
Summer Olympics
: 1988, 1992
: 1984
FIBA World Championship
: 1990
: 1986
FIBA EuroBasket
: 1989
: 1987
Summer Universiade
: 1987
: 1983
Balkan Championship for Junior Men
: 1982
: 1982
Balkan Championship for Cadets
: 1981
Balkan Championship
: 1984
FIBA Europe Under-18 Championship
: 1982
Personal
Balkan Championship for Junior Men Best Player: 1982
FIBA World Cup MVP: 1986
FIBA EuroBasket MVP: 1989
Dražen Petrović Memorial Center
A museum named "The Dražen Petrović Memorial Center" was founded in his honor, and constitutes a co-operative effort led by the Dražen Petrović Foundation in conjunction with the Croatian government, the city of Zagreb and the Croatian Museum of Sports. The memorial center idea originated from Petrović's parents, Biserka and Jole Petrovic, and was supported with the contributions of Croatian architects Andrija Rusan and Niksa Bilic. All of the articles presented in the center have been collected and categorized by the Croatian Museum of Sports. The organization and operations of the center have been provided by the Dražen Petrović Foundation, which is led by Petrović's family. The Center contains his No. 3 New Jersey Nets jersey and the watch that stopped when he died in a car crash. The center features 1,000 memorabilia items and a video of his basketball highlights.
The official opening of the museum was held on 7 June 2006, while the official opening of the center to the public began at the end of December 2006. The square on which the center is operated upon has been renamed to Dražen Petrović Square in his honor. In 2013, former NBA MVP Derrick Rose visited the museum.
See also
List of basketball players who died during their careers
List of basketball players who have scored 100 points in a single game
Yugoslav First Federal Basketball League career stats leaders
References
Sources
External links
Drazen Petrovic Museum
Drazen Petrovic Yugoslavia FIBA Profile
Drazen Petrovic Croatia FIBA Profile
FIBA Europe Profile
Drazen Petrovic at the Basketball Hall of Fame
Euroleague.net 50 greatest contributors
In Honor of Dražen Petrović
FIBA Hall of Fame profile
1964 births
1993 deaths
1986 FIBA World Championship players
1990 FIBA World Championship players
Basketball players at the 1984 Summer Olympics
Basketball players at the 1988 Summer Olympics
Basketball players at the 1992 Summer Olympics
Basketball players from Šibenik
Burials at Mirogoj Cemetery
Croatian expatriate basketball people in Spain
Croatian expatriate basketball people in the United States
Croatian men's basketball players
Croatian people of Serbian descent
Euroscar award winners
FIBA EuroBasket-winning players
FIBA Hall of Fame inductees
FIBA World Championship-winning players
KK Cibona players
KK Šibenik players
Liga ACB players
Medalists at the 1983 Summer Universiade
Medalists at the 1984 Summer Olympics
Medalists at the 1988 Summer Olympics
Medalists at the 1992 Summer Olympics
Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductees
National Basketball Association players from Croatia
National Basketball Association players with retired numbers
New Jersey Nets players
Olympic basketball players of Croatia
Olympic basketball players of Yugoslavia
Olympic bronze medalists for Yugoslavia
Olympic medalists in basketball
Olympic silver medalists for Croatia
Olympic silver medalists for Yugoslavia
Portland Trail Blazers draft picks
Portland Trail Blazers players
Real Madrid Baloncesto players
Recipients of the Olympic Order
Road incident deaths in Germany
Shooting guards
Universiade gold medalists for Yugoslavia
Universiade medalists in basketball
Universiade silver medalists for Yugoslavia
Yugoslav expatriate sportspeople in Spain
Yugoslav expatriate sportspeople in the United States
Yugoslav men's basketball players | false | [
"Honey toast (Japanese:ハニートースト), also known as Shibuya toast, brick toast, and hanito is a Japanese dessert that originated from the district of Shibuya during the Japanese asset price bubble, often served at karaoke bars. It is also popular in other parts of the world, most prominently Taiwan and Singapore.\n\nPreparation\nThe main component of honey toast is bread, preferably pain de mie. The bread is hollowed out and then cut into small cubes. The cubes and the loaf shell are then caramelized, by brushing them with a butter and honey mixture and placing them into the oven until golden. While layering the baked cubes back into the loaf, it is filled with what one may desire, most commonly macerated fruits, toasted nuts, various flavors of syrup or whipped cream. As a finishing touch, the toast is topped with ice cream. The Taiwanese version of the dish however is more subdued, usually only topped with condensed milk, custard or cheese.\n\nReferences\n\nJapanese desserts and sweets",
"Parmo, or Teesside Parmesan, is a dish originating in Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire, and a popular item of take-away food in the Teesside area. It consists of a breaded cutlet of chicken or pork topped with a white béchamel sauce and cheese, usually cheddar cheese. The name of the dish is a reference to the dish chicken parmigiana, which is made with tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese. In an April 2019 survey, parmo ranked 20th in Britain's Top 20 Favourite Takeaways.\n\nHistory\n\nOrigins\nParmo is said to have been created by Nicos Harris, a chef with the United States Army in World War II. He was wounded in France, but was brought to the United Kingdom to be treated in a British hospital. Eventually, he moved to Middlesbrough and opened a restaurant, The American Grill, on Linthorpe Road, where he created parmo in 1958. His son-in-law, Caramello, still lived in Teesside as of 2014, continuing the family tradition.\n\nSupermarket sales\nIn 2009, supermarket chain Asda started selling parmo in their shops in Teesside. They claimed they were selling 6,000 chicken parmos a week, making them at the time the shop's fastest-selling line. Asda later expanded this line to branches outside Teesside.\n\nVariations\n\nCommon parmo variants include additional toppings and preparations of the meat. These include:\n\nParmo hotshot - a spicy version topped with cheese, pepperoni, peppers, garlic butter and chilli\nParmo Kiev - topped with cheese, garlic butter and mushrooms\nParmo Italia - topped with cheese, garlic butter and ham, with a further topping of mozzarella cheese\nMeat feast parmo - topped with pepperoni, chicken and ham\nParmo Zeno - topped with cheese and onions\n\nNutritional information\nIn 2007, North Yorkshire Trading Standards conducted a survey of 25 fast food dishes. A large parmo with chips and salad they tested contained about 2,600 calories and 150g of fat.\n\nSee also\n\n Escalopes\n List of deep fried foods\n Wiener Schnitzel\n Chicken fried steak\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nTeesside recipe\nParmo: Teesside's fast food sensation, BBC Inside Out – North East, 11 June 2007\nApril Fool Evening Gazette article about the \"history\" of parmo\n\nBreaded cutlets\nEnglish cuisine\nFast food\nFood and drink introduced in 1958\nYorkshire cuisine\nDeep fried foods"
] |
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"Dražen Petrović",
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"1984 Summer Olympics were Petrovic's first competition of a grand scale with the Yugoslav senior national team,",
"What place did they get",
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"when did he do university games",
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"who did they lose too",
"semi-final game against the Soviet Union. At the 1987 EuroBasket, Petrovic again returned with bronze, as Yugoslavia lost to the hosts and gold medalists Greece.",
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"An excellent club season with Real Madrid was topped by Petrovic's 1989 accomplishment with the Yugoslav national team: at the EuroBasket"
] | C_87c16213bea04fa5ad751999800b87e8_0 | When did he go to South America | 7 | When did Dražen Petrović go to South America? | Dražen Petrović | Petrovic's national team debut came at the age of 15, at the Under-18 Balkan Championship in Turkey, where the Yugoslavian junior team won the bronze. The young man regularly played for the Yugoslavian national team in the Balkan Championships, also winning gold with the junior team and silver with the senior team. He also brought back the silver from the 1982 FIBA Europe Under-18 Championship in Bulgaria. The 1984 Summer Olympics were Petrovic's first competition of a grand scale with the Yugoslav senior national team, and the bronze medal won in Los Angeles that summer became his first Olympic medal. Third place was also earned at the 1986 FIBA World Championship, remembered for the last minute thriller in the semi-final game against the Soviet Union. At the 1987 EuroBasket, Petrovic again returned with bronze, as Yugoslavia lost to the hosts and gold medalists Greece. The University Games, held in Zagreb in 1987, saw the Yugoslavian squad with Petrovic win the gold. In the 1988 Summer Olympics, Yugoslavia with Petrovic, earned 2nd place, as they lost once more to the Soviet powerhouse. An excellent club season with Real Madrid was topped by Petrovic's 1989 accomplishment with the Yugoslav national team: at the EuroBasket in Zagreb, the young Yugoslavian team went all the way, defeating Greece more than comfortably in the championship game. Petrovic was the tournament's second leading scorer and most valuable player. The very next year, the summer in between the two most frustrating seasons of his professional career, as he struggled for playing time with the Trail Blazers, Petrovic was again making history with the national team, as Yugoslavia became world champions, after beating the Soviet Union for the gold in Buenos Aires, at the 1990 FIBA World Championship. CANNOTANSWER | Yugoslavia became world champions, after beating the Soviet Union for the gold in Buenos Aires, at the 1990 FIBA World Championship. | Dražen Petrović (; 22 October 1964 – 7 June 1993) was a Yugoslav and Croatian professional basketball player. A shooting guard, he initially achieved success playing professional basketball in Europe in the 1980s, before joining the National Basketball Association (NBA) in 1989.
A star on multiple international basketball stages, Petrović earned two silver medals (1988, 1992) and one bronze (1984) at the Summer Olympic Games, a gold (1990) and a bronze (1986) at the FIBA World Cup, and a gold (1989) and a bronze (1987) at the FIBA EuroBasket. He was the MVP of the 1986 FIBA World Championship, and the MVP of the 1989 FIBA EuroBasket. With Cibona Zagreb, Petrović also won two consecutive EuroLeague championships in 1985 and 1986. He first represented Yugoslavia's senior national team and, later, Croatia's senior national team. He earned four Euroscars, and was named Mr. Europa twice. In 1985, he received the Golden Badge award for the best athlete of Yugoslavia.
Seeking a bigger arena after his career start in Europe, Petrović joined the NBA in 1989, as a member of the Portland Trail Blazers. After playing mostly off the bench that year, Petrović experienced a breakthrough following a trade to the New Jersey Nets. While starting for the Nets, he became one of the league's best shooting guards. He was named one of FIBA's 50 Greatest Players in 1991. On 7 June 1993, Petrović's career and life were cut short, after he died in a car accident, at the age of 28.
In 1993, Petrović's jersey number 3 was retired by the Nets, and the Dražen Petrović Basketball Hall was named after him in his honor. He also received the Olympic Order in 1993. In 2002, he was posthumously enshrined into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. In 2006, the Dražen Petrović Award was created in his honor. In 2007, he was posthumously inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame. He was named one of the 50 Greatest EuroLeague Contributors in 2008. In 2013, he was voted the best European Basketball player in history, by players at the 2013 FIBA EuroBasket.
Petrović is considered a crucial part of the vanguard to the present-day mass influx of European players into the NBA, and to this day he is viewed as a national hero in Croatia.
Early years
Born in Šibenik, Yugoslavia (present-day Croatia), Dražen Petrović was the second child of Jovan "Jole" Petrović, a police officer, and Biserka (), a librarian. His father was born in a Serb family in Zagora, near Trebinje in Bosnia and Herzegovina. His mother was born in Bilice, near Šibenik, and was from a traditional conservative Croat family, devoutly Roman Catholic. The couple's eldest child, Aleksandar, was the first to play basketball and rose to become one of the top point guards in former Yugoslavia. The Petrović brothers are second cousins to the Serbian basketball player Dejan Bodiroga.
Šibenka (1979–1983)
At the age of 13, Petrović started playing in the youth selections of the local club Šibenka; at the age of 15, he had already made the club's first team, just as Šibenka had earned a place in the Yugoslav national first division. With young Petrović as the star of the team, Šibenka reached the final of the third level Pan-European club competition, the FIBA Radivoj Korać Cup twice (1981–82 and 1982–83), where they lost to the French League club Limoges CSP both times. In 1983, the 18-year-old Petrović hit two free throws in Šibenka's victory over Bosna Sarajevo in the final playoff game of the Yugoslavian League's 1982–83 season's club championship. However, on the day after the club won the championship, the Basketball Federation of Yugoslavia stripped the title from Šibenka, because of irregularities in refereeing. The league's championship was then awarded to Bosna, after Šibenka refused to play in a rematch.
Petrović increased his scoring numbers in each successive season that he played with Šibenka. In the 1979–80 Yugoslav FFL season, he scored 13 points in 16 games, for an average of 0.8 points per game. In the 1980–81 Yugoslav FFL season, he scored 39 points in 20 games, for an average of 2.0 points per game. In the 1981–82 Yugoslav FFL season, he scored 392 points in 24 games, for an average of 16.3 points per game. In the 1982–83 Yugoslav FFL season, he scored 758 points in 31 games, for an average of 24.5 points per game. In total, he scored 1,202 points in 91 games played with Šibenka in the Yugoslav first division, for a scoring average of 13.2 points per game.
Rise to European stardom
Cibona Zagreb (1984–1988)
1984–85 season
After a year's mandatory service in the Yugoslav military, Petrović joined his older brother Aco and moved to Cibona Zagreb, to form what was at that time, the best back court duo in Europe. In his first season in Cibona, Petrović won both the national Yugoslav League championship and the Yugoslav National Cup title. In national domestic league play, in the 1984–85 Yugoslav FFL season, Petrović scored a total of 878 points in 27 games played, for a scoring average of 32.5 points per game.
On 6 December 1984, in the 1984–85 season of Europe's top-level club competition, the FIBA European Champions Cup (EuroLeague), Petrović scored 44 points in a game against the Spanish League club Real Madrid. He scored 29 of the 44 points in the second half of the game. Petrović also scored 36 points in the league's 1985 Final against Real Madrid. Cibona won the game, by a score of 87–78, and the win brought the club their first top-tier level European Champions Cup title. That season, in Europe's top-level club competition, which eventually became known as the EuroLeague, Petrović scored a total of 463 points in 15 games played, for a scoring average of 30.9 points per game.
1985–86 season
On 5 October 1985, in a Yugoslav First Federal League game against Union Olimpija Ljubljana, Petrović scored 112 points, in Cibona's 158–77 blowout win. He scored 67 of the 112 points in the first half of the game. During the game, Petrović shot 40/60 from the field, 10/20 from 3-point range, and 22/22 from the free-throw line.
The 112 points scored was the most points ever scored in a single game in the history of the Yugoslav First Federal League. It broke the league's previous single-game scoring record of 74 points, which was set in 1962, by Radivoj Korać. Korać achieved that record while playing with OKK Beograd, in a game against Mladost Zagreb. However, the record was achieved under unusual circumstances.
Olimpija Ljubljana had failed to fulfill their player registration administrative obligations in time for the game. Olimpija general manager Radovan Lorbek was reportedly late with submitting a registration letter to the Basketball Federation of Yugoslavia (KSJ) headquarters in Belgrade. That rendered their entire men's first team roster ineligible for the Yugoslav First Federal League's regular season opening game, and forced them to instead field players for the game from their youth systems. Unfortunately, Olimpija didn't have an under-18 youth squad that season. So the club had to go to Zagreb to play the game with even younger players. In the end, the team that Olimpija took to Zagreb to play against Cibona, consisted of players in the under-16 and under-17 age groups, which included: Igor Đurović, Matjaž Strmole, Jože Maček, Dag Kralj, Tine Erjavec, Jure Zorčič, Gregor Stražiščar, Andrej Novina, and Tine Merzelj.
Cibona, for their part, decided to use a mixed roster for the game, consisting of players from their youth system, plus their senior men's team's twenty-one-year-old young superstar Dražen Petrović, who used the opportunity of playing against the inferior youth squad opposition to shatter Korać's single-game Yugoslav League scoring record of 74 points. Petrović ended up with 112 points scored in the game, despite the fact that before the game, he had reportedly announced his intention to exit from the game, once he had surpassed Korać's 74 points record. Petrović was one of only five Cibona players to get on the score sheet that day. The other four were eighteen-year-old Dražen Anzulović with 16 points, eighteen-year-old Vladimir Rizman with 14 points, nineteen-year-old Ivo Nakić with 12 points, and Ivan Šoštarec with 4 points.
Overall, in the 1985–86 Yugoslav FFL season, Petrović scored a total of 1,241 points in 30 games played, for a scoring average of 41.4 points per game. That season, Petrović also won another Yugoslav National Cup title with Cibona. On 7 February 1986, Petrović scored 55 points in a Yugoslav Cup game against Union Olimpija Ljubljana. He also scored 46 points in the 1986 Yugoslav Cup's Final against Cibona's old rivals Bosna Sarajevo.
On 4 December 1985, in a 1985–86 season FIBA European Champions Cup (EuroLeague) game against the Israeli Super League club Maccabi Tel Aviv, Petrović scored 44 points. In the same European Champions Cup season, on 11 December 1985, he had 47 points and 25 assists in a game against the then reigning Italian League champions Simac Milano. In another European Champions Cup game that season, on 16 January 1986, Petrović scored 49 points, and had 20 assists against the Spanish League club Real Madrid. On 22 January 1986, in a European Champions Cup game against the French League club Limoges, Petrović made ten 3-pointers, including seven in a row during a first-half stretch, for a final tally of 51 points and 10 assists in the game. The 51 points scored was also his personal career-high scored in a single EuroLeague game.
Eventually, Petrović won his second straight FIBA European Champions Cup (EuroLeague) title with Cibona, as he scored 22 points in the league's 1986 Final, in which Cibona defeated the USSR Premier League club Žalgiris Kaunas, which starred the legendary Arvydas Sabonis. In the 1985–86 European Champions Cup (EuroLeague) season, Petrović scored a total of 555 points in 15 games played, for a scoring average of 37.0 points per game.
1986–87 season
In the 1986–87 Yugoslav FFL season, Petrović scored a total of 932 points in 25 games played, for a scoring average of 37.3 points per game.
In that same season, Cibona competed in the European-wide secondary level FIBA European Cup Winners' Cup competition. Petrović led Cibona to the championship, as he scored 28 points against the Italian League club Scavolini Pesaro, in the league's 1986–87 season Final. It was the third straight European-wide club championship for Petrović and Cibona.
In the 1986–87 FIBA European Cup Winners Cup season, Petrović scored a total of 270 points in 8 games played, for a scoring average of 33.8 points per game.
1987–88 season
With Cibona, Petrović again won the Yugoslav National Cup title in 1988. In the 1987–88 Yugoslav FFL season, Petrović scored a total of 860 points in 24 games played, for a scoring average of 35.8 points per game.
In that same season, Cibona competed in Europe's third level club competition, the FIBA Korać Cup. On 14 October 1987, Petrović scored 62 points in a 1987–88 FIBA Korać Cup season game against the Finnish League club KTP Kotka. Petrović led Cibona to the Finals of the Korać Cup, where they lost to the Spanish League club Real Madrid. During the Korać Cup season, Petrović scored a total of 401 points in 12 games played, for a scoring average of 33.4 points per game.
During his four seasons with Cibona, Petrović scored a total of 3,911 points, in 106 games played in the national Yugoslav First Federal League, for a scoring average of 36.9 points per game. With Cibona, he also scored a total of 559 points, in 20 games played, for a scoring average of 28.0 points per game, in the Yugoslav Cup competition. In the three Pan-European club competitions that he played in with Cibona, he scored a total of 1,689 points in 50 games played, for a scoring average of 33.8 points per game.
With both Šibenka and Cibona, Petrović's career scoring numbers in the Yugoslav First Federal League were 5,113 points scored, in 197 games played, for a career scoring average of 26.0 points per game. In the top-level European-wide club competition, the FIBA European Champions Cup, which is now known as the EuroLeague, Petrović scored a career total of 1,018 points in 30 games played, for a career scoring average of 33.9 points per game.
Real Madrid (1988–1989)
After his string of very successful seasons with Cibona Zagreb, Petrović needed new challenges that Cibona and the Yugoslav First Federal League could no longer offer him. The NBA's Portland Trail Blazers had already used their third-round draft pick on the young Petrović, in the 1986 NBA draft, but he had decided to postpone his departure to the United States. In 1988, rather than go to the NBA, he instead signed with the Spanish League club Real Madrid, for around US$4 million in net income. At that time, Yugoslav sporting laws stipulated that players could not professionally move abroad until they had reached the age of 28. Petrović was still only 23 when he signed with Real Madrid. In 2014, José Antonio Arízaga, the sports agent who played a key role in Petrović's 1988 summer transfer from Cibona to Real, recalled a few details from the transaction: "I spoke to Mirko Novosel, Dražen's head coach at Cibona, and he told me two things. One, every problem in Yugoslavia can be taken care of with the right amount of money, and two, if Dražen leaves, every other player under 28 will be leaving and it'll be chaos. So, you can imagine all the individuals I had to bribe and all the places where I had to pay up, in order to circumvent this law".
1988–89 season
Petrović helped Real to win the title of the 1989 edition of the Spanish King's Cup, over their Catalan rivals, Barcelona. In the Spanish ACB League's Finals, Real Madrid narrowly lost to Barcelona, in the fifth and decisive game of the series. In the Spanish League's 1988–89 ACB season, Petrović was the league's regular season top scorer. Including the playoffs, he scored a total of 1,327 points, in 47 games played, for a scoring average of 28.2 points per game. Petrović's first season in Spain's ACB was also his last, but he still holds the ACB's single-game Finals records for the most points scored, with 42, and for the most three-pointers made, with 8.
In European-wide club competition, Real Madrid competed in the European secondary level FIBA European Cup Winners' Cup. On 14 March 1989, in the 1988–89 Cup Winners' Cup Final against the Italian League club Snaidero Caserta, Petrović tied his previous best scoring performance in a European-wide club competition with 62 points.
Petrović was pressured to join the NBA, by the Trail Blazers, who had drafted him 60th overall in 1986. Being motivated by the potential new challenges that the NBA presented, Petrović finally decided to try to establish himself in the league. He left Spain rather abruptly, at the end of the season; the Blazers assisted him in the process, by buying out his contract with Real Madrid, for as much as US$1.5 million. Petrović finally joined the Blazers for the 1989–90 season.
NBA career
Portland Trail Blazers (1989–1991)
The Blazers valued Petrović as a shooter, but were concerned that he might not possess the quickness to play guard or the foot speed to play defense. They brought him onto the team primarily as an outside threat to shoot three-pointers. In the Blazers' offensive scheme he was to set up behind the line, receive a passed ball and go directly up to release his shot. Petrović was an aggressive, attacking player who was used to creating his shot and shots for his teammates. Taking the ball out of his hands and making him a static shooter was foreign to him. Making matters worse, the Blazers already had a full rotation of guards, with a starting backcourt of Clyde Drexler and Terry Porter, and with veteran Danny Young as a reserve. Consequently, the reigning La Gazzetta dello Sport Euroscar European Player of the Year saw limited playing time. He had difficulty being productive in the limited role the Blazers had for him. In his rookie year during the 1989–90 NBA season, he averaged 7.4 points in 12 minutes per game. The following season veteran guard Danny Ainge was added to the team, and Petrović's playing time dropped further to 7 minutes a game. In many statements made prior to arriving in Portland, Petrović had said he saw a lack of playing time as the only possible obstacle to his success in the NBA. He was determined to be a success in basketball's highest arena. His lack of playing time during his second season in the league brought Petrović's frustration to a climax:
"I have nothing to say to Adelman any more and vice versa. Eighteen months have passed by, too long. I have to leave to prove how much I am worth. Never in my life did I sit on the bench and I don’t intend to do that in Portland."
At his insistence, 38 games into the season (20 of which held no playing time for Petrović), a three-way trade with the Denver Nuggets sent him to the New Jersey Nets in exchange for a first-round pick in the following draft and Walter Davis, who was sent from Denver to Portland.
New Jersey Nets (1991–1993)
On 23 January 1991, Petrović became a member of the New Jersey Nets. He joined a team that had not reached the playoffs since 1986, but had rookie Derrick Coleman, the number one selection from the 1990 draft. He was immediately given a role on the floor, with 20.5 minutes per game. His scoring over the remaining 43 games increased to 12.6 points per game, one of the league's best points-per-minute ratios. The following year, he and Coleman were joined by Kenny Anderson, giving the team a third talented new addition. Petrović was made a starter for the 1991–92 season, his first full season with the Nets. Petro, as the Americans had dubbed him, did not miss a single game. On 13 March 1992, Petrović scored 39 points while shooting 65% from the field, and 100% (3 of 3) from 3 point range, in a 110-108 win against the Boston Celtics. His determination, hard work and aggressive on-court demeanor established him as a team leader. In 36.9 minutes on the floor he averaged 20.6 points. Petrović led the Nets in field-goal shooting and free-throw shooting, and his field goal percentage of 51% placed him near the top of all NBA guards. More importantly, his success translated into success for the team. The Nets made the playoffs, recording 14 more wins than the previous year. On 23 April 1992, in Game 1 of their first round matchup against the Cleveland Cavaliers, Petrović scored a playoff career-high 40 points. The Nets would eventually lose the best of 5 series 3 games to 1. The following season saw Petrović increase his scoring average to 22.3 ppg, 11th best in the league.
On 6 December 1992, he was named MVP of the Week. On 4 February 1993, Petrović played a career-high 53 minutes and scored 35 points in an overtime win against the Seattle SuperSonics. For the second season in a row he shot 45% from the three-point arc. His field goal percentage of 52% was again near the top for all guards. American media honored him with a selection to the All-NBA Third Team. However, he did not receive an invitation to the 1993 All-Star game. Among the top 13 scorers in the NBA that season, he was the only one not invited.
In an interview on the Scoop B Radio Podcast, Petrović's Nets teammate, Chucky Brown marveled at Petrović's healing ability. Brown told Brandon Scoop B Robinson that he remembered Petrović spraining his knee and was slated to miss two months. Petrović rehabbed so hard that he ended up only missing two weeks.
Career statistics
NBA
Regular season
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|Portland
| 77 || 0 || 12.6 || .485 || .459 || .844 || 1.4 || 1.5 || .3 || .0 || 7.6
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|Portland
| 18 || 0 || 7.4 || .451 || .167 || .682 || 1.0 || 1.1 || .3 || .0 || 4.4
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 43 || 0 || 20.5 || .500 || .373 || .861 || 2.1 || 1.5 || .9 || .0 || 12.6
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 82 || 82 || 36.9 || .508 || .444 || .808 || 3.1 || 3.1 || 1.3 || .1 || 20.6
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 70 || 67 || 38.0 || .518 || .449 || .870 || 2.7 || 3.5 || 1.3 || .2 || 22.3
|- class="sortbottom"
| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"|Career
| 290 || 149 || 26.4 || .506 || .437 || .841 || 2.3 || 2.4 || .9 || .1 || 15.4
Playoffs
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|1990
| style="text-align:left;"|Portland
| 20 || 0 || 12.7 || .440 || .313 || .583 || 1.6 || 1.0 || .3 || .0 || 6.1
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|1992
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 4 || 4 || 40.8 || .539 || .333 || .846 || 2.5 || 3.3 || 1.0 || .3 || 24.3
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|1993
| style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey
| 5 || 5 || 38.6 || .455 || .333 || .800 || 1.8 || 1.8 || .4 || .0 || 15.6
|- class="sortbottom"
| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"|Career
| 29 || 9 || 21.0 || .474 || .324 || .696 || 1.8 || 1.4 || .4 || .0 || 10.2
EuroLeague
|-
| style="text-align:left;background:#afe6ba;"|1984–85†
| style="text-align:left;"|Cibona Zagreb
| 15 || || || || || || || || || || 30.9 ||
|-
| style="text-align:left;background:#afe6ba;"|1985–86†
| style="text-align:left;"|Cibona Zagreb
| 15 || || || || || || || || || || 37.0 ||
|- class="sortbottom"
| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"|Career
| 30 || || || || || || || || || || ||
National team career
Yugoslavia
Petrović's national team debut came at the age of 15, at the Under-18 Balkan Championship in Turkey, where the Yugoslavia junior team won the bronze. The young man regularly played for the Yugoslavia national team in the Balkan Championships, also winning gold with the junior team and silver with the senior team. He also brought back the silver from the 1982 FIBA Europe Under-18 Championship in Bulgaria.
The 1984 Summer Olympics were Petrović's first competition of a grand scale with the Yugoslavia senior national team, and the bronze medal won in Los Angeles that summer became his first Olympic medal. Third place was also earned at the 1986 FIBA World Championship, remembered for the last minute thriller in the semi-final game against the Soviet Union. Petrović was named the MVP of the tournament. At the 1987 EuroBasket, Petrović again returned with bronze, as Yugoslavia lost to the hosts and gold medalists Greece. The University Games, held in Zagreb in 1987, saw the Yugoslavian squad with Petrović win the gold. In the 1988 Summer Olympics, Yugoslavia with Petrović, earned 2nd place, as they lost once more to the Soviet powerhouse.
An excellent club season with Real Madrid was topped by Petrović's 1989 accomplishment with the Yugoslavia national team: at the EuroBasket in Zagreb, the young Yugoslavian team went all the way, defeating Greece more than comfortably in the championship game. Petrović was the tournament's second leading scorer and Most Valuable Player. The very next year, the summer in between the two most frustrating seasons of his professional career, as he struggled for playing time with the Trail Blazers, Petrović was again making history with the national team, as Yugoslavia became world champions, after beating the Soviet Union for the gold in Buenos Aires, at the 1990 FIBA World Championship.
Overall, Petrović represented Yugoslavia's senior national team in 155 games, in which he scored a total of 3,258 points, for a career scoring average of 21.0 points per game.
Croatia
The 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, marked the first summer Olympics featuring the independent Croatia, and Petrović was the leader of the Croatian national basketball team at the Olympic basketball tournament. Losing only to the American Dream Team in the group stage, a strong and inspired Croatian team emerged victorious from the Semifinals against the revamped Soviet team, thanks to clutch free throws executed by Petrović, and faced off against the Americans for the gold. Urged on by Petrović's competitiveness and confidence, the Croatians fared well in the first ten minutes of the game, taking a 25–23 lead on a Franjo Arapović dunk and the subsequent made free throw. As the game progressed, however, the now-legendary team composed of NBA stars proved too tough for Croatia: the Americans won 117–85, sending Petrović, the game's leading scorer with 24 points, and his teammates, home with silver medals.
In the period during which Petrović played for the senior Croatian national team (1992–1993), he appeared in 40 games and scored a total of 1,002 points, for a career scoring average of 25.1 points per game. His highest single-game point tally came against Estonia, on 31 May 1993 (48 points). Counting the senior national team games that he played in with both Yugoslavia's and Croatia's national teams, Petrović scored a total of 4,260 points in 195 games played, for a career scoring average of 21.8 points per game.
Death and legacy
In the summer of 1993, after his best NBA season and the Nets' first-round elimination by the Cleveland Cavaliers, Petrović traveled to Berlin, where the Croatian national team was playing a qualification tournament for the 1993 EuroBasket. He was contemplating departure from the Nets, disappointed with the fact that the Nets had not yet extended his contract. He told American reporters that the lack of recognition in the league made him also consider leaving the NBA completely and playing club basketball in Greece. There were at least two Greek clubs ready to offer Petrović three-year contracts worth US$7.5 million net. Petrović decided to skip the connection flight back to Zagreb and drive with his girlfriend back to Croatia.
Petrović died in a traffic accident at about 5:20 p.m. on 7 June 1993. On the rain-drenched Autobahn 9, he was a passenger in a car that was cut off by a semi-truck at Denkendorf near Ingolstadt in the German state of Bavaria. According to the report of the Ingolstadt police, that afternoon a truck broke through the Autobahn median; the driver was trying to avoid a collision with a personal vehicle in his own lane and lost control of the truck, crashing through the median barrier and finally coming to a stop and blocking all three lanes of traffic going in the opposite direction. Seconds later, the Volkswagen Golf carrying a sleeping Petrović in the passenger seat crashed into the truck. Petrovic was ejected from the vehicle. Despite efforts to revive him, he succumbed to severe head injuries. According to the autopsy report, Petrovic died on impact. The driver, Klara Szalantzy, a Hungarian model and basketball player with whom Petrović was romantically involved, and Hilal Edebal, a female Turkish basketball player, sustained grave injuries. It was established that visibility on the road was very poor and that Petrović was not wearing a seatbelt.
Petrović's tomb at Mirogoj Cemetery instantly became a sanctuary for his compatriots. The Cibona stadium was renamed the Dražen Petrović Basketball Hall on 4 October 1993, and the city of Zagreb dedicated a square in his name, which was later followed by Šibenik and Vukovar, while Petrinja dedicated a street to him. Before Game 1 of the 1993 NBA Finals, the NBA held a moment of silence for Petrović, whose death occurred two days before the event began. The Nets retired his number 3 jersey on 11 November 1993. After 1994, the MVP award at the McDonald's Championship bore the name Dražen Petrović Trophy, and the Croatian Olympic Committee's award for young athletes was named for him in 2006. On 29 April 1995, a statue commemorating Petrović's significance to the world of sports was erected in front of the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland, thus making him only the second athlete to receive this honor. On 9 July 2001, having defeated Patrick Rafter to win the men's singles title at Wimbledon, Croatian tennis player Goran Ivanišević dedicated the win to Petrović; Ivanišević wore Petrović's Nets jersey amidst the 100,000 strong crowd celebrating his victory in Split. Petrović was inducted posthumously into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2002. In 2006, the 13th anniversary of Petrović's death was marked with the opening of the Dražen Petrović Memorial Center in Zagreb, dedicated to his life and achievements, with ten themed galleries of multimedia content outlining his entire career and a statue of Dražen in shooting position in front of it. Petrović was enshrined in the FIBA Hall of Fame in 2007.
The 2010 documentary, Once Brothers (part of the ESPN 30 for 30 series), portrays the achievements of the Yugoslavia national basketball team in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and how the Yugoslav Wars tore the team apart. It explores Petrović's broken friendship with Serbian/Yugoslav player Vlade Divac. In 2011, a statue of him as a little boy sitting on a bench with a ball was unveiled in Šibenik, and his old room was renovated the way it looked when he was young, as a first part of opening a Memorial Center in his hometown. During the 2012 Three Point Shootout, New Jersey Nets guard Anthony Morrow wore Petrović's jersey in the latter's honor. In 2015, Australian writer Todd Spehr released a 470-page biography on Petrović, titled Dražen: The Remarkable Life & Legacy of the Mozart of Basketball. On 3 June 2015, Croatian basketball journalists Marjan Crnogaj and Vlado Radicevic released a 487-page biography which global paperback edition was released on 14 October 2017.
Reactions
Accomplishments and awards
Club competitions
European Champions Cup
Champion: 1985, 1986
European Cup Winners' Cup
Champion: 1987, 1989
Yugoslavian Championship
Champion: 1985
Yugoslavian Cup
Winner: 1985, 1986, 1988
Spanish Cup
Winner: 1989
NBA Finals
Runner-up: 1990
Korać Cup
Runner-up: 1982, 1983, 1988
Spanish Championship
Runner-up: 1989
Personal
Yugoslav First League: most points scored by an individual, in a league game (112).
Spanish ACB League: most points scored by an individual, in a final series game (42).
Spanish ACB League: most 3-point field goals made by an individual, in a final series game (8).
NBA: second highest 3-point field goal percentage (.444) in 1991–92.
NBA: fourth highest field goal percentage among guards (.508) in 1991–92.
NBA: second highest 3-point field goal percentage (.449) 1992–93.
NBA: second highest field goal percentage among guards (.518) 1992–93.
NBA: third best career 3-point field goal percentage (.437).
National teams
Summer Olympics
: 1988, 1992
: 1984
FIBA World Championship
: 1990
: 1986
FIBA EuroBasket
: 1989
: 1987
Summer Universiade
: 1987
: 1983
Balkan Championship for Junior Men
: 1982
: 1982
Balkan Championship for Cadets
: 1981
Balkan Championship
: 1984
FIBA Europe Under-18 Championship
: 1982
Personal
Balkan Championship for Junior Men Best Player: 1982
FIBA World Cup MVP: 1986
FIBA EuroBasket MVP: 1989
Dražen Petrović Memorial Center
A museum named "The Dražen Petrović Memorial Center" was founded in his honor, and constitutes a co-operative effort led by the Dražen Petrović Foundation in conjunction with the Croatian government, the city of Zagreb and the Croatian Museum of Sports. The memorial center idea originated from Petrović's parents, Biserka and Jole Petrovic, and was supported with the contributions of Croatian architects Andrija Rusan and Niksa Bilic. All of the articles presented in the center have been collected and categorized by the Croatian Museum of Sports. The organization and operations of the center have been provided by the Dražen Petrović Foundation, which is led by Petrović's family. The Center contains his No. 3 New Jersey Nets jersey and the watch that stopped when he died in a car crash. The center features 1,000 memorabilia items and a video of his basketball highlights.
The official opening of the museum was held on 7 June 2006, while the official opening of the center to the public began at the end of December 2006. The square on which the center is operated upon has been renamed to Dražen Petrović Square in his honor. In 2013, former NBA MVP Derrick Rose visited the museum.
See also
List of basketball players who died during their careers
List of basketball players who have scored 100 points in a single game
Yugoslav First Federal Basketball League career stats leaders
References
Sources
External links
Drazen Petrovic Museum
Drazen Petrovic Yugoslavia FIBA Profile
Drazen Petrovic Croatia FIBA Profile
FIBA Europe Profile
Drazen Petrovic at the Basketball Hall of Fame
Euroleague.net 50 greatest contributors
In Honor of Dražen Petrović
FIBA Hall of Fame profile
1964 births
1993 deaths
1986 FIBA World Championship players
1990 FIBA World Championship players
Basketball players at the 1984 Summer Olympics
Basketball players at the 1988 Summer Olympics
Basketball players at the 1992 Summer Olympics
Basketball players from Šibenik
Burials at Mirogoj Cemetery
Croatian expatriate basketball people in Spain
Croatian expatriate basketball people in the United States
Croatian men's basketball players
Croatian people of Serbian descent
Euroscar award winners
FIBA EuroBasket-winning players
FIBA Hall of Fame inductees
FIBA World Championship-winning players
KK Cibona players
KK Šibenik players
Liga ACB players
Medalists at the 1983 Summer Universiade
Medalists at the 1984 Summer Olympics
Medalists at the 1988 Summer Olympics
Medalists at the 1992 Summer Olympics
Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductees
National Basketball Association players from Croatia
National Basketball Association players with retired numbers
New Jersey Nets players
Olympic basketball players of Croatia
Olympic basketball players of Yugoslavia
Olympic bronze medalists for Yugoslavia
Olympic medalists in basketball
Olympic silver medalists for Croatia
Olympic silver medalists for Yugoslavia
Portland Trail Blazers draft picks
Portland Trail Blazers players
Real Madrid Baloncesto players
Recipients of the Olympic Order
Road incident deaths in Germany
Shooting guards
Universiade gold medalists for Yugoslavia
Universiade medalists in basketball
Universiade silver medalists for Yugoslavia
Yugoslav expatriate sportspeople in Spain
Yugoslav expatriate sportspeople in the United States
Yugoslav men's basketball players | true | [
"Ryu Shikun (柳時熏, born December 8, 1971 in Seoul, South Korea) is a professional Go player.\n\nBiography \nRyu Shikun is a Go player who grew up in Seoul. He did not move to Japan until he was 15, and just 2 years later he turned professional. He was promoted to 9 dan in 2003.\n\nTitles & runners-up\n\nSee also\nGo players\n\nExternal links\nGoBase Profile\nNihon Ki-in Profile (Japanese)\n\n1971 births\nLiving people\nSouth Korean Go players",
"Miss America: Countdown to the Crown was a four-week-long reality series that followed the 52 Miss America contestants vying for the Miss America 2009 crown, hosted by Tyler Harcott. It aired on the TLC network, part of the Discovery Channel family of networks, to promote and generate interest in the Miss America pageant that would air after the series completion.\n\nEpisodes\n\nSummary\nDuring this reality series, viewers had the opportunity to vote for contestants to help them earn a spot in the top 15 prior to the live telecast, called the \"Golden Sash\". The contestants who earned a \"Golden Sash\" were Miss Indiana Katie Stam, Miss Georgia Chasity Hardman, Miss South Dakota Alexandra Hoffman, and Miss Alabama Amanda Tapley.\n\nUltimately in the Miss America 2009 pageant, Hoffman and Tapley did not go beyond the Top 15, but Stam and Hardman were named Miss America 2009 and first runner-up, respectively.\n\nReferences\n\n2009 American television series debuts\n2009 American television series endings\n2000s American reality television series"
] |
[
"Slash (musician)",
"2002-2008: Velvet Revolver"
] | C_64d627d3f6004403918f23105a60590e_1 | what did slash have to do with Velvet Revolver? | 1 | what did Slash have to do with Velvet Revolver? | Slash (musician) | In 2002, Slash reunited with Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum for a Randy Castillo tribute concert. Realizing that they still had the chemistry of their days in Guns N' Roses, they decided to form a new band together. Former Guns N' Roses guitarist Izzy Stradlin was initially involved, but left after the others decided to find a lead singer. Dave Kushner, who had previously played with McKagan in Loaded, then joined the band on rhythm guitar. For many months, the four searched for a lead singer by listening to offered demo tapes, a monotonous process documented by VH1. Eventually, former Stone Temple Pilots vocalist Scott Weiland joined the band. In 2003, Velvet Revolver played several concerts during the summer and released their first single, "Set Me Free". In June 2004, they released their debut album, Contraband, which debuted at No. 1 on the U.S. chart and sold two million copies, re-establishing Slash as a mainstream performer. A year-and-a-half-long tour followed in support of the album. In July 2007, Velvet Revolver released their second album, Libertad, and embarked on a second tour. During a show in March 2008, Weiland announced to the audience that it would be the band's final tour; he was fired from the band in April 2008, Slash insisted "chemical issues" led to the split. The following month Weiland rejoined Stone Temple Pilots. Despite Weiland's departure, Velvet Revolver did not officially disband. In early 2010, Velvet Revolver began writing new songs and auditioning new singers. By January 2011, the band had recorded nine demos, and was reportedly due to make a decision on their singer. However, the following April, Slash stated that they had been unable to find a suitable singer and that Velvet Revolver would remain on hiatus for the next few years while its members focus on other projects. CANNOTANSWER | Realizing that they still had the chemistry of their days in Guns N' Roses, they decided to form a new band together. | Saul Hudson (born July 23, 1965), better known as Slash, is a British-American musician, songwriter, and record producer from Stoke-on-Trent, England. He is best known as the lead guitarist of the American hard rock band Guns N' Roses, with whom he achieved worldwide success in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Slash has received critical acclaim and is considered one of the greatest guitarists in history.
In 1993, Slash formed the side project Slash's Snakepit and in 1996 he left Guns N' Roses and co-founded the supergroup Velvet Revolver, which re-established him as a mainstream performer in the mid to late 2000s. Slash has released four solo albums: Slash (2010), featuring an array of guest musicians, Apocalyptic Love (2012), World on Fire (2014) and Living the Dream (2018) recorded with his band, Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators. He returned to Guns N' Roses in 2016.
Time magazine named him runner-up on their list of "The 10 Best Electric Guitar Players" in 2009, while Rolling Stone placed him at number 65 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" in 2011. Guitar World ranked his guitar solo in "November Rain" number 6 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Guitar Solos" in 2008, and Total Guitar placed his riff in "Sweet Child o' Mine" at number 1 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Riffs" in 2004. In 2010, Gibson Guitar Corporation ranked Slash as number 34 on their "Top 50 Guitarists of All Time", while their readers landed him number 9 on Gibson's "Top 25 Guitarists of All Time". In 2012, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Guns N' Roses' classic lineup.
Early life
Saul Hudson was born in Stoke-on-Trent on July 23, 1965. He was named after Romanian-American cartoonist Saul Steinberg. His mother, Ola J. Hudson (née Oliver; 1946–2009), was an African-American fashion designer and costumier from the United States, whose clients included David Bowie (whom she also dated), Ringo Starr, and Janis Joplin. His father, Anthony Hudson, is a white English artist who created album covers for musicians such as Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. Of his mixed background, Slash has remarked, "As a musician, I've always been amused that I'm both British and Black; particularly because so many American musicians seem to aspire to be British while so many British musicians, in the 'Sixties in particular, went to such great pains to be Black."
During his early years, Slash was raised by his father and paternal grandparents in Stoke-on-Trent while his mother moved back to her native United States to work in Los Angeles. When he was around five years old, he and his father joined his mother in Los Angeles. His brother, Albion "Ash" Hudson, was born in 1972. Following his parents' separation in 1974, Slash became a self-described "problem child". He chose to live with his mother and was often sent to live with his beloved maternal grandmother whenever his mother had to travel for her job. Slash sometimes accompanied his mother to work, where he met several film and music stars. He was given the nickname "Slash" by actor Seymour Cassel because he was "always in a hurry, zipping around from one thing to another".
In 1979, Slash decided to form a band with his friend Steven Adler. The band never materialized, but it prompted Slash to take up an instrument. Since Adler had designated himself the role of guitarist, Slash decided to learn how to play bass. Equipped with a one-string flamenco guitar given to him by his grandmother, he began taking classes with Robert Wolin, a teacher at Fairfax Music School. During his first lesson, Slash decided to switch from bass to guitar after hearing Wolin play "Brown Sugar" by the Rolling Stones. His decision to play guitar was further influenced by one of his school teachers, who would play songs by Cream and Led Zeppelin for his students. As a result, Slash stated, "When I heard him do that, I said, 'That's what I want to do.'" He vividly recalls the feeling after learning "Come Dancing" from Wired by Jeff Beck, his greatest influence, which he described as "fucking awesome".
A champion BMX rider, Slash put the bike aside to devote himself to playing guitar, practising up to 12 hours a day. Slash attended Beverly Hills High School and was a contemporary of musicians Lenny Kravitz and Zoro.
Career
1981–1985: Early years
Slash joined his first band, Tidus Sloan, in 1981. In 1983, he formed the band Road Crew—named after the Motörhead song "(We Are) The Road Crew"—with his childhood friend Steven Adler, who by then had learned to play drums. He placed an advertisement in a newspaper looking for a bassist, and received a response from Duff McKagan. They auditioned a number of singers, including one-time Black Flag vocalist Ron Reyes, and worked on material that included the main riff of what became the Guns N' Roses song "Rocket Queen". Slash disbanded the group the following year due to them not being able to find a singer, as well as Adler's lack of work ethic compared to himself and McKagan. He, along with Adler, then joined a local band known as Hollywood Rose, which featured singer Axl Rose and guitarist Izzy Stradlin. Following his time with Hollywood Rose, Slash played in a band called Black Sheep and unsuccessfully auditioned for Poison, a glam metal band that he later openly derided.
1985–1996: First stint with Guns N' Roses
In June 1985, Slash was asked by Axl Rose and Izzy Stradlin to join their new band GunsN'Roses, along with Duff McKagan and Steven Adler (replacing founding members Tracii Guns, Ole Beich and Rob Gardner, respectively). They played Los Angeles-area nightclubssuch as the Whisky a Go Go, The Roxy, and The Troubadourand opened for larger acts throughout 1985 and 1986. Before one of the shows in 1985, Slash shoplifted a black felt top hat and a Native American-style silver concho belt from two stores on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. He then combined the hat with parts of the belt to create a piece of custom headwear for the show. He said he "felt really cool" wearing the hat, and it became his trademark. It was during 1985–1986 that the band wrote most of its classic material, including "Welcome to the Jungle," "Sweet Child o' Mine", and "Paradise City," As a result of their rowdy and rebellious behavior, Guns N' Roses quickly received the moniker "Most Dangerous Band in the World," causing Slash to remark, "For some strange reason, Guns N' Roses is like the catalyst for controversy, even before we had any kind of record deal." After being scouted by several major record labels, the band signed with Geffen Records in March 1986.
In July 1987, Guns N' Roses released its debut album, Appetite for Destruction, which, as of September 2008, had sold over 28 million copies worldwide, 18million of which were sold in the United States, making it the best-selling debut album of all time in the U.S. In the summer of 1988, the band achieved its only U.S. No. 1 hit with "Sweet Child O' Mine," a song spearheaded by Slash's guitar riff and solo. In November of that year, Guns N' Roses released G N' R Lies, which sold over five million copies in the U.S. alone, despite containing only eight tracks, four of which were included on the previously released EP Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide. As their success grew, so did interpersonal tensions within the band. In 1989, during a show as opening act for the Rolling Stones, Axl Rose threatened to leave the band if certain members of the band didn't stop "dancing with Mr. Brownstone," a reference to their song of the same name about heroin use. Slash was among those who promised to clean up. However, the following year, Steven Adler was fired from the band because of his heroin addiction; he was replaced by Matt Sorum of The Cult.
In May 1991, the band embarked on the two-and-a-half-year-long Use Your Illusion Tour. The following September, Guns N' Roses released the long-awaited albums Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II, which debuted at No. 2 and No. 1, respectively, on the U.S. chart, a feat not achieved by any other group. Izzy Stradlin abruptly left the band in November; he was replaced by Gilby Clarke of Candy and Kill for Thrills. Slash finished Use Your Illusion Tour with Guns N' Roses on July 17, 1993. In November of that year, the band released "The Spaghetti Incident?", a cover album of mostly punk songs, which proved less successful than its predecessors. Slash then wrote several songs for what would have become the follow-up album to the Use Your Illusion double album. Axl Rose and Duff, however, rejected the material.
With the band's failure to collaborate resulting in no album being recorded, Slash announced in October 1996 that he was no longer a part of Guns N' Roses. Slash stated at the time "Axl and I have not been capable of seeing eye to eye on Guns N' Roses for some time. We tried to collaborate, but at this point, I'm no longer in the band." Paul Tobias's inclusion in the band was another factor in Slash leaving, with Slash having both "creative and personal" differences with Tobias. However, in his 2007 autobiography, Slash stated that his decision to leave the band was not based on artistic differences with Axl Rose, but on Rose's constant lateness to concerts, the alleged legal manipulation Rose used (since denied by Rose) to gain control of the band, and the departures of Steven Adler and Izzy Stradlin.
1994–2002: Slash's Snakepit
In 1994, Slash formed Slash's Snakepit, a side project that featured his Guns N' Roses bandmates Matt Sorum and Gilby Clarke on drums and rhythm guitar respectively, as well as Alice in Chains' Mike Inez on bass and Jellyfish's Eric Dover on vocals. The band recorded Slash's material originally intended for Guns N' Roses, resulting in the release of It's Five O'Clock Somewhere in February 1995. The album was critically praised for ignoring the then-popular conventions of alternative music, and fared well on the charts, eventually selling over one million copies in the US alone despite little promotion from Geffen Records. Slash's Snakepit toured in support of the album with bassist James LoMenzo and drummer Brian Tichy of Pride & Glory, before disbanding in 1996. Slash then toured for two years with the blues rock cover band Slash's Blues Ball.
In 1999, Slash chose to regroup Slash's Snakepit with Rod Jackson on vocals, Ryan Roxie on rhythm guitar, Johnny Griparic on bass, and Matt Laug on drums. Their second album, Ain't Life Grand, was released in October 2000 through Koch Records. It did not sell as well as the band's previous release, and its critical reception was mixed. To promote the album, the band—with Keri Kelli on rhythm guitar—embarked on an extensive world tour in support of AC/DC in the summer of 2000, followed by their own headlining theater tour. Slash disbanded Snakepit in 2002.
2002–2008: Velvet Revolver
In 2002, Slash reunited with Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum for a Randy Castillo tribute concert. Realizing that they still had the chemistry of their days in Guns N' Roses, they decided to form a new band together. Former Guns N' Roses guitarist Izzy Stradlin was initially involved, but left after the others decided to find a lead singer. Dave Kushner, who had previously played with McKagan in Loaded, then joined the band on rhythm guitar. For many months, the four searched for a lead singer by listening to offered demo tapes, a monotonous process documented by VH1. Eventually, former Stone Temple Pilots vocalist Scott Weiland joined the band.
In 2003, Velvet Revolver played several concerts during the summer and released their first single, "Set Me Free". In June 2004, they released their debut album, Contraband, which debuted at No.1 on the U.S. chart and sold two million copies, re-establishing Slash as a mainstream performer. A year-and-a-half-long tour followed in support of the album. In 2005, the band was nominated for three Grammys: Rock Album of the Year, Rock Song, and Hard Rock Performance for their Contraband single "Slither" which won their first and only Grammy. In July 2007, Velvet Revolver released their second album, Libertad, and embarked on a second tour. During a show in March 2008, Weiland announced to the audience that it would be the band's final tour; he was fired from the band in April 2008 and Slash insisted "chemical issues" led to the split. The following month Weiland rejoined Stone Temple Pilots. Despite Weiland's departure, Velvet Revolver did not officially disband.
In early 2010, Velvet Revolver began writing new songs and auditioning new singers. By January 2011, the band had recorded nine demos, and was reportedly due to make a decision on their singer. However, the following April, Slash stated that they had been unable to find a suitable singer and that Velvet Revolver would remain on hiatus for the next few years while its members focus on other projects.
2009–present: "Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators"
In September 2008, Slash began production on his debut solo album. He described the process of recording by himself as "cathartic." He also mentioned working on the album gave him a chance to "...take a little bit of a break from all the politics and the democracy that is a band and just sort of do my own thing for a little bit. Slash's wife Perla revealed that many different artists would appear on the album, saying, "It's going to be Slash and friends, with everyone from Ozzy to Fergie." The album, simply titled Slash, debuted at No. 3 on the U.S. chart upon its release in April 2010. It featured an all-star roster of guest musicians, including Osbourne, Fergie of The Black Eyed Peas, Adam Levine of Maroon 5, M. Shadows of Avenged Sevenfold, Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead, Dave Grohl, Chris Cornell and Iggy Pop. The album also features musical collaborations with former Guns N' Roses members Izzy Stradlin, Steven Adler and Duff McKagan. Preceding the release of the album, Slash had released the Japan-only single "Sahara", featuring Japanese vocalist Koshi Inaba (from B'z). It charted at number four on the Oricon Singles Chart, as well number six on the Billboard Japan Hot 100. It has been awarded Western "Single of the Year" award at the 24th Japan Gold Disc Award by RIAJ. To promote the album, Slash embarked on his first solo world tour with Myles Kennedy of Alter Bridge—who also appeared on the album—on vocals, Bobby Schneck on rhythm guitar, Todd Kerns on bass, and Brent Fitz on drums. Slash opened for Ozzy Osbourne for a leg of Osbourne's Scream World Tour.
Slash began working on his second solo album in June 2011. He collaborated with his touring bandmates Myles Kennedy, Todd Kerns, and Brent Fitz, with the resulting album billed to "Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators". The album, titled Apocalyptic Love, was released on May 22, 2012, debuting at #2 on the Canadian Albums Chart. In 2013 Slash received the award for "Best Guitarist Of The Year 2012" from Loudwire.
Slash embarked on a tour in the summer of 2014, opening for Aerosmith as part of the Let Rock Rule Tour. In May 2014, Slash revealed details of his third solo album World on Fire. The album was again billed as "Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators" and was released on September 10, 2014. It debuted at No. 10 on The Billboard 200 chart.
In March 2018, Slash revealed that a new album with Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators was to be released later in the year. In June 2018, he announced that the album was titled Living the Dream, to be released on September 21, 2018. The group tour for the album began in September 2018, starting with a show in Del Mar, California at the KAABOO Del Mar Music Festival. The tour was concluded the US and Canada again 2019 after completing the Asian leg and Hawaii show with Guns n' Roses. Former touring guitarist Frank Sidoris joined the band full-time for the recording sessions.
In an October 2020 interview with blabbermouth.net bassist/vocalist Todd Kerns confirmed that there would be a new album in 2021, referred to as "SMKC4".
On July 26, 2021, it was confirmed that the record was to be released via Gibson's new record label Gibson Records in February 2022. On October 18, 2021, Slash officially confirmed via Instagram the first single's title "The River is Rising", along with its release date, October 22, 2021. On October 22, the release day of first single, it was announced that the album 4 will be released on February 11, 2022. The tour was also announced the same day, scheduled to start February 8, 2022, in Portland, Oregon.
2016–present: Return to Guns N' Roses
On December 29, 2015, several days after a Guns N' Roses-related teaser was released to movie theaters, Billboard reported that Slash would rejoin the band to headline Coachella 2016, filling the lead guitarist spot vacated when DJ Ashba left the band. Guns N' Roses were officially announced as headliners of Coachella on January 4, 2016, with KROQ reporting Slash and Duff McKagan would rejoin the band. Slash performed with Guns N' Roses for the first time in 23 years during the band's secret warmup gig at the Troubadour in Los Angeles on April 1, 2016. The band then embarked on the Not in This Lifetime... Tour.
Session work
In 1991, Slash played lead guitar on the single "Give In to Me" off Michael Jackson's album Dangerous, as well as for the opening skit of the video for the song "Black or White" off the same album. In 1995, he played guitar on "D.S.", a controversial song from Jackson's HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I album, and in 1997 appeared on the song "Morphine" off the remix album Blood on the Dance Floor: History in the Mix. In 2001, Slash played on "Privacy" off Jackson's final studio album, Invincible. Slash also joined Jackson on several occasions on stage, most notably at the 1995 MTV Video Music Awards playing with Jackson on "Black or White" (and the introduction of "Billie Jean"). He made two surprise appearances during Jackson's 1992 Dangerous World Tour in Spain and Japan and supported the 1999 charity concerts MJ & Friends in Seoul and Munich playing the same set as he did for 1995's MTV Video Music Awards. The last time Slash and Jackson shared a stage was on both 2001 Michael Jackson: 30th Anniversary Special concerts in New York City playing "Black or White" and "Beat It".
In 1991, Slash collaborated with Lenny Kravitz on "Always on the Run", the lead single from Kravitz' album Mama Said. In 1993, Slash appeared on the album Stone Free: A Tribute to Jimi Hendrix, performing "I Don't Live Today" with Paul Rodgers and Band of Gypsys. Slash also guest appeared in Carole King's 1994 live concert, which was captured on her Carole KingIn Concert album. Slash and King appeared on David Letterman to promote the concert. In 1996, he collaborated with Marta Sánchez to record the flamenco-inspired song "Obsession Confession" for the Curdled soundtrack. Later that year, he played with Alice Cooper at Sammy Hagar's club Cabo Wabo in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. The show was released the following year as A Fistful of Alice. In 1997, Slash appeared alongside rapper Ol' Dirty Bastard and rock band Fishbone on Blackstreet's rock remix of their single "Fix"; he also appeared in the accompanying music video. Also in 1997, he played on the single "But You Said I'm Useless" by Japanese musician J. That same year, he contributed music to the soundtrack of Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown; several compositions by Slash's Snakepit can be heard throughout the film. He also appeared on the Insane Clown Posse album The Great Milenko on the track "Halls of Illusions".
In 2002, Slash played on the title track to Elán's album Street Child. In 2003, he participated in the Yardbirds' comeback record Birdland; he played lead guitar on the track "Over, Under, Sideways, Down". In 2006, Slash played on a cover of "In the Summertime" on keyboardist Derek Sherinian's solo album Blood of the Snake; he was also featured in the accompanying music video. In 2007, he appeared on Paulina Rubio's single "Nada Puede Cambiarme". In 2008, Slash played guitar on the film score of The Wrestler, composed by Clint Mansell. Slash was the featured guitarist on the 2008 Italian hit single "Gioca Con Me" by Italian singer-songwriter Vasco Rossi. In 2009, he was featured on Rihanna's single "Rockstar 101" off her album Rated R. In 2011, he contributed the song "Kick It Up a Notch" to the Disney Channel animation Phineas and Ferb the Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension; he appeared in both live-action and animated form in the promotional music video.
Other ventures
A self-described "film buff", Slash has had small parts in several films and television series. In 1988, he appeared with his GunsN'Roses bandmates in the Dirty Harry film The Dead Pool, in which his character attends a musician's funeral and shoots a harpoon. He played radio DJ Hank in a 1994 episode of the horror anthology television series Tales from the Crypt. Slash was a guest star in an episode of the live-action/animated talk show Space Ghost Coast to Coast on Cartoon Network, where Space Ghost, Zorak, and Moltar teach him how to do guitar licks, but he refuses to do any of that. In 1999, he appeared as the host of the Miss America Bag Lady pageant in the widely panned film The Underground Comedy Movie. He has also appeared as himself in several projects, including Howard Stern's Private Parts in 1997, The Drew Carey Show in 1998, MADtv in 2005, and Sacha Baron Cohen's Brüno in 2009. Slash voiced a recurring caricature of himself in Robert Evans' animated television series Kid Notorious, which aired in 2003 on Comedy Central. As in real life, Slash is Evans' close friend and next-door neighbor on the show. He played Billy Butterface in the R-rated television show Metalocalypse on The Adult Swim. On May 5, 2009, he appeared as the guest mentor for the rock 'n' roll week of American Idol. In 2010, Slash formed Slasher Films, a horror film production company. Its first film, Nothing Left to Fear, was screened in select cities on October 4, 2013, before being released on DVD and Blu-ray the following Tuesday. Slash appeared on the October 26, 2014 episode of Talking Dead. He is reported to be a massive fan of horror movies.
Slash's autobiography, simply titled Slash, was published on October 30, 2007. It was co-written with Anthony Bozza. Slash also made several contributions to The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star, the autobiography of Mötley Crüe bassist and back-up singer Nikki Sixx, which was also published in 2007.
Slash is a pinball enthusiast and collector. He participated in the design process for the 1994 Data East GunsN'Roses pinball machine, as well as the 2020 Jersey Jack Pinball machine of the same theme, and provided music for the 1998 Sega machine Viper Night Drivin'.<ref name="Viper Night Drivin' Promotional Flyer">{{cite web |title=Internet Pinball Machine Database: Sega 'Viper Night Drivin Images |url=https://ipdb.org/showpic.pl?id=4359&picno=3372&zoom=1 |website=ipdb.org |access-date=19 June 2020}}</ref> Slash is a playable character in the video game Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, released in 2007. His performance was motion captured to record his movements for the game. Slash's character becomes playable after a player beats him in a one-on-one competition, which then leads to the player and Slash playing the master track of "Welcome to the Jungle". Guitar learning game/simulator Rocksmith 2014 by Ubisoft released a Slash Song Pack with several of the latter compositions by the artist available to purchase as downloadable content and learn on the guitar.
A keen artist, Slash designed logos and artwork for several of his pre-Guns N' Roses bands, as well as the famous circular GN'R logo. He is also credited as having provided some artwork for Aerosmith's 2012 album, Music From Another Dimension!, as it reproduces a picture of the band drawn by Slash when he was still a teenager.
Slash is a fan of the Angry Birds series of video games, and created a hard rock version of the Angry Birds Space theme song. In addition, Slash has a Birds avatar shown in the game, released in March 2013.
Personal life
On October 10, 1992, Slash married model-actress Renée Suran in Marina del Rey, California. They divorced in late 1997 after five years of marriage. Slash married Perla Ferrar on October 15, 2001, in Hawaii. They have two sons, London Emilio (born August 28, 2002) and Cash Anthony (born June 23, 2004). Slash filed for divorce from Ferrar in August 2010, but the couple reconciled two months later. In December 2014, he again filed for divorce.
Slash is a dual citizen of the United Kingdom and the United States. A British national since his birth, he has resided in Los Angeles since 1971 but did not acquire American citizenship until 1996. He said in 2010, "I do consider myself British. I have very strong feelings about my British heritage. My first years were there, I went to school there, and I have seemingly endless family on that side of the pond. So I've always felt most comfortable in England."
In 2001, at the age of 35, Slash was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, a form of congestive heart failure caused by his many years of alcohol and drug abuse. Originally given between six days and six weeks to live, he survived through physical therapy and the implantation of a defibrillator. As of 2011, Slash had been clean and sober since 2006, which he credited to his then-wife Ferrar. In 2009, following his mother's death from lung cancer, he quit smoking.
Slash's friendship with GunsN'Roses frontman Axl Rose soured following his departure from the band. In 2006, Rose claimed that Slash had shown up at his house uninvited the previous year to offer a truce. He alleged that Slash had insulted his Velvet Revolver bandmates, telling Rose that he considered Scott Weiland "a fraud" and Duff McKagan "spineless", and that he "hated" Matt Sorum. Slash denied the accusations. In his 2007 autobiography he admitted to visiting Rose's home with the intention to settle a longstanding legal dispute and make peace with his former bandmate. He claims, however, that he did not speak with Rose and instead merely left a note. Slash maintained that he had not spoken with Rose in person since 1996. In 2009, in response to a statement by Rose in which he referred to Slash as "a cancer", Slash commented: "It doesn't really affect me at all... It's been a long time. The fact that he has anything to say at all, it's like, 'Whatever, dude.' It doesn't really matter." In an August 2015 interview, Slash stated that he and Rose had reconciled. He subsequently rejoined Guns N' Roses in 2016.
Slash's drummer son London Hudson debuted his new band Suspect208 in late 2020. The band also featured Robert Trujillo's son Tye Trujillo on bass and Scott Weiland's son Noah Weiland on vocals. Slash promoted the band on his social media accounts. In 2021 Slash and Myles Kennedy tested positive for COVID-19 while working on a new album.
Philanthropy
Slash is an honorary board member of Little Kids Rock, a national nonprofit that works to restore and rejuvenate music education programs in disadvantaged public schools. He has visited Little Kids Rock students, jammed with them and donated instruments and his time. Slash's passion for music is evident in his charity as well as his art. "Being a musician is good for the character because it teaches you a lot about discipline," Slash said. "I think it's a great creative outlet."
Slash has been recognized for his longtime contributions to establishing environmental welfare programs. He is a board trustee of the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association and has long supported the Los Angeles Zoo and zoos around the world. Slash's love of reptiles was for many years a notable aspect of his public personawith several of his many snakes appearing with him in music videos and photoshootsuntil the birth of his first son in 2002 forced him to find a new home for his collection.
Awards and accolades
Slash has received critical acclaim as a guitarist. In 2005, he was named "Best Guitarist" by Esquire, which congratulated him on "beating the comeback odds with a surprisingly legitimate and vital outfit, Velvet Revolver." Slash was awarded the title of "Riff Lord" during Metal Hammer's fourth annual Golden Gods awards in 2007. In 2008, he was ranked No.21 on Gigwise's list of "The 50 Greatest Guitarists Ever," and in 2009, he was named runner-up on "The 10 Best Electric Guitar Players" list in Time, which praised him as "a remarkably precise player." In 2011, Rolling Stone placed Slash at No. 65 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time."
In 2007, Slash was honored with a star on the Rock Walk of Fame; his name was placed alongside Jimmy Page, Eddie Van Halen and Jimi Hendrix. He was the honoree at the 2010 Sunset Strip Music Festival, where he was presented by West Hollywood mayor John Heilman with a plaque declaring August 26 as "Slash Day." In 2012, Slash was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the classic lineup of Guns N' Roses. He performed three songs—"Paradise City", "Sweet Child o' Mine" and "Mr. Brownstone"with fellow inductees Duff McKagan, Steven Adler, and Matt Sorum, one-time Guns N' Roses guitarist Gilby Clarke, and his frequent collaborator Myles Kennedy. Inductees Axl Rose, Izzy Stradlin and Dizzy Reed declined to attend. Later that year, Slash received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, located directly in front of the Hard Rock Cafe on Hollywood Boulevard.
In 2004, Slash's introductory riff in "Sweet Child o' Mine" was voted No.1 on a list of "The 100 Greatest Riffs" by the readers of Total Guitar; his riffs in "Out ta Get Me" (No.51), "Welcome to the Jungle" (No. 21), and "Paradise City" (No.19) also made the list. In 2006, his solo in "Paradise City" was voted No.3 by Total Guitars readers on a list of "The 100 Hottest Guitar Solos"; his solos in "Sweet Child o' Mine" and "November Rain" were ranked No.30 and No.82 respectively. In 2008, Guitar World placed Slash's solo in "November Rain" at No.6 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Guitar Solos," while his solo in "Sweet Child o' Mine" was ranked No.37 on the list. In 2010, the readers of Total Guitar voted his riff in "Slither" runner-up on the list of "The 50Greatest Riffs of the Decade," while his riff in "By the Sword" was ranked No.22. Slash received a Radio Contraband Rock Radio Award in 2012. In January 2015 Slash received the Les Paul award.
Equipment
Slash owns more than 100 guitars. His guitars are worth a total of $1.92 million. He prefers the Gibson Les Paul, which he has called "the best all-around guitar for me." Gibson has credited him and Zakk Wylde with bringing the Les Paul back into the mainstream in the late 1980s. His main studio guitar is a 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard replica, built by luthier Kris Derrig, which he came to own during the recording sessions for Guns N' Roses' debut album, Appetite for Destruction. He used that guitar on every subsequent album he recorded with Guns N' Roses and Velvet Revolver. For many years, his main live guitar was a 1988 Gibson Les Paul Standard.
Since 1997, Slash has collaborated with Gibson on seventeen signature Les Paul modelsfive through Gibson USA; seven through the Gibson Custom Shop; and five through the Gibson subsidiary Epiphone. Slash also plays various other Gibson guitars, including Firebirds and Explorers. In addition to Gibson, he also plays or has played guitars by a plethora of other brands as well, including B.C. Rich with whom he has designed several custom models based on their Mockingbird and Bich designs. He has used guitars by Fender, Gretsch, Jackson, and Martin. He has also collaborated on signature equipment with other companies. In 1996, Marshall introduced the Marshall Slash Signature JCM2555, an authentic reissue of the Marshall "Silver Jubilee" JCM2555 released in 1987. It was the first signature amp ever produced by Marshall, with production limited to 3000. In 2007, Jim Dunlop introduced the Crybaby SW-95 Slash Signature Wah, designed after Slash's own custom-built Crybaby wah pedal. In 2010, Seymour Duncan introduced the Alnico II Pro Slash APH-2 pickups, which were designed to recreate the tone of Slash's main studio guitar. The Slash signature pickups were marketed through Seymour Duncan's YouTube channel with product demonstrator Danny Young performing the official videos. Also in 2010, Marshall introduced the Marshall AFD100, a recreation of the Marshall 1959 that Slash used for the recording of Appetite for Destruction, with production limited to 2300.
On stage, Slash prefers Marshall amplifiers, particularly the Marshall "Silver Jubilee" JCM2555 amp. He used a rented early-1970s Marshall 1959 for the recording of Appetite for Destruction. Slash enjoyed the amp so much that he tried to keep it, telling the rental company, S.I.R., that it had been stolen. However, the amp was repossessed by S.I.R. employees after a roadie accidentally brought it to rehearsals at the store. For the recording of Velvet Revolver's debut album, Contraband, he used a Vox AC30 amp and small Fender tube amps, and on their second album, Libertad, he used the Marshall "Vintage Modern" 2466 amp. On his eponymous debut solo album he used a Marshall JCM800, issued as "#34", and later, on the subsequent world tour, Slash used his signature Marshall AFD100 amp.
Discography
Solo albums
Slash (2010)
Slash featuring Myles Kennedy & The Conspirators
Apocalyptic Love (2012)
World on Fire (2014)
Living the Dream (2018)
4 (2022)
With Guns N' Roses
Appetite for Destruction (1987)
G N' R Lies (1988)
Use Your Illusion I (1991)
Use Your Illusion II (1991)
"The Spaghetti Incident?" (1993)
With Slash's Snakepit
It's Five O'Clock Somewhere (1995)
Ain't Life Grand (2000)
With Velvet Revolver
Contraband (2004)
Libertad'' (2007)
Citations
General references
External links
1965 births
Living people
20th-century American guitarists
20th-century American writers
20th-century British musicians
20th-century British writers
21st-century American guitarists
21st-century American male writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
21st-century British musicians
21st-century British writers
American male film actors
American male television actors
American male voice actors
American autobiographers
American heavy metal guitarists
American male guitarists
American male songwriters
American rock songwriters
Black British rock musicians
Blues rock musicians
British emigrants to the United States
English male film actors
English male television actors
English male voice actors
English autobiographers
English people of African-American descent
English rock guitarists
English male guitarists
English songwriters
Geffen Records artists
Guitarists from Los Angeles
Guns N' Roses members
Hollywood Rose members
Kerrang! Awards winners
Lead guitarists
Musicians from London
People from Hampstead
People from Stoke-on-Trent
People with acquired American citizenship
Slash's Snakepit members
Slide guitarists
Songwriters from California
Velvet Revolver members
Writers from London
Writers from Los Angeles | true | [
"Velvet Revolver was an American hard rock supergroup consisting of Guns N' Roses members Slash (lead guitar), Duff McKagan (bass, backing vocals) and Matt Sorum (drums, backing vocals), alongside Dave Kushner (rhythm guitar) formerly of punk band Wasted Youth, and Scott Weiland (lead vocalist) formerly of Stone Temple Pilots. The band formed in 2002 and was active until 2008, when Weiland left the band abruptly to rejoin Stone Temple Pilots.\n\nIn 2004, the band achieved commercial success with their debut album, Contraband. Despite positive reviews, some critics initially described Velvet Revolver as a mere combination of Stone Temple Pilots and Guns N' Roses, and criticizing them for a \"disconnection\" between Weiland and the rest of the band. With their single \"Slither\", they won the 2005 Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance. The band released Libertad in 2007, driven by the release of the single \"She Builds Quick Machines\", and embarked on a tour with Alice in Chains.\n\nIn April 2008, Weiland abruptly left Velvet Revolver and reunited with Stone Temple Pilots. Velvet Revolver was put on indefinite hiatus and in November of that year, requested to be released by their record label RCA Records to allow themselves \"complete freedom to go through whatever process it would take to accomplish\" replacing Weiland.\n\nAlthough Velvet Revolver worked on new material and auditioned new singers following Scott Weiland's departure, the band has not released any new material and only performed publicly once since 2008, when they reunited with Weiland for a one-off reunion show on January 12, 2012 at a benefit concert. This proved to be their last performance together before Weiland's death on December 3, 2015. Slash and McKagan later rejoined Guns N' Roses in 2016.\n\nHistory\n\nFoundations (2001–2002)\nSlash, Duff McKagan, and Matt Sorum were members of the hard rock band Guns N' Roses. However, disagreements with singer Axl Rose resulted in Slash leaving the band in 1996 and McKagan departing in 1997 shortly before Sorum was fired. Following their departures the trio focused on separate projects, with Slash reforming Slash's Snakepit and McKagan reforming 10 Minute Warning as well as recording his second solo album, while Sorum rejoined the Cult.\n\nBy 2001, Slash's Snakepit had disbanded for the second time. Slash began working with the Black Crowes drummer Steve Gorman and an unnamed bassist on a new project: writing the music for what would become \"Fall to Pieces\". McKagan reformed Loaded, previously his band for the tour in support of Beautiful Disease, with Geoff Reading. McKagan also added both Mike Squires and Jeff Rouse to the lineup. Following a tour of Japan in 2002, former Zilch, Wasted Youth, Electric Love Hogs, and Dave Navarro guitarist Dave Kushner joined Loaded in place of Mike Squires.\n\nFormation (2002–2003)\nWhen musician Randy Castillo died from cancer in 2002, Slash, McKagan, and Sorum performed at a benefit concert to raise money and commemorate Castillo, with Josh Todd and Keith Nelson of Buckcherry as well as B-Real and Sen Dog of Cypress Hill. Recognizing that their musical relationship was still intact, the trio began rehearsing with Todd and Nelson, working on material that would become \"Dirty Little Thing\", but eventually decided against forming a group with them. During a Loaded show at West Hollywood's Viper Room, McKagan re-introduced Dave Kushner to Slash, who were previously friends in junior high and high school. Kushner was invited to jam with the group and was soon invited to join with Slash, stating that \"Dave brought a cool vibe to what [they] were doing. There was no deliberation; that was it, it was a perfect fit.\" Their former Guns N' Roses bandmate Izzy Stradlin also joined them for two weeks, eventually suggesting that \"Duff and [Stradlin] will sing and [they] will just do a club tour in a van.\" Slash states in his autobiography that it was hard to tell if Stradlin was serious or kidding. After auditioning Kelly Shaefer of Atheist and Neurotica, Stradlin left the group.\n\nWhile Shaefer's audition was unsuccessful, the quartet continued auditioning for a lead singer. VH1 filmed the recruitment process, which was referred to as the temporary name \"The Project\". The resulting documentary was aired as VH1 Inside Out: The Rise of Velvet Revolver. A number of lead singers auditioned for the band, including Stephen Shareaux, of Kik Tracee, Steve Ludwin, of Carrie and Little Hell, Todd Kerns, formerly of Age of Electric, Sebastian Bach, formerly of Skid Row, Shawn Albro of U.P.O., and Travis Meeks of Days of the New. Myles Kennedy, formerly of the Mayfield Four, declined an invitation from Sorum to audition. Ian Astbury of the Cult and Mike Patton of Faith No More also declined audition offers. The band were also interested in auditioning Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland, who had become friends with McKagan after attending the same gym. Weiland once played on the same bill as Kushner, and was in rehab at the same time as Sorum. Weiland was sent two discs of material, and felt that the first disc \"sounded like Bad Company gone wrong.\" When he was sent the second disc, Weiland was more positive, comparing it to Core-era Stone Temple Pilots, though he turned them down because Stone Temple Pilots were still together.\n\nWhen Stone Temple Pilots disbanded in 2003, the band sent Weiland new music, which he took into his studio and added vocals. This music eventually became the song \"Set Me Free\". Weiland was still unsure whether or not he wanted to join, despite delivering the music to the band himself and performing at an industry showcase at Mates. They recorded two songs with producer Nick Raskulinecz, a recorded version of \"Set Me Free\" and a cover of Pink Floyd's \"Money\", for the soundtracks to the movies Hulk and The Italian Job, respectively. Weiland joined the band soon after. \"Set Me Free\" managed to peak at number 17 on the Mainstream Rock Chart without any radio promotion or a record label.\n\nIt was prior to a screening of The Hulk at Universal Studios that the band chose a name. After seeing a movie by Revolution Studios, Slash liked the beginning of the word, eventually thinking of Revolver because of its multiple meanings; the name of a gun, subtext of a revolving door which suited the band as well as the name of a Beatles album. When he suggested Revolver to the band, Weiland suggested back Black Velvet Revolver, liking the idea of \"something intimate like velvet juxtaposed with something deadly like a gun.\" They eventually arrived at Velvet Revolver, announcing it at a press conference and performance showcase at the El Rey Theatre while also performing the songs \"Set Me Free\" and \"Slither\" as well as covers of Nirvana's \"Negative Creep\", Sex Pistols' \"Bodies\", and Guns N' Roses' \"It's So Easy\".\n\nContraband and mainstream success (2003–2005)\n\nPrior to the recording of their debut album, Weiland took material that the band had previously written to his studio, Lavish, in Toluca Lake. With engineer Doug Grean, Weiland rearranged the music to fit his vocals, eventually coming out with the songs \"Big Machine\" and \"Dirty Little Thing\". The band worked on new material for songs such as \"You Got No Right\", \"Slither\", \"Sucker Train Blues\", and \"Do It for the Kids\", among others. It was during this time that Weiland was arrested at the parking lot of his studio for drug possession. Upon release from jail, he wrote lyrics to material he was given previously, writing the lyrics to the song \"Fall to Pieces\". Velvet Revolver soon began recording their debut album. Initially, they recorded \"Slither\" with producer Bob Ezrin at Henson Studios, but were dissatisfied with the result. After recording \"Headspace\" with Josh Abraham, the band liked the track enough to do the rest of the album with him.\n\nVelvet Revolver soon gained major label attention with Warner Bros. and Chrysalis. RCA and Elektra were also interested in signing the band. They eventually signed with RCA Records. They recorded their album at NRG Recording Studios, while Slash recorded his guitar parts at a smaller studio on the southern corner between Highland Avenue and Sunset Boulevard. During recording, Weiland could only work for three hours a day due to a court order mentioning that he was to stay in a halfway house. The marketing campaign for Velvet Revolver in the run-up to the release of the first album was profiled as part of the Frontline program The Way the Music Died, which included interviews with the band members and producers.\n\nThe resulting album, titled Contraband, was released on June 8, 2004. Helped by the success of the single \"Slither\", it debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling over 250,000 copies in the first week. Contraband went on to sell four million copies worldwide, 2.9 million of which were sold in the United States, and was certified 2x platinum by the RIAA. Both \"Slither\" and \"Fall to Pieces\" managed to peak at number one on the Mainstream Rock Chart as well as number 56 and 67 on the Billboard Hot 100, respectively. \"Slither\" also peaked at number one on the Modern Rock Chart and number 35 on the UK Singles Chart. The album's third single, \"Dirty Little Thing\", peaked at number eight on the Mainstream Rock chart.\n\nCritically, the album was generally well received. Despite being praised for its hedonism and maturity, critics noted a disconnection between \"singer and band\". Velvet Revolver won the Kerrang! Award for Best International Newcomer in 2004, and the following year they won the Best Hard Rock Performance Grammy Award for \"Slither\". They also received a nomination for Rock Artist of the Year at the Billboard Music Awards while \"Fall to Pieces\" was nominated for a Song of the Year/Rock Radio Radio Music Award. They recorded a new song entitled \"Come On, Come In\" for the movie Fantastic Four in 2005, which peaked at number 14 on the Mainstream Rock Chart. \"Fall to Pieces\" then re-entered the charts, peaking at number twenty-five on the Adult Top 40 the same year.\n\nVelvet Revolver toured extensively for nineteen months in support of Contraband. They toured both the United States and Europe twice, while also performing in Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. They performed at Live 8 and various festivals including Download Festival, as well as Ozzfest. It was during the tour that the band members, with the exception of Kushner, began to relapse on alcohol and drugs. Though they managed to get clean in time for the recording of their new album, Slash felt that \"[the band] lost [Weiland]\" and \"thought the overall spirit of everything was declining at that point.\"\n\nLibertad and departure of Scott Weiland (2005–2008)\n\nWeiland announced in 2005 that Velvet Revolver's next album would be titled Libertad and would be a concept album. When they started writing material, they decided against the concept idea. Initially, the band started working with producer Rick Rubin on the album. However, due to his methods, such as having a crew to do the work and engineering while only popping in occasionally, and due to the fact that he was also working with other bands at the same time, they decided against continuing with Rubin. At the suggestion of Weiland, Velvet Revolver began working with Brendan O'Brien. Slash stated that O' Brien \"brought more than just discipline to the equation, he brought a musicality that stems from the fact that he plays guitar, bass and drums. At any given moment he could play along [with the band] and it really helped the process.\" While writing for the album, Weiland believed that his bandmates were going to reunite with Guns N' Roses when the band's manager was talking to Axl Rose about switching management companies, and were not going to record their second album. He was later convinced by the band that this was not the case.\n\nFollowing the completion of the album, Velvet Revolver performed for and inducted Van Halen into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, with Weiland and Slash speaking on the band's behalf, on March 12, 2007. The band played a medley of \"Ain't Talkin' 'bout Love\" and \"Runaround\". Shows in South America with Aerosmith followed in April. They released the EP Melody and the Tyranny on June 1 to serve as a precursor to the release of their new album, which featured two songs from Libertad, a cover of Talking Heads song \"Psycho Killer\" and a video documentary about the making of Libertad as well as a live video of the band performing \"Do It for the Kids\".\n\nLibertad was released on July 3, 2007, peaking at number five on the Billboard 200. The album's first single \"She Builds Quick Machines\" peaked at 74 on the Hot Canadian Digital Singles. The second and third singles, \"The Last Fight\" and \"Get Out the Door\", both peaked at number 16 and 34 on the Mainstream Rock Chart, respectively. Critical reception to the album was mixed. Though some critics praised the album and felt that Libertad gave the band an identity of their own, outside of the Guns N' Roses and Stone Temple Pilots comparisons, others described the album as \"bland\" and noted that the band have still to gel with them \"play[ing] to their strengths instead of finding a collective sound.\"\n\nIn support of Libertad, Velvet Revolver toured North America with Alice in Chains from August 2007 to October. They also performed at the Virgin Festival, Gods of Metal, and Download in 2007. A November tour of Japan was canceled after they were denied visas, and in 2008, a tour of Australia was postponed, due to health issues, and later canceled following Weiland's decision to voluntarily enter a rehab facility. On November 21, 2007, Weiland was arrested after crashing his car while driving on an L.A. highway. He was charged with driving under the influence of drugs with a prior conviction and later released on $40,000 bail. Velvet Revolver then toured both the US and the UK, as well as some European shows, on the Rock n' Roll as It Should Be tour from January 24 to April 1, 2008. They also played at the Dubai Desert Rock Festival on March 8 the same year. It was during the tour that Weiland \"got back into his old ways\", which started to take their toll on the rest of the band with the cancellation of the Australian tour seen as the \"final blow\".\n\nOn the UK tour, the band members never spoke with Weiland, with the exception of a few arguments around the stage. Tensions came to a head during Velvet Revolver's Glasgow show on March 20, 2008, where Weiland announced to the crowd that it was the band's last tour, unaware that the other band members were already planning on firing him. After Sorum posted a message about the show on his website, Weiland issued a statement through Blabbermouth.net in response, saying he \"made many attempts to remain cordial with the members of [Velvet Revolver], but mainly, the likes of [Sorum]\" and that \"[the band] were a gang. But ego and jealousy can get the better of anyone.\" Slash later stated that it would not be Velvet Revolver's last tour. Weiland's departure was announced on April 1. Weiland also departed the cover band Camp Freddy, which also featured Sorum, and reunited with Stone Temple Pilots, before being fired in 2013.\n\nSearch for a new singer and solo careers (2008–2015) \n\nAfter Weiland's departure, the band began recording and searching for a new singer. The search was sporadic with the band spending some time auditioning singers, then turning into solo projects, returning to the band, then abandoning it again. Several names were rumored to be auditioning for the band through the years. Myles Kennedy (Alter Bridge) was strongly rumored due to his collaborations with Slash; Lenny Kravitz, Chester Bennington of Linkin Park, Steve Isaacs formerly of Skycycle and the Panic Channel, Royston Langdon of Spacehog, Donovan Leitch of Camp Freddy, Ours singer Jimmy Gnecco and Scars on Broadway guitarist Franky Perez, as well as previous auditionee Sebastian Bach. Kushner later revealed that Perez was officially hired by the band as vocalist for a brief time in 2008.\n\nSlash, McKagan, and Sorum all contributed to the song \"Kissed It\" for the Macy Gray album The Sellout, which was released on June 22, 2011. Despite not featuring Kushner, the trio were credited as Velvet Revolver on the album. The band released their first concert DVD on November 16, 2010, entitled Live In Houston, which was filmed June 18, 2004, at the Verizon Wireless Theater while the band was touring in support of Contraband. Slash, McKagan and Sorum made a performance at the Road Recovery benefit concert on September 13 with a guest appearance from Kushner.\n\nVelvet Revolver reunited for a one-off performance with Scott Weiland at a benefit concert for the late John O'Brien, on January 12, 2012. Following a benefit show for the Road Recovery in 2011 with the other Velvet Revolver members, each one agreed to a one-off reunion before Kushner invited Weiland, who also agreed. Kushner also stated it was then unknown what Velvet Revolver's plans were for the future after the reunion show; \"I know everyone's got other commitments, but I think everyone's like, 'Let's get this thing done and get through this and then we'll see.'\"\n\nIn April 2012, Weiland remarked that he would like to reunite permanently with Velvet Revolver, saying that \"if Maynard James Keenan can do it with A Perfect Circle and Tool, then there's no reason why I shouldn't go and do it with both bands\". Further in May in an interview with ABC Radio Weiland said that he had reunited with the band permanently for a tour and an album, which however was denied a few days later by Slash in an interview with 93X.\n\nOn May 12, 2014, in an interview at the MusiCares benefit concert, Slash told journalist Lucas H. Gordon that he \"think[s] [they're] gonna audition a singer\" in the future. However, he also stated that he would be touring with his solo band \"for the next year and a half.\"\n\nOn June 29, 2014, in an interview to Totalrock radio, Duff McKagan talked to Hayley Leggs in Clisson France about the subject of a new lead vocalist for Velvet Revolver and revealed that there had been at least one audition for the role of lead vocalist, but said that the person that they auditioned did not properly impress the remaining members of the band. He also ruled himself out of being the band's lead vocalist.\n\nOn December 3, 2015, Weiland was found dead on his tour bus around 9 pm, one day before he was to perform in Minnesota with his band the Wildabouts, which ended the possible reunion. Both Slash and McKagan rejoined Guns N' Roses in 2016.\n\nMusical style\nVelvet Revolver's first album Contraband was described by Johnny Loftus of AllMusic as an \"updated version of Guns N' Roses swagger behind Scott Weiland's glammy, elastic vocals.\" David Browne of Entertainment Weekly stated that \"[a]nyone expecting Use Your Illusion III, though, will be in for a slight buzzkill\" and that \"[t]he songs suggest the pop grunge of Weiland's old band more than the careening overdrive of GN'R.\" A number of reviewers made some comparisons to the members previous bands, with PopMatters reviewer David Powell stating that \"Contraband is a pretty good record of unpretentious rock and roll that suffers from inevitable comparison with the best efforts of its parent bands.\" He went on to state that while Velvet Revolver's \"heritage is evident on most of the songs\", Contraband \"improves with repeat listening, which is encouraging.\" Velvet Revolver's second album Libertad saw the band's style change with the presence of producer Brendan O'Brien, noted by AllMusic reviewer Stephen Thomas Erlewine. Erlewine also stated that \"too often, there are concessions between Weiland and the others during the course of a song.\" Tom Sinclair of Entertainment Weekly stated that Libertad \"feels both comfortingly familiar and vaguely exotic.\" Songs such as \"Let it Roll\" and \"She Mine\" have seen some comparisons to the Doors, the Rolling Stones and the Stooges, as noted by San Francisco Chronicle reviewer Jaan Uhelszki. The New York Post commented that \"Slash's guitar riffs throughout this new record are as aggressive as a caged cat\" and \"\nsinger Scott Weiland's vocals are crisp and controlled yet passionate.\"\n\nBand members\nSlash – lead guitar, talkbox (2002–2012)\nDuff McKagan – bass, backing vocals (2002–2012)\nMatt Sorum – drums, percussion, backing vocals (2002–2012)\nDave Kushner – rhythm guitar (2002–2012)\nScott Weiland – lead vocals, keyboards (2003–2008, 2012)\n\nDiscography\n\nStudio albums\nContraband (2004)\nLibertad (2007)\n\nAwards and nominations\n\nVelvet Revolver have received one Grammy Award. The band won the Grammy when \"Slither\" was nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance in 2005. The song \"Fall to Pieces\" received a nomination for Song of the Year/Rock Radio Radio Music Award in 2005. The band won the Best International Newcomer Kerrang! Award in 2004 while they were nominated for a Rock Artist of the Year Billboard Music Award in 2005.\n\nBillboard Music Awards\nThe Billboard Music Awards were awarded annually by Billboard magazine.\n\n|-\n| style=\"text-align:center;\"| 2005 || Velvet Revolver || Rock Artist of the Year || \n\nGrammy Awards\nThe Grammy Awards are awarded annually by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.\n\n|-\n| rowspan=\"3\" style=\"text-align:center;\"| 2005 || \"Slither\" || Best Hard Rock Performance || \n|-\n| \"Fall to Pieces\" || Best Rock Song || \n|-\n| Contraband || Best Rock Album || \n\nKerrang! Awards\nThe Kerrang! Awards are awarded annually by Kerrang! Magazine.\n\n|-\n| style=\"text-align:center;\"| 2004 || Velvet Revolver || Best International Newcomer || \n\nRadio Music Awards\nThe Radio Music Awards were awarded annually honoring the most successful songs on mainstream radio.\n\n|-\n| style=\"text-align:center;\"| 2005 || \"Fall to Pieces\" || Song of the Year/Rock Radio ||\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n \n \n\n \n2002 establishments in California\nAmerican alternative metal musical groups\nGrammy Award winners\nGuns N' Roses\nHard rock musical groups from California\nKerrang! Awards winners\nMusical groups established in 2002\nMusical groups disestablished in 2008\nMusical groups reestablished in 2012\nMusical groups disestablished in 2012\nMusical groups from Orange County, California\nRCA Records artists\nRock music supergroups",
"Melody and the Tyranny is an EP released by Velvet Revolver as a precursor to their album Libertad. It includes two tracks from Libertad as well as the Talking Heads cover \"Psycho Killer\" and a live rendition of \"Do It for the Kids\", a song from Velvet Revolver's debut album, Contraband. The documentary on the making of Libertad was Produced and Directed by Rocco Guarino.\n\nThe EP received a European and Australian release and was not released in North America. It was limited to just 5,000 copies.\n\nTrack listing\n \"She Builds Quick Machines\" (Scott Weiland, Slash, Duff McKagan, Matt Sorum, Dave Kushner)\n \"Just Sixteen\" (Weiland, Slash, McKagan, Sorum, Kushner)\n \"Psycho Killer\" (David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth)\n \"Making Of Libertad\" - 5 Minute Piece (Video)\n \"Do It for the Kids\" - Live (Video) (Weiland, Slash, McKagan, Sorum, Kushner)\n\nPersonnel\n Scott Weiland – lead vocals\n Slash – lead guitar\n Dave Kushner – rhythm guitar\n Duff McKagan – bass, backing vocals\n Matt Sorum – drums, percussion, backing vocals\n\nChart\n\nReferences\n\n2007 EPs\nVelvet Revolver albums\nRCA Records EPs\nAlbums produced by Brendan O'Brien (record producer)"
] |
[
"Slash (musician)",
"2002-2008: Velvet Revolver",
"what did slash have to do with Velvet Revolver?",
"Realizing that they still had the chemistry of their days in Guns N' Roses, they decided to form a new band together."
] | C_64d627d3f6004403918f23105a60590e_1 | was the new band named Velvet Revolver? | 2 | was the new band named Velvet Revolver? | Slash (musician) | In 2002, Slash reunited with Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum for a Randy Castillo tribute concert. Realizing that they still had the chemistry of their days in Guns N' Roses, they decided to form a new band together. Former Guns N' Roses guitarist Izzy Stradlin was initially involved, but left after the others decided to find a lead singer. Dave Kushner, who had previously played with McKagan in Loaded, then joined the band on rhythm guitar. For many months, the four searched for a lead singer by listening to offered demo tapes, a monotonous process documented by VH1. Eventually, former Stone Temple Pilots vocalist Scott Weiland joined the band. In 2003, Velvet Revolver played several concerts during the summer and released their first single, "Set Me Free". In June 2004, they released their debut album, Contraband, which debuted at No. 1 on the U.S. chart and sold two million copies, re-establishing Slash as a mainstream performer. A year-and-a-half-long tour followed in support of the album. In July 2007, Velvet Revolver released their second album, Libertad, and embarked on a second tour. During a show in March 2008, Weiland announced to the audience that it would be the band's final tour; he was fired from the band in April 2008, Slash insisted "chemical issues" led to the split. The following month Weiland rejoined Stone Temple Pilots. Despite Weiland's departure, Velvet Revolver did not officially disband. In early 2010, Velvet Revolver began writing new songs and auditioning new singers. By January 2011, the band had recorded nine demos, and was reportedly due to make a decision on their singer. However, the following April, Slash stated that they had been unable to find a suitable singer and that Velvet Revolver would remain on hiatus for the next few years while its members focus on other projects. CANNOTANSWER | In 2003, Velvet Revolver played several concerts during the summer and released their first single, "Set Me Free". | Saul Hudson (born July 23, 1965), better known as Slash, is a British-American musician, songwriter, and record producer from Stoke-on-Trent, England. He is best known as the lead guitarist of the American hard rock band Guns N' Roses, with whom he achieved worldwide success in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Slash has received critical acclaim and is considered one of the greatest guitarists in history.
In 1993, Slash formed the side project Slash's Snakepit and in 1996 he left Guns N' Roses and co-founded the supergroup Velvet Revolver, which re-established him as a mainstream performer in the mid to late 2000s. Slash has released four solo albums: Slash (2010), featuring an array of guest musicians, Apocalyptic Love (2012), World on Fire (2014) and Living the Dream (2018) recorded with his band, Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators. He returned to Guns N' Roses in 2016.
Time magazine named him runner-up on their list of "The 10 Best Electric Guitar Players" in 2009, while Rolling Stone placed him at number 65 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" in 2011. Guitar World ranked his guitar solo in "November Rain" number 6 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Guitar Solos" in 2008, and Total Guitar placed his riff in "Sweet Child o' Mine" at number 1 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Riffs" in 2004. In 2010, Gibson Guitar Corporation ranked Slash as number 34 on their "Top 50 Guitarists of All Time", while their readers landed him number 9 on Gibson's "Top 25 Guitarists of All Time". In 2012, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Guns N' Roses' classic lineup.
Early life
Saul Hudson was born in Stoke-on-Trent on July 23, 1965. He was named after Romanian-American cartoonist Saul Steinberg. His mother, Ola J. Hudson (née Oliver; 1946–2009), was an African-American fashion designer and costumier from the United States, whose clients included David Bowie (whom she also dated), Ringo Starr, and Janis Joplin. His father, Anthony Hudson, is a white English artist who created album covers for musicians such as Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. Of his mixed background, Slash has remarked, "As a musician, I've always been amused that I'm both British and Black; particularly because so many American musicians seem to aspire to be British while so many British musicians, in the 'Sixties in particular, went to such great pains to be Black."
During his early years, Slash was raised by his father and paternal grandparents in Stoke-on-Trent while his mother moved back to her native United States to work in Los Angeles. When he was around five years old, he and his father joined his mother in Los Angeles. His brother, Albion "Ash" Hudson, was born in 1972. Following his parents' separation in 1974, Slash became a self-described "problem child". He chose to live with his mother and was often sent to live with his beloved maternal grandmother whenever his mother had to travel for her job. Slash sometimes accompanied his mother to work, where he met several film and music stars. He was given the nickname "Slash" by actor Seymour Cassel because he was "always in a hurry, zipping around from one thing to another".
In 1979, Slash decided to form a band with his friend Steven Adler. The band never materialized, but it prompted Slash to take up an instrument. Since Adler had designated himself the role of guitarist, Slash decided to learn how to play bass. Equipped with a one-string flamenco guitar given to him by his grandmother, he began taking classes with Robert Wolin, a teacher at Fairfax Music School. During his first lesson, Slash decided to switch from bass to guitar after hearing Wolin play "Brown Sugar" by the Rolling Stones. His decision to play guitar was further influenced by one of his school teachers, who would play songs by Cream and Led Zeppelin for his students. As a result, Slash stated, "When I heard him do that, I said, 'That's what I want to do.'" He vividly recalls the feeling after learning "Come Dancing" from Wired by Jeff Beck, his greatest influence, which he described as "fucking awesome".
A champion BMX rider, Slash put the bike aside to devote himself to playing guitar, practising up to 12 hours a day. Slash attended Beverly Hills High School and was a contemporary of musicians Lenny Kravitz and Zoro.
Career
1981–1985: Early years
Slash joined his first band, Tidus Sloan, in 1981. In 1983, he formed the band Road Crew—named after the Motörhead song "(We Are) The Road Crew"—with his childhood friend Steven Adler, who by then had learned to play drums. He placed an advertisement in a newspaper looking for a bassist, and received a response from Duff McKagan. They auditioned a number of singers, including one-time Black Flag vocalist Ron Reyes, and worked on material that included the main riff of what became the Guns N' Roses song "Rocket Queen". Slash disbanded the group the following year due to them not being able to find a singer, as well as Adler's lack of work ethic compared to himself and McKagan. He, along with Adler, then joined a local band known as Hollywood Rose, which featured singer Axl Rose and guitarist Izzy Stradlin. Following his time with Hollywood Rose, Slash played in a band called Black Sheep and unsuccessfully auditioned for Poison, a glam metal band that he later openly derided.
1985–1996: First stint with Guns N' Roses
In June 1985, Slash was asked by Axl Rose and Izzy Stradlin to join their new band GunsN'Roses, along with Duff McKagan and Steven Adler (replacing founding members Tracii Guns, Ole Beich and Rob Gardner, respectively). They played Los Angeles-area nightclubssuch as the Whisky a Go Go, The Roxy, and The Troubadourand opened for larger acts throughout 1985 and 1986. Before one of the shows in 1985, Slash shoplifted a black felt top hat and a Native American-style silver concho belt from two stores on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. He then combined the hat with parts of the belt to create a piece of custom headwear for the show. He said he "felt really cool" wearing the hat, and it became his trademark. It was during 1985–1986 that the band wrote most of its classic material, including "Welcome to the Jungle," "Sweet Child o' Mine", and "Paradise City," As a result of their rowdy and rebellious behavior, Guns N' Roses quickly received the moniker "Most Dangerous Band in the World," causing Slash to remark, "For some strange reason, Guns N' Roses is like the catalyst for controversy, even before we had any kind of record deal." After being scouted by several major record labels, the band signed with Geffen Records in March 1986.
In July 1987, Guns N' Roses released its debut album, Appetite for Destruction, which, as of September 2008, had sold over 28 million copies worldwide, 18million of which were sold in the United States, making it the best-selling debut album of all time in the U.S. In the summer of 1988, the band achieved its only U.S. No. 1 hit with "Sweet Child O' Mine," a song spearheaded by Slash's guitar riff and solo. In November of that year, Guns N' Roses released G N' R Lies, which sold over five million copies in the U.S. alone, despite containing only eight tracks, four of which were included on the previously released EP Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide. As their success grew, so did interpersonal tensions within the band. In 1989, during a show as opening act for the Rolling Stones, Axl Rose threatened to leave the band if certain members of the band didn't stop "dancing with Mr. Brownstone," a reference to their song of the same name about heroin use. Slash was among those who promised to clean up. However, the following year, Steven Adler was fired from the band because of his heroin addiction; he was replaced by Matt Sorum of The Cult.
In May 1991, the band embarked on the two-and-a-half-year-long Use Your Illusion Tour. The following September, Guns N' Roses released the long-awaited albums Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II, which debuted at No. 2 and No. 1, respectively, on the U.S. chart, a feat not achieved by any other group. Izzy Stradlin abruptly left the band in November; he was replaced by Gilby Clarke of Candy and Kill for Thrills. Slash finished Use Your Illusion Tour with Guns N' Roses on July 17, 1993. In November of that year, the band released "The Spaghetti Incident?", a cover album of mostly punk songs, which proved less successful than its predecessors. Slash then wrote several songs for what would have become the follow-up album to the Use Your Illusion double album. Axl Rose and Duff, however, rejected the material.
With the band's failure to collaborate resulting in no album being recorded, Slash announced in October 1996 that he was no longer a part of Guns N' Roses. Slash stated at the time "Axl and I have not been capable of seeing eye to eye on Guns N' Roses for some time. We tried to collaborate, but at this point, I'm no longer in the band." Paul Tobias's inclusion in the band was another factor in Slash leaving, with Slash having both "creative and personal" differences with Tobias. However, in his 2007 autobiography, Slash stated that his decision to leave the band was not based on artistic differences with Axl Rose, but on Rose's constant lateness to concerts, the alleged legal manipulation Rose used (since denied by Rose) to gain control of the band, and the departures of Steven Adler and Izzy Stradlin.
1994–2002: Slash's Snakepit
In 1994, Slash formed Slash's Snakepit, a side project that featured his Guns N' Roses bandmates Matt Sorum and Gilby Clarke on drums and rhythm guitar respectively, as well as Alice in Chains' Mike Inez on bass and Jellyfish's Eric Dover on vocals. The band recorded Slash's material originally intended for Guns N' Roses, resulting in the release of It's Five O'Clock Somewhere in February 1995. The album was critically praised for ignoring the then-popular conventions of alternative music, and fared well on the charts, eventually selling over one million copies in the US alone despite little promotion from Geffen Records. Slash's Snakepit toured in support of the album with bassist James LoMenzo and drummer Brian Tichy of Pride & Glory, before disbanding in 1996. Slash then toured for two years with the blues rock cover band Slash's Blues Ball.
In 1999, Slash chose to regroup Slash's Snakepit with Rod Jackson on vocals, Ryan Roxie on rhythm guitar, Johnny Griparic on bass, and Matt Laug on drums. Their second album, Ain't Life Grand, was released in October 2000 through Koch Records. It did not sell as well as the band's previous release, and its critical reception was mixed. To promote the album, the band—with Keri Kelli on rhythm guitar—embarked on an extensive world tour in support of AC/DC in the summer of 2000, followed by their own headlining theater tour. Slash disbanded Snakepit in 2002.
2002–2008: Velvet Revolver
In 2002, Slash reunited with Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum for a Randy Castillo tribute concert. Realizing that they still had the chemistry of their days in Guns N' Roses, they decided to form a new band together. Former Guns N' Roses guitarist Izzy Stradlin was initially involved, but left after the others decided to find a lead singer. Dave Kushner, who had previously played with McKagan in Loaded, then joined the band on rhythm guitar. For many months, the four searched for a lead singer by listening to offered demo tapes, a monotonous process documented by VH1. Eventually, former Stone Temple Pilots vocalist Scott Weiland joined the band.
In 2003, Velvet Revolver played several concerts during the summer and released their first single, "Set Me Free". In June 2004, they released their debut album, Contraband, which debuted at No.1 on the U.S. chart and sold two million copies, re-establishing Slash as a mainstream performer. A year-and-a-half-long tour followed in support of the album. In 2005, the band was nominated for three Grammys: Rock Album of the Year, Rock Song, and Hard Rock Performance for their Contraband single "Slither" which won their first and only Grammy. In July 2007, Velvet Revolver released their second album, Libertad, and embarked on a second tour. During a show in March 2008, Weiland announced to the audience that it would be the band's final tour; he was fired from the band in April 2008 and Slash insisted "chemical issues" led to the split. The following month Weiland rejoined Stone Temple Pilots. Despite Weiland's departure, Velvet Revolver did not officially disband.
In early 2010, Velvet Revolver began writing new songs and auditioning new singers. By January 2011, the band had recorded nine demos, and was reportedly due to make a decision on their singer. However, the following April, Slash stated that they had been unable to find a suitable singer and that Velvet Revolver would remain on hiatus for the next few years while its members focus on other projects.
2009–present: "Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators"
In September 2008, Slash began production on his debut solo album. He described the process of recording by himself as "cathartic." He also mentioned working on the album gave him a chance to "...take a little bit of a break from all the politics and the democracy that is a band and just sort of do my own thing for a little bit. Slash's wife Perla revealed that many different artists would appear on the album, saying, "It's going to be Slash and friends, with everyone from Ozzy to Fergie." The album, simply titled Slash, debuted at No. 3 on the U.S. chart upon its release in April 2010. It featured an all-star roster of guest musicians, including Osbourne, Fergie of The Black Eyed Peas, Adam Levine of Maroon 5, M. Shadows of Avenged Sevenfold, Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead, Dave Grohl, Chris Cornell and Iggy Pop. The album also features musical collaborations with former Guns N' Roses members Izzy Stradlin, Steven Adler and Duff McKagan. Preceding the release of the album, Slash had released the Japan-only single "Sahara", featuring Japanese vocalist Koshi Inaba (from B'z). It charted at number four on the Oricon Singles Chart, as well number six on the Billboard Japan Hot 100. It has been awarded Western "Single of the Year" award at the 24th Japan Gold Disc Award by RIAJ. To promote the album, Slash embarked on his first solo world tour with Myles Kennedy of Alter Bridge—who also appeared on the album—on vocals, Bobby Schneck on rhythm guitar, Todd Kerns on bass, and Brent Fitz on drums. Slash opened for Ozzy Osbourne for a leg of Osbourne's Scream World Tour.
Slash began working on his second solo album in June 2011. He collaborated with his touring bandmates Myles Kennedy, Todd Kerns, and Brent Fitz, with the resulting album billed to "Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators". The album, titled Apocalyptic Love, was released on May 22, 2012, debuting at #2 on the Canadian Albums Chart. In 2013 Slash received the award for "Best Guitarist Of The Year 2012" from Loudwire.
Slash embarked on a tour in the summer of 2014, opening for Aerosmith as part of the Let Rock Rule Tour. In May 2014, Slash revealed details of his third solo album World on Fire. The album was again billed as "Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators" and was released on September 10, 2014. It debuted at No. 10 on The Billboard 200 chart.
In March 2018, Slash revealed that a new album with Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators was to be released later in the year. In June 2018, he announced that the album was titled Living the Dream, to be released on September 21, 2018. The group tour for the album began in September 2018, starting with a show in Del Mar, California at the KAABOO Del Mar Music Festival. The tour was concluded the US and Canada again 2019 after completing the Asian leg and Hawaii show with Guns n' Roses. Former touring guitarist Frank Sidoris joined the band full-time for the recording sessions.
In an October 2020 interview with blabbermouth.net bassist/vocalist Todd Kerns confirmed that there would be a new album in 2021, referred to as "SMKC4".
On July 26, 2021, it was confirmed that the record was to be released via Gibson's new record label Gibson Records in February 2022. On October 18, 2021, Slash officially confirmed via Instagram the first single's title "The River is Rising", along with its release date, October 22, 2021. On October 22, the release day of first single, it was announced that the album 4 will be released on February 11, 2022. The tour was also announced the same day, scheduled to start February 8, 2022, in Portland, Oregon.
2016–present: Return to Guns N' Roses
On December 29, 2015, several days after a Guns N' Roses-related teaser was released to movie theaters, Billboard reported that Slash would rejoin the band to headline Coachella 2016, filling the lead guitarist spot vacated when DJ Ashba left the band. Guns N' Roses were officially announced as headliners of Coachella on January 4, 2016, with KROQ reporting Slash and Duff McKagan would rejoin the band. Slash performed with Guns N' Roses for the first time in 23 years during the band's secret warmup gig at the Troubadour in Los Angeles on April 1, 2016. The band then embarked on the Not in This Lifetime... Tour.
Session work
In 1991, Slash played lead guitar on the single "Give In to Me" off Michael Jackson's album Dangerous, as well as for the opening skit of the video for the song "Black or White" off the same album. In 1995, he played guitar on "D.S.", a controversial song from Jackson's HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I album, and in 1997 appeared on the song "Morphine" off the remix album Blood on the Dance Floor: History in the Mix. In 2001, Slash played on "Privacy" off Jackson's final studio album, Invincible. Slash also joined Jackson on several occasions on stage, most notably at the 1995 MTV Video Music Awards playing with Jackson on "Black or White" (and the introduction of "Billie Jean"). He made two surprise appearances during Jackson's 1992 Dangerous World Tour in Spain and Japan and supported the 1999 charity concerts MJ & Friends in Seoul and Munich playing the same set as he did for 1995's MTV Video Music Awards. The last time Slash and Jackson shared a stage was on both 2001 Michael Jackson: 30th Anniversary Special concerts in New York City playing "Black or White" and "Beat It".
In 1991, Slash collaborated with Lenny Kravitz on "Always on the Run", the lead single from Kravitz' album Mama Said. In 1993, Slash appeared on the album Stone Free: A Tribute to Jimi Hendrix, performing "I Don't Live Today" with Paul Rodgers and Band of Gypsys. Slash also guest appeared in Carole King's 1994 live concert, which was captured on her Carole KingIn Concert album. Slash and King appeared on David Letterman to promote the concert. In 1996, he collaborated with Marta Sánchez to record the flamenco-inspired song "Obsession Confession" for the Curdled soundtrack. Later that year, he played with Alice Cooper at Sammy Hagar's club Cabo Wabo in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. The show was released the following year as A Fistful of Alice. In 1997, Slash appeared alongside rapper Ol' Dirty Bastard and rock band Fishbone on Blackstreet's rock remix of their single "Fix"; he also appeared in the accompanying music video. Also in 1997, he played on the single "But You Said I'm Useless" by Japanese musician J. That same year, he contributed music to the soundtrack of Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown; several compositions by Slash's Snakepit can be heard throughout the film. He also appeared on the Insane Clown Posse album The Great Milenko on the track "Halls of Illusions".
In 2002, Slash played on the title track to Elán's album Street Child. In 2003, he participated in the Yardbirds' comeback record Birdland; he played lead guitar on the track "Over, Under, Sideways, Down". In 2006, Slash played on a cover of "In the Summertime" on keyboardist Derek Sherinian's solo album Blood of the Snake; he was also featured in the accompanying music video. In 2007, he appeared on Paulina Rubio's single "Nada Puede Cambiarme". In 2008, Slash played guitar on the film score of The Wrestler, composed by Clint Mansell. Slash was the featured guitarist on the 2008 Italian hit single "Gioca Con Me" by Italian singer-songwriter Vasco Rossi. In 2009, he was featured on Rihanna's single "Rockstar 101" off her album Rated R. In 2011, he contributed the song "Kick It Up a Notch" to the Disney Channel animation Phineas and Ferb the Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension; he appeared in both live-action and animated form in the promotional music video.
Other ventures
A self-described "film buff", Slash has had small parts in several films and television series. In 1988, he appeared with his GunsN'Roses bandmates in the Dirty Harry film The Dead Pool, in which his character attends a musician's funeral and shoots a harpoon. He played radio DJ Hank in a 1994 episode of the horror anthology television series Tales from the Crypt. Slash was a guest star in an episode of the live-action/animated talk show Space Ghost Coast to Coast on Cartoon Network, where Space Ghost, Zorak, and Moltar teach him how to do guitar licks, but he refuses to do any of that. In 1999, he appeared as the host of the Miss America Bag Lady pageant in the widely panned film The Underground Comedy Movie. He has also appeared as himself in several projects, including Howard Stern's Private Parts in 1997, The Drew Carey Show in 1998, MADtv in 2005, and Sacha Baron Cohen's Brüno in 2009. Slash voiced a recurring caricature of himself in Robert Evans' animated television series Kid Notorious, which aired in 2003 on Comedy Central. As in real life, Slash is Evans' close friend and next-door neighbor on the show. He played Billy Butterface in the R-rated television show Metalocalypse on The Adult Swim. On May 5, 2009, he appeared as the guest mentor for the rock 'n' roll week of American Idol. In 2010, Slash formed Slasher Films, a horror film production company. Its first film, Nothing Left to Fear, was screened in select cities on October 4, 2013, before being released on DVD and Blu-ray the following Tuesday. Slash appeared on the October 26, 2014 episode of Talking Dead. He is reported to be a massive fan of horror movies.
Slash's autobiography, simply titled Slash, was published on October 30, 2007. It was co-written with Anthony Bozza. Slash also made several contributions to The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star, the autobiography of Mötley Crüe bassist and back-up singer Nikki Sixx, which was also published in 2007.
Slash is a pinball enthusiast and collector. He participated in the design process for the 1994 Data East GunsN'Roses pinball machine, as well as the 2020 Jersey Jack Pinball machine of the same theme, and provided music for the 1998 Sega machine Viper Night Drivin'.<ref name="Viper Night Drivin' Promotional Flyer">{{cite web |title=Internet Pinball Machine Database: Sega 'Viper Night Drivin Images |url=https://ipdb.org/showpic.pl?id=4359&picno=3372&zoom=1 |website=ipdb.org |access-date=19 June 2020}}</ref> Slash is a playable character in the video game Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, released in 2007. His performance was motion captured to record his movements for the game. Slash's character becomes playable after a player beats him in a one-on-one competition, which then leads to the player and Slash playing the master track of "Welcome to the Jungle". Guitar learning game/simulator Rocksmith 2014 by Ubisoft released a Slash Song Pack with several of the latter compositions by the artist available to purchase as downloadable content and learn on the guitar.
A keen artist, Slash designed logos and artwork for several of his pre-Guns N' Roses bands, as well as the famous circular GN'R logo. He is also credited as having provided some artwork for Aerosmith's 2012 album, Music From Another Dimension!, as it reproduces a picture of the band drawn by Slash when he was still a teenager.
Slash is a fan of the Angry Birds series of video games, and created a hard rock version of the Angry Birds Space theme song. In addition, Slash has a Birds avatar shown in the game, released in March 2013.
Personal life
On October 10, 1992, Slash married model-actress Renée Suran in Marina del Rey, California. They divorced in late 1997 after five years of marriage. Slash married Perla Ferrar on October 15, 2001, in Hawaii. They have two sons, London Emilio (born August 28, 2002) and Cash Anthony (born June 23, 2004). Slash filed for divorce from Ferrar in August 2010, but the couple reconciled two months later. In December 2014, he again filed for divorce.
Slash is a dual citizen of the United Kingdom and the United States. A British national since his birth, he has resided in Los Angeles since 1971 but did not acquire American citizenship until 1996. He said in 2010, "I do consider myself British. I have very strong feelings about my British heritage. My first years were there, I went to school there, and I have seemingly endless family on that side of the pond. So I've always felt most comfortable in England."
In 2001, at the age of 35, Slash was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, a form of congestive heart failure caused by his many years of alcohol and drug abuse. Originally given between six days and six weeks to live, he survived through physical therapy and the implantation of a defibrillator. As of 2011, Slash had been clean and sober since 2006, which he credited to his then-wife Ferrar. In 2009, following his mother's death from lung cancer, he quit smoking.
Slash's friendship with GunsN'Roses frontman Axl Rose soured following his departure from the band. In 2006, Rose claimed that Slash had shown up at his house uninvited the previous year to offer a truce. He alleged that Slash had insulted his Velvet Revolver bandmates, telling Rose that he considered Scott Weiland "a fraud" and Duff McKagan "spineless", and that he "hated" Matt Sorum. Slash denied the accusations. In his 2007 autobiography he admitted to visiting Rose's home with the intention to settle a longstanding legal dispute and make peace with his former bandmate. He claims, however, that he did not speak with Rose and instead merely left a note. Slash maintained that he had not spoken with Rose in person since 1996. In 2009, in response to a statement by Rose in which he referred to Slash as "a cancer", Slash commented: "It doesn't really affect me at all... It's been a long time. The fact that he has anything to say at all, it's like, 'Whatever, dude.' It doesn't really matter." In an August 2015 interview, Slash stated that he and Rose had reconciled. He subsequently rejoined Guns N' Roses in 2016.
Slash's drummer son London Hudson debuted his new band Suspect208 in late 2020. The band also featured Robert Trujillo's son Tye Trujillo on bass and Scott Weiland's son Noah Weiland on vocals. Slash promoted the band on his social media accounts. In 2021 Slash and Myles Kennedy tested positive for COVID-19 while working on a new album.
Philanthropy
Slash is an honorary board member of Little Kids Rock, a national nonprofit that works to restore and rejuvenate music education programs in disadvantaged public schools. He has visited Little Kids Rock students, jammed with them and donated instruments and his time. Slash's passion for music is evident in his charity as well as his art. "Being a musician is good for the character because it teaches you a lot about discipline," Slash said. "I think it's a great creative outlet."
Slash has been recognized for his longtime contributions to establishing environmental welfare programs. He is a board trustee of the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association and has long supported the Los Angeles Zoo and zoos around the world. Slash's love of reptiles was for many years a notable aspect of his public personawith several of his many snakes appearing with him in music videos and photoshootsuntil the birth of his first son in 2002 forced him to find a new home for his collection.
Awards and accolades
Slash has received critical acclaim as a guitarist. In 2005, he was named "Best Guitarist" by Esquire, which congratulated him on "beating the comeback odds with a surprisingly legitimate and vital outfit, Velvet Revolver." Slash was awarded the title of "Riff Lord" during Metal Hammer's fourth annual Golden Gods awards in 2007. In 2008, he was ranked No.21 on Gigwise's list of "The 50 Greatest Guitarists Ever," and in 2009, he was named runner-up on "The 10 Best Electric Guitar Players" list in Time, which praised him as "a remarkably precise player." In 2011, Rolling Stone placed Slash at No. 65 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time."
In 2007, Slash was honored with a star on the Rock Walk of Fame; his name was placed alongside Jimmy Page, Eddie Van Halen and Jimi Hendrix. He was the honoree at the 2010 Sunset Strip Music Festival, where he was presented by West Hollywood mayor John Heilman with a plaque declaring August 26 as "Slash Day." In 2012, Slash was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the classic lineup of Guns N' Roses. He performed three songs—"Paradise City", "Sweet Child o' Mine" and "Mr. Brownstone"with fellow inductees Duff McKagan, Steven Adler, and Matt Sorum, one-time Guns N' Roses guitarist Gilby Clarke, and his frequent collaborator Myles Kennedy. Inductees Axl Rose, Izzy Stradlin and Dizzy Reed declined to attend. Later that year, Slash received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, located directly in front of the Hard Rock Cafe on Hollywood Boulevard.
In 2004, Slash's introductory riff in "Sweet Child o' Mine" was voted No.1 on a list of "The 100 Greatest Riffs" by the readers of Total Guitar; his riffs in "Out ta Get Me" (No.51), "Welcome to the Jungle" (No. 21), and "Paradise City" (No.19) also made the list. In 2006, his solo in "Paradise City" was voted No.3 by Total Guitars readers on a list of "The 100 Hottest Guitar Solos"; his solos in "Sweet Child o' Mine" and "November Rain" were ranked No.30 and No.82 respectively. In 2008, Guitar World placed Slash's solo in "November Rain" at No.6 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Guitar Solos," while his solo in "Sweet Child o' Mine" was ranked No.37 on the list. In 2010, the readers of Total Guitar voted his riff in "Slither" runner-up on the list of "The 50Greatest Riffs of the Decade," while his riff in "By the Sword" was ranked No.22. Slash received a Radio Contraband Rock Radio Award in 2012. In January 2015 Slash received the Les Paul award.
Equipment
Slash owns more than 100 guitars. His guitars are worth a total of $1.92 million. He prefers the Gibson Les Paul, which he has called "the best all-around guitar for me." Gibson has credited him and Zakk Wylde with bringing the Les Paul back into the mainstream in the late 1980s. His main studio guitar is a 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard replica, built by luthier Kris Derrig, which he came to own during the recording sessions for Guns N' Roses' debut album, Appetite for Destruction. He used that guitar on every subsequent album he recorded with Guns N' Roses and Velvet Revolver. For many years, his main live guitar was a 1988 Gibson Les Paul Standard.
Since 1997, Slash has collaborated with Gibson on seventeen signature Les Paul modelsfive through Gibson USA; seven through the Gibson Custom Shop; and five through the Gibson subsidiary Epiphone. Slash also plays various other Gibson guitars, including Firebirds and Explorers. In addition to Gibson, he also plays or has played guitars by a plethora of other brands as well, including B.C. Rich with whom he has designed several custom models based on their Mockingbird and Bich designs. He has used guitars by Fender, Gretsch, Jackson, and Martin. He has also collaborated on signature equipment with other companies. In 1996, Marshall introduced the Marshall Slash Signature JCM2555, an authentic reissue of the Marshall "Silver Jubilee" JCM2555 released in 1987. It was the first signature amp ever produced by Marshall, with production limited to 3000. In 2007, Jim Dunlop introduced the Crybaby SW-95 Slash Signature Wah, designed after Slash's own custom-built Crybaby wah pedal. In 2010, Seymour Duncan introduced the Alnico II Pro Slash APH-2 pickups, which were designed to recreate the tone of Slash's main studio guitar. The Slash signature pickups were marketed through Seymour Duncan's YouTube channel with product demonstrator Danny Young performing the official videos. Also in 2010, Marshall introduced the Marshall AFD100, a recreation of the Marshall 1959 that Slash used for the recording of Appetite for Destruction, with production limited to 2300.
On stage, Slash prefers Marshall amplifiers, particularly the Marshall "Silver Jubilee" JCM2555 amp. He used a rented early-1970s Marshall 1959 for the recording of Appetite for Destruction. Slash enjoyed the amp so much that he tried to keep it, telling the rental company, S.I.R., that it had been stolen. However, the amp was repossessed by S.I.R. employees after a roadie accidentally brought it to rehearsals at the store. For the recording of Velvet Revolver's debut album, Contraband, he used a Vox AC30 amp and small Fender tube amps, and on their second album, Libertad, he used the Marshall "Vintage Modern" 2466 amp. On his eponymous debut solo album he used a Marshall JCM800, issued as "#34", and later, on the subsequent world tour, Slash used his signature Marshall AFD100 amp.
Discography
Solo albums
Slash (2010)
Slash featuring Myles Kennedy & The Conspirators
Apocalyptic Love (2012)
World on Fire (2014)
Living the Dream (2018)
4 (2022)
With Guns N' Roses
Appetite for Destruction (1987)
G N' R Lies (1988)
Use Your Illusion I (1991)
Use Your Illusion II (1991)
"The Spaghetti Incident?" (1993)
With Slash's Snakepit
It's Five O'Clock Somewhere (1995)
Ain't Life Grand (2000)
With Velvet Revolver
Contraband (2004)
Libertad'' (2007)
Citations
General references
External links
1965 births
Living people
20th-century American guitarists
20th-century American writers
20th-century British musicians
20th-century British writers
21st-century American guitarists
21st-century American male writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
21st-century British musicians
21st-century British writers
American male film actors
American male television actors
American male voice actors
American autobiographers
American heavy metal guitarists
American male guitarists
American male songwriters
American rock songwriters
Black British rock musicians
Blues rock musicians
British emigrants to the United States
English male film actors
English male television actors
English male voice actors
English autobiographers
English people of African-American descent
English rock guitarists
English male guitarists
English songwriters
Geffen Records artists
Guitarists from Los Angeles
Guns N' Roses members
Hollywood Rose members
Kerrang! Awards winners
Lead guitarists
Musicians from London
People from Hampstead
People from Stoke-on-Trent
People with acquired American citizenship
Slash's Snakepit members
Slide guitarists
Songwriters from California
Velvet Revolver members
Writers from London
Writers from Los Angeles | true | [
"The discography of Velvet Revolver, an American hard rock band, consists of two studio albums, one extended play (EP), 11 singles (nine as lead artist, two as featured artist), two video albums and eight music videos. Velvet Revolver was a supergroup formed in Rancho Santa Margarita, California in 2002 by former Guns N' Roses members Slash (lead guitar), Duff McKagan (bass) and Matt Sorum (drums), along with rhythm guitarist Dave Kushner (formerly of Wasted Youth) and late vocalist Scott Weiland (formerly and subsequently of Stone Temple Pilots).\n\nThe band signed with RCA Records the next year and released its debut album Contraband in 2004, which topped the US Billboard 200 and has since sold over 4 million copies in the US. The album was supported by the release of four singles, including \"Slither\" which topped the Billboard Alternative Songs and Mainstream Rock charts. In 2005 the group contributed the song \"Come On, Come In\" to the Fantastic Four soundtrack, which was also released as a single and reached number 14 on the Mainstream Rock chart. The band also performed on a recording of \"Tears in Heaven\" released to benefit victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.\n\nVelvet Revolver returned in 2007 with Libertad. The band's second album reached number five on the Billboard 200, and was certified gold in Canada and silver in the UK. Lead single \"She Builds Quick Machines\" reached the top 20 of the Alternative Songs chart and number two on the Mainstream Rock chart. Weiland departed the band in April 2008, before RCA dropped the group later in the year. In 2010, Slash, McKagan and Sorum (credited as Velvet Revolver) were featured on Macy Gray's single \"Kissed It\". The band has since released two live video albums: Live in Houston in 2010 and Let It Roll: Live in Germany in 2012.\n\nAlbums\n\nStudio albums\n\nExtended plays\n\nSingles\n\nAs featured artist\n\nVideos\n\nVideo albums\n\nMusic videos\n\nFootnotes\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nVelvet Revolver at AllMusic\nVelvet Revolver discography at Discogs\nVelvet Revolver discography at MusicBrainz\n\nDiscography\nDiscographies of American artists\nRock music group discographies",
"Velvet Revolver was an American hard rock supergroup consisting of Guns N' Roses members Slash (lead guitar), Duff McKagan (bass, backing vocals) and Matt Sorum (drums, backing vocals), alongside Dave Kushner (rhythm guitar) formerly of punk band Wasted Youth, and Scott Weiland (lead vocalist) formerly of Stone Temple Pilots. The band formed in 2002 and was active until 2008, when Weiland left the band abruptly to rejoin Stone Temple Pilots.\n\nIn 2004, the band achieved commercial success with their debut album, Contraband. Despite positive reviews, some critics initially described Velvet Revolver as a mere combination of Stone Temple Pilots and Guns N' Roses, and criticizing them for a \"disconnection\" between Weiland and the rest of the band. With their single \"Slither\", they won the 2005 Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance. The band released Libertad in 2007, driven by the release of the single \"She Builds Quick Machines\", and embarked on a tour with Alice in Chains.\n\nIn April 2008, Weiland abruptly left Velvet Revolver and reunited with Stone Temple Pilots. Velvet Revolver was put on indefinite hiatus and in November of that year, requested to be released by their record label RCA Records to allow themselves \"complete freedom to go through whatever process it would take to accomplish\" replacing Weiland.\n\nAlthough Velvet Revolver worked on new material and auditioned new singers following Scott Weiland's departure, the band has not released any new material and only performed publicly once since 2008, when they reunited with Weiland for a one-off reunion show on January 12, 2012 at a benefit concert. This proved to be their last performance together before Weiland's death on December 3, 2015. Slash and McKagan later rejoined Guns N' Roses in 2016.\n\nHistory\n\nFoundations (2001–2002)\nSlash, Duff McKagan, and Matt Sorum were members of the hard rock band Guns N' Roses. However, disagreements with singer Axl Rose resulted in Slash leaving the band in 1996 and McKagan departing in 1997 shortly before Sorum was fired. Following their departures the trio focused on separate projects, with Slash reforming Slash's Snakepit and McKagan reforming 10 Minute Warning as well as recording his second solo album, while Sorum rejoined the Cult.\n\nBy 2001, Slash's Snakepit had disbanded for the second time. Slash began working with the Black Crowes drummer Steve Gorman and an unnamed bassist on a new project: writing the music for what would become \"Fall to Pieces\". McKagan reformed Loaded, previously his band for the tour in support of Beautiful Disease, with Geoff Reading. McKagan also added both Mike Squires and Jeff Rouse to the lineup. Following a tour of Japan in 2002, former Zilch, Wasted Youth, Electric Love Hogs, and Dave Navarro guitarist Dave Kushner joined Loaded in place of Mike Squires.\n\nFormation (2002–2003)\nWhen musician Randy Castillo died from cancer in 2002, Slash, McKagan, and Sorum performed at a benefit concert to raise money and commemorate Castillo, with Josh Todd and Keith Nelson of Buckcherry as well as B-Real and Sen Dog of Cypress Hill. Recognizing that their musical relationship was still intact, the trio began rehearsing with Todd and Nelson, working on material that would become \"Dirty Little Thing\", but eventually decided against forming a group with them. During a Loaded show at West Hollywood's Viper Room, McKagan re-introduced Dave Kushner to Slash, who were previously friends in junior high and high school. Kushner was invited to jam with the group and was soon invited to join with Slash, stating that \"Dave brought a cool vibe to what [they] were doing. There was no deliberation; that was it, it was a perfect fit.\" Their former Guns N' Roses bandmate Izzy Stradlin also joined them for two weeks, eventually suggesting that \"Duff and [Stradlin] will sing and [they] will just do a club tour in a van.\" Slash states in his autobiography that it was hard to tell if Stradlin was serious or kidding. After auditioning Kelly Shaefer of Atheist and Neurotica, Stradlin left the group.\n\nWhile Shaefer's audition was unsuccessful, the quartet continued auditioning for a lead singer. VH1 filmed the recruitment process, which was referred to as the temporary name \"The Project\". The resulting documentary was aired as VH1 Inside Out: The Rise of Velvet Revolver. A number of lead singers auditioned for the band, including Stephen Shareaux, of Kik Tracee, Steve Ludwin, of Carrie and Little Hell, Todd Kerns, formerly of Age of Electric, Sebastian Bach, formerly of Skid Row, Shawn Albro of U.P.O., and Travis Meeks of Days of the New. Myles Kennedy, formerly of the Mayfield Four, declined an invitation from Sorum to audition. Ian Astbury of the Cult and Mike Patton of Faith No More also declined audition offers. The band were also interested in auditioning Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland, who had become friends with McKagan after attending the same gym. Weiland once played on the same bill as Kushner, and was in rehab at the same time as Sorum. Weiland was sent two discs of material, and felt that the first disc \"sounded like Bad Company gone wrong.\" When he was sent the second disc, Weiland was more positive, comparing it to Core-era Stone Temple Pilots, though he turned them down because Stone Temple Pilots were still together.\n\nWhen Stone Temple Pilots disbanded in 2003, the band sent Weiland new music, which he took into his studio and added vocals. This music eventually became the song \"Set Me Free\". Weiland was still unsure whether or not he wanted to join, despite delivering the music to the band himself and performing at an industry showcase at Mates. They recorded two songs with producer Nick Raskulinecz, a recorded version of \"Set Me Free\" and a cover of Pink Floyd's \"Money\", for the soundtracks to the movies Hulk and The Italian Job, respectively. Weiland joined the band soon after. \"Set Me Free\" managed to peak at number 17 on the Mainstream Rock Chart without any radio promotion or a record label.\n\nIt was prior to a screening of The Hulk at Universal Studios that the band chose a name. After seeing a movie by Revolution Studios, Slash liked the beginning of the word, eventually thinking of Revolver because of its multiple meanings; the name of a gun, subtext of a revolving door which suited the band as well as the name of a Beatles album. When he suggested Revolver to the band, Weiland suggested back Black Velvet Revolver, liking the idea of \"something intimate like velvet juxtaposed with something deadly like a gun.\" They eventually arrived at Velvet Revolver, announcing it at a press conference and performance showcase at the El Rey Theatre while also performing the songs \"Set Me Free\" and \"Slither\" as well as covers of Nirvana's \"Negative Creep\", Sex Pistols' \"Bodies\", and Guns N' Roses' \"It's So Easy\".\n\nContraband and mainstream success (2003–2005)\n\nPrior to the recording of their debut album, Weiland took material that the band had previously written to his studio, Lavish, in Toluca Lake. With engineer Doug Grean, Weiland rearranged the music to fit his vocals, eventually coming out with the songs \"Big Machine\" and \"Dirty Little Thing\". The band worked on new material for songs such as \"You Got No Right\", \"Slither\", \"Sucker Train Blues\", and \"Do It for the Kids\", among others. It was during this time that Weiland was arrested at the parking lot of his studio for drug possession. Upon release from jail, he wrote lyrics to material he was given previously, writing the lyrics to the song \"Fall to Pieces\". Velvet Revolver soon began recording their debut album. Initially, they recorded \"Slither\" with producer Bob Ezrin at Henson Studios, but were dissatisfied with the result. After recording \"Headspace\" with Josh Abraham, the band liked the track enough to do the rest of the album with him.\n\nVelvet Revolver soon gained major label attention with Warner Bros. and Chrysalis. RCA and Elektra were also interested in signing the band. They eventually signed with RCA Records. They recorded their album at NRG Recording Studios, while Slash recorded his guitar parts at a smaller studio on the southern corner between Highland Avenue and Sunset Boulevard. During recording, Weiland could only work for three hours a day due to a court order mentioning that he was to stay in a halfway house. The marketing campaign for Velvet Revolver in the run-up to the release of the first album was profiled as part of the Frontline program The Way the Music Died, which included interviews with the band members and producers.\n\nThe resulting album, titled Contraband, was released on June 8, 2004. Helped by the success of the single \"Slither\", it debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling over 250,000 copies in the first week. Contraband went on to sell four million copies worldwide, 2.9 million of which were sold in the United States, and was certified 2x platinum by the RIAA. Both \"Slither\" and \"Fall to Pieces\" managed to peak at number one on the Mainstream Rock Chart as well as number 56 and 67 on the Billboard Hot 100, respectively. \"Slither\" also peaked at number one on the Modern Rock Chart and number 35 on the UK Singles Chart. The album's third single, \"Dirty Little Thing\", peaked at number eight on the Mainstream Rock chart.\n\nCritically, the album was generally well received. Despite being praised for its hedonism and maturity, critics noted a disconnection between \"singer and band\". Velvet Revolver won the Kerrang! Award for Best International Newcomer in 2004, and the following year they won the Best Hard Rock Performance Grammy Award for \"Slither\". They also received a nomination for Rock Artist of the Year at the Billboard Music Awards while \"Fall to Pieces\" was nominated for a Song of the Year/Rock Radio Radio Music Award. They recorded a new song entitled \"Come On, Come In\" for the movie Fantastic Four in 2005, which peaked at number 14 on the Mainstream Rock Chart. \"Fall to Pieces\" then re-entered the charts, peaking at number twenty-five on the Adult Top 40 the same year.\n\nVelvet Revolver toured extensively for nineteen months in support of Contraband. They toured both the United States and Europe twice, while also performing in Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. They performed at Live 8 and various festivals including Download Festival, as well as Ozzfest. It was during the tour that the band members, with the exception of Kushner, began to relapse on alcohol and drugs. Though they managed to get clean in time for the recording of their new album, Slash felt that \"[the band] lost [Weiland]\" and \"thought the overall spirit of everything was declining at that point.\"\n\nLibertad and departure of Scott Weiland (2005–2008)\n\nWeiland announced in 2005 that Velvet Revolver's next album would be titled Libertad and would be a concept album. When they started writing material, they decided against the concept idea. Initially, the band started working with producer Rick Rubin on the album. However, due to his methods, such as having a crew to do the work and engineering while only popping in occasionally, and due to the fact that he was also working with other bands at the same time, they decided against continuing with Rubin. At the suggestion of Weiland, Velvet Revolver began working with Brendan O'Brien. Slash stated that O' Brien \"brought more than just discipline to the equation, he brought a musicality that stems from the fact that he plays guitar, bass and drums. At any given moment he could play along [with the band] and it really helped the process.\" While writing for the album, Weiland believed that his bandmates were going to reunite with Guns N' Roses when the band's manager was talking to Axl Rose about switching management companies, and were not going to record their second album. He was later convinced by the band that this was not the case.\n\nFollowing the completion of the album, Velvet Revolver performed for and inducted Van Halen into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, with Weiland and Slash speaking on the band's behalf, on March 12, 2007. The band played a medley of \"Ain't Talkin' 'bout Love\" and \"Runaround\". Shows in South America with Aerosmith followed in April. They released the EP Melody and the Tyranny on June 1 to serve as a precursor to the release of their new album, which featured two songs from Libertad, a cover of Talking Heads song \"Psycho Killer\" and a video documentary about the making of Libertad as well as a live video of the band performing \"Do It for the Kids\".\n\nLibertad was released on July 3, 2007, peaking at number five on the Billboard 200. The album's first single \"She Builds Quick Machines\" peaked at 74 on the Hot Canadian Digital Singles. The second and third singles, \"The Last Fight\" and \"Get Out the Door\", both peaked at number 16 and 34 on the Mainstream Rock Chart, respectively. Critical reception to the album was mixed. Though some critics praised the album and felt that Libertad gave the band an identity of their own, outside of the Guns N' Roses and Stone Temple Pilots comparisons, others described the album as \"bland\" and noted that the band have still to gel with them \"play[ing] to their strengths instead of finding a collective sound.\"\n\nIn support of Libertad, Velvet Revolver toured North America with Alice in Chains from August 2007 to October. They also performed at the Virgin Festival, Gods of Metal, and Download in 2007. A November tour of Japan was canceled after they were denied visas, and in 2008, a tour of Australia was postponed, due to health issues, and later canceled following Weiland's decision to voluntarily enter a rehab facility. On November 21, 2007, Weiland was arrested after crashing his car while driving on an L.A. highway. He was charged with driving under the influence of drugs with a prior conviction and later released on $40,000 bail. Velvet Revolver then toured both the US and the UK, as well as some European shows, on the Rock n' Roll as It Should Be tour from January 24 to April 1, 2008. They also played at the Dubai Desert Rock Festival on March 8 the same year. It was during the tour that Weiland \"got back into his old ways\", which started to take their toll on the rest of the band with the cancellation of the Australian tour seen as the \"final blow\".\n\nOn the UK tour, the band members never spoke with Weiland, with the exception of a few arguments around the stage. Tensions came to a head during Velvet Revolver's Glasgow show on March 20, 2008, where Weiland announced to the crowd that it was the band's last tour, unaware that the other band members were already planning on firing him. After Sorum posted a message about the show on his website, Weiland issued a statement through Blabbermouth.net in response, saying he \"made many attempts to remain cordial with the members of [Velvet Revolver], but mainly, the likes of [Sorum]\" and that \"[the band] were a gang. But ego and jealousy can get the better of anyone.\" Slash later stated that it would not be Velvet Revolver's last tour. Weiland's departure was announced on April 1. Weiland also departed the cover band Camp Freddy, which also featured Sorum, and reunited with Stone Temple Pilots, before being fired in 2013.\n\nSearch for a new singer and solo careers (2008–2015) \n\nAfter Weiland's departure, the band began recording and searching for a new singer. The search was sporadic with the band spending some time auditioning singers, then turning into solo projects, returning to the band, then abandoning it again. Several names were rumored to be auditioning for the band through the years. Myles Kennedy (Alter Bridge) was strongly rumored due to his collaborations with Slash; Lenny Kravitz, Chester Bennington of Linkin Park, Steve Isaacs formerly of Skycycle and the Panic Channel, Royston Langdon of Spacehog, Donovan Leitch of Camp Freddy, Ours singer Jimmy Gnecco and Scars on Broadway guitarist Franky Perez, as well as previous auditionee Sebastian Bach. Kushner later revealed that Perez was officially hired by the band as vocalist for a brief time in 2008.\n\nSlash, McKagan, and Sorum all contributed to the song \"Kissed It\" for the Macy Gray album The Sellout, which was released on June 22, 2011. Despite not featuring Kushner, the trio were credited as Velvet Revolver on the album. The band released their first concert DVD on November 16, 2010, entitled Live In Houston, which was filmed June 18, 2004, at the Verizon Wireless Theater while the band was touring in support of Contraband. Slash, McKagan and Sorum made a performance at the Road Recovery benefit concert on September 13 with a guest appearance from Kushner.\n\nVelvet Revolver reunited for a one-off performance with Scott Weiland at a benefit concert for the late John O'Brien, on January 12, 2012. Following a benefit show for the Road Recovery in 2011 with the other Velvet Revolver members, each one agreed to a one-off reunion before Kushner invited Weiland, who also agreed. Kushner also stated it was then unknown what Velvet Revolver's plans were for the future after the reunion show; \"I know everyone's got other commitments, but I think everyone's like, 'Let's get this thing done and get through this and then we'll see.'\"\n\nIn April 2012, Weiland remarked that he would like to reunite permanently with Velvet Revolver, saying that \"if Maynard James Keenan can do it with A Perfect Circle and Tool, then there's no reason why I shouldn't go and do it with both bands\". Further in May in an interview with ABC Radio Weiland said that he had reunited with the band permanently for a tour and an album, which however was denied a few days later by Slash in an interview with 93X.\n\nOn May 12, 2014, in an interview at the MusiCares benefit concert, Slash told journalist Lucas H. Gordon that he \"think[s] [they're] gonna audition a singer\" in the future. However, he also stated that he would be touring with his solo band \"for the next year and a half.\"\n\nOn June 29, 2014, in an interview to Totalrock radio, Duff McKagan talked to Hayley Leggs in Clisson France about the subject of a new lead vocalist for Velvet Revolver and revealed that there had been at least one audition for the role of lead vocalist, but said that the person that they auditioned did not properly impress the remaining members of the band. He also ruled himself out of being the band's lead vocalist.\n\nOn December 3, 2015, Weiland was found dead on his tour bus around 9 pm, one day before he was to perform in Minnesota with his band the Wildabouts, which ended the possible reunion. Both Slash and McKagan rejoined Guns N' Roses in 2016.\n\nMusical style\nVelvet Revolver's first album Contraband was described by Johnny Loftus of AllMusic as an \"updated version of Guns N' Roses swagger behind Scott Weiland's glammy, elastic vocals.\" David Browne of Entertainment Weekly stated that \"[a]nyone expecting Use Your Illusion III, though, will be in for a slight buzzkill\" and that \"[t]he songs suggest the pop grunge of Weiland's old band more than the careening overdrive of GN'R.\" A number of reviewers made some comparisons to the members previous bands, with PopMatters reviewer David Powell stating that \"Contraband is a pretty good record of unpretentious rock and roll that suffers from inevitable comparison with the best efforts of its parent bands.\" He went on to state that while Velvet Revolver's \"heritage is evident on most of the songs\", Contraband \"improves with repeat listening, which is encouraging.\" Velvet Revolver's second album Libertad saw the band's style change with the presence of producer Brendan O'Brien, noted by AllMusic reviewer Stephen Thomas Erlewine. Erlewine also stated that \"too often, there are concessions between Weiland and the others during the course of a song.\" Tom Sinclair of Entertainment Weekly stated that Libertad \"feels both comfortingly familiar and vaguely exotic.\" Songs such as \"Let it Roll\" and \"She Mine\" have seen some comparisons to the Doors, the Rolling Stones and the Stooges, as noted by San Francisco Chronicle reviewer Jaan Uhelszki. The New York Post commented that \"Slash's guitar riffs throughout this new record are as aggressive as a caged cat\" and \"\nsinger Scott Weiland's vocals are crisp and controlled yet passionate.\"\n\nBand members\nSlash – lead guitar, talkbox (2002–2012)\nDuff McKagan – bass, backing vocals (2002–2012)\nMatt Sorum – drums, percussion, backing vocals (2002–2012)\nDave Kushner – rhythm guitar (2002–2012)\nScott Weiland – lead vocals, keyboards (2003–2008, 2012)\n\nDiscography\n\nStudio albums\nContraband (2004)\nLibertad (2007)\n\nAwards and nominations\n\nVelvet Revolver have received one Grammy Award. The band won the Grammy when \"Slither\" was nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance in 2005. The song \"Fall to Pieces\" received a nomination for Song of the Year/Rock Radio Radio Music Award in 2005. The band won the Best International Newcomer Kerrang! Award in 2004 while they were nominated for a Rock Artist of the Year Billboard Music Award in 2005.\n\nBillboard Music Awards\nThe Billboard Music Awards were awarded annually by Billboard magazine.\n\n|-\n| style=\"text-align:center;\"| 2005 || Velvet Revolver || Rock Artist of the Year || \n\nGrammy Awards\nThe Grammy Awards are awarded annually by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.\n\n|-\n| rowspan=\"3\" style=\"text-align:center;\"| 2005 || \"Slither\" || Best Hard Rock Performance || \n|-\n| \"Fall to Pieces\" || Best Rock Song || \n|-\n| Contraband || Best Rock Album || \n\nKerrang! Awards\nThe Kerrang! Awards are awarded annually by Kerrang! Magazine.\n\n|-\n| style=\"text-align:center;\"| 2004 || Velvet Revolver || Best International Newcomer || \n\nRadio Music Awards\nThe Radio Music Awards were awarded annually honoring the most successful songs on mainstream radio.\n\n|-\n| style=\"text-align:center;\"| 2005 || \"Fall to Pieces\" || Song of the Year/Rock Radio ||\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n \n \n\n \n2002 establishments in California\nAmerican alternative metal musical groups\nGrammy Award winners\nGuns N' Roses\nHard rock musical groups from California\nKerrang! Awards winners\nMusical groups established in 2002\nMusical groups disestablished in 2008\nMusical groups reestablished in 2012\nMusical groups disestablished in 2012\nMusical groups from Orange County, California\nRCA Records artists\nRock music supergroups"
] |
[
"Slash (musician)",
"2002-2008: Velvet Revolver",
"what did slash have to do with Velvet Revolver?",
"Realizing that they still had the chemistry of their days in Guns N' Roses, they decided to form a new band together.",
"was the new band named Velvet Revolver?",
"In 2003, Velvet Revolver played several concerts during the summer and released their first single, \"Set Me Free\"."
] | C_64d627d3f6004403918f23105a60590e_1 | what was another song velvet revolver played? | 3 | what was another song velvet revolver played in addition to "Set Me Free"? | Slash (musician) | In 2002, Slash reunited with Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum for a Randy Castillo tribute concert. Realizing that they still had the chemistry of their days in Guns N' Roses, they decided to form a new band together. Former Guns N' Roses guitarist Izzy Stradlin was initially involved, but left after the others decided to find a lead singer. Dave Kushner, who had previously played with McKagan in Loaded, then joined the band on rhythm guitar. For many months, the four searched for a lead singer by listening to offered demo tapes, a monotonous process documented by VH1. Eventually, former Stone Temple Pilots vocalist Scott Weiland joined the band. In 2003, Velvet Revolver played several concerts during the summer and released their first single, "Set Me Free". In June 2004, they released their debut album, Contraband, which debuted at No. 1 on the U.S. chart and sold two million copies, re-establishing Slash as a mainstream performer. A year-and-a-half-long tour followed in support of the album. In July 2007, Velvet Revolver released their second album, Libertad, and embarked on a second tour. During a show in March 2008, Weiland announced to the audience that it would be the band's final tour; he was fired from the band in April 2008, Slash insisted "chemical issues" led to the split. The following month Weiland rejoined Stone Temple Pilots. Despite Weiland's departure, Velvet Revolver did not officially disband. In early 2010, Velvet Revolver began writing new songs and auditioning new singers. By January 2011, the band had recorded nine demos, and was reportedly due to make a decision on their singer. However, the following April, Slash stated that they had been unable to find a suitable singer and that Velvet Revolver would remain on hiatus for the next few years while its members focus on other projects. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Saul Hudson (born July 23, 1965), better known as Slash, is a British-American musician, songwriter, and record producer from Stoke-on-Trent, England. He is best known as the lead guitarist of the American hard rock band Guns N' Roses, with whom he achieved worldwide success in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Slash has received critical acclaim and is considered one of the greatest guitarists in history.
In 1993, Slash formed the side project Slash's Snakepit and in 1996 he left Guns N' Roses and co-founded the supergroup Velvet Revolver, which re-established him as a mainstream performer in the mid to late 2000s. Slash has released four solo albums: Slash (2010), featuring an array of guest musicians, Apocalyptic Love (2012), World on Fire (2014) and Living the Dream (2018) recorded with his band, Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators. He returned to Guns N' Roses in 2016.
Time magazine named him runner-up on their list of "The 10 Best Electric Guitar Players" in 2009, while Rolling Stone placed him at number 65 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" in 2011. Guitar World ranked his guitar solo in "November Rain" number 6 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Guitar Solos" in 2008, and Total Guitar placed his riff in "Sweet Child o' Mine" at number 1 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Riffs" in 2004. In 2010, Gibson Guitar Corporation ranked Slash as number 34 on their "Top 50 Guitarists of All Time", while their readers landed him number 9 on Gibson's "Top 25 Guitarists of All Time". In 2012, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Guns N' Roses' classic lineup.
Early life
Saul Hudson was born in Stoke-on-Trent on July 23, 1965. He was named after Romanian-American cartoonist Saul Steinberg. His mother, Ola J. Hudson (née Oliver; 1946–2009), was an African-American fashion designer and costumier from the United States, whose clients included David Bowie (whom she also dated), Ringo Starr, and Janis Joplin. His father, Anthony Hudson, is a white English artist who created album covers for musicians such as Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. Of his mixed background, Slash has remarked, "As a musician, I've always been amused that I'm both British and Black; particularly because so many American musicians seem to aspire to be British while so many British musicians, in the 'Sixties in particular, went to such great pains to be Black."
During his early years, Slash was raised by his father and paternal grandparents in Stoke-on-Trent while his mother moved back to her native United States to work in Los Angeles. When he was around five years old, he and his father joined his mother in Los Angeles. His brother, Albion "Ash" Hudson, was born in 1972. Following his parents' separation in 1974, Slash became a self-described "problem child". He chose to live with his mother and was often sent to live with his beloved maternal grandmother whenever his mother had to travel for her job. Slash sometimes accompanied his mother to work, where he met several film and music stars. He was given the nickname "Slash" by actor Seymour Cassel because he was "always in a hurry, zipping around from one thing to another".
In 1979, Slash decided to form a band with his friend Steven Adler. The band never materialized, but it prompted Slash to take up an instrument. Since Adler had designated himself the role of guitarist, Slash decided to learn how to play bass. Equipped with a one-string flamenco guitar given to him by his grandmother, he began taking classes with Robert Wolin, a teacher at Fairfax Music School. During his first lesson, Slash decided to switch from bass to guitar after hearing Wolin play "Brown Sugar" by the Rolling Stones. His decision to play guitar was further influenced by one of his school teachers, who would play songs by Cream and Led Zeppelin for his students. As a result, Slash stated, "When I heard him do that, I said, 'That's what I want to do.'" He vividly recalls the feeling after learning "Come Dancing" from Wired by Jeff Beck, his greatest influence, which he described as "fucking awesome".
A champion BMX rider, Slash put the bike aside to devote himself to playing guitar, practising up to 12 hours a day. Slash attended Beverly Hills High School and was a contemporary of musicians Lenny Kravitz and Zoro.
Career
1981–1985: Early years
Slash joined his first band, Tidus Sloan, in 1981. In 1983, he formed the band Road Crew—named after the Motörhead song "(We Are) The Road Crew"—with his childhood friend Steven Adler, who by then had learned to play drums. He placed an advertisement in a newspaper looking for a bassist, and received a response from Duff McKagan. They auditioned a number of singers, including one-time Black Flag vocalist Ron Reyes, and worked on material that included the main riff of what became the Guns N' Roses song "Rocket Queen". Slash disbanded the group the following year due to them not being able to find a singer, as well as Adler's lack of work ethic compared to himself and McKagan. He, along with Adler, then joined a local band known as Hollywood Rose, which featured singer Axl Rose and guitarist Izzy Stradlin. Following his time with Hollywood Rose, Slash played in a band called Black Sheep and unsuccessfully auditioned for Poison, a glam metal band that he later openly derided.
1985–1996: First stint with Guns N' Roses
In June 1985, Slash was asked by Axl Rose and Izzy Stradlin to join their new band GunsN'Roses, along with Duff McKagan and Steven Adler (replacing founding members Tracii Guns, Ole Beich and Rob Gardner, respectively). They played Los Angeles-area nightclubssuch as the Whisky a Go Go, The Roxy, and The Troubadourand opened for larger acts throughout 1985 and 1986. Before one of the shows in 1985, Slash shoplifted a black felt top hat and a Native American-style silver concho belt from two stores on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. He then combined the hat with parts of the belt to create a piece of custom headwear for the show. He said he "felt really cool" wearing the hat, and it became his trademark. It was during 1985–1986 that the band wrote most of its classic material, including "Welcome to the Jungle," "Sweet Child o' Mine", and "Paradise City," As a result of their rowdy and rebellious behavior, Guns N' Roses quickly received the moniker "Most Dangerous Band in the World," causing Slash to remark, "For some strange reason, Guns N' Roses is like the catalyst for controversy, even before we had any kind of record deal." After being scouted by several major record labels, the band signed with Geffen Records in March 1986.
In July 1987, Guns N' Roses released its debut album, Appetite for Destruction, which, as of September 2008, had sold over 28 million copies worldwide, 18million of which were sold in the United States, making it the best-selling debut album of all time in the U.S. In the summer of 1988, the band achieved its only U.S. No. 1 hit with "Sweet Child O' Mine," a song spearheaded by Slash's guitar riff and solo. In November of that year, Guns N' Roses released G N' R Lies, which sold over five million copies in the U.S. alone, despite containing only eight tracks, four of which were included on the previously released EP Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide. As their success grew, so did interpersonal tensions within the band. In 1989, during a show as opening act for the Rolling Stones, Axl Rose threatened to leave the band if certain members of the band didn't stop "dancing with Mr. Brownstone," a reference to their song of the same name about heroin use. Slash was among those who promised to clean up. However, the following year, Steven Adler was fired from the band because of his heroin addiction; he was replaced by Matt Sorum of The Cult.
In May 1991, the band embarked on the two-and-a-half-year-long Use Your Illusion Tour. The following September, Guns N' Roses released the long-awaited albums Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II, which debuted at No. 2 and No. 1, respectively, on the U.S. chart, a feat not achieved by any other group. Izzy Stradlin abruptly left the band in November; he was replaced by Gilby Clarke of Candy and Kill for Thrills. Slash finished Use Your Illusion Tour with Guns N' Roses on July 17, 1993. In November of that year, the band released "The Spaghetti Incident?", a cover album of mostly punk songs, which proved less successful than its predecessors. Slash then wrote several songs for what would have become the follow-up album to the Use Your Illusion double album. Axl Rose and Duff, however, rejected the material.
With the band's failure to collaborate resulting in no album being recorded, Slash announced in October 1996 that he was no longer a part of Guns N' Roses. Slash stated at the time "Axl and I have not been capable of seeing eye to eye on Guns N' Roses for some time. We tried to collaborate, but at this point, I'm no longer in the band." Paul Tobias's inclusion in the band was another factor in Slash leaving, with Slash having both "creative and personal" differences with Tobias. However, in his 2007 autobiography, Slash stated that his decision to leave the band was not based on artistic differences with Axl Rose, but on Rose's constant lateness to concerts, the alleged legal manipulation Rose used (since denied by Rose) to gain control of the band, and the departures of Steven Adler and Izzy Stradlin.
1994–2002: Slash's Snakepit
In 1994, Slash formed Slash's Snakepit, a side project that featured his Guns N' Roses bandmates Matt Sorum and Gilby Clarke on drums and rhythm guitar respectively, as well as Alice in Chains' Mike Inez on bass and Jellyfish's Eric Dover on vocals. The band recorded Slash's material originally intended for Guns N' Roses, resulting in the release of It's Five O'Clock Somewhere in February 1995. The album was critically praised for ignoring the then-popular conventions of alternative music, and fared well on the charts, eventually selling over one million copies in the US alone despite little promotion from Geffen Records. Slash's Snakepit toured in support of the album with bassist James LoMenzo and drummer Brian Tichy of Pride & Glory, before disbanding in 1996. Slash then toured for two years with the blues rock cover band Slash's Blues Ball.
In 1999, Slash chose to regroup Slash's Snakepit with Rod Jackson on vocals, Ryan Roxie on rhythm guitar, Johnny Griparic on bass, and Matt Laug on drums. Their second album, Ain't Life Grand, was released in October 2000 through Koch Records. It did not sell as well as the band's previous release, and its critical reception was mixed. To promote the album, the band—with Keri Kelli on rhythm guitar—embarked on an extensive world tour in support of AC/DC in the summer of 2000, followed by their own headlining theater tour. Slash disbanded Snakepit in 2002.
2002–2008: Velvet Revolver
In 2002, Slash reunited with Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum for a Randy Castillo tribute concert. Realizing that they still had the chemistry of their days in Guns N' Roses, they decided to form a new band together. Former Guns N' Roses guitarist Izzy Stradlin was initially involved, but left after the others decided to find a lead singer. Dave Kushner, who had previously played with McKagan in Loaded, then joined the band on rhythm guitar. For many months, the four searched for a lead singer by listening to offered demo tapes, a monotonous process documented by VH1. Eventually, former Stone Temple Pilots vocalist Scott Weiland joined the band.
In 2003, Velvet Revolver played several concerts during the summer and released their first single, "Set Me Free". In June 2004, they released their debut album, Contraband, which debuted at No.1 on the U.S. chart and sold two million copies, re-establishing Slash as a mainstream performer. A year-and-a-half-long tour followed in support of the album. In 2005, the band was nominated for three Grammys: Rock Album of the Year, Rock Song, and Hard Rock Performance for their Contraband single "Slither" which won their first and only Grammy. In July 2007, Velvet Revolver released their second album, Libertad, and embarked on a second tour. During a show in March 2008, Weiland announced to the audience that it would be the band's final tour; he was fired from the band in April 2008 and Slash insisted "chemical issues" led to the split. The following month Weiland rejoined Stone Temple Pilots. Despite Weiland's departure, Velvet Revolver did not officially disband.
In early 2010, Velvet Revolver began writing new songs and auditioning new singers. By January 2011, the band had recorded nine demos, and was reportedly due to make a decision on their singer. However, the following April, Slash stated that they had been unable to find a suitable singer and that Velvet Revolver would remain on hiatus for the next few years while its members focus on other projects.
2009–present: "Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators"
In September 2008, Slash began production on his debut solo album. He described the process of recording by himself as "cathartic." He also mentioned working on the album gave him a chance to "...take a little bit of a break from all the politics and the democracy that is a band and just sort of do my own thing for a little bit. Slash's wife Perla revealed that many different artists would appear on the album, saying, "It's going to be Slash and friends, with everyone from Ozzy to Fergie." The album, simply titled Slash, debuted at No. 3 on the U.S. chart upon its release in April 2010. It featured an all-star roster of guest musicians, including Osbourne, Fergie of The Black Eyed Peas, Adam Levine of Maroon 5, M. Shadows of Avenged Sevenfold, Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead, Dave Grohl, Chris Cornell and Iggy Pop. The album also features musical collaborations with former Guns N' Roses members Izzy Stradlin, Steven Adler and Duff McKagan. Preceding the release of the album, Slash had released the Japan-only single "Sahara", featuring Japanese vocalist Koshi Inaba (from B'z). It charted at number four on the Oricon Singles Chart, as well number six on the Billboard Japan Hot 100. It has been awarded Western "Single of the Year" award at the 24th Japan Gold Disc Award by RIAJ. To promote the album, Slash embarked on his first solo world tour with Myles Kennedy of Alter Bridge—who also appeared on the album—on vocals, Bobby Schneck on rhythm guitar, Todd Kerns on bass, and Brent Fitz on drums. Slash opened for Ozzy Osbourne for a leg of Osbourne's Scream World Tour.
Slash began working on his second solo album in June 2011. He collaborated with his touring bandmates Myles Kennedy, Todd Kerns, and Brent Fitz, with the resulting album billed to "Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators". The album, titled Apocalyptic Love, was released on May 22, 2012, debuting at #2 on the Canadian Albums Chart. In 2013 Slash received the award for "Best Guitarist Of The Year 2012" from Loudwire.
Slash embarked on a tour in the summer of 2014, opening for Aerosmith as part of the Let Rock Rule Tour. In May 2014, Slash revealed details of his third solo album World on Fire. The album was again billed as "Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators" and was released on September 10, 2014. It debuted at No. 10 on The Billboard 200 chart.
In March 2018, Slash revealed that a new album with Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators was to be released later in the year. In June 2018, he announced that the album was titled Living the Dream, to be released on September 21, 2018. The group tour for the album began in September 2018, starting with a show in Del Mar, California at the KAABOO Del Mar Music Festival. The tour was concluded the US and Canada again 2019 after completing the Asian leg and Hawaii show with Guns n' Roses. Former touring guitarist Frank Sidoris joined the band full-time for the recording sessions.
In an October 2020 interview with blabbermouth.net bassist/vocalist Todd Kerns confirmed that there would be a new album in 2021, referred to as "SMKC4".
On July 26, 2021, it was confirmed that the record was to be released via Gibson's new record label Gibson Records in February 2022. On October 18, 2021, Slash officially confirmed via Instagram the first single's title "The River is Rising", along with its release date, October 22, 2021. On October 22, the release day of first single, it was announced that the album 4 will be released on February 11, 2022. The tour was also announced the same day, scheduled to start February 8, 2022, in Portland, Oregon.
2016–present: Return to Guns N' Roses
On December 29, 2015, several days after a Guns N' Roses-related teaser was released to movie theaters, Billboard reported that Slash would rejoin the band to headline Coachella 2016, filling the lead guitarist spot vacated when DJ Ashba left the band. Guns N' Roses were officially announced as headliners of Coachella on January 4, 2016, with KROQ reporting Slash and Duff McKagan would rejoin the band. Slash performed with Guns N' Roses for the first time in 23 years during the band's secret warmup gig at the Troubadour in Los Angeles on April 1, 2016. The band then embarked on the Not in This Lifetime... Tour.
Session work
In 1991, Slash played lead guitar on the single "Give In to Me" off Michael Jackson's album Dangerous, as well as for the opening skit of the video for the song "Black or White" off the same album. In 1995, he played guitar on "D.S.", a controversial song from Jackson's HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I album, and in 1997 appeared on the song "Morphine" off the remix album Blood on the Dance Floor: History in the Mix. In 2001, Slash played on "Privacy" off Jackson's final studio album, Invincible. Slash also joined Jackson on several occasions on stage, most notably at the 1995 MTV Video Music Awards playing with Jackson on "Black or White" (and the introduction of "Billie Jean"). He made two surprise appearances during Jackson's 1992 Dangerous World Tour in Spain and Japan and supported the 1999 charity concerts MJ & Friends in Seoul and Munich playing the same set as he did for 1995's MTV Video Music Awards. The last time Slash and Jackson shared a stage was on both 2001 Michael Jackson: 30th Anniversary Special concerts in New York City playing "Black or White" and "Beat It".
In 1991, Slash collaborated with Lenny Kravitz on "Always on the Run", the lead single from Kravitz' album Mama Said. In 1993, Slash appeared on the album Stone Free: A Tribute to Jimi Hendrix, performing "I Don't Live Today" with Paul Rodgers and Band of Gypsys. Slash also guest appeared in Carole King's 1994 live concert, which was captured on her Carole KingIn Concert album. Slash and King appeared on David Letterman to promote the concert. In 1996, he collaborated with Marta Sánchez to record the flamenco-inspired song "Obsession Confession" for the Curdled soundtrack. Later that year, he played with Alice Cooper at Sammy Hagar's club Cabo Wabo in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. The show was released the following year as A Fistful of Alice. In 1997, Slash appeared alongside rapper Ol' Dirty Bastard and rock band Fishbone on Blackstreet's rock remix of their single "Fix"; he also appeared in the accompanying music video. Also in 1997, he played on the single "But You Said I'm Useless" by Japanese musician J. That same year, he contributed music to the soundtrack of Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown; several compositions by Slash's Snakepit can be heard throughout the film. He also appeared on the Insane Clown Posse album The Great Milenko on the track "Halls of Illusions".
In 2002, Slash played on the title track to Elán's album Street Child. In 2003, he participated in the Yardbirds' comeback record Birdland; he played lead guitar on the track "Over, Under, Sideways, Down". In 2006, Slash played on a cover of "In the Summertime" on keyboardist Derek Sherinian's solo album Blood of the Snake; he was also featured in the accompanying music video. In 2007, he appeared on Paulina Rubio's single "Nada Puede Cambiarme". In 2008, Slash played guitar on the film score of The Wrestler, composed by Clint Mansell. Slash was the featured guitarist on the 2008 Italian hit single "Gioca Con Me" by Italian singer-songwriter Vasco Rossi. In 2009, he was featured on Rihanna's single "Rockstar 101" off her album Rated R. In 2011, he contributed the song "Kick It Up a Notch" to the Disney Channel animation Phineas and Ferb the Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension; he appeared in both live-action and animated form in the promotional music video.
Other ventures
A self-described "film buff", Slash has had small parts in several films and television series. In 1988, he appeared with his GunsN'Roses bandmates in the Dirty Harry film The Dead Pool, in which his character attends a musician's funeral and shoots a harpoon. He played radio DJ Hank in a 1994 episode of the horror anthology television series Tales from the Crypt. Slash was a guest star in an episode of the live-action/animated talk show Space Ghost Coast to Coast on Cartoon Network, where Space Ghost, Zorak, and Moltar teach him how to do guitar licks, but he refuses to do any of that. In 1999, he appeared as the host of the Miss America Bag Lady pageant in the widely panned film The Underground Comedy Movie. He has also appeared as himself in several projects, including Howard Stern's Private Parts in 1997, The Drew Carey Show in 1998, MADtv in 2005, and Sacha Baron Cohen's Brüno in 2009. Slash voiced a recurring caricature of himself in Robert Evans' animated television series Kid Notorious, which aired in 2003 on Comedy Central. As in real life, Slash is Evans' close friend and next-door neighbor on the show. He played Billy Butterface in the R-rated television show Metalocalypse on The Adult Swim. On May 5, 2009, he appeared as the guest mentor for the rock 'n' roll week of American Idol. In 2010, Slash formed Slasher Films, a horror film production company. Its first film, Nothing Left to Fear, was screened in select cities on October 4, 2013, before being released on DVD and Blu-ray the following Tuesday. Slash appeared on the October 26, 2014 episode of Talking Dead. He is reported to be a massive fan of horror movies.
Slash's autobiography, simply titled Slash, was published on October 30, 2007. It was co-written with Anthony Bozza. Slash also made several contributions to The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star, the autobiography of Mötley Crüe bassist and back-up singer Nikki Sixx, which was also published in 2007.
Slash is a pinball enthusiast and collector. He participated in the design process for the 1994 Data East GunsN'Roses pinball machine, as well as the 2020 Jersey Jack Pinball machine of the same theme, and provided music for the 1998 Sega machine Viper Night Drivin'.<ref name="Viper Night Drivin' Promotional Flyer">{{cite web |title=Internet Pinball Machine Database: Sega 'Viper Night Drivin Images |url=https://ipdb.org/showpic.pl?id=4359&picno=3372&zoom=1 |website=ipdb.org |access-date=19 June 2020}}</ref> Slash is a playable character in the video game Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, released in 2007. His performance was motion captured to record his movements for the game. Slash's character becomes playable after a player beats him in a one-on-one competition, which then leads to the player and Slash playing the master track of "Welcome to the Jungle". Guitar learning game/simulator Rocksmith 2014 by Ubisoft released a Slash Song Pack with several of the latter compositions by the artist available to purchase as downloadable content and learn on the guitar.
A keen artist, Slash designed logos and artwork for several of his pre-Guns N' Roses bands, as well as the famous circular GN'R logo. He is also credited as having provided some artwork for Aerosmith's 2012 album, Music From Another Dimension!, as it reproduces a picture of the band drawn by Slash when he was still a teenager.
Slash is a fan of the Angry Birds series of video games, and created a hard rock version of the Angry Birds Space theme song. In addition, Slash has a Birds avatar shown in the game, released in March 2013.
Personal life
On October 10, 1992, Slash married model-actress Renée Suran in Marina del Rey, California. They divorced in late 1997 after five years of marriage. Slash married Perla Ferrar on October 15, 2001, in Hawaii. They have two sons, London Emilio (born August 28, 2002) and Cash Anthony (born June 23, 2004). Slash filed for divorce from Ferrar in August 2010, but the couple reconciled two months later. In December 2014, he again filed for divorce.
Slash is a dual citizen of the United Kingdom and the United States. A British national since his birth, he has resided in Los Angeles since 1971 but did not acquire American citizenship until 1996. He said in 2010, "I do consider myself British. I have very strong feelings about my British heritage. My first years were there, I went to school there, and I have seemingly endless family on that side of the pond. So I've always felt most comfortable in England."
In 2001, at the age of 35, Slash was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, a form of congestive heart failure caused by his many years of alcohol and drug abuse. Originally given between six days and six weeks to live, he survived through physical therapy and the implantation of a defibrillator. As of 2011, Slash had been clean and sober since 2006, which he credited to his then-wife Ferrar. In 2009, following his mother's death from lung cancer, he quit smoking.
Slash's friendship with GunsN'Roses frontman Axl Rose soured following his departure from the band. In 2006, Rose claimed that Slash had shown up at his house uninvited the previous year to offer a truce. He alleged that Slash had insulted his Velvet Revolver bandmates, telling Rose that he considered Scott Weiland "a fraud" and Duff McKagan "spineless", and that he "hated" Matt Sorum. Slash denied the accusations. In his 2007 autobiography he admitted to visiting Rose's home with the intention to settle a longstanding legal dispute and make peace with his former bandmate. He claims, however, that he did not speak with Rose and instead merely left a note. Slash maintained that he had not spoken with Rose in person since 1996. In 2009, in response to a statement by Rose in which he referred to Slash as "a cancer", Slash commented: "It doesn't really affect me at all... It's been a long time. The fact that he has anything to say at all, it's like, 'Whatever, dude.' It doesn't really matter." In an August 2015 interview, Slash stated that he and Rose had reconciled. He subsequently rejoined Guns N' Roses in 2016.
Slash's drummer son London Hudson debuted his new band Suspect208 in late 2020. The band also featured Robert Trujillo's son Tye Trujillo on bass and Scott Weiland's son Noah Weiland on vocals. Slash promoted the band on his social media accounts. In 2021 Slash and Myles Kennedy tested positive for COVID-19 while working on a new album.
Philanthropy
Slash is an honorary board member of Little Kids Rock, a national nonprofit that works to restore and rejuvenate music education programs in disadvantaged public schools. He has visited Little Kids Rock students, jammed with them and donated instruments and his time. Slash's passion for music is evident in his charity as well as his art. "Being a musician is good for the character because it teaches you a lot about discipline," Slash said. "I think it's a great creative outlet."
Slash has been recognized for his longtime contributions to establishing environmental welfare programs. He is a board trustee of the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association and has long supported the Los Angeles Zoo and zoos around the world. Slash's love of reptiles was for many years a notable aspect of his public personawith several of his many snakes appearing with him in music videos and photoshootsuntil the birth of his first son in 2002 forced him to find a new home for his collection.
Awards and accolades
Slash has received critical acclaim as a guitarist. In 2005, he was named "Best Guitarist" by Esquire, which congratulated him on "beating the comeback odds with a surprisingly legitimate and vital outfit, Velvet Revolver." Slash was awarded the title of "Riff Lord" during Metal Hammer's fourth annual Golden Gods awards in 2007. In 2008, he was ranked No.21 on Gigwise's list of "The 50 Greatest Guitarists Ever," and in 2009, he was named runner-up on "The 10 Best Electric Guitar Players" list in Time, which praised him as "a remarkably precise player." In 2011, Rolling Stone placed Slash at No. 65 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time."
In 2007, Slash was honored with a star on the Rock Walk of Fame; his name was placed alongside Jimmy Page, Eddie Van Halen and Jimi Hendrix. He was the honoree at the 2010 Sunset Strip Music Festival, where he was presented by West Hollywood mayor John Heilman with a plaque declaring August 26 as "Slash Day." In 2012, Slash was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the classic lineup of Guns N' Roses. He performed three songs—"Paradise City", "Sweet Child o' Mine" and "Mr. Brownstone"with fellow inductees Duff McKagan, Steven Adler, and Matt Sorum, one-time Guns N' Roses guitarist Gilby Clarke, and his frequent collaborator Myles Kennedy. Inductees Axl Rose, Izzy Stradlin and Dizzy Reed declined to attend. Later that year, Slash received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, located directly in front of the Hard Rock Cafe on Hollywood Boulevard.
In 2004, Slash's introductory riff in "Sweet Child o' Mine" was voted No.1 on a list of "The 100 Greatest Riffs" by the readers of Total Guitar; his riffs in "Out ta Get Me" (No.51), "Welcome to the Jungle" (No. 21), and "Paradise City" (No.19) also made the list. In 2006, his solo in "Paradise City" was voted No.3 by Total Guitars readers on a list of "The 100 Hottest Guitar Solos"; his solos in "Sweet Child o' Mine" and "November Rain" were ranked No.30 and No.82 respectively. In 2008, Guitar World placed Slash's solo in "November Rain" at No.6 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Guitar Solos," while his solo in "Sweet Child o' Mine" was ranked No.37 on the list. In 2010, the readers of Total Guitar voted his riff in "Slither" runner-up on the list of "The 50Greatest Riffs of the Decade," while his riff in "By the Sword" was ranked No.22. Slash received a Radio Contraband Rock Radio Award in 2012. In January 2015 Slash received the Les Paul award.
Equipment
Slash owns more than 100 guitars. His guitars are worth a total of $1.92 million. He prefers the Gibson Les Paul, which he has called "the best all-around guitar for me." Gibson has credited him and Zakk Wylde with bringing the Les Paul back into the mainstream in the late 1980s. His main studio guitar is a 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard replica, built by luthier Kris Derrig, which he came to own during the recording sessions for Guns N' Roses' debut album, Appetite for Destruction. He used that guitar on every subsequent album he recorded with Guns N' Roses and Velvet Revolver. For many years, his main live guitar was a 1988 Gibson Les Paul Standard.
Since 1997, Slash has collaborated with Gibson on seventeen signature Les Paul modelsfive through Gibson USA; seven through the Gibson Custom Shop; and five through the Gibson subsidiary Epiphone. Slash also plays various other Gibson guitars, including Firebirds and Explorers. In addition to Gibson, he also plays or has played guitars by a plethora of other brands as well, including B.C. Rich with whom he has designed several custom models based on their Mockingbird and Bich designs. He has used guitars by Fender, Gretsch, Jackson, and Martin. He has also collaborated on signature equipment with other companies. In 1996, Marshall introduced the Marshall Slash Signature JCM2555, an authentic reissue of the Marshall "Silver Jubilee" JCM2555 released in 1987. It was the first signature amp ever produced by Marshall, with production limited to 3000. In 2007, Jim Dunlop introduced the Crybaby SW-95 Slash Signature Wah, designed after Slash's own custom-built Crybaby wah pedal. In 2010, Seymour Duncan introduced the Alnico II Pro Slash APH-2 pickups, which were designed to recreate the tone of Slash's main studio guitar. The Slash signature pickups were marketed through Seymour Duncan's YouTube channel with product demonstrator Danny Young performing the official videos. Also in 2010, Marshall introduced the Marshall AFD100, a recreation of the Marshall 1959 that Slash used for the recording of Appetite for Destruction, with production limited to 2300.
On stage, Slash prefers Marshall amplifiers, particularly the Marshall "Silver Jubilee" JCM2555 amp. He used a rented early-1970s Marshall 1959 for the recording of Appetite for Destruction. Slash enjoyed the amp so much that he tried to keep it, telling the rental company, S.I.R., that it had been stolen. However, the amp was repossessed by S.I.R. employees after a roadie accidentally brought it to rehearsals at the store. For the recording of Velvet Revolver's debut album, Contraband, he used a Vox AC30 amp and small Fender tube amps, and on their second album, Libertad, he used the Marshall "Vintage Modern" 2466 amp. On his eponymous debut solo album he used a Marshall JCM800, issued as "#34", and later, on the subsequent world tour, Slash used his signature Marshall AFD100 amp.
Discography
Solo albums
Slash (2010)
Slash featuring Myles Kennedy & The Conspirators
Apocalyptic Love (2012)
World on Fire (2014)
Living the Dream (2018)
4 (2022)
With Guns N' Roses
Appetite for Destruction (1987)
G N' R Lies (1988)
Use Your Illusion I (1991)
Use Your Illusion II (1991)
"The Spaghetti Incident?" (1993)
With Slash's Snakepit
It's Five O'Clock Somewhere (1995)
Ain't Life Grand (2000)
With Velvet Revolver
Contraband (2004)
Libertad'' (2007)
Citations
General references
External links
1965 births
Living people
20th-century American guitarists
20th-century American writers
20th-century British musicians
20th-century British writers
21st-century American guitarists
21st-century American male writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
21st-century British musicians
21st-century British writers
American male film actors
American male television actors
American male voice actors
American autobiographers
American heavy metal guitarists
American male guitarists
American male songwriters
American rock songwriters
Black British rock musicians
Blues rock musicians
British emigrants to the United States
English male film actors
English male television actors
English male voice actors
English autobiographers
English people of African-American descent
English rock guitarists
English male guitarists
English songwriters
Geffen Records artists
Guitarists from Los Angeles
Guns N' Roses members
Hollywood Rose members
Kerrang! Awards winners
Lead guitarists
Musicians from London
People from Hampstead
People from Stoke-on-Trent
People with acquired American citizenship
Slash's Snakepit members
Slide guitarists
Songwriters from California
Velvet Revolver members
Writers from London
Writers from Los Angeles | false | [
"\"Set Me Free\" is the debut single by Velvet Revolver, released in 2003. It was released as the lead single from their debut album Contraband. It also appeared in the 2003 Marvel Comics film Hulk.\n\nAlternative versions\nThe album version features different mixing and also contains a slightly different ending, with a drum beat no longer finishing the song.\n\nA live version is also included on the \"Slither\" single. This version includes an extended guitar solo at the end of the song.\n\nSong Structure\n\nThe song's main riff was created by the band's guitarist, Slash. The song then goes through two rotations of verse-chorus, then a bridge and a fairly complicated guitar solo by Slash. The song then finishes with another chorus and guitar solo.\n\nMusic video\n\nThe music video, directed by Dean Karr, shows the band playing at a club live, which was the first gig where the Velvet Revolver idea was formed. It also shows some scenes from the Hulk movie.\n\nTrack listing\n\nChart performance\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nMusic video\n\nVelvet Revolver songs\n2003 debut singles\nSongs written by Slash (musician)\nSongs written by Matt Sorum\nSongs written by Duff McKagan\nSongs written by Scott Weiland\n2003 songs\nSongs written by Dave Kushner\nSong recordings produced by Nick Raskulinecz\nRCA Records singles\nHulk (film)",
"\"Come On, Come In\" is a song by American hard rock band Velvet Revolver, featured on the soundtrack to the 2005 superhero film Fantastic Four. When released as a promotional single in the United States on June 21, 2005, the song reached number 14 on the American Billboard Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. The lyrics were written by vocalist Scott Weiland and the music was written by Weiland and the rest of the band; the song was produced by the band, Douglas Grean and Nick Raskulinecz. The music video for \"Come On, Come In\" was directed by Wayne Isham and is featured as an extra in the Fantastic Four DVD.\n\nTrack listing\n \"Come On, Come In\" - 3:50\n\nPersonnel\nVelvet Revolver\nScott Weiland – vocals, production\nSlash – lead guitar, production\nDuff McKagan – bass, production\nMatt Sorum – drums, production\nDave Kushner – rhythm guitar, production\nAdditional personnel\nDouglas Grean – production\nNick Raskulinecz – production\nMike Brown – vocals engineering\nDave Donnelly – mastering\n\nReferences\n\n2005 singles\nVelvet Revolver songs\nFantastic Four (film series)\nSongs written by Scott Weiland\n2005 songs\nSongs written by Slash (musician)\nSongs written by Duff McKagan\nSongs written by Matt Sorum\nSong recordings produced by Nick Raskulinecz\nWind-up Records singles\nSongs written by Dave Kushner"
] |
[
"Slash (musician)",
"2002-2008: Velvet Revolver",
"what did slash have to do with Velvet Revolver?",
"Realizing that they still had the chemistry of their days in Guns N' Roses, they decided to form a new band together.",
"was the new band named Velvet Revolver?",
"In 2003, Velvet Revolver played several concerts during the summer and released their first single, \"Set Me Free\".",
"what was another song velvet revolver played?",
"I don't know."
] | C_64d627d3f6004403918f23105a60590e_1 | who else was in the Velvet Revolver? | 4 | who else was in the Velvet Revolver besides Slash? | Slash (musician) | In 2002, Slash reunited with Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum for a Randy Castillo tribute concert. Realizing that they still had the chemistry of their days in Guns N' Roses, they decided to form a new band together. Former Guns N' Roses guitarist Izzy Stradlin was initially involved, but left after the others decided to find a lead singer. Dave Kushner, who had previously played with McKagan in Loaded, then joined the band on rhythm guitar. For many months, the four searched for a lead singer by listening to offered demo tapes, a monotonous process documented by VH1. Eventually, former Stone Temple Pilots vocalist Scott Weiland joined the band. In 2003, Velvet Revolver played several concerts during the summer and released their first single, "Set Me Free". In June 2004, they released their debut album, Contraband, which debuted at No. 1 on the U.S. chart and sold two million copies, re-establishing Slash as a mainstream performer. A year-and-a-half-long tour followed in support of the album. In July 2007, Velvet Revolver released their second album, Libertad, and embarked on a second tour. During a show in March 2008, Weiland announced to the audience that it would be the band's final tour; he was fired from the band in April 2008, Slash insisted "chemical issues" led to the split. The following month Weiland rejoined Stone Temple Pilots. Despite Weiland's departure, Velvet Revolver did not officially disband. In early 2010, Velvet Revolver began writing new songs and auditioning new singers. By January 2011, the band had recorded nine demos, and was reportedly due to make a decision on their singer. However, the following April, Slash stated that they had been unable to find a suitable singer and that Velvet Revolver would remain on hiatus for the next few years while its members focus on other projects. CANNOTANSWER | Eventually, former Stone Temple Pilots vocalist Scott Weiland joined the band. | Saul Hudson (born July 23, 1965), better known as Slash, is a British-American musician, songwriter, and record producer from Stoke-on-Trent, England. He is best known as the lead guitarist of the American hard rock band Guns N' Roses, with whom he achieved worldwide success in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Slash has received critical acclaim and is considered one of the greatest guitarists in history.
In 1993, Slash formed the side project Slash's Snakepit and in 1996 he left Guns N' Roses and co-founded the supergroup Velvet Revolver, which re-established him as a mainstream performer in the mid to late 2000s. Slash has released four solo albums: Slash (2010), featuring an array of guest musicians, Apocalyptic Love (2012), World on Fire (2014) and Living the Dream (2018) recorded with his band, Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators. He returned to Guns N' Roses in 2016.
Time magazine named him runner-up on their list of "The 10 Best Electric Guitar Players" in 2009, while Rolling Stone placed him at number 65 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" in 2011. Guitar World ranked his guitar solo in "November Rain" number 6 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Guitar Solos" in 2008, and Total Guitar placed his riff in "Sweet Child o' Mine" at number 1 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Riffs" in 2004. In 2010, Gibson Guitar Corporation ranked Slash as number 34 on their "Top 50 Guitarists of All Time", while their readers landed him number 9 on Gibson's "Top 25 Guitarists of All Time". In 2012, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Guns N' Roses' classic lineup.
Early life
Saul Hudson was born in Stoke-on-Trent on July 23, 1965. He was named after Romanian-American cartoonist Saul Steinberg. His mother, Ola J. Hudson (née Oliver; 1946–2009), was an African-American fashion designer and costumier from the United States, whose clients included David Bowie (whom she also dated), Ringo Starr, and Janis Joplin. His father, Anthony Hudson, is a white English artist who created album covers for musicians such as Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. Of his mixed background, Slash has remarked, "As a musician, I've always been amused that I'm both British and Black; particularly because so many American musicians seem to aspire to be British while so many British musicians, in the 'Sixties in particular, went to such great pains to be Black."
During his early years, Slash was raised by his father and paternal grandparents in Stoke-on-Trent while his mother moved back to her native United States to work in Los Angeles. When he was around five years old, he and his father joined his mother in Los Angeles. His brother, Albion "Ash" Hudson, was born in 1972. Following his parents' separation in 1974, Slash became a self-described "problem child". He chose to live with his mother and was often sent to live with his beloved maternal grandmother whenever his mother had to travel for her job. Slash sometimes accompanied his mother to work, where he met several film and music stars. He was given the nickname "Slash" by actor Seymour Cassel because he was "always in a hurry, zipping around from one thing to another".
In 1979, Slash decided to form a band with his friend Steven Adler. The band never materialized, but it prompted Slash to take up an instrument. Since Adler had designated himself the role of guitarist, Slash decided to learn how to play bass. Equipped with a one-string flamenco guitar given to him by his grandmother, he began taking classes with Robert Wolin, a teacher at Fairfax Music School. During his first lesson, Slash decided to switch from bass to guitar after hearing Wolin play "Brown Sugar" by the Rolling Stones. His decision to play guitar was further influenced by one of his school teachers, who would play songs by Cream and Led Zeppelin for his students. As a result, Slash stated, "When I heard him do that, I said, 'That's what I want to do.'" He vividly recalls the feeling after learning "Come Dancing" from Wired by Jeff Beck, his greatest influence, which he described as "fucking awesome".
A champion BMX rider, Slash put the bike aside to devote himself to playing guitar, practising up to 12 hours a day. Slash attended Beverly Hills High School and was a contemporary of musicians Lenny Kravitz and Zoro.
Career
1981–1985: Early years
Slash joined his first band, Tidus Sloan, in 1981. In 1983, he formed the band Road Crew—named after the Motörhead song "(We Are) The Road Crew"—with his childhood friend Steven Adler, who by then had learned to play drums. He placed an advertisement in a newspaper looking for a bassist, and received a response from Duff McKagan. They auditioned a number of singers, including one-time Black Flag vocalist Ron Reyes, and worked on material that included the main riff of what became the Guns N' Roses song "Rocket Queen". Slash disbanded the group the following year due to them not being able to find a singer, as well as Adler's lack of work ethic compared to himself and McKagan. He, along with Adler, then joined a local band known as Hollywood Rose, which featured singer Axl Rose and guitarist Izzy Stradlin. Following his time with Hollywood Rose, Slash played in a band called Black Sheep and unsuccessfully auditioned for Poison, a glam metal band that he later openly derided.
1985–1996: First stint with Guns N' Roses
In June 1985, Slash was asked by Axl Rose and Izzy Stradlin to join their new band GunsN'Roses, along with Duff McKagan and Steven Adler (replacing founding members Tracii Guns, Ole Beich and Rob Gardner, respectively). They played Los Angeles-area nightclubssuch as the Whisky a Go Go, The Roxy, and The Troubadourand opened for larger acts throughout 1985 and 1986. Before one of the shows in 1985, Slash shoplifted a black felt top hat and a Native American-style silver concho belt from two stores on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. He then combined the hat with parts of the belt to create a piece of custom headwear for the show. He said he "felt really cool" wearing the hat, and it became his trademark. It was during 1985–1986 that the band wrote most of its classic material, including "Welcome to the Jungle," "Sweet Child o' Mine", and "Paradise City," As a result of their rowdy and rebellious behavior, Guns N' Roses quickly received the moniker "Most Dangerous Band in the World," causing Slash to remark, "For some strange reason, Guns N' Roses is like the catalyst for controversy, even before we had any kind of record deal." After being scouted by several major record labels, the band signed with Geffen Records in March 1986.
In July 1987, Guns N' Roses released its debut album, Appetite for Destruction, which, as of September 2008, had sold over 28 million copies worldwide, 18million of which were sold in the United States, making it the best-selling debut album of all time in the U.S. In the summer of 1988, the band achieved its only U.S. No. 1 hit with "Sweet Child O' Mine," a song spearheaded by Slash's guitar riff and solo. In November of that year, Guns N' Roses released G N' R Lies, which sold over five million copies in the U.S. alone, despite containing only eight tracks, four of which were included on the previously released EP Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide. As their success grew, so did interpersonal tensions within the band. In 1989, during a show as opening act for the Rolling Stones, Axl Rose threatened to leave the band if certain members of the band didn't stop "dancing with Mr. Brownstone," a reference to their song of the same name about heroin use. Slash was among those who promised to clean up. However, the following year, Steven Adler was fired from the band because of his heroin addiction; he was replaced by Matt Sorum of The Cult.
In May 1991, the band embarked on the two-and-a-half-year-long Use Your Illusion Tour. The following September, Guns N' Roses released the long-awaited albums Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II, which debuted at No. 2 and No. 1, respectively, on the U.S. chart, a feat not achieved by any other group. Izzy Stradlin abruptly left the band in November; he was replaced by Gilby Clarke of Candy and Kill for Thrills. Slash finished Use Your Illusion Tour with Guns N' Roses on July 17, 1993. In November of that year, the band released "The Spaghetti Incident?", a cover album of mostly punk songs, which proved less successful than its predecessors. Slash then wrote several songs for what would have become the follow-up album to the Use Your Illusion double album. Axl Rose and Duff, however, rejected the material.
With the band's failure to collaborate resulting in no album being recorded, Slash announced in October 1996 that he was no longer a part of Guns N' Roses. Slash stated at the time "Axl and I have not been capable of seeing eye to eye on Guns N' Roses for some time. We tried to collaborate, but at this point, I'm no longer in the band." Paul Tobias's inclusion in the band was another factor in Slash leaving, with Slash having both "creative and personal" differences with Tobias. However, in his 2007 autobiography, Slash stated that his decision to leave the band was not based on artistic differences with Axl Rose, but on Rose's constant lateness to concerts, the alleged legal manipulation Rose used (since denied by Rose) to gain control of the band, and the departures of Steven Adler and Izzy Stradlin.
1994–2002: Slash's Snakepit
In 1994, Slash formed Slash's Snakepit, a side project that featured his Guns N' Roses bandmates Matt Sorum and Gilby Clarke on drums and rhythm guitar respectively, as well as Alice in Chains' Mike Inez on bass and Jellyfish's Eric Dover on vocals. The band recorded Slash's material originally intended for Guns N' Roses, resulting in the release of It's Five O'Clock Somewhere in February 1995. The album was critically praised for ignoring the then-popular conventions of alternative music, and fared well on the charts, eventually selling over one million copies in the US alone despite little promotion from Geffen Records. Slash's Snakepit toured in support of the album with bassist James LoMenzo and drummer Brian Tichy of Pride & Glory, before disbanding in 1996. Slash then toured for two years with the blues rock cover band Slash's Blues Ball.
In 1999, Slash chose to regroup Slash's Snakepit with Rod Jackson on vocals, Ryan Roxie on rhythm guitar, Johnny Griparic on bass, and Matt Laug on drums. Their second album, Ain't Life Grand, was released in October 2000 through Koch Records. It did not sell as well as the band's previous release, and its critical reception was mixed. To promote the album, the band—with Keri Kelli on rhythm guitar—embarked on an extensive world tour in support of AC/DC in the summer of 2000, followed by their own headlining theater tour. Slash disbanded Snakepit in 2002.
2002–2008: Velvet Revolver
In 2002, Slash reunited with Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum for a Randy Castillo tribute concert. Realizing that they still had the chemistry of their days in Guns N' Roses, they decided to form a new band together. Former Guns N' Roses guitarist Izzy Stradlin was initially involved, but left after the others decided to find a lead singer. Dave Kushner, who had previously played with McKagan in Loaded, then joined the band on rhythm guitar. For many months, the four searched for a lead singer by listening to offered demo tapes, a monotonous process documented by VH1. Eventually, former Stone Temple Pilots vocalist Scott Weiland joined the band.
In 2003, Velvet Revolver played several concerts during the summer and released their first single, "Set Me Free". In June 2004, they released their debut album, Contraband, which debuted at No.1 on the U.S. chart and sold two million copies, re-establishing Slash as a mainstream performer. A year-and-a-half-long tour followed in support of the album. In 2005, the band was nominated for three Grammys: Rock Album of the Year, Rock Song, and Hard Rock Performance for their Contraband single "Slither" which won their first and only Grammy. In July 2007, Velvet Revolver released their second album, Libertad, and embarked on a second tour. During a show in March 2008, Weiland announced to the audience that it would be the band's final tour; he was fired from the band in April 2008 and Slash insisted "chemical issues" led to the split. The following month Weiland rejoined Stone Temple Pilots. Despite Weiland's departure, Velvet Revolver did not officially disband.
In early 2010, Velvet Revolver began writing new songs and auditioning new singers. By January 2011, the band had recorded nine demos, and was reportedly due to make a decision on their singer. However, the following April, Slash stated that they had been unable to find a suitable singer and that Velvet Revolver would remain on hiatus for the next few years while its members focus on other projects.
2009–present: "Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators"
In September 2008, Slash began production on his debut solo album. He described the process of recording by himself as "cathartic." He also mentioned working on the album gave him a chance to "...take a little bit of a break from all the politics and the democracy that is a band and just sort of do my own thing for a little bit. Slash's wife Perla revealed that many different artists would appear on the album, saying, "It's going to be Slash and friends, with everyone from Ozzy to Fergie." The album, simply titled Slash, debuted at No. 3 on the U.S. chart upon its release in April 2010. It featured an all-star roster of guest musicians, including Osbourne, Fergie of The Black Eyed Peas, Adam Levine of Maroon 5, M. Shadows of Avenged Sevenfold, Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead, Dave Grohl, Chris Cornell and Iggy Pop. The album also features musical collaborations with former Guns N' Roses members Izzy Stradlin, Steven Adler and Duff McKagan. Preceding the release of the album, Slash had released the Japan-only single "Sahara", featuring Japanese vocalist Koshi Inaba (from B'z). It charted at number four on the Oricon Singles Chart, as well number six on the Billboard Japan Hot 100. It has been awarded Western "Single of the Year" award at the 24th Japan Gold Disc Award by RIAJ. To promote the album, Slash embarked on his first solo world tour with Myles Kennedy of Alter Bridge—who also appeared on the album—on vocals, Bobby Schneck on rhythm guitar, Todd Kerns on bass, and Brent Fitz on drums. Slash opened for Ozzy Osbourne for a leg of Osbourne's Scream World Tour.
Slash began working on his second solo album in June 2011. He collaborated with his touring bandmates Myles Kennedy, Todd Kerns, and Brent Fitz, with the resulting album billed to "Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators". The album, titled Apocalyptic Love, was released on May 22, 2012, debuting at #2 on the Canadian Albums Chart. In 2013 Slash received the award for "Best Guitarist Of The Year 2012" from Loudwire.
Slash embarked on a tour in the summer of 2014, opening for Aerosmith as part of the Let Rock Rule Tour. In May 2014, Slash revealed details of his third solo album World on Fire. The album was again billed as "Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators" and was released on September 10, 2014. It debuted at No. 10 on The Billboard 200 chart.
In March 2018, Slash revealed that a new album with Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators was to be released later in the year. In June 2018, he announced that the album was titled Living the Dream, to be released on September 21, 2018. The group tour for the album began in September 2018, starting with a show in Del Mar, California at the KAABOO Del Mar Music Festival. The tour was concluded the US and Canada again 2019 after completing the Asian leg and Hawaii show with Guns n' Roses. Former touring guitarist Frank Sidoris joined the band full-time for the recording sessions.
In an October 2020 interview with blabbermouth.net bassist/vocalist Todd Kerns confirmed that there would be a new album in 2021, referred to as "SMKC4".
On July 26, 2021, it was confirmed that the record was to be released via Gibson's new record label Gibson Records in February 2022. On October 18, 2021, Slash officially confirmed via Instagram the first single's title "The River is Rising", along with its release date, October 22, 2021. On October 22, the release day of first single, it was announced that the album 4 will be released on February 11, 2022. The tour was also announced the same day, scheduled to start February 8, 2022, in Portland, Oregon.
2016–present: Return to Guns N' Roses
On December 29, 2015, several days after a Guns N' Roses-related teaser was released to movie theaters, Billboard reported that Slash would rejoin the band to headline Coachella 2016, filling the lead guitarist spot vacated when DJ Ashba left the band. Guns N' Roses were officially announced as headliners of Coachella on January 4, 2016, with KROQ reporting Slash and Duff McKagan would rejoin the band. Slash performed with Guns N' Roses for the first time in 23 years during the band's secret warmup gig at the Troubadour in Los Angeles on April 1, 2016. The band then embarked on the Not in This Lifetime... Tour.
Session work
In 1991, Slash played lead guitar on the single "Give In to Me" off Michael Jackson's album Dangerous, as well as for the opening skit of the video for the song "Black or White" off the same album. In 1995, he played guitar on "D.S.", a controversial song from Jackson's HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I album, and in 1997 appeared on the song "Morphine" off the remix album Blood on the Dance Floor: History in the Mix. In 2001, Slash played on "Privacy" off Jackson's final studio album, Invincible. Slash also joined Jackson on several occasions on stage, most notably at the 1995 MTV Video Music Awards playing with Jackson on "Black or White" (and the introduction of "Billie Jean"). He made two surprise appearances during Jackson's 1992 Dangerous World Tour in Spain and Japan and supported the 1999 charity concerts MJ & Friends in Seoul and Munich playing the same set as he did for 1995's MTV Video Music Awards. The last time Slash and Jackson shared a stage was on both 2001 Michael Jackson: 30th Anniversary Special concerts in New York City playing "Black or White" and "Beat It".
In 1991, Slash collaborated with Lenny Kravitz on "Always on the Run", the lead single from Kravitz' album Mama Said. In 1993, Slash appeared on the album Stone Free: A Tribute to Jimi Hendrix, performing "I Don't Live Today" with Paul Rodgers and Band of Gypsys. Slash also guest appeared in Carole King's 1994 live concert, which was captured on her Carole KingIn Concert album. Slash and King appeared on David Letterman to promote the concert. In 1996, he collaborated with Marta Sánchez to record the flamenco-inspired song "Obsession Confession" for the Curdled soundtrack. Later that year, he played with Alice Cooper at Sammy Hagar's club Cabo Wabo in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. The show was released the following year as A Fistful of Alice. In 1997, Slash appeared alongside rapper Ol' Dirty Bastard and rock band Fishbone on Blackstreet's rock remix of their single "Fix"; he also appeared in the accompanying music video. Also in 1997, he played on the single "But You Said I'm Useless" by Japanese musician J. That same year, he contributed music to the soundtrack of Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown; several compositions by Slash's Snakepit can be heard throughout the film. He also appeared on the Insane Clown Posse album The Great Milenko on the track "Halls of Illusions".
In 2002, Slash played on the title track to Elán's album Street Child. In 2003, he participated in the Yardbirds' comeback record Birdland; he played lead guitar on the track "Over, Under, Sideways, Down". In 2006, Slash played on a cover of "In the Summertime" on keyboardist Derek Sherinian's solo album Blood of the Snake; he was also featured in the accompanying music video. In 2007, he appeared on Paulina Rubio's single "Nada Puede Cambiarme". In 2008, Slash played guitar on the film score of The Wrestler, composed by Clint Mansell. Slash was the featured guitarist on the 2008 Italian hit single "Gioca Con Me" by Italian singer-songwriter Vasco Rossi. In 2009, he was featured on Rihanna's single "Rockstar 101" off her album Rated R. In 2011, he contributed the song "Kick It Up a Notch" to the Disney Channel animation Phineas and Ferb the Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension; he appeared in both live-action and animated form in the promotional music video.
Other ventures
A self-described "film buff", Slash has had small parts in several films and television series. In 1988, he appeared with his GunsN'Roses bandmates in the Dirty Harry film The Dead Pool, in which his character attends a musician's funeral and shoots a harpoon. He played radio DJ Hank in a 1994 episode of the horror anthology television series Tales from the Crypt. Slash was a guest star in an episode of the live-action/animated talk show Space Ghost Coast to Coast on Cartoon Network, where Space Ghost, Zorak, and Moltar teach him how to do guitar licks, but he refuses to do any of that. In 1999, he appeared as the host of the Miss America Bag Lady pageant in the widely panned film The Underground Comedy Movie. He has also appeared as himself in several projects, including Howard Stern's Private Parts in 1997, The Drew Carey Show in 1998, MADtv in 2005, and Sacha Baron Cohen's Brüno in 2009. Slash voiced a recurring caricature of himself in Robert Evans' animated television series Kid Notorious, which aired in 2003 on Comedy Central. As in real life, Slash is Evans' close friend and next-door neighbor on the show. He played Billy Butterface in the R-rated television show Metalocalypse on The Adult Swim. On May 5, 2009, he appeared as the guest mentor for the rock 'n' roll week of American Idol. In 2010, Slash formed Slasher Films, a horror film production company. Its first film, Nothing Left to Fear, was screened in select cities on October 4, 2013, before being released on DVD and Blu-ray the following Tuesday. Slash appeared on the October 26, 2014 episode of Talking Dead. He is reported to be a massive fan of horror movies.
Slash's autobiography, simply titled Slash, was published on October 30, 2007. It was co-written with Anthony Bozza. Slash also made several contributions to The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star, the autobiography of Mötley Crüe bassist and back-up singer Nikki Sixx, which was also published in 2007.
Slash is a pinball enthusiast and collector. He participated in the design process for the 1994 Data East GunsN'Roses pinball machine, as well as the 2020 Jersey Jack Pinball machine of the same theme, and provided music for the 1998 Sega machine Viper Night Drivin'.<ref name="Viper Night Drivin' Promotional Flyer">{{cite web |title=Internet Pinball Machine Database: Sega 'Viper Night Drivin Images |url=https://ipdb.org/showpic.pl?id=4359&picno=3372&zoom=1 |website=ipdb.org |access-date=19 June 2020}}</ref> Slash is a playable character in the video game Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, released in 2007. His performance was motion captured to record his movements for the game. Slash's character becomes playable after a player beats him in a one-on-one competition, which then leads to the player and Slash playing the master track of "Welcome to the Jungle". Guitar learning game/simulator Rocksmith 2014 by Ubisoft released a Slash Song Pack with several of the latter compositions by the artist available to purchase as downloadable content and learn on the guitar.
A keen artist, Slash designed logos and artwork for several of his pre-Guns N' Roses bands, as well as the famous circular GN'R logo. He is also credited as having provided some artwork for Aerosmith's 2012 album, Music From Another Dimension!, as it reproduces a picture of the band drawn by Slash when he was still a teenager.
Slash is a fan of the Angry Birds series of video games, and created a hard rock version of the Angry Birds Space theme song. In addition, Slash has a Birds avatar shown in the game, released in March 2013.
Personal life
On October 10, 1992, Slash married model-actress Renée Suran in Marina del Rey, California. They divorced in late 1997 after five years of marriage. Slash married Perla Ferrar on October 15, 2001, in Hawaii. They have two sons, London Emilio (born August 28, 2002) and Cash Anthony (born June 23, 2004). Slash filed for divorce from Ferrar in August 2010, but the couple reconciled two months later. In December 2014, he again filed for divorce.
Slash is a dual citizen of the United Kingdom and the United States. A British national since his birth, he has resided in Los Angeles since 1971 but did not acquire American citizenship until 1996. He said in 2010, "I do consider myself British. I have very strong feelings about my British heritage. My first years were there, I went to school there, and I have seemingly endless family on that side of the pond. So I've always felt most comfortable in England."
In 2001, at the age of 35, Slash was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, a form of congestive heart failure caused by his many years of alcohol and drug abuse. Originally given between six days and six weeks to live, he survived through physical therapy and the implantation of a defibrillator. As of 2011, Slash had been clean and sober since 2006, which he credited to his then-wife Ferrar. In 2009, following his mother's death from lung cancer, he quit smoking.
Slash's friendship with GunsN'Roses frontman Axl Rose soured following his departure from the band. In 2006, Rose claimed that Slash had shown up at his house uninvited the previous year to offer a truce. He alleged that Slash had insulted his Velvet Revolver bandmates, telling Rose that he considered Scott Weiland "a fraud" and Duff McKagan "spineless", and that he "hated" Matt Sorum. Slash denied the accusations. In his 2007 autobiography he admitted to visiting Rose's home with the intention to settle a longstanding legal dispute and make peace with his former bandmate. He claims, however, that he did not speak with Rose and instead merely left a note. Slash maintained that he had not spoken with Rose in person since 1996. In 2009, in response to a statement by Rose in which he referred to Slash as "a cancer", Slash commented: "It doesn't really affect me at all... It's been a long time. The fact that he has anything to say at all, it's like, 'Whatever, dude.' It doesn't really matter." In an August 2015 interview, Slash stated that he and Rose had reconciled. He subsequently rejoined Guns N' Roses in 2016.
Slash's drummer son London Hudson debuted his new band Suspect208 in late 2020. The band also featured Robert Trujillo's son Tye Trujillo on bass and Scott Weiland's son Noah Weiland on vocals. Slash promoted the band on his social media accounts. In 2021 Slash and Myles Kennedy tested positive for COVID-19 while working on a new album.
Philanthropy
Slash is an honorary board member of Little Kids Rock, a national nonprofit that works to restore and rejuvenate music education programs in disadvantaged public schools. He has visited Little Kids Rock students, jammed with them and donated instruments and his time. Slash's passion for music is evident in his charity as well as his art. "Being a musician is good for the character because it teaches you a lot about discipline," Slash said. "I think it's a great creative outlet."
Slash has been recognized for his longtime contributions to establishing environmental welfare programs. He is a board trustee of the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association and has long supported the Los Angeles Zoo and zoos around the world. Slash's love of reptiles was for many years a notable aspect of his public personawith several of his many snakes appearing with him in music videos and photoshootsuntil the birth of his first son in 2002 forced him to find a new home for his collection.
Awards and accolades
Slash has received critical acclaim as a guitarist. In 2005, he was named "Best Guitarist" by Esquire, which congratulated him on "beating the comeback odds with a surprisingly legitimate and vital outfit, Velvet Revolver." Slash was awarded the title of "Riff Lord" during Metal Hammer's fourth annual Golden Gods awards in 2007. In 2008, he was ranked No.21 on Gigwise's list of "The 50 Greatest Guitarists Ever," and in 2009, he was named runner-up on "The 10 Best Electric Guitar Players" list in Time, which praised him as "a remarkably precise player." In 2011, Rolling Stone placed Slash at No. 65 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time."
In 2007, Slash was honored with a star on the Rock Walk of Fame; his name was placed alongside Jimmy Page, Eddie Van Halen and Jimi Hendrix. He was the honoree at the 2010 Sunset Strip Music Festival, where he was presented by West Hollywood mayor John Heilman with a plaque declaring August 26 as "Slash Day." In 2012, Slash was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the classic lineup of Guns N' Roses. He performed three songs—"Paradise City", "Sweet Child o' Mine" and "Mr. Brownstone"with fellow inductees Duff McKagan, Steven Adler, and Matt Sorum, one-time Guns N' Roses guitarist Gilby Clarke, and his frequent collaborator Myles Kennedy. Inductees Axl Rose, Izzy Stradlin and Dizzy Reed declined to attend. Later that year, Slash received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, located directly in front of the Hard Rock Cafe on Hollywood Boulevard.
In 2004, Slash's introductory riff in "Sweet Child o' Mine" was voted No.1 on a list of "The 100 Greatest Riffs" by the readers of Total Guitar; his riffs in "Out ta Get Me" (No.51), "Welcome to the Jungle" (No. 21), and "Paradise City" (No.19) also made the list. In 2006, his solo in "Paradise City" was voted No.3 by Total Guitars readers on a list of "The 100 Hottest Guitar Solos"; his solos in "Sweet Child o' Mine" and "November Rain" were ranked No.30 and No.82 respectively. In 2008, Guitar World placed Slash's solo in "November Rain" at No.6 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Guitar Solos," while his solo in "Sweet Child o' Mine" was ranked No.37 on the list. In 2010, the readers of Total Guitar voted his riff in "Slither" runner-up on the list of "The 50Greatest Riffs of the Decade," while his riff in "By the Sword" was ranked No.22. Slash received a Radio Contraband Rock Radio Award in 2012. In January 2015 Slash received the Les Paul award.
Equipment
Slash owns more than 100 guitars. His guitars are worth a total of $1.92 million. He prefers the Gibson Les Paul, which he has called "the best all-around guitar for me." Gibson has credited him and Zakk Wylde with bringing the Les Paul back into the mainstream in the late 1980s. His main studio guitar is a 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard replica, built by luthier Kris Derrig, which he came to own during the recording sessions for Guns N' Roses' debut album, Appetite for Destruction. He used that guitar on every subsequent album he recorded with Guns N' Roses and Velvet Revolver. For many years, his main live guitar was a 1988 Gibson Les Paul Standard.
Since 1997, Slash has collaborated with Gibson on seventeen signature Les Paul modelsfive through Gibson USA; seven through the Gibson Custom Shop; and five through the Gibson subsidiary Epiphone. Slash also plays various other Gibson guitars, including Firebirds and Explorers. In addition to Gibson, he also plays or has played guitars by a plethora of other brands as well, including B.C. Rich with whom he has designed several custom models based on their Mockingbird and Bich designs. He has used guitars by Fender, Gretsch, Jackson, and Martin. He has also collaborated on signature equipment with other companies. In 1996, Marshall introduced the Marshall Slash Signature JCM2555, an authentic reissue of the Marshall "Silver Jubilee" JCM2555 released in 1987. It was the first signature amp ever produced by Marshall, with production limited to 3000. In 2007, Jim Dunlop introduced the Crybaby SW-95 Slash Signature Wah, designed after Slash's own custom-built Crybaby wah pedal. In 2010, Seymour Duncan introduced the Alnico II Pro Slash APH-2 pickups, which were designed to recreate the tone of Slash's main studio guitar. The Slash signature pickups were marketed through Seymour Duncan's YouTube channel with product demonstrator Danny Young performing the official videos. Also in 2010, Marshall introduced the Marshall AFD100, a recreation of the Marshall 1959 that Slash used for the recording of Appetite for Destruction, with production limited to 2300.
On stage, Slash prefers Marshall amplifiers, particularly the Marshall "Silver Jubilee" JCM2555 amp. He used a rented early-1970s Marshall 1959 for the recording of Appetite for Destruction. Slash enjoyed the amp so much that he tried to keep it, telling the rental company, S.I.R., that it had been stolen. However, the amp was repossessed by S.I.R. employees after a roadie accidentally brought it to rehearsals at the store. For the recording of Velvet Revolver's debut album, Contraband, he used a Vox AC30 amp and small Fender tube amps, and on their second album, Libertad, he used the Marshall "Vintage Modern" 2466 amp. On his eponymous debut solo album he used a Marshall JCM800, issued as "#34", and later, on the subsequent world tour, Slash used his signature Marshall AFD100 amp.
Discography
Solo albums
Slash (2010)
Slash featuring Myles Kennedy & The Conspirators
Apocalyptic Love (2012)
World on Fire (2014)
Living the Dream (2018)
4 (2022)
With Guns N' Roses
Appetite for Destruction (1987)
G N' R Lies (1988)
Use Your Illusion I (1991)
Use Your Illusion II (1991)
"The Spaghetti Incident?" (1993)
With Slash's Snakepit
It's Five O'Clock Somewhere (1995)
Ain't Life Grand (2000)
With Velvet Revolver
Contraband (2004)
Libertad'' (2007)
Citations
General references
External links
1965 births
Living people
20th-century American guitarists
20th-century American writers
20th-century British musicians
20th-century British writers
21st-century American guitarists
21st-century American male writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
21st-century British musicians
21st-century British writers
American male film actors
American male television actors
American male voice actors
American autobiographers
American heavy metal guitarists
American male guitarists
American male songwriters
American rock songwriters
Black British rock musicians
Blues rock musicians
British emigrants to the United States
English male film actors
English male television actors
English male voice actors
English autobiographers
English people of African-American descent
English rock guitarists
English male guitarists
English songwriters
Geffen Records artists
Guitarists from Los Angeles
Guns N' Roses members
Hollywood Rose members
Kerrang! Awards winners
Lead guitarists
Musicians from London
People from Hampstead
People from Stoke-on-Trent
People with acquired American citizenship
Slash's Snakepit members
Slide guitarists
Songwriters from California
Velvet Revolver members
Writers from London
Writers from Los Angeles | true | [
"The discography of Velvet Revolver, an American hard rock band, consists of two studio albums, one extended play (EP), 11 singles (nine as lead artist, two as featured artist), two video albums and eight music videos. Velvet Revolver was a supergroup formed in Rancho Santa Margarita, California in 2002 by former Guns N' Roses members Slash (lead guitar), Duff McKagan (bass) and Matt Sorum (drums), along with rhythm guitarist Dave Kushner (formerly of Wasted Youth) and late vocalist Scott Weiland (formerly and subsequently of Stone Temple Pilots).\n\nThe band signed with RCA Records the next year and released its debut album Contraband in 2004, which topped the US Billboard 200 and has since sold over 4 million copies in the US. The album was supported by the release of four singles, including \"Slither\" which topped the Billboard Alternative Songs and Mainstream Rock charts. In 2005 the group contributed the song \"Come On, Come In\" to the Fantastic Four soundtrack, which was also released as a single and reached number 14 on the Mainstream Rock chart. The band also performed on a recording of \"Tears in Heaven\" released to benefit victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.\n\nVelvet Revolver returned in 2007 with Libertad. The band's second album reached number five on the Billboard 200, and was certified gold in Canada and silver in the UK. Lead single \"She Builds Quick Machines\" reached the top 20 of the Alternative Songs chart and number two on the Mainstream Rock chart. Weiland departed the band in April 2008, before RCA dropped the group later in the year. In 2010, Slash, McKagan and Sorum (credited as Velvet Revolver) were featured on Macy Gray's single \"Kissed It\". The band has since released two live video albums: Live in Houston in 2010 and Let It Roll: Live in Germany in 2012.\n\nAlbums\n\nStudio albums\n\nExtended plays\n\nSingles\n\nAs featured artist\n\nVideos\n\nVideo albums\n\nMusic videos\n\nFootnotes\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nVelvet Revolver at AllMusic\nVelvet Revolver discography at Discogs\nVelvet Revolver discography at MusicBrainz\n\nDiscography\nDiscographies of American artists\nRock music group discographies",
"Revolver Revue is a Czech quarterly literary magazine published in Prague, Czech Republic. The magazine was an underground periodical and issued legally after the Velvet Revolution.\n\nHistory and profile\nRevolver Revue was established in January 1985. The first issue was only fifty copies. The founders were Ivan Lamper, Jáchym Topol and Viktor Karlík.\n\nThe magazine became a literary magazine in December 1990. It is published four times a year.\n\nA complete archive of \"Revolver Revue\" exists at Libri Prohibiti, a library of prohibited and banned books and samizdat in Prague.\n\nReferences\n\n1985 establishments in Czechoslovakia\nLiterary magazines published in the Czech Republic\nCzech-language magazines\nMagazines established in 1985\nMass media in Prague\nQuarterly magazines"
] |
[
"Slash (musician)",
"2002-2008: Velvet Revolver",
"what did slash have to do with Velvet Revolver?",
"Realizing that they still had the chemistry of their days in Guns N' Roses, they decided to form a new band together.",
"was the new band named Velvet Revolver?",
"In 2003, Velvet Revolver played several concerts during the summer and released their first single, \"Set Me Free\".",
"what was another song velvet revolver played?",
"I don't know.",
"who else was in the Velvet Revolver?",
"Eventually, former Stone Temple Pilots vocalist Scott Weiland joined the band."
] | C_64d627d3f6004403918f23105a60590e_1 | how many years was the band together? | 5 | how many years was Velvet Revolver together? | Slash (musician) | In 2002, Slash reunited with Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum for a Randy Castillo tribute concert. Realizing that they still had the chemistry of their days in Guns N' Roses, they decided to form a new band together. Former Guns N' Roses guitarist Izzy Stradlin was initially involved, but left after the others decided to find a lead singer. Dave Kushner, who had previously played with McKagan in Loaded, then joined the band on rhythm guitar. For many months, the four searched for a lead singer by listening to offered demo tapes, a monotonous process documented by VH1. Eventually, former Stone Temple Pilots vocalist Scott Weiland joined the band. In 2003, Velvet Revolver played several concerts during the summer and released their first single, "Set Me Free". In June 2004, they released their debut album, Contraband, which debuted at No. 1 on the U.S. chart and sold two million copies, re-establishing Slash as a mainstream performer. A year-and-a-half-long tour followed in support of the album. In July 2007, Velvet Revolver released their second album, Libertad, and embarked on a second tour. During a show in March 2008, Weiland announced to the audience that it would be the band's final tour; he was fired from the band in April 2008, Slash insisted "chemical issues" led to the split. The following month Weiland rejoined Stone Temple Pilots. Despite Weiland's departure, Velvet Revolver did not officially disband. In early 2010, Velvet Revolver began writing new songs and auditioning new singers. By January 2011, the band had recorded nine demos, and was reportedly due to make a decision on their singer. However, the following April, Slash stated that they had been unable to find a suitable singer and that Velvet Revolver would remain on hiatus for the next few years while its members focus on other projects. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Saul Hudson (born July 23, 1965), better known as Slash, is a British-American musician, songwriter, and record producer from Stoke-on-Trent, England. He is best known as the lead guitarist of the American hard rock band Guns N' Roses, with whom he achieved worldwide success in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Slash has received critical acclaim and is considered one of the greatest guitarists in history.
In 1993, Slash formed the side project Slash's Snakepit and in 1996 he left Guns N' Roses and co-founded the supergroup Velvet Revolver, which re-established him as a mainstream performer in the mid to late 2000s. Slash has released four solo albums: Slash (2010), featuring an array of guest musicians, Apocalyptic Love (2012), World on Fire (2014) and Living the Dream (2018) recorded with his band, Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators. He returned to Guns N' Roses in 2016.
Time magazine named him runner-up on their list of "The 10 Best Electric Guitar Players" in 2009, while Rolling Stone placed him at number 65 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" in 2011. Guitar World ranked his guitar solo in "November Rain" number 6 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Guitar Solos" in 2008, and Total Guitar placed his riff in "Sweet Child o' Mine" at number 1 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Riffs" in 2004. In 2010, Gibson Guitar Corporation ranked Slash as number 34 on their "Top 50 Guitarists of All Time", while their readers landed him number 9 on Gibson's "Top 25 Guitarists of All Time". In 2012, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Guns N' Roses' classic lineup.
Early life
Saul Hudson was born in Stoke-on-Trent on July 23, 1965. He was named after Romanian-American cartoonist Saul Steinberg. His mother, Ola J. Hudson (née Oliver; 1946–2009), was an African-American fashion designer and costumier from the United States, whose clients included David Bowie (whom she also dated), Ringo Starr, and Janis Joplin. His father, Anthony Hudson, is a white English artist who created album covers for musicians such as Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. Of his mixed background, Slash has remarked, "As a musician, I've always been amused that I'm both British and Black; particularly because so many American musicians seem to aspire to be British while so many British musicians, in the 'Sixties in particular, went to such great pains to be Black."
During his early years, Slash was raised by his father and paternal grandparents in Stoke-on-Trent while his mother moved back to her native United States to work in Los Angeles. When he was around five years old, he and his father joined his mother in Los Angeles. His brother, Albion "Ash" Hudson, was born in 1972. Following his parents' separation in 1974, Slash became a self-described "problem child". He chose to live with his mother and was often sent to live with his beloved maternal grandmother whenever his mother had to travel for her job. Slash sometimes accompanied his mother to work, where he met several film and music stars. He was given the nickname "Slash" by actor Seymour Cassel because he was "always in a hurry, zipping around from one thing to another".
In 1979, Slash decided to form a band with his friend Steven Adler. The band never materialized, but it prompted Slash to take up an instrument. Since Adler had designated himself the role of guitarist, Slash decided to learn how to play bass. Equipped with a one-string flamenco guitar given to him by his grandmother, he began taking classes with Robert Wolin, a teacher at Fairfax Music School. During his first lesson, Slash decided to switch from bass to guitar after hearing Wolin play "Brown Sugar" by the Rolling Stones. His decision to play guitar was further influenced by one of his school teachers, who would play songs by Cream and Led Zeppelin for his students. As a result, Slash stated, "When I heard him do that, I said, 'That's what I want to do.'" He vividly recalls the feeling after learning "Come Dancing" from Wired by Jeff Beck, his greatest influence, which he described as "fucking awesome".
A champion BMX rider, Slash put the bike aside to devote himself to playing guitar, practising up to 12 hours a day. Slash attended Beverly Hills High School and was a contemporary of musicians Lenny Kravitz and Zoro.
Career
1981–1985: Early years
Slash joined his first band, Tidus Sloan, in 1981. In 1983, he formed the band Road Crew—named after the Motörhead song "(We Are) The Road Crew"—with his childhood friend Steven Adler, who by then had learned to play drums. He placed an advertisement in a newspaper looking for a bassist, and received a response from Duff McKagan. They auditioned a number of singers, including one-time Black Flag vocalist Ron Reyes, and worked on material that included the main riff of what became the Guns N' Roses song "Rocket Queen". Slash disbanded the group the following year due to them not being able to find a singer, as well as Adler's lack of work ethic compared to himself and McKagan. He, along with Adler, then joined a local band known as Hollywood Rose, which featured singer Axl Rose and guitarist Izzy Stradlin. Following his time with Hollywood Rose, Slash played in a band called Black Sheep and unsuccessfully auditioned for Poison, a glam metal band that he later openly derided.
1985–1996: First stint with Guns N' Roses
In June 1985, Slash was asked by Axl Rose and Izzy Stradlin to join their new band GunsN'Roses, along with Duff McKagan and Steven Adler (replacing founding members Tracii Guns, Ole Beich and Rob Gardner, respectively). They played Los Angeles-area nightclubssuch as the Whisky a Go Go, The Roxy, and The Troubadourand opened for larger acts throughout 1985 and 1986. Before one of the shows in 1985, Slash shoplifted a black felt top hat and a Native American-style silver concho belt from two stores on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. He then combined the hat with parts of the belt to create a piece of custom headwear for the show. He said he "felt really cool" wearing the hat, and it became his trademark. It was during 1985–1986 that the band wrote most of its classic material, including "Welcome to the Jungle," "Sweet Child o' Mine", and "Paradise City," As a result of their rowdy and rebellious behavior, Guns N' Roses quickly received the moniker "Most Dangerous Band in the World," causing Slash to remark, "For some strange reason, Guns N' Roses is like the catalyst for controversy, even before we had any kind of record deal." After being scouted by several major record labels, the band signed with Geffen Records in March 1986.
In July 1987, Guns N' Roses released its debut album, Appetite for Destruction, which, as of September 2008, had sold over 28 million copies worldwide, 18million of which were sold in the United States, making it the best-selling debut album of all time in the U.S. In the summer of 1988, the band achieved its only U.S. No. 1 hit with "Sweet Child O' Mine," a song spearheaded by Slash's guitar riff and solo. In November of that year, Guns N' Roses released G N' R Lies, which sold over five million copies in the U.S. alone, despite containing only eight tracks, four of which were included on the previously released EP Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide. As their success grew, so did interpersonal tensions within the band. In 1989, during a show as opening act for the Rolling Stones, Axl Rose threatened to leave the band if certain members of the band didn't stop "dancing with Mr. Brownstone," a reference to their song of the same name about heroin use. Slash was among those who promised to clean up. However, the following year, Steven Adler was fired from the band because of his heroin addiction; he was replaced by Matt Sorum of The Cult.
In May 1991, the band embarked on the two-and-a-half-year-long Use Your Illusion Tour. The following September, Guns N' Roses released the long-awaited albums Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II, which debuted at No. 2 and No. 1, respectively, on the U.S. chart, a feat not achieved by any other group. Izzy Stradlin abruptly left the band in November; he was replaced by Gilby Clarke of Candy and Kill for Thrills. Slash finished Use Your Illusion Tour with Guns N' Roses on July 17, 1993. In November of that year, the band released "The Spaghetti Incident?", a cover album of mostly punk songs, which proved less successful than its predecessors. Slash then wrote several songs for what would have become the follow-up album to the Use Your Illusion double album. Axl Rose and Duff, however, rejected the material.
With the band's failure to collaborate resulting in no album being recorded, Slash announced in October 1996 that he was no longer a part of Guns N' Roses. Slash stated at the time "Axl and I have not been capable of seeing eye to eye on Guns N' Roses for some time. We tried to collaborate, but at this point, I'm no longer in the band." Paul Tobias's inclusion in the band was another factor in Slash leaving, with Slash having both "creative and personal" differences with Tobias. However, in his 2007 autobiography, Slash stated that his decision to leave the band was not based on artistic differences with Axl Rose, but on Rose's constant lateness to concerts, the alleged legal manipulation Rose used (since denied by Rose) to gain control of the band, and the departures of Steven Adler and Izzy Stradlin.
1994–2002: Slash's Snakepit
In 1994, Slash formed Slash's Snakepit, a side project that featured his Guns N' Roses bandmates Matt Sorum and Gilby Clarke on drums and rhythm guitar respectively, as well as Alice in Chains' Mike Inez on bass and Jellyfish's Eric Dover on vocals. The band recorded Slash's material originally intended for Guns N' Roses, resulting in the release of It's Five O'Clock Somewhere in February 1995. The album was critically praised for ignoring the then-popular conventions of alternative music, and fared well on the charts, eventually selling over one million copies in the US alone despite little promotion from Geffen Records. Slash's Snakepit toured in support of the album with bassist James LoMenzo and drummer Brian Tichy of Pride & Glory, before disbanding in 1996. Slash then toured for two years with the blues rock cover band Slash's Blues Ball.
In 1999, Slash chose to regroup Slash's Snakepit with Rod Jackson on vocals, Ryan Roxie on rhythm guitar, Johnny Griparic on bass, and Matt Laug on drums. Their second album, Ain't Life Grand, was released in October 2000 through Koch Records. It did not sell as well as the band's previous release, and its critical reception was mixed. To promote the album, the band—with Keri Kelli on rhythm guitar—embarked on an extensive world tour in support of AC/DC in the summer of 2000, followed by their own headlining theater tour. Slash disbanded Snakepit in 2002.
2002–2008: Velvet Revolver
In 2002, Slash reunited with Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum for a Randy Castillo tribute concert. Realizing that they still had the chemistry of their days in Guns N' Roses, they decided to form a new band together. Former Guns N' Roses guitarist Izzy Stradlin was initially involved, but left after the others decided to find a lead singer. Dave Kushner, who had previously played with McKagan in Loaded, then joined the band on rhythm guitar. For many months, the four searched for a lead singer by listening to offered demo tapes, a monotonous process documented by VH1. Eventually, former Stone Temple Pilots vocalist Scott Weiland joined the band.
In 2003, Velvet Revolver played several concerts during the summer and released their first single, "Set Me Free". In June 2004, they released their debut album, Contraband, which debuted at No.1 on the U.S. chart and sold two million copies, re-establishing Slash as a mainstream performer. A year-and-a-half-long tour followed in support of the album. In 2005, the band was nominated for three Grammys: Rock Album of the Year, Rock Song, and Hard Rock Performance for their Contraband single "Slither" which won their first and only Grammy. In July 2007, Velvet Revolver released their second album, Libertad, and embarked on a second tour. During a show in March 2008, Weiland announced to the audience that it would be the band's final tour; he was fired from the band in April 2008 and Slash insisted "chemical issues" led to the split. The following month Weiland rejoined Stone Temple Pilots. Despite Weiland's departure, Velvet Revolver did not officially disband.
In early 2010, Velvet Revolver began writing new songs and auditioning new singers. By January 2011, the band had recorded nine demos, and was reportedly due to make a decision on their singer. However, the following April, Slash stated that they had been unable to find a suitable singer and that Velvet Revolver would remain on hiatus for the next few years while its members focus on other projects.
2009–present: "Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators"
In September 2008, Slash began production on his debut solo album. He described the process of recording by himself as "cathartic." He also mentioned working on the album gave him a chance to "...take a little bit of a break from all the politics and the democracy that is a band and just sort of do my own thing for a little bit. Slash's wife Perla revealed that many different artists would appear on the album, saying, "It's going to be Slash and friends, with everyone from Ozzy to Fergie." The album, simply titled Slash, debuted at No. 3 on the U.S. chart upon its release in April 2010. It featured an all-star roster of guest musicians, including Osbourne, Fergie of The Black Eyed Peas, Adam Levine of Maroon 5, M. Shadows of Avenged Sevenfold, Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead, Dave Grohl, Chris Cornell and Iggy Pop. The album also features musical collaborations with former Guns N' Roses members Izzy Stradlin, Steven Adler and Duff McKagan. Preceding the release of the album, Slash had released the Japan-only single "Sahara", featuring Japanese vocalist Koshi Inaba (from B'z). It charted at number four on the Oricon Singles Chart, as well number six on the Billboard Japan Hot 100. It has been awarded Western "Single of the Year" award at the 24th Japan Gold Disc Award by RIAJ. To promote the album, Slash embarked on his first solo world tour with Myles Kennedy of Alter Bridge—who also appeared on the album—on vocals, Bobby Schneck on rhythm guitar, Todd Kerns on bass, and Brent Fitz on drums. Slash opened for Ozzy Osbourne for a leg of Osbourne's Scream World Tour.
Slash began working on his second solo album in June 2011. He collaborated with his touring bandmates Myles Kennedy, Todd Kerns, and Brent Fitz, with the resulting album billed to "Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators". The album, titled Apocalyptic Love, was released on May 22, 2012, debuting at #2 on the Canadian Albums Chart. In 2013 Slash received the award for "Best Guitarist Of The Year 2012" from Loudwire.
Slash embarked on a tour in the summer of 2014, opening for Aerosmith as part of the Let Rock Rule Tour. In May 2014, Slash revealed details of his third solo album World on Fire. The album was again billed as "Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators" and was released on September 10, 2014. It debuted at No. 10 on The Billboard 200 chart.
In March 2018, Slash revealed that a new album with Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators was to be released later in the year. In June 2018, he announced that the album was titled Living the Dream, to be released on September 21, 2018. The group tour for the album began in September 2018, starting with a show in Del Mar, California at the KAABOO Del Mar Music Festival. The tour was concluded the US and Canada again 2019 after completing the Asian leg and Hawaii show with Guns n' Roses. Former touring guitarist Frank Sidoris joined the band full-time for the recording sessions.
In an October 2020 interview with blabbermouth.net bassist/vocalist Todd Kerns confirmed that there would be a new album in 2021, referred to as "SMKC4".
On July 26, 2021, it was confirmed that the record was to be released via Gibson's new record label Gibson Records in February 2022. On October 18, 2021, Slash officially confirmed via Instagram the first single's title "The River is Rising", along with its release date, October 22, 2021. On October 22, the release day of first single, it was announced that the album 4 will be released on February 11, 2022. The tour was also announced the same day, scheduled to start February 8, 2022, in Portland, Oregon.
2016–present: Return to Guns N' Roses
On December 29, 2015, several days after a Guns N' Roses-related teaser was released to movie theaters, Billboard reported that Slash would rejoin the band to headline Coachella 2016, filling the lead guitarist spot vacated when DJ Ashba left the band. Guns N' Roses were officially announced as headliners of Coachella on January 4, 2016, with KROQ reporting Slash and Duff McKagan would rejoin the band. Slash performed with Guns N' Roses for the first time in 23 years during the band's secret warmup gig at the Troubadour in Los Angeles on April 1, 2016. The band then embarked on the Not in This Lifetime... Tour.
Session work
In 1991, Slash played lead guitar on the single "Give In to Me" off Michael Jackson's album Dangerous, as well as for the opening skit of the video for the song "Black or White" off the same album. In 1995, he played guitar on "D.S.", a controversial song from Jackson's HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I album, and in 1997 appeared on the song "Morphine" off the remix album Blood on the Dance Floor: History in the Mix. In 2001, Slash played on "Privacy" off Jackson's final studio album, Invincible. Slash also joined Jackson on several occasions on stage, most notably at the 1995 MTV Video Music Awards playing with Jackson on "Black or White" (and the introduction of "Billie Jean"). He made two surprise appearances during Jackson's 1992 Dangerous World Tour in Spain and Japan and supported the 1999 charity concerts MJ & Friends in Seoul and Munich playing the same set as he did for 1995's MTV Video Music Awards. The last time Slash and Jackson shared a stage was on both 2001 Michael Jackson: 30th Anniversary Special concerts in New York City playing "Black or White" and "Beat It".
In 1991, Slash collaborated with Lenny Kravitz on "Always on the Run", the lead single from Kravitz' album Mama Said. In 1993, Slash appeared on the album Stone Free: A Tribute to Jimi Hendrix, performing "I Don't Live Today" with Paul Rodgers and Band of Gypsys. Slash also guest appeared in Carole King's 1994 live concert, which was captured on her Carole KingIn Concert album. Slash and King appeared on David Letterman to promote the concert. In 1996, he collaborated with Marta Sánchez to record the flamenco-inspired song "Obsession Confession" for the Curdled soundtrack. Later that year, he played with Alice Cooper at Sammy Hagar's club Cabo Wabo in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. The show was released the following year as A Fistful of Alice. In 1997, Slash appeared alongside rapper Ol' Dirty Bastard and rock band Fishbone on Blackstreet's rock remix of their single "Fix"; he also appeared in the accompanying music video. Also in 1997, he played on the single "But You Said I'm Useless" by Japanese musician J. That same year, he contributed music to the soundtrack of Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown; several compositions by Slash's Snakepit can be heard throughout the film. He also appeared on the Insane Clown Posse album The Great Milenko on the track "Halls of Illusions".
In 2002, Slash played on the title track to Elán's album Street Child. In 2003, he participated in the Yardbirds' comeback record Birdland; he played lead guitar on the track "Over, Under, Sideways, Down". In 2006, Slash played on a cover of "In the Summertime" on keyboardist Derek Sherinian's solo album Blood of the Snake; he was also featured in the accompanying music video. In 2007, he appeared on Paulina Rubio's single "Nada Puede Cambiarme". In 2008, Slash played guitar on the film score of The Wrestler, composed by Clint Mansell. Slash was the featured guitarist on the 2008 Italian hit single "Gioca Con Me" by Italian singer-songwriter Vasco Rossi. In 2009, he was featured on Rihanna's single "Rockstar 101" off her album Rated R. In 2011, he contributed the song "Kick It Up a Notch" to the Disney Channel animation Phineas and Ferb the Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension; he appeared in both live-action and animated form in the promotional music video.
Other ventures
A self-described "film buff", Slash has had small parts in several films and television series. In 1988, he appeared with his GunsN'Roses bandmates in the Dirty Harry film The Dead Pool, in which his character attends a musician's funeral and shoots a harpoon. He played radio DJ Hank in a 1994 episode of the horror anthology television series Tales from the Crypt. Slash was a guest star in an episode of the live-action/animated talk show Space Ghost Coast to Coast on Cartoon Network, where Space Ghost, Zorak, and Moltar teach him how to do guitar licks, but he refuses to do any of that. In 1999, he appeared as the host of the Miss America Bag Lady pageant in the widely panned film The Underground Comedy Movie. He has also appeared as himself in several projects, including Howard Stern's Private Parts in 1997, The Drew Carey Show in 1998, MADtv in 2005, and Sacha Baron Cohen's Brüno in 2009. Slash voiced a recurring caricature of himself in Robert Evans' animated television series Kid Notorious, which aired in 2003 on Comedy Central. As in real life, Slash is Evans' close friend and next-door neighbor on the show. He played Billy Butterface in the R-rated television show Metalocalypse on The Adult Swim. On May 5, 2009, he appeared as the guest mentor for the rock 'n' roll week of American Idol. In 2010, Slash formed Slasher Films, a horror film production company. Its first film, Nothing Left to Fear, was screened in select cities on October 4, 2013, before being released on DVD and Blu-ray the following Tuesday. Slash appeared on the October 26, 2014 episode of Talking Dead. He is reported to be a massive fan of horror movies.
Slash's autobiography, simply titled Slash, was published on October 30, 2007. It was co-written with Anthony Bozza. Slash also made several contributions to The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star, the autobiography of Mötley Crüe bassist and back-up singer Nikki Sixx, which was also published in 2007.
Slash is a pinball enthusiast and collector. He participated in the design process for the 1994 Data East GunsN'Roses pinball machine, as well as the 2020 Jersey Jack Pinball machine of the same theme, and provided music for the 1998 Sega machine Viper Night Drivin'.<ref name="Viper Night Drivin' Promotional Flyer">{{cite web |title=Internet Pinball Machine Database: Sega 'Viper Night Drivin Images |url=https://ipdb.org/showpic.pl?id=4359&picno=3372&zoom=1 |website=ipdb.org |access-date=19 June 2020}}</ref> Slash is a playable character in the video game Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, released in 2007. His performance was motion captured to record his movements for the game. Slash's character becomes playable after a player beats him in a one-on-one competition, which then leads to the player and Slash playing the master track of "Welcome to the Jungle". Guitar learning game/simulator Rocksmith 2014 by Ubisoft released a Slash Song Pack with several of the latter compositions by the artist available to purchase as downloadable content and learn on the guitar.
A keen artist, Slash designed logos and artwork for several of his pre-Guns N' Roses bands, as well as the famous circular GN'R logo. He is also credited as having provided some artwork for Aerosmith's 2012 album, Music From Another Dimension!, as it reproduces a picture of the band drawn by Slash when he was still a teenager.
Slash is a fan of the Angry Birds series of video games, and created a hard rock version of the Angry Birds Space theme song. In addition, Slash has a Birds avatar shown in the game, released in March 2013.
Personal life
On October 10, 1992, Slash married model-actress Renée Suran in Marina del Rey, California. They divorced in late 1997 after five years of marriage. Slash married Perla Ferrar on October 15, 2001, in Hawaii. They have two sons, London Emilio (born August 28, 2002) and Cash Anthony (born June 23, 2004). Slash filed for divorce from Ferrar in August 2010, but the couple reconciled two months later. In December 2014, he again filed for divorce.
Slash is a dual citizen of the United Kingdom and the United States. A British national since his birth, he has resided in Los Angeles since 1971 but did not acquire American citizenship until 1996. He said in 2010, "I do consider myself British. I have very strong feelings about my British heritage. My first years were there, I went to school there, and I have seemingly endless family on that side of the pond. So I've always felt most comfortable in England."
In 2001, at the age of 35, Slash was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, a form of congestive heart failure caused by his many years of alcohol and drug abuse. Originally given between six days and six weeks to live, he survived through physical therapy and the implantation of a defibrillator. As of 2011, Slash had been clean and sober since 2006, which he credited to his then-wife Ferrar. In 2009, following his mother's death from lung cancer, he quit smoking.
Slash's friendship with GunsN'Roses frontman Axl Rose soured following his departure from the band. In 2006, Rose claimed that Slash had shown up at his house uninvited the previous year to offer a truce. He alleged that Slash had insulted his Velvet Revolver bandmates, telling Rose that he considered Scott Weiland "a fraud" and Duff McKagan "spineless", and that he "hated" Matt Sorum. Slash denied the accusations. In his 2007 autobiography he admitted to visiting Rose's home with the intention to settle a longstanding legal dispute and make peace with his former bandmate. He claims, however, that he did not speak with Rose and instead merely left a note. Slash maintained that he had not spoken with Rose in person since 1996. In 2009, in response to a statement by Rose in which he referred to Slash as "a cancer", Slash commented: "It doesn't really affect me at all... It's been a long time. The fact that he has anything to say at all, it's like, 'Whatever, dude.' It doesn't really matter." In an August 2015 interview, Slash stated that he and Rose had reconciled. He subsequently rejoined Guns N' Roses in 2016.
Slash's drummer son London Hudson debuted his new band Suspect208 in late 2020. The band also featured Robert Trujillo's son Tye Trujillo on bass and Scott Weiland's son Noah Weiland on vocals. Slash promoted the band on his social media accounts. In 2021 Slash and Myles Kennedy tested positive for COVID-19 while working on a new album.
Philanthropy
Slash is an honorary board member of Little Kids Rock, a national nonprofit that works to restore and rejuvenate music education programs in disadvantaged public schools. He has visited Little Kids Rock students, jammed with them and donated instruments and his time. Slash's passion for music is evident in his charity as well as his art. "Being a musician is good for the character because it teaches you a lot about discipline," Slash said. "I think it's a great creative outlet."
Slash has been recognized for his longtime contributions to establishing environmental welfare programs. He is a board trustee of the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association and has long supported the Los Angeles Zoo and zoos around the world. Slash's love of reptiles was for many years a notable aspect of his public personawith several of his many snakes appearing with him in music videos and photoshootsuntil the birth of his first son in 2002 forced him to find a new home for his collection.
Awards and accolades
Slash has received critical acclaim as a guitarist. In 2005, he was named "Best Guitarist" by Esquire, which congratulated him on "beating the comeback odds with a surprisingly legitimate and vital outfit, Velvet Revolver." Slash was awarded the title of "Riff Lord" during Metal Hammer's fourth annual Golden Gods awards in 2007. In 2008, he was ranked No.21 on Gigwise's list of "The 50 Greatest Guitarists Ever," and in 2009, he was named runner-up on "The 10 Best Electric Guitar Players" list in Time, which praised him as "a remarkably precise player." In 2011, Rolling Stone placed Slash at No. 65 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time."
In 2007, Slash was honored with a star on the Rock Walk of Fame; his name was placed alongside Jimmy Page, Eddie Van Halen and Jimi Hendrix. He was the honoree at the 2010 Sunset Strip Music Festival, where he was presented by West Hollywood mayor John Heilman with a plaque declaring August 26 as "Slash Day." In 2012, Slash was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the classic lineup of Guns N' Roses. He performed three songs—"Paradise City", "Sweet Child o' Mine" and "Mr. Brownstone"with fellow inductees Duff McKagan, Steven Adler, and Matt Sorum, one-time Guns N' Roses guitarist Gilby Clarke, and his frequent collaborator Myles Kennedy. Inductees Axl Rose, Izzy Stradlin and Dizzy Reed declined to attend. Later that year, Slash received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, located directly in front of the Hard Rock Cafe on Hollywood Boulevard.
In 2004, Slash's introductory riff in "Sweet Child o' Mine" was voted No.1 on a list of "The 100 Greatest Riffs" by the readers of Total Guitar; his riffs in "Out ta Get Me" (No.51), "Welcome to the Jungle" (No. 21), and "Paradise City" (No.19) also made the list. In 2006, his solo in "Paradise City" was voted No.3 by Total Guitars readers on a list of "The 100 Hottest Guitar Solos"; his solos in "Sweet Child o' Mine" and "November Rain" were ranked No.30 and No.82 respectively. In 2008, Guitar World placed Slash's solo in "November Rain" at No.6 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Guitar Solos," while his solo in "Sweet Child o' Mine" was ranked No.37 on the list. In 2010, the readers of Total Guitar voted his riff in "Slither" runner-up on the list of "The 50Greatest Riffs of the Decade," while his riff in "By the Sword" was ranked No.22. Slash received a Radio Contraband Rock Radio Award in 2012. In January 2015 Slash received the Les Paul award.
Equipment
Slash owns more than 100 guitars. His guitars are worth a total of $1.92 million. He prefers the Gibson Les Paul, which he has called "the best all-around guitar for me." Gibson has credited him and Zakk Wylde with bringing the Les Paul back into the mainstream in the late 1980s. His main studio guitar is a 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard replica, built by luthier Kris Derrig, which he came to own during the recording sessions for Guns N' Roses' debut album, Appetite for Destruction. He used that guitar on every subsequent album he recorded with Guns N' Roses and Velvet Revolver. For many years, his main live guitar was a 1988 Gibson Les Paul Standard.
Since 1997, Slash has collaborated with Gibson on seventeen signature Les Paul modelsfive through Gibson USA; seven through the Gibson Custom Shop; and five through the Gibson subsidiary Epiphone. Slash also plays various other Gibson guitars, including Firebirds and Explorers. In addition to Gibson, he also plays or has played guitars by a plethora of other brands as well, including B.C. Rich with whom he has designed several custom models based on their Mockingbird and Bich designs. He has used guitars by Fender, Gretsch, Jackson, and Martin. He has also collaborated on signature equipment with other companies. In 1996, Marshall introduced the Marshall Slash Signature JCM2555, an authentic reissue of the Marshall "Silver Jubilee" JCM2555 released in 1987. It was the first signature amp ever produced by Marshall, with production limited to 3000. In 2007, Jim Dunlop introduced the Crybaby SW-95 Slash Signature Wah, designed after Slash's own custom-built Crybaby wah pedal. In 2010, Seymour Duncan introduced the Alnico II Pro Slash APH-2 pickups, which were designed to recreate the tone of Slash's main studio guitar. The Slash signature pickups were marketed through Seymour Duncan's YouTube channel with product demonstrator Danny Young performing the official videos. Also in 2010, Marshall introduced the Marshall AFD100, a recreation of the Marshall 1959 that Slash used for the recording of Appetite for Destruction, with production limited to 2300.
On stage, Slash prefers Marshall amplifiers, particularly the Marshall "Silver Jubilee" JCM2555 amp. He used a rented early-1970s Marshall 1959 for the recording of Appetite for Destruction. Slash enjoyed the amp so much that he tried to keep it, telling the rental company, S.I.R., that it had been stolen. However, the amp was repossessed by S.I.R. employees after a roadie accidentally brought it to rehearsals at the store. For the recording of Velvet Revolver's debut album, Contraband, he used a Vox AC30 amp and small Fender tube amps, and on their second album, Libertad, he used the Marshall "Vintage Modern" 2466 amp. On his eponymous debut solo album he used a Marshall JCM800, issued as "#34", and later, on the subsequent world tour, Slash used his signature Marshall AFD100 amp.
Discography
Solo albums
Slash (2010)
Slash featuring Myles Kennedy & The Conspirators
Apocalyptic Love (2012)
World on Fire (2014)
Living the Dream (2018)
4 (2022)
With Guns N' Roses
Appetite for Destruction (1987)
G N' R Lies (1988)
Use Your Illusion I (1991)
Use Your Illusion II (1991)
"The Spaghetti Incident?" (1993)
With Slash's Snakepit
It's Five O'Clock Somewhere (1995)
Ain't Life Grand (2000)
With Velvet Revolver
Contraband (2004)
Libertad'' (2007)
Citations
General references
External links
1965 births
Living people
20th-century American guitarists
20th-century American writers
20th-century British musicians
20th-century British writers
21st-century American guitarists
21st-century American male writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
21st-century British musicians
21st-century British writers
American male film actors
American male television actors
American male voice actors
American autobiographers
American heavy metal guitarists
American male guitarists
American male songwriters
American rock songwriters
Black British rock musicians
Blues rock musicians
British emigrants to the United States
English male film actors
English male television actors
English male voice actors
English autobiographers
English people of African-American descent
English rock guitarists
English male guitarists
English songwriters
Geffen Records artists
Guitarists from Los Angeles
Guns N' Roses members
Hollywood Rose members
Kerrang! Awards winners
Lead guitarists
Musicians from London
People from Hampstead
People from Stoke-on-Trent
People with acquired American citizenship
Slash's Snakepit members
Slide guitarists
Songwriters from California
Velvet Revolver members
Writers from London
Writers from Los Angeles | false | [
"\"How Many More Years\" is a blues song written and originally recorded by Howlin' Wolf in 1951. Recorded at the Memphis Recording Service – which later became the Sun Studio – it was released by Chess Records and reached No. 4 on the Billboard R&B chart. Musician and record producer T-Bone Burnett has described \"How Many More Years\" as \"in some ways... the first rock’n’roll song\". It was a double-sided hit with \"Moanin' at Midnight\", which reached No. 10 on the R&B chart.\n\nRecording and release \nAfter military service, Chester Burnett performed as a blues singer and formed his own band in West Memphis, Arkansas, in 1948, billing himself as \"The Howlin' Wolf\". He began broadcasting on radio station KWEM in West Memphis, and was brought by Ike Turner to record for Sam Phillips in Memphis, Tennessee.\n\nHe recorded \"How Many More Years\" at the Memphis Recording Service at 706 Union Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee, in or about July 1951, singing and playing harmonica with a band consisting of Ike Turner (piano), Willie Johnson (guitar), and Willie Steele (drums). The repetitious bass-string boogie line resembles the one played in the traditional blues standard \"Forty-Four\".\n\nPhillips had not yet set up Sun Records and regularly leased his recordings to the Chess label in Chicago. The record was issued as Chess 1479 on 15 August 1951, with \"Moanin' at Midnight\" as the A-side and \"How Many More Years\" as the B-side. \"Moanin' at Midnight\" entered the Billboard R&B chart at No. 10 in November 1951, and was followed four weeks later by \"How Many More Years\", which became the more popular side. It rose to No. 8 on the Best Selling R&B Records chart in December 1951, and No. 4 on the Most Played Juke Box R&B Records chart on March 1, 1952.\n\nThe songwriting for both sides of the record was originally credited to Carl Germany, who was a disc jockey and dance promoter in Chicago. The Chess label occasionally used composer credits on their records to repay favors to local businessmen who had helped their record sales. Later reissues of the recordings have given the songwriting credits to Chester Burnett.\n\nFollowing the record's success, Burnett moved to Chicago in late 1952, and developed his career further in clubs and through recordings there, with a new band.\n\nInfluence \nWriter Robert Palmer has cited Willie Johnson's electric guitar work on the track as the first use of the power chord. T-Bone Burnett said of the recording:\n\nReferences \n\n1951 songs\n1951 singles\nChess Records singles\nHowlin' Wolf songs",
"How to Destroy Angels (HTDA) is an American post-industrial band formed in 2009 by Nine Inch Nails members Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross alongside Reznor's wife Mariqueen Maandig and longtime Nine Inch Nails collaborator Rob Sheridan. The group is named after a 1984 Coil EP of the same name. Alessandro Cortini joined the lineup for the duration of the 2013 tour.\n\nReleases \nThe band's first release was a self-titled EP released on June 1, 2010. The band released a single from the album, \"A Drowning\", as digital downloadable content, and a second song, \"The Space in Between,\" debuted as a music video on Pitchfork on May 14, 2010. A third track, \"The Believers,\" was made available through Wired magazine's iPad application, along with a dissection and breakdown of the song, and through a free digital download from the official website. \"The Believers\", is also featured on the soundtrack of the 2011 film Limitless.\n\nThe band recorded a cover version of Bryan Ferry's \"Is Your Love Strong Enough?\" which was released December 9, 2011 on the soundtrack for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.\n\nIn November 2012, the band's second EP, An Omen EP was released on Columbia Records. The song \"Keep It Together\" from the EP was released as a single on October 9, 2012. A music video for the song was directed by the band themselves. Two other songs from An Omen EP were also given music videos: \"Ice Age\", directed by John Hillcoat, and \"The Loop Closes\", which was also directed by the band.\n\nThe band's debut studio album, Welcome Oblivion, was released on March 5, 2013 through Columbia Records. It included the tracks \"Keep It Together\", \"Ice Age\", \"On the Wing\", and \"The Loop Closes\" from An Omen EP. A deluxe edition of the album also included the How to Destroy Angels EP.\n\nThe first single from Welcome Oblivion, \"How Long?\", was released on January 31, 2013, along with a music video directed by Shynola.\n\nDiscography\n\nAlbums\n\nStudio albums\n\nEPs\n\nSingles\n\nOther appearances\n\nMusic videos\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n \n\nMusical groups established in 2009\nAmerican industrial music groups\nAmerican electronic music groups\nAmerican experimental musical groups\nColumbia Records artists\nMusical quartets\nTrent Reznor"
] |
[
"Slash (musician)",
"2002-2008: Velvet Revolver",
"what did slash have to do with Velvet Revolver?",
"Realizing that they still had the chemistry of their days in Guns N' Roses, they decided to form a new band together.",
"was the new band named Velvet Revolver?",
"In 2003, Velvet Revolver played several concerts during the summer and released their first single, \"Set Me Free\".",
"what was another song velvet revolver played?",
"I don't know.",
"who else was in the Velvet Revolver?",
"Eventually, former Stone Temple Pilots vocalist Scott Weiland joined the band.",
"how many years was the band together?",
"I don't know."
] | C_64d627d3f6004403918f23105a60590e_1 | did they win any awards? | 6 | did Velvet Revolver win any awards? | Slash (musician) | In 2002, Slash reunited with Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum for a Randy Castillo tribute concert. Realizing that they still had the chemistry of their days in Guns N' Roses, they decided to form a new band together. Former Guns N' Roses guitarist Izzy Stradlin was initially involved, but left after the others decided to find a lead singer. Dave Kushner, who had previously played with McKagan in Loaded, then joined the band on rhythm guitar. For many months, the four searched for a lead singer by listening to offered demo tapes, a monotonous process documented by VH1. Eventually, former Stone Temple Pilots vocalist Scott Weiland joined the band. In 2003, Velvet Revolver played several concerts during the summer and released their first single, "Set Me Free". In June 2004, they released their debut album, Contraband, which debuted at No. 1 on the U.S. chart and sold two million copies, re-establishing Slash as a mainstream performer. A year-and-a-half-long tour followed in support of the album. In July 2007, Velvet Revolver released their second album, Libertad, and embarked on a second tour. During a show in March 2008, Weiland announced to the audience that it would be the band's final tour; he was fired from the band in April 2008, Slash insisted "chemical issues" led to the split. The following month Weiland rejoined Stone Temple Pilots. Despite Weiland's departure, Velvet Revolver did not officially disband. In early 2010, Velvet Revolver began writing new songs and auditioning new singers. By January 2011, the band had recorded nine demos, and was reportedly due to make a decision on their singer. However, the following April, Slash stated that they had been unable to find a suitable singer and that Velvet Revolver would remain on hiatus for the next few years while its members focus on other projects. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Saul Hudson (born July 23, 1965), better known as Slash, is a British-American musician, songwriter, and record producer from Stoke-on-Trent, England. He is best known as the lead guitarist of the American hard rock band Guns N' Roses, with whom he achieved worldwide success in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Slash has received critical acclaim and is considered one of the greatest guitarists in history.
In 1993, Slash formed the side project Slash's Snakepit and in 1996 he left Guns N' Roses and co-founded the supergroup Velvet Revolver, which re-established him as a mainstream performer in the mid to late 2000s. Slash has released four solo albums: Slash (2010), featuring an array of guest musicians, Apocalyptic Love (2012), World on Fire (2014) and Living the Dream (2018) recorded with his band, Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators. He returned to Guns N' Roses in 2016.
Time magazine named him runner-up on their list of "The 10 Best Electric Guitar Players" in 2009, while Rolling Stone placed him at number 65 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" in 2011. Guitar World ranked his guitar solo in "November Rain" number 6 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Guitar Solos" in 2008, and Total Guitar placed his riff in "Sweet Child o' Mine" at number 1 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Riffs" in 2004. In 2010, Gibson Guitar Corporation ranked Slash as number 34 on their "Top 50 Guitarists of All Time", while their readers landed him number 9 on Gibson's "Top 25 Guitarists of All Time". In 2012, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Guns N' Roses' classic lineup.
Early life
Saul Hudson was born in Stoke-on-Trent on July 23, 1965. He was named after Romanian-American cartoonist Saul Steinberg. His mother, Ola J. Hudson (née Oliver; 1946–2009), was an African-American fashion designer and costumier from the United States, whose clients included David Bowie (whom she also dated), Ringo Starr, and Janis Joplin. His father, Anthony Hudson, is a white English artist who created album covers for musicians such as Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. Of his mixed background, Slash has remarked, "As a musician, I've always been amused that I'm both British and Black; particularly because so many American musicians seem to aspire to be British while so many British musicians, in the 'Sixties in particular, went to such great pains to be Black."
During his early years, Slash was raised by his father and paternal grandparents in Stoke-on-Trent while his mother moved back to her native United States to work in Los Angeles. When he was around five years old, he and his father joined his mother in Los Angeles. His brother, Albion "Ash" Hudson, was born in 1972. Following his parents' separation in 1974, Slash became a self-described "problem child". He chose to live with his mother and was often sent to live with his beloved maternal grandmother whenever his mother had to travel for her job. Slash sometimes accompanied his mother to work, where he met several film and music stars. He was given the nickname "Slash" by actor Seymour Cassel because he was "always in a hurry, zipping around from one thing to another".
In 1979, Slash decided to form a band with his friend Steven Adler. The band never materialized, but it prompted Slash to take up an instrument. Since Adler had designated himself the role of guitarist, Slash decided to learn how to play bass. Equipped with a one-string flamenco guitar given to him by his grandmother, he began taking classes with Robert Wolin, a teacher at Fairfax Music School. During his first lesson, Slash decided to switch from bass to guitar after hearing Wolin play "Brown Sugar" by the Rolling Stones. His decision to play guitar was further influenced by one of his school teachers, who would play songs by Cream and Led Zeppelin for his students. As a result, Slash stated, "When I heard him do that, I said, 'That's what I want to do.'" He vividly recalls the feeling after learning "Come Dancing" from Wired by Jeff Beck, his greatest influence, which he described as "fucking awesome".
A champion BMX rider, Slash put the bike aside to devote himself to playing guitar, practising up to 12 hours a day. Slash attended Beverly Hills High School and was a contemporary of musicians Lenny Kravitz and Zoro.
Career
1981–1985: Early years
Slash joined his first band, Tidus Sloan, in 1981. In 1983, he formed the band Road Crew—named after the Motörhead song "(We Are) The Road Crew"—with his childhood friend Steven Adler, who by then had learned to play drums. He placed an advertisement in a newspaper looking for a bassist, and received a response from Duff McKagan. They auditioned a number of singers, including one-time Black Flag vocalist Ron Reyes, and worked on material that included the main riff of what became the Guns N' Roses song "Rocket Queen". Slash disbanded the group the following year due to them not being able to find a singer, as well as Adler's lack of work ethic compared to himself and McKagan. He, along with Adler, then joined a local band known as Hollywood Rose, which featured singer Axl Rose and guitarist Izzy Stradlin. Following his time with Hollywood Rose, Slash played in a band called Black Sheep and unsuccessfully auditioned for Poison, a glam metal band that he later openly derided.
1985–1996: First stint with Guns N' Roses
In June 1985, Slash was asked by Axl Rose and Izzy Stradlin to join their new band GunsN'Roses, along with Duff McKagan and Steven Adler (replacing founding members Tracii Guns, Ole Beich and Rob Gardner, respectively). They played Los Angeles-area nightclubssuch as the Whisky a Go Go, The Roxy, and The Troubadourand opened for larger acts throughout 1985 and 1986. Before one of the shows in 1985, Slash shoplifted a black felt top hat and a Native American-style silver concho belt from two stores on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. He then combined the hat with parts of the belt to create a piece of custom headwear for the show. He said he "felt really cool" wearing the hat, and it became his trademark. It was during 1985–1986 that the band wrote most of its classic material, including "Welcome to the Jungle," "Sweet Child o' Mine", and "Paradise City," As a result of their rowdy and rebellious behavior, Guns N' Roses quickly received the moniker "Most Dangerous Band in the World," causing Slash to remark, "For some strange reason, Guns N' Roses is like the catalyst for controversy, even before we had any kind of record deal." After being scouted by several major record labels, the band signed with Geffen Records in March 1986.
In July 1987, Guns N' Roses released its debut album, Appetite for Destruction, which, as of September 2008, had sold over 28 million copies worldwide, 18million of which were sold in the United States, making it the best-selling debut album of all time in the U.S. In the summer of 1988, the band achieved its only U.S. No. 1 hit with "Sweet Child O' Mine," a song spearheaded by Slash's guitar riff and solo. In November of that year, Guns N' Roses released G N' R Lies, which sold over five million copies in the U.S. alone, despite containing only eight tracks, four of which were included on the previously released EP Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide. As their success grew, so did interpersonal tensions within the band. In 1989, during a show as opening act for the Rolling Stones, Axl Rose threatened to leave the band if certain members of the band didn't stop "dancing with Mr. Brownstone," a reference to their song of the same name about heroin use. Slash was among those who promised to clean up. However, the following year, Steven Adler was fired from the band because of his heroin addiction; he was replaced by Matt Sorum of The Cult.
In May 1991, the band embarked on the two-and-a-half-year-long Use Your Illusion Tour. The following September, Guns N' Roses released the long-awaited albums Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II, which debuted at No. 2 and No. 1, respectively, on the U.S. chart, a feat not achieved by any other group. Izzy Stradlin abruptly left the band in November; he was replaced by Gilby Clarke of Candy and Kill for Thrills. Slash finished Use Your Illusion Tour with Guns N' Roses on July 17, 1993. In November of that year, the band released "The Spaghetti Incident?", a cover album of mostly punk songs, which proved less successful than its predecessors. Slash then wrote several songs for what would have become the follow-up album to the Use Your Illusion double album. Axl Rose and Duff, however, rejected the material.
With the band's failure to collaborate resulting in no album being recorded, Slash announced in October 1996 that he was no longer a part of Guns N' Roses. Slash stated at the time "Axl and I have not been capable of seeing eye to eye on Guns N' Roses for some time. We tried to collaborate, but at this point, I'm no longer in the band." Paul Tobias's inclusion in the band was another factor in Slash leaving, with Slash having both "creative and personal" differences with Tobias. However, in his 2007 autobiography, Slash stated that his decision to leave the band was not based on artistic differences with Axl Rose, but on Rose's constant lateness to concerts, the alleged legal manipulation Rose used (since denied by Rose) to gain control of the band, and the departures of Steven Adler and Izzy Stradlin.
1994–2002: Slash's Snakepit
In 1994, Slash formed Slash's Snakepit, a side project that featured his Guns N' Roses bandmates Matt Sorum and Gilby Clarke on drums and rhythm guitar respectively, as well as Alice in Chains' Mike Inez on bass and Jellyfish's Eric Dover on vocals. The band recorded Slash's material originally intended for Guns N' Roses, resulting in the release of It's Five O'Clock Somewhere in February 1995. The album was critically praised for ignoring the then-popular conventions of alternative music, and fared well on the charts, eventually selling over one million copies in the US alone despite little promotion from Geffen Records. Slash's Snakepit toured in support of the album with bassist James LoMenzo and drummer Brian Tichy of Pride & Glory, before disbanding in 1996. Slash then toured for two years with the blues rock cover band Slash's Blues Ball.
In 1999, Slash chose to regroup Slash's Snakepit with Rod Jackson on vocals, Ryan Roxie on rhythm guitar, Johnny Griparic on bass, and Matt Laug on drums. Their second album, Ain't Life Grand, was released in October 2000 through Koch Records. It did not sell as well as the band's previous release, and its critical reception was mixed. To promote the album, the band—with Keri Kelli on rhythm guitar—embarked on an extensive world tour in support of AC/DC in the summer of 2000, followed by their own headlining theater tour. Slash disbanded Snakepit in 2002.
2002–2008: Velvet Revolver
In 2002, Slash reunited with Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum for a Randy Castillo tribute concert. Realizing that they still had the chemistry of their days in Guns N' Roses, they decided to form a new band together. Former Guns N' Roses guitarist Izzy Stradlin was initially involved, but left after the others decided to find a lead singer. Dave Kushner, who had previously played with McKagan in Loaded, then joined the band on rhythm guitar. For many months, the four searched for a lead singer by listening to offered demo tapes, a monotonous process documented by VH1. Eventually, former Stone Temple Pilots vocalist Scott Weiland joined the band.
In 2003, Velvet Revolver played several concerts during the summer and released their first single, "Set Me Free". In June 2004, they released their debut album, Contraband, which debuted at No.1 on the U.S. chart and sold two million copies, re-establishing Slash as a mainstream performer. A year-and-a-half-long tour followed in support of the album. In 2005, the band was nominated for three Grammys: Rock Album of the Year, Rock Song, and Hard Rock Performance for their Contraband single "Slither" which won their first and only Grammy. In July 2007, Velvet Revolver released their second album, Libertad, and embarked on a second tour. During a show in March 2008, Weiland announced to the audience that it would be the band's final tour; he was fired from the band in April 2008 and Slash insisted "chemical issues" led to the split. The following month Weiland rejoined Stone Temple Pilots. Despite Weiland's departure, Velvet Revolver did not officially disband.
In early 2010, Velvet Revolver began writing new songs and auditioning new singers. By January 2011, the band had recorded nine demos, and was reportedly due to make a decision on their singer. However, the following April, Slash stated that they had been unable to find a suitable singer and that Velvet Revolver would remain on hiatus for the next few years while its members focus on other projects.
2009–present: "Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators"
In September 2008, Slash began production on his debut solo album. He described the process of recording by himself as "cathartic." He also mentioned working on the album gave him a chance to "...take a little bit of a break from all the politics and the democracy that is a band and just sort of do my own thing for a little bit. Slash's wife Perla revealed that many different artists would appear on the album, saying, "It's going to be Slash and friends, with everyone from Ozzy to Fergie." The album, simply titled Slash, debuted at No. 3 on the U.S. chart upon its release in April 2010. It featured an all-star roster of guest musicians, including Osbourne, Fergie of The Black Eyed Peas, Adam Levine of Maroon 5, M. Shadows of Avenged Sevenfold, Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead, Dave Grohl, Chris Cornell and Iggy Pop. The album also features musical collaborations with former Guns N' Roses members Izzy Stradlin, Steven Adler and Duff McKagan. Preceding the release of the album, Slash had released the Japan-only single "Sahara", featuring Japanese vocalist Koshi Inaba (from B'z). It charted at number four on the Oricon Singles Chart, as well number six on the Billboard Japan Hot 100. It has been awarded Western "Single of the Year" award at the 24th Japan Gold Disc Award by RIAJ. To promote the album, Slash embarked on his first solo world tour with Myles Kennedy of Alter Bridge—who also appeared on the album—on vocals, Bobby Schneck on rhythm guitar, Todd Kerns on bass, and Brent Fitz on drums. Slash opened for Ozzy Osbourne for a leg of Osbourne's Scream World Tour.
Slash began working on his second solo album in June 2011. He collaborated with his touring bandmates Myles Kennedy, Todd Kerns, and Brent Fitz, with the resulting album billed to "Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators". The album, titled Apocalyptic Love, was released on May 22, 2012, debuting at #2 on the Canadian Albums Chart. In 2013 Slash received the award for "Best Guitarist Of The Year 2012" from Loudwire.
Slash embarked on a tour in the summer of 2014, opening for Aerosmith as part of the Let Rock Rule Tour. In May 2014, Slash revealed details of his third solo album World on Fire. The album was again billed as "Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators" and was released on September 10, 2014. It debuted at No. 10 on The Billboard 200 chart.
In March 2018, Slash revealed that a new album with Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators was to be released later in the year. In June 2018, he announced that the album was titled Living the Dream, to be released on September 21, 2018. The group tour for the album began in September 2018, starting with a show in Del Mar, California at the KAABOO Del Mar Music Festival. The tour was concluded the US and Canada again 2019 after completing the Asian leg and Hawaii show with Guns n' Roses. Former touring guitarist Frank Sidoris joined the band full-time for the recording sessions.
In an October 2020 interview with blabbermouth.net bassist/vocalist Todd Kerns confirmed that there would be a new album in 2021, referred to as "SMKC4".
On July 26, 2021, it was confirmed that the record was to be released via Gibson's new record label Gibson Records in February 2022. On October 18, 2021, Slash officially confirmed via Instagram the first single's title "The River is Rising", along with its release date, October 22, 2021. On October 22, the release day of first single, it was announced that the album 4 will be released on February 11, 2022. The tour was also announced the same day, scheduled to start February 8, 2022, in Portland, Oregon.
2016–present: Return to Guns N' Roses
On December 29, 2015, several days after a Guns N' Roses-related teaser was released to movie theaters, Billboard reported that Slash would rejoin the band to headline Coachella 2016, filling the lead guitarist spot vacated when DJ Ashba left the band. Guns N' Roses were officially announced as headliners of Coachella on January 4, 2016, with KROQ reporting Slash and Duff McKagan would rejoin the band. Slash performed with Guns N' Roses for the first time in 23 years during the band's secret warmup gig at the Troubadour in Los Angeles on April 1, 2016. The band then embarked on the Not in This Lifetime... Tour.
Session work
In 1991, Slash played lead guitar on the single "Give In to Me" off Michael Jackson's album Dangerous, as well as for the opening skit of the video for the song "Black or White" off the same album. In 1995, he played guitar on "D.S.", a controversial song from Jackson's HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I album, and in 1997 appeared on the song "Morphine" off the remix album Blood on the Dance Floor: History in the Mix. In 2001, Slash played on "Privacy" off Jackson's final studio album, Invincible. Slash also joined Jackson on several occasions on stage, most notably at the 1995 MTV Video Music Awards playing with Jackson on "Black or White" (and the introduction of "Billie Jean"). He made two surprise appearances during Jackson's 1992 Dangerous World Tour in Spain and Japan and supported the 1999 charity concerts MJ & Friends in Seoul and Munich playing the same set as he did for 1995's MTV Video Music Awards. The last time Slash and Jackson shared a stage was on both 2001 Michael Jackson: 30th Anniversary Special concerts in New York City playing "Black or White" and "Beat It".
In 1991, Slash collaborated with Lenny Kravitz on "Always on the Run", the lead single from Kravitz' album Mama Said. In 1993, Slash appeared on the album Stone Free: A Tribute to Jimi Hendrix, performing "I Don't Live Today" with Paul Rodgers and Band of Gypsys. Slash also guest appeared in Carole King's 1994 live concert, which was captured on her Carole KingIn Concert album. Slash and King appeared on David Letterman to promote the concert. In 1996, he collaborated with Marta Sánchez to record the flamenco-inspired song "Obsession Confession" for the Curdled soundtrack. Later that year, he played with Alice Cooper at Sammy Hagar's club Cabo Wabo in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. The show was released the following year as A Fistful of Alice. In 1997, Slash appeared alongside rapper Ol' Dirty Bastard and rock band Fishbone on Blackstreet's rock remix of their single "Fix"; he also appeared in the accompanying music video. Also in 1997, he played on the single "But You Said I'm Useless" by Japanese musician J. That same year, he contributed music to the soundtrack of Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown; several compositions by Slash's Snakepit can be heard throughout the film. He also appeared on the Insane Clown Posse album The Great Milenko on the track "Halls of Illusions".
In 2002, Slash played on the title track to Elán's album Street Child. In 2003, he participated in the Yardbirds' comeback record Birdland; he played lead guitar on the track "Over, Under, Sideways, Down". In 2006, Slash played on a cover of "In the Summertime" on keyboardist Derek Sherinian's solo album Blood of the Snake; he was also featured in the accompanying music video. In 2007, he appeared on Paulina Rubio's single "Nada Puede Cambiarme". In 2008, Slash played guitar on the film score of The Wrestler, composed by Clint Mansell. Slash was the featured guitarist on the 2008 Italian hit single "Gioca Con Me" by Italian singer-songwriter Vasco Rossi. In 2009, he was featured on Rihanna's single "Rockstar 101" off her album Rated R. In 2011, he contributed the song "Kick It Up a Notch" to the Disney Channel animation Phineas and Ferb the Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension; he appeared in both live-action and animated form in the promotional music video.
Other ventures
A self-described "film buff", Slash has had small parts in several films and television series. In 1988, he appeared with his GunsN'Roses bandmates in the Dirty Harry film The Dead Pool, in which his character attends a musician's funeral and shoots a harpoon. He played radio DJ Hank in a 1994 episode of the horror anthology television series Tales from the Crypt. Slash was a guest star in an episode of the live-action/animated talk show Space Ghost Coast to Coast on Cartoon Network, where Space Ghost, Zorak, and Moltar teach him how to do guitar licks, but he refuses to do any of that. In 1999, he appeared as the host of the Miss America Bag Lady pageant in the widely panned film The Underground Comedy Movie. He has also appeared as himself in several projects, including Howard Stern's Private Parts in 1997, The Drew Carey Show in 1998, MADtv in 2005, and Sacha Baron Cohen's Brüno in 2009. Slash voiced a recurring caricature of himself in Robert Evans' animated television series Kid Notorious, which aired in 2003 on Comedy Central. As in real life, Slash is Evans' close friend and next-door neighbor on the show. He played Billy Butterface in the R-rated television show Metalocalypse on The Adult Swim. On May 5, 2009, he appeared as the guest mentor for the rock 'n' roll week of American Idol. In 2010, Slash formed Slasher Films, a horror film production company. Its first film, Nothing Left to Fear, was screened in select cities on October 4, 2013, before being released on DVD and Blu-ray the following Tuesday. Slash appeared on the October 26, 2014 episode of Talking Dead. He is reported to be a massive fan of horror movies.
Slash's autobiography, simply titled Slash, was published on October 30, 2007. It was co-written with Anthony Bozza. Slash also made several contributions to The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star, the autobiography of Mötley Crüe bassist and back-up singer Nikki Sixx, which was also published in 2007.
Slash is a pinball enthusiast and collector. He participated in the design process for the 1994 Data East GunsN'Roses pinball machine, as well as the 2020 Jersey Jack Pinball machine of the same theme, and provided music for the 1998 Sega machine Viper Night Drivin'.<ref name="Viper Night Drivin' Promotional Flyer">{{cite web |title=Internet Pinball Machine Database: Sega 'Viper Night Drivin Images |url=https://ipdb.org/showpic.pl?id=4359&picno=3372&zoom=1 |website=ipdb.org |access-date=19 June 2020}}</ref> Slash is a playable character in the video game Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, released in 2007. His performance was motion captured to record his movements for the game. Slash's character becomes playable after a player beats him in a one-on-one competition, which then leads to the player and Slash playing the master track of "Welcome to the Jungle". Guitar learning game/simulator Rocksmith 2014 by Ubisoft released a Slash Song Pack with several of the latter compositions by the artist available to purchase as downloadable content and learn on the guitar.
A keen artist, Slash designed logos and artwork for several of his pre-Guns N' Roses bands, as well as the famous circular GN'R logo. He is also credited as having provided some artwork for Aerosmith's 2012 album, Music From Another Dimension!, as it reproduces a picture of the band drawn by Slash when he was still a teenager.
Slash is a fan of the Angry Birds series of video games, and created a hard rock version of the Angry Birds Space theme song. In addition, Slash has a Birds avatar shown in the game, released in March 2013.
Personal life
On October 10, 1992, Slash married model-actress Renée Suran in Marina del Rey, California. They divorced in late 1997 after five years of marriage. Slash married Perla Ferrar on October 15, 2001, in Hawaii. They have two sons, London Emilio (born August 28, 2002) and Cash Anthony (born June 23, 2004). Slash filed for divorce from Ferrar in August 2010, but the couple reconciled two months later. In December 2014, he again filed for divorce.
Slash is a dual citizen of the United Kingdom and the United States. A British national since his birth, he has resided in Los Angeles since 1971 but did not acquire American citizenship until 1996. He said in 2010, "I do consider myself British. I have very strong feelings about my British heritage. My first years were there, I went to school there, and I have seemingly endless family on that side of the pond. So I've always felt most comfortable in England."
In 2001, at the age of 35, Slash was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, a form of congestive heart failure caused by his many years of alcohol and drug abuse. Originally given between six days and six weeks to live, he survived through physical therapy and the implantation of a defibrillator. As of 2011, Slash had been clean and sober since 2006, which he credited to his then-wife Ferrar. In 2009, following his mother's death from lung cancer, he quit smoking.
Slash's friendship with GunsN'Roses frontman Axl Rose soured following his departure from the band. In 2006, Rose claimed that Slash had shown up at his house uninvited the previous year to offer a truce. He alleged that Slash had insulted his Velvet Revolver bandmates, telling Rose that he considered Scott Weiland "a fraud" and Duff McKagan "spineless", and that he "hated" Matt Sorum. Slash denied the accusations. In his 2007 autobiography he admitted to visiting Rose's home with the intention to settle a longstanding legal dispute and make peace with his former bandmate. He claims, however, that he did not speak with Rose and instead merely left a note. Slash maintained that he had not spoken with Rose in person since 1996. In 2009, in response to a statement by Rose in which he referred to Slash as "a cancer", Slash commented: "It doesn't really affect me at all... It's been a long time. The fact that he has anything to say at all, it's like, 'Whatever, dude.' It doesn't really matter." In an August 2015 interview, Slash stated that he and Rose had reconciled. He subsequently rejoined Guns N' Roses in 2016.
Slash's drummer son London Hudson debuted his new band Suspect208 in late 2020. The band also featured Robert Trujillo's son Tye Trujillo on bass and Scott Weiland's son Noah Weiland on vocals. Slash promoted the band on his social media accounts. In 2021 Slash and Myles Kennedy tested positive for COVID-19 while working on a new album.
Philanthropy
Slash is an honorary board member of Little Kids Rock, a national nonprofit that works to restore and rejuvenate music education programs in disadvantaged public schools. He has visited Little Kids Rock students, jammed with them and donated instruments and his time. Slash's passion for music is evident in his charity as well as his art. "Being a musician is good for the character because it teaches you a lot about discipline," Slash said. "I think it's a great creative outlet."
Slash has been recognized for his longtime contributions to establishing environmental welfare programs. He is a board trustee of the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association and has long supported the Los Angeles Zoo and zoos around the world. Slash's love of reptiles was for many years a notable aspect of his public personawith several of his many snakes appearing with him in music videos and photoshootsuntil the birth of his first son in 2002 forced him to find a new home for his collection.
Awards and accolades
Slash has received critical acclaim as a guitarist. In 2005, he was named "Best Guitarist" by Esquire, which congratulated him on "beating the comeback odds with a surprisingly legitimate and vital outfit, Velvet Revolver." Slash was awarded the title of "Riff Lord" during Metal Hammer's fourth annual Golden Gods awards in 2007. In 2008, he was ranked No.21 on Gigwise's list of "The 50 Greatest Guitarists Ever," and in 2009, he was named runner-up on "The 10 Best Electric Guitar Players" list in Time, which praised him as "a remarkably precise player." In 2011, Rolling Stone placed Slash at No. 65 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time."
In 2007, Slash was honored with a star on the Rock Walk of Fame; his name was placed alongside Jimmy Page, Eddie Van Halen and Jimi Hendrix. He was the honoree at the 2010 Sunset Strip Music Festival, where he was presented by West Hollywood mayor John Heilman with a plaque declaring August 26 as "Slash Day." In 2012, Slash was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the classic lineup of Guns N' Roses. He performed three songs—"Paradise City", "Sweet Child o' Mine" and "Mr. Brownstone"with fellow inductees Duff McKagan, Steven Adler, and Matt Sorum, one-time Guns N' Roses guitarist Gilby Clarke, and his frequent collaborator Myles Kennedy. Inductees Axl Rose, Izzy Stradlin and Dizzy Reed declined to attend. Later that year, Slash received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, located directly in front of the Hard Rock Cafe on Hollywood Boulevard.
In 2004, Slash's introductory riff in "Sweet Child o' Mine" was voted No.1 on a list of "The 100 Greatest Riffs" by the readers of Total Guitar; his riffs in "Out ta Get Me" (No.51), "Welcome to the Jungle" (No. 21), and "Paradise City" (No.19) also made the list. In 2006, his solo in "Paradise City" was voted No.3 by Total Guitars readers on a list of "The 100 Hottest Guitar Solos"; his solos in "Sweet Child o' Mine" and "November Rain" were ranked No.30 and No.82 respectively. In 2008, Guitar World placed Slash's solo in "November Rain" at No.6 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Guitar Solos," while his solo in "Sweet Child o' Mine" was ranked No.37 on the list. In 2010, the readers of Total Guitar voted his riff in "Slither" runner-up on the list of "The 50Greatest Riffs of the Decade," while his riff in "By the Sword" was ranked No.22. Slash received a Radio Contraband Rock Radio Award in 2012. In January 2015 Slash received the Les Paul award.
Equipment
Slash owns more than 100 guitars. His guitars are worth a total of $1.92 million. He prefers the Gibson Les Paul, which he has called "the best all-around guitar for me." Gibson has credited him and Zakk Wylde with bringing the Les Paul back into the mainstream in the late 1980s. His main studio guitar is a 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard replica, built by luthier Kris Derrig, which he came to own during the recording sessions for Guns N' Roses' debut album, Appetite for Destruction. He used that guitar on every subsequent album he recorded with Guns N' Roses and Velvet Revolver. For many years, his main live guitar was a 1988 Gibson Les Paul Standard.
Since 1997, Slash has collaborated with Gibson on seventeen signature Les Paul modelsfive through Gibson USA; seven through the Gibson Custom Shop; and five through the Gibson subsidiary Epiphone. Slash also plays various other Gibson guitars, including Firebirds and Explorers. In addition to Gibson, he also plays or has played guitars by a plethora of other brands as well, including B.C. Rich with whom he has designed several custom models based on their Mockingbird and Bich designs. He has used guitars by Fender, Gretsch, Jackson, and Martin. He has also collaborated on signature equipment with other companies. In 1996, Marshall introduced the Marshall Slash Signature JCM2555, an authentic reissue of the Marshall "Silver Jubilee" JCM2555 released in 1987. It was the first signature amp ever produced by Marshall, with production limited to 3000. In 2007, Jim Dunlop introduced the Crybaby SW-95 Slash Signature Wah, designed after Slash's own custom-built Crybaby wah pedal. In 2010, Seymour Duncan introduced the Alnico II Pro Slash APH-2 pickups, which were designed to recreate the tone of Slash's main studio guitar. The Slash signature pickups were marketed through Seymour Duncan's YouTube channel with product demonstrator Danny Young performing the official videos. Also in 2010, Marshall introduced the Marshall AFD100, a recreation of the Marshall 1959 that Slash used for the recording of Appetite for Destruction, with production limited to 2300.
On stage, Slash prefers Marshall amplifiers, particularly the Marshall "Silver Jubilee" JCM2555 amp. He used a rented early-1970s Marshall 1959 for the recording of Appetite for Destruction. Slash enjoyed the amp so much that he tried to keep it, telling the rental company, S.I.R., that it had been stolen. However, the amp was repossessed by S.I.R. employees after a roadie accidentally brought it to rehearsals at the store. For the recording of Velvet Revolver's debut album, Contraband, he used a Vox AC30 amp and small Fender tube amps, and on their second album, Libertad, he used the Marshall "Vintage Modern" 2466 amp. On his eponymous debut solo album he used a Marshall JCM800, issued as "#34", and later, on the subsequent world tour, Slash used his signature Marshall AFD100 amp.
Discography
Solo albums
Slash (2010)
Slash featuring Myles Kennedy & The Conspirators
Apocalyptic Love (2012)
World on Fire (2014)
Living the Dream (2018)
4 (2022)
With Guns N' Roses
Appetite for Destruction (1987)
G N' R Lies (1988)
Use Your Illusion I (1991)
Use Your Illusion II (1991)
"The Spaghetti Incident?" (1993)
With Slash's Snakepit
It's Five O'Clock Somewhere (1995)
Ain't Life Grand (2000)
With Velvet Revolver
Contraband (2004)
Libertad'' (2007)
Citations
General references
External links
1965 births
Living people
20th-century American guitarists
20th-century American writers
20th-century British musicians
20th-century British writers
21st-century American guitarists
21st-century American male writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
21st-century British musicians
21st-century British writers
American male film actors
American male television actors
American male voice actors
American autobiographers
American heavy metal guitarists
American male guitarists
American male songwriters
American rock songwriters
Black British rock musicians
Blues rock musicians
British emigrants to the United States
English male film actors
English male television actors
English male voice actors
English autobiographers
English people of African-American descent
English rock guitarists
English male guitarists
English songwriters
Geffen Records artists
Guitarists from Los Angeles
Guns N' Roses members
Hollywood Rose members
Kerrang! Awards winners
Lead guitarists
Musicians from London
People from Hampstead
People from Stoke-on-Trent
People with acquired American citizenship
Slash's Snakepit members
Slide guitarists
Songwriters from California
Velvet Revolver members
Writers from London
Writers from Los Angeles | 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 African National Congress was a political party in Trinidad and Tobago. The party first contested national elections in 1961, when it received just 0.5% of the vote and failed to win a seat. They did not put forward any candidates for the 1966 elections, but returned for the 1971 elections, in which they received 2.4% of the vote, but again failed to win a seat as the People's National Movement won all 36. The party did not contest any further elections.\n\nReferences\n\nDefunct political parties in Trinidad and Tobago"
] |
[
"Steeleye Span",
"Breakup and comeback"
] | C_d8948e2e2537445bab89ef08e6ad5ea4_0 | When did they breakup? | 1 | When did Steeleye Span breakup? | Steeleye Span | Reported difficulties among band members saw a split during the recording of Bedlam Born. Woods reportedly was uncomfortable with the financial arrangements of the band, health problems forced Johnson into retirement, and drummer Dave Mattacks' period as an unofficial member came to an end during this time. For a while the band consisted of just Peter Knight and Tim Harries, plus various guest musicians, as they fulfilled live commitments. Rick Kemp resumed playing with the band at some of these gigs, with Harries switching to lead guitar. This was an uncertain time for the future of the band, and when Harries announced he was not keen to continue his role, even the willingness of Kemp to return to the line-up full-time was not enough to prevent what was effectively a break-up. In 2002, Steeleye Span reformed with a "classic" line-up (including Prior), bringing an end to the uncertainty of the previous couple of years. Knight hosted a poll on his website, asking the band's fans which Steeleye songs they would most want to see the band re-record. Armed with the results, Knight persuaded Prior and Genockey to rejoin, coaxed Johnson out of a health-induced retirement, and along with Kemp and Knight, they released Present--The Very Best of Steeleye Span (2002), a 2-disc set of new recordings of the songs. But Bob Johnson's health prevented him from playing live shortly before the 2002 comeback tour, and he was replaced at the eleventh hour on guitar by Ken Nicol, formerly of the Albion Band. Nicol had been talking with Rick Kemp about forming a band when Kemp invited him to play for the tour, and this was to herald a significant return to form for the band. CANNOTANSWER | Reported difficulties among band members saw a split during the recording of Bedlam Born. | Steeleye Span are an English folk rock band formed in 1969. Along with Fairport Convention, they are among the best known acts of the British folk revival, and were among the most commercially successful, thanks to their hit singles "Gaudete" and "All Around My Hat". They had four Top 40 albums and achieved significant sales of "All Around My Hat".
Throughout their history, Steeleye Span have seen many personnel changes. Their typical album is a collection of mostly traditional songs with one or two instrumental tracks of jigs and/or reels added; the traditional songs often include some of the Child Ballads. In their later albums there has been an increased tendency to include music written by the band members, but they have never moved completely away from traditional music, which draws upon pan-British traditions.
History
Early years
Steeleye Span began in late 1969, when London-born bass player Ashley Hutchings departed Fairport Convention, the band he had co-founded in 1967. Fairport had been involved in a road accident in 1969 in which the drummer, Martin Lamble, and Richard Thompson's girlfriend, Jeannie Franklyn, were killed and other band members injured. The survivors convalesced in a rented house near Winchester in Hampshire and worked on the album Liege & Lief. Despite the success of the album, Ashley Hutchings and the band's vocalist Sandy Denny left Fairport Convention.
In part, Hutchings departed because he wanted to pursue a different, more traditional, direction than the other members of Fairport did at that time. However, Fairport's co-founder, guitarist Simon Nicol, stated "Whatever the upfront reasons about musical differences and wanting to concentrate on traditional material, I think the accident was the underlying reason why Ashley felt he couldn't continue with us."
Hutchings' new band was formed after he met established duo Tim Hart and Maddy Prior on the London folk club scene, and the initial line-up was completed by husband and wife team Terry Woods (formerly of Sweeney's Men, later of The Pogues) and Gay Woods. The name Steeleye Span comes from a character in the traditional song "Horkstow Grange" (which they did not actually record until they released an album by that name in 1998). The song gives an account of a fight between John "Steeleye" Span and John Bowlin, neither of whom is proven to have been a real person. Martin Carthy gave Hart the idea to name the band after the song character. When the band discussed names, they decided to choose among the three suggestions "Middlemarch Wait", "Iyubidin's Wait", and "Steeleye Span". Although there were only five members in the band, six ballots appeared and "Steeleye Span" won. Only in 1978 did Hart confess that he had voted twice. The liner notes for their first album include thanks to Carthy for the name suggestion.
With two female singers, the original line-up was unusual for the time, and indeed, never performed live, as the Woodses departed the band shortly after the release of the group's debut album, Hark! The Village Wait (1970). While recording the album, the five members were all living in the same house, an arrangement that produced considerable tensions particularly between Hart and Prior on the one hand and the Woodses on the other. Terry Woods maintains that the members had agreed that if more than one person departed, the remaining members would select a new name, and he was upset that this did not happen when he and Gay Woods left the band. Gay and Terry were replaced by veteran folk musician Martin Carthy and fiddler Peter Knight in a longer-term line-up that toured small concert venues, recorded a number of BBC Radio Sessions, and recorded two albums – Please to See the King (1971) and Ten Man Mop, or Mr. Reservoir Butler Rides Again (1971). While the first album was traditionally performed – guitars, bass and with two guest drummers – Please to See the King was revolutionary in its hard electric sound and lack of drums.
In 1971, the then Steeleye Span line-up minus Maddy Prior contributed to two songs on Scottish folk musician Ray Fisher's album The Bonny Birdy; Martin Carthy and Ashley Hutchings were also involved in the selection and arrangement of some songs released on this album, whilst Ashley Hutchings wrote the sleeve notes. Furthermore, Martin Carthy and Peter Knight performed on four songs released on Roy Bailey's eponymous debut album in 1971.
A new direction
Shortly after the release of their third album, the band brought in manager Jo Lustig, who brought a more commercial sound to their recordings. At that time, traditionalists Carthy and Hutchings left the band to pursue purely folk projects. Their replacements were electric guitarist Bob Johnson and bass player Rick Kemp, who brought strong rock and blues influences to the sound. Rick Kemp subsequently married Maddy Prior and they had two children before divorcing. Their daughter Rose Kemp and their son Alex (who performs as Kemp) both followed their parents into the music industry.
Lustig signed them to the Chrysalis record label, for a deal that was to last for ten albums.
With the release of their fourth album, Below the Salt, later in 1972, the revised line-up had settled on a distinctive electrified rock sound, although they continued to play mostly arrangements of very traditional material, including songs dating back a hundred years or more. Even on the more commercial Parcel of Rogues (1973), the band had no permanent drummer but, in 1973, rock drummer Nigel Pegrum, who had previously recorded with Gnidrolog, The Small Faces and Uriah Heep, joined them, to harden up their sound (as well as occasionally playing flute and oboe).
Also that year the single "Gaudete" from Below the Salt became a Christmas hit single, reaching number 14 in the UK Singles Chart, although, being an a cappella piece, taken from the late renaissance song collection Piae Cantiones from Finland and sung entirely in Latin, this can neither be considered representative of the band's music, nor of the album from which it was taken. This proved to be their commercial breakthrough and saw them performing on Top of the Pops for the first time. They often include it as a concert encore. Their popularity was also helped by the fact that they often performed as an opening act for fellow Chrysalis artists Jethro Tull.
Their sixth album (and sixth member Pegrum's first with the band) was entitled Now We Are Six. Produced by Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson, the album includes the epic track "Thomas the Rhymer", which has been a part of the live set ever since. Although successful, the album is controversial among some fans for the inclusion of nursery rhymes sung by "The St. Eeleye School Choir" (band members singing in the style of children), and the cover of "To Know Him Is to Love Him", featuring a guest appearance from David Bowie on saxophone.
The attempts at humour continued on Commoners Crown (1975), which included Peter Sellers playing electric ukulele on the final track, "New York Girls". Their seventh album also included the epic ballad "Long Lankin" and novelty instrumental "Bach Goes To Limerick".
Mike Batt era
With their star now conspicuously ascendant, the band brought in producer Mike Batt to work on their eighth album, All Around My Hat, and their biggest success would come with the release of the title track as a single – it reached number 5 in the UK Singles Chart in late 1975. The single was also released in other European countries and gave them a breakthrough in the Netherlands and Germany. Other well-known tracks on the album included "Black Jack Davy" (sampled by rappers Goldie Lookin Chain on their track "The Maggot") and the rocky "Hard Times of Old England". While All Around My Hat was the height of the band's commercial success, the good times were not to last long. Despite touring almost every year since 1975, they have not had another hit single, nor any success in the album chart, since the late 1970s.
The follow-up album, Rocket Cottage (1976), also produced by Batt, proved to be a commercial flop, despite having much in common musically with its predecessor. The opening track, "London", was penned by Rick Kemp as a follow-up to "All Around My Hat", in response to a request from the record label that Kemp describes as "we'll have another one of those, please", and released as a single. The song failed to make the UK Chart, in complete contrast to "All Around My Hat", despite having much in common – a 12/8 time signature, upbeat tempo, solo verses and full harmony chorus. Rocket Cottage also included the experimental track "Fighting for Strangers" (with sparse vocals singing concurrently in a variety of keys) and, on the final track, excerpts of studio banter between the band members and a seemingly impromptu rendition of "Camptown Races", in which Prior gets the lyrics wrong.
At the time of their seventh album, Commoners Crown, the advent of punk saw the mainstream market turning away from folk rock almost overnight, heralding a downturn in commercial fortunes for the band. However, as a thank you to their committed fans (and also possibly to garner some publicity for their underperforming album), Steeleye Span showered attendees of a November 1976 concert in London with £8,500 in pound notes (then equivalent to US$13,600). The unannounced idea was Maddy Prior's and, remarkably, no-one was injured in the rush to grab the falling notes. Indeed, contemporary press reports indicated that it took some time for the crowd to even realise what was happening. Thanks to their connection with Mike Batt, band members appeared in Womble costumes on Top of the Pops, performing the Wombles hit "Superwomble".
Late 1970s and early 1980s
While they would never regain the commercial success of All Around My Hat, Steeleye remained popular among British folk rock fans and generally respected within the music industry. It has been widely reported that Peter Knight and Bob Johnson left the band to work on another project together, The King of Elfland's Daughter. The actual situation was more complex. Chrysalis Records agreed to allow Knight and Johnson to work on "King" only as a way to persuade the duo to continue working with Steeleye. Since the record company had no interest in "King" for its own sake, it made no effort to market the album. Chrysalis' ploy failed, however, and Knight and Johnson quit.
Their departure left a significant hole in the band. For the 1977 album, Storm Force Ten, early member Martin Carthy rejoined on guitar. When he originally joined the band for their second album, Carthy had tried to persuade the others to bring John Kirkpatrick on board but the band had chosen Knight instead. This time, Carthy's suggestion was accepted and Kirkpatrick's accordion replaced Knight's fiddle, which gave the recording a very different texture from the Steeleye sound of previous years. Kirkpatrick's one-man morris dances quickly became one of the highlights of the band's show. This line-up also recorded their first album outside of the studio, Live at Last, before a "split" at the end of the decade that proved to be short-lived. Carthy and Kirkpatrick had only intended to play with the band for a few months and had no interest in a longer association.
During 1977 and some time thereafter, Nigel Pegrum and Rick Kemp created a "porno punk" band called The Pork Dukes, using pseudonyms. The Pork Dukes released several albums and singles over the years.
The band were contractually obliged to record a final album for the Chrysalis label and, with Carthy and Kirkpatrick not wanting to rejoin the re-formed band, the door was open for Knight and Johnson to return, in 1980. The album Sails of Silver saw the band moving away from traditional material to a greater focus on self-penned songs, many with historical or pseudo-folk themes. Sails was not a commercial success, in part because Chrysalis chose not to promote the album aggressively but also because many fans felt uncomfortable with the band's new direction in its choice of material. The failure of the album left Hart unhappy enough that he decided to leave the band and give up commercial music entirely, in favour of a reclusive life overseas.
After Sails of Silver there were to be no new albums for several years, and Steeleye became a part-time touring band. The other members spent much of their time and energy working on their various other projects and the band went into a fitful hibernation. "Sails of Silver" was used as a theme song for the science fiction literary show "Hour of The Wolf", on NYC radio station WBAI 99.5FM since the 1980s. This introduced many younger US listeners to the band.
In 1981 Isla St Clair presented a series of four television programmes, called "The Song and The Story", about the history of some folk songs, which won the Prix Jeunesse. St Clair sang the songs, and The Maddy Prior Band did the backing instrumentals.
Wilderness years
For much of the 1980s, the members of the band tended to focus on outside projects of various sorts. Johnson opened a restaurant and then studied for a degree in psychology at the University of Hertfordshire. Pegrum ran a music studio. Prior and Kemp devoted much energy to their own band (The Maddy Prior Band; see Maddy Prior (solo albums)), recording 4 albums, and also had children together. The result was that the band's output dropped sharply, producing only three albums over the space of ten years (including a concert album), although the band continued touring.
After a quiet spell, the group's 12th studio album (and first without Tim Hart) Back in Line was released on the Flutterby label in 1986. With no "relaunch" as such, the band retained a low profile, although they covered "Blackleg Miner" (a composition to support a 1844 strike revised many times by folk artists in the 20th century) to show solidarity with striking miners. Some argued this became a political anthem for the NUM during the miners' strike of 1984–5 and was used to intimidate working miners. Steeleye Span continued to perform the song live and included a different version on their 1986 release Back in Line, which some claim puts greater stress on the line that threatens death against blacklegs .
In 1989, two long-term members departed. One was bassist Rick Kemp, who needed to recover from a serious shoulder injury, exacerbated by playing bass on stage. His eventual replacement (after two tours, each with a different bassist) was Tim Harries, who was brought in less than two weeks before the band was scheduled to start a tour. A friend of Pegrum's, Harries was a self-taught rock bassist, as well as a classically trained pianist and double bassist. With Harries on board, Steeleye released Tempted and Tried (1989), an album that formed the basis for their live set for many years to come.
Not long after recording Tempted, drummer Nigel Pegrum emigrated to Australia for personal relationship reasons. He was replaced by eccentric drummer Liam Genockey (most recently of rock band Gillan), easily identified by his long, plaited beard. He and Knight were simultaneously members of "Moiré Music", a free-jazz band with a classical flavour, led by Trevor Watts. Unlike Pegrum, who employed a traditional rock drumming style, Genockey favoured a more varied drumming style, influenced by both Irish and African drumming, in which he hit, brushed, and rubbed the various surfaces of his drums and cymbals, creating a more varied range of sounds. Consequently, when the band embarked on their 20th Anniversary Tour, they did so with a totally new rhythm section.
Both Harries and Genockey were interested in experimenting with the band's sound, and they helped re-energise the other members' interest in Steeleye. The band began reworking some of their earlier material, seeking new approaches to traditional favourites. For example, Johnson experimented with an arrangement of "Tam Lin", that involved a heavy Bulgarian influence, inspired by Eastern European versions of the Tam Lin legend. In 1992 the band released Tonight's the Night...Live, which demonstrates some of this new energy and direction. The band continued to tour the UK every year, and frequently toured overseas as well.
Maddy 'leaves the bus'
In 1995 almost all the past and present members of the band reunited for a concert to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the band (which would later be released as The Journey). The only former members not present were founding members Terry Woods, Mark Williamson, and Chris Staines.
A by-product of this gig was founding vocalist Gay Woods rejoining the band full-time, partly because Prior was experiencing vocal problems and, for a while, Steeleye toured with two female singers and released the album Time 1996, their first new studio album in seven years.
There were doubts over the future of the band when Prior announced her departure, in 1997, but Steeleye continued in a more productive vein than for many years, with Woods as lead singer, releasing Horkstow Grange (1998), and then Bedlam Born (2000). Fans of Steeleye's "rock" element felt that Horkstow Grange was too quiet and folk-oriented, while fans of the band's "folk" element complained that Bedlam Born was too rock-heavy. Woods received considerable criticism from fans, many of whom did not realise that she was one of the founding members and who compared her singing style unfavourably to Prior's. There was also disagreement among the band about what material to perform; Woods advocated performing old favourites such as "All Around My Hat" and "Alison Gross", while Johnson favoured a set that emphasised their newer material.
Liam Genockey had also left the band in 1997 and, on these albums, the drum kit was manned by Dave Mattacks, who was not an official member of the band.
Breakup and comeback
Reported difficulties among band members saw a split during the recording of Bedlam Born. Woods reportedly was uncomfortable with the financial arrangements of the band, health problems forced Johnson into retirement, and drummer Dave Mattacks' period as an unofficial member came to an end. Rick Kemp resumed playing with the band as a guest replacing Bob Johnson for the Bedlam Born tour, with Harries switching to lead guitar. Woods then left after this tour.
For a while the band consisted of just Peter Knight and Tim Harries, plus various guest musicians, as they fulfilled live commitments. This was an uncertain time for the future of the band, and when Harries announced he was not keen to continue his role, even the willingness of Kemp to return to the line-up full-time was not enough to prevent an 18 month hiatus while Peter Knight and the bands manager, John Dagnell, considered whether it was worth continuing.
In 2002 Steeleye Span reformed with a "classic" line-up (including Prior), bringing an end to the uncertainty of the previous couple of years. Knight hosted a poll on his website, asking the band's fans which Steeleye songs they would most want to see the band re-record. Armed with the results, Knight persuaded Prior and Genockey to rejoin, coaxed Johnson out of a health-induced retirement and, along with Kemp and Knight, they released Present—The Very Best of Steeleye Span (2002), a 2-disc set of new recordings of the songs.
Bob Johnson's health issues prevented him from playing live, shortly before the 2002 comeback tour, and he was replaced at the eleventh hour on guitar by Ken Nicol, formerly of the Albion Band. Nicol had been talking with Rick Kemp about forming a band, when Kemp invited him to play for the tour and this was to herald a significant return to form for the band.
Ken Nicol years
A revitalised lineup consisting of Prior, Kemp, Knight, Genockey and newcomer Ken Nicol released the album They Called Her Babylon early in 2004, to considerable acclaim. The band extensively toured the UK, Europe and Australia, and their relatively prolific output continued with the release of the Christmas album Winter later the same year, as the band ended a busy year of touring with a gala performance in London's Palladium theatre. In 2005 Steeleye Span were awarded the Good Tradition Award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, while the 2005 book, Electric Folk by Britta Sweers devotes much space to the band.
With a new sense of purpose and a stable line-up, the band carried out a UK tour in April and May 2006, followed by dates in Europe and an appearance at the 2006 Cropredy Festival, where they were the headline act on the opening night. The set started with "Bonny Black Hare" and finished with "All Around My Hat", with backing vocals from the Cropredy Crowd. The full play list is at Crop Log 2006. The tour was supported by a live album and DVD of their 2004 tour.
In November 2006 Steeleye released their studio album Bloody Men. Their Autumn/Winter tour started on 24 November 2006 in Basingstoke and ran until just before Christmas. They headlined at their namesake festival, Spanfest 2007 at Kentwell Hall, Suffolk from 27 to 29 July 2007, and returned for Spanfest 2008. However, as Kentwell Hall declined to hold the festival again, it was held at Stanford Hall in Leicestershire. A UK tour took place between 17 April and 16 May 2008.
For their 40th anniversary tour, in 2009, Pete Zorn joined the line-up on bass, as Rick Kemp was unwell. Kemp and Zorn both toured with the band for the winter tour that year, with Zorn playing guitar, and Kemp announced that he would be retiring at the end of the tour – a decision he later reversed, as usual.
Live at a Distance, a live double CD and DVD set, was released in April 2009 by Park Records, and their new studio album entitled Cogs, Wheels & Lovers was released on 26 October 2009. Several tracks from this album featured in the sets of the autumn tour.
Founding member Tim Hart died on 24 December 2009, at his home in La Gomera on the Canary Islands, at the age of 61, after being diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer.
Now We Are Six Again / Wintersmith
In June 2010 Ken Nicol announced that he was leaving Steeleye and the band reassembled for a Spring 2011 tour, with Julian Littman joining the line-up as guitarist, replacing Nicol. Multi-instrumentalist Pete Zorn also continued to play with the band, making them a six-piece for the first time in many years.
In 2011 they released Now We Are Six again, a live double album based on their set at the time, which included full performances of all the songs on their 1974 Now we are Six album.
In October 2013 the band released their 22nd studio album, Wintersmith, containing original songs based on the writings of Terry Pratchett. This was followed by a winter tour of the UK. This album marked a return to form and media attention as the album reached number 77 in the UK Albums Chart, had tracks played on BBC Radio 2 and led to various radio and TV interviews for Terry Pratchett and Maddy Prior as they promoted the album.
Following Pratchett's death, in March 2015, the band made an appearance at the memorial service for him, in April 2016, at Barbican Centre, London.
Peter Knight leaves / Dodgy Bastards album
In November 2013 Peter Knight announced that he would be leaving Steeleye Span at the end of 2013. He was replaced by Jessie May Smart. The band continued to tour regularly and recorded four new tracks for the 2014 'Deluxe' re-release of the Wintersmith album.
In the summer of 2015 they toured North America, with a reduced line up consisting of Prior, Littman, Smart, Genockey and, for the first time, Maddy's son, Alex Kemp, on bass, replacing his father, Rick. An autumn/winter tour of the UK followed with Rick Kemp back in the line-up, along with Andrew 'Spud' Sinclair, replacing Pete Zorn.
In April 2016 Pete Zorn was diagnosed with advanced lung and brain cancer. He died on 19 April.
Andrew Sinclair joined the band permanently in 2016 and the line up toured in October 2016 and announced the release of a new studio album, Dodgy Bastards, in November. The album is a mixture of original compositions, traditional songs and original tunes put to traditional lyrics.
Present day / 50th anniversary
After completing the 'Dodgy Bastards' tour, Rick Kemp retired and has been replaced by Roger Carey, on bass. For the November/December 2017 tour the band was joined by multi-instrumentalist and ex-Bellowhead member Benji Kirkpatrick. Benji is son of former Steeleye Span member, John Kirkpatrick. This seven-piece line-up, the first in the band's history, has continued to tour. 2019 was the band's 50th anniversary year and a new album was released to celebrate the anniversary: Est'd 1969. The band undertook two "50th Anniversary" tours in 2019, in Spring and November. The band played the 'Fields of Avalon' area at the Glastonbury Festival 2019, were the closing act at the Cornbury Music Festival 2019 and even made their debut in Russia at a folk festival called Chasti Sveta (Части света, Parts of the World), in Saint Petersburg. On 17 December they appeared at the Barbican Theatre, in London, with special guests and previous band members Peter Knight, Martin Carthy and John Kirkpatrick. For the November/December 2022 tour, with Jessie May Smart on maternity leave, Violeta Vicci joined the band, on violin. Benji Kirkpatrick left the band in early 2022.
Examples of collaborations
Prior sang backing vocals on the title track of Jethro Tull's 1976 album Too Old To Rock and Roll, Too Young To Die, the song "Salamander's Rag-Time" from the same session and their 1978 single "A Stitch In Time". Later, members of Jethro Tull backed Prior on her album Woman in the Wings. Ray Fisher's rare 1972 album Bonny Birdy includes one track with the High Level Ranters, one with Steeleye Span, and one with Martin Carthy.
Until the 1990s Steeleye often toured as part of a double bill, either supporting Status Quo, or featuring support from artists such as Rock Salt & Nails and The Rankin Family. When Steeleye Span supported Status Quo on tour, in 1996, the latter had just issued their version of "All Around My Hat" as a single. "The video was filmed at Christmas," Prior recalled. "We'd supported them, and I found myself down in the mosh pit. Francis saw me and told the audience, 'Oh look, there's a Maddy lookalike down there… Fuck me, it is Maddy!' I was hoyed over the barrier [to the stage], to join them for the encore. It was all very jolly." Status Quo's single is credited to "Status Quo with Maddy Prior from Steeleye Span" and reached number 47 in the charts.
Discography
Studio albums
Hark! The Village Wait (1970)
Please to See the King (1971)
Ten Man Mop, or Mr. Reservoir Butler Rides Again (1971)
Below the Salt (1972)
Parcel of Rogues (1973)
Now We Are Six (1974)
Commoners Crown (1975)
All Around My Hat (1975)
Rocket Cottage (1976)
Storm Force Ten (1977)
Sails of Silver (1980)
Back in Line (1986)
Tempted and Tried (1989)
Time (1996)
Horkstow Grange (1998)
Bedlam Born (2000)
Present – The Very Best of Steeleye Span (2002)
They Called Her Babylon (2004)
Winter (2004)
Bloody Men (2006)
Cogs, Wheels and Lovers (2009)
Wintersmith (2013)
Dodgy Bastards (2016)
Est'd 1969 (2019)
Lost recordings
In 1995 Steeleye recorded "The Golden Vanity" for the Time album, but it did not appear on it. It was released on the anthology The Best of British Folk Rock. Similarly they recorded "General Taylor" for Ten Man Mop but the song did not appear on it. It resurfaced on the compilation album Individually and Collectively instead. It was also included in another compilation The Lark in The Morning (2006), as well as re-issues of Ten Man Mop. "Bonny Moorhen" was recorded at the time of the Parcel of Rogues session. It appears, however, on the compilation album Original Masters, and is also packaged as part of A Parcel of Steeleye Span. The song "Somewhere in London", recorded for Back in Line (1986) was released instead as a B-side single, but returned to its proper place "Back in Line" when the album was reissued in 1991. "Staring Robin", a song about a man described by Tim Harries as an "Elizabethan psycho", was recorded during the Bedlam Born (2000) sessions, but it was left off the final album as it was deemed by Park Records to be too disturbing.
The track "The Holly and the Ivy" was released as the B-side of the Gaudete single and did not appear on any album. It was later released on the 'Steeleye Span: A rare collection' oddities compilation. Several Steeleye songs have never been recorded for a studio album and have only been made available in their live versions, including several tracks on 'Live at Last' and 'Tonight's the night... Live'.
Personnel
Members
Current members
Maddy Prior – vocals
Liam Genockey – drums, percussion
Andrew "Spud" Sinclair – guitars
Julian Littman – guitars
Jessie May Smart – violin
Roger Carey – bass
Violeta Vicci –
Former members
Tim Hart – guitars, dulcimer, mandolin, vocals
Ashley Hutchings – bass
Gay Woods – vocals, bodhran
Terry Woods – guitars, concertina, vocals
Martin Carthy – guitars, keyboards, vocals
Bob Johnson – guitars, vocals
Nigel Pegrum – drums, percussion, flute
John Kirkpatrick – accordion, vocals
Mark Williamson – bass
Chris Staines – bass
Dave Mattacks – drums, percussion
Tim Harries – bass, piano, guitars, vocals
Michael Gregory – drums, percussion
Terl Bryant – drums, percussion
Ken Nicol – guitars, vocals
Peter Knight – strings, keyboards, guitars, vocals
Pete Zorn – guitars, woodwind
Rick Kemp – bass, drums, vocals
Benji Kirkpatrick – bouzouki, banjo, vocals
Lineups
Timeline
Notes and references
Sources
External links
Official website
Steeleye Span's record label
1969 establishments in England
Articles which contain graphical timelines
Ashley Hutchings
British folk rock groups
Chrysalis Records artists
English folk rock groups
Musical groups established in 1969
RCA Records artists
United Artists Records artists
Female-fronted musical groups | true | [
"A breakup song is a song describing the breakup of an intimate relationship. Breakup Song may also refer to:\n\nBreakup Song, a 2012 album by Deerhoof\n\"Break Up Song\" (Little Mix song), a 2020 song by Little Mix\n\"The Breakup Song (They Don't Write 'Em)\", a 1981 song by Greg Kihn\n\"The Breakup Song\" (Francesca Battistelli song), a 2018 song by Francesca Battistelli\n\nSee also\n\"Potential Breakup Song\", a 2006 song by Aly & AJ",
"\"The Breakup Song (They Don't Write 'Em)\" is a song written by Greg Kihn and Steve Wright and recorded by the American rock band The Greg Kihn Band. It is the first single from the band's sixth studio album, RocKihnRoll (1981). The song's musical style encompasses pop rock and power pop.\n\nMeaning\nIt celebrates the quality of break-up songs in rock's earlier times, as the narrator laments both his recent breakup and the fact that they don't write good breakup songs anymore.\n\nRelease\nThe song reached No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and #5 on the Billboard Top Tracks chart.\n\nIn popular culture\nIt has been featured in several films, including Let Me In (2010), The House of the Devil (2009), The Groomsmen (2006) and Beautiful Girls (1996) as well as the hit video game Grand Theft Auto V (2013). It was sampled in \"Gone\" by Yelawolf on his Arena Rap EP. It was also featured in a season five episode of \"The Sopranos\". Additionally the TV show The Nanny made a reference to the song when Fran said they don't write them like that anymore.\n\nTrack listing\n 12\" Maxi (AS-11506)\n\"The Breakup Song (They Don't Write 'Em)\" - 3:42\n\"The Girl Most Likely\" - 3:46\n\"Can't Stop Hurtin' Myself\" - 4:30\n\"Valerie\" - 2:44\n\n 7\" Single (B-47149)\n\"The Breakup Song (They Don't Write 'Em)\" - 2:50\n\"When the Music Starts\" - 2:34\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nReferences\n\n1981 singles\n1981 songs\nGreg Kihn songs\nBeserkley Records singles\nSongs written by Greg Kihn\nMetasongs"
] |
[
"Steeleye Span",
"Breakup and comeback",
"When did they breakup?",
"Reported difficulties among band members saw a split during the recording of Bedlam Born."
] | C_d8948e2e2537445bab89ef08e6ad5ea4_0 | Why did they break up | 2 | Why did Steeleye Span break up | Steeleye Span | Reported difficulties among band members saw a split during the recording of Bedlam Born. Woods reportedly was uncomfortable with the financial arrangements of the band, health problems forced Johnson into retirement, and drummer Dave Mattacks' period as an unofficial member came to an end during this time. For a while the band consisted of just Peter Knight and Tim Harries, plus various guest musicians, as they fulfilled live commitments. Rick Kemp resumed playing with the band at some of these gigs, with Harries switching to lead guitar. This was an uncertain time for the future of the band, and when Harries announced he was not keen to continue his role, even the willingness of Kemp to return to the line-up full-time was not enough to prevent what was effectively a break-up. In 2002, Steeleye Span reformed with a "classic" line-up (including Prior), bringing an end to the uncertainty of the previous couple of years. Knight hosted a poll on his website, asking the band's fans which Steeleye songs they would most want to see the band re-record. Armed with the results, Knight persuaded Prior and Genockey to rejoin, coaxed Johnson out of a health-induced retirement, and along with Kemp and Knight, they released Present--The Very Best of Steeleye Span (2002), a 2-disc set of new recordings of the songs. But Bob Johnson's health prevented him from playing live shortly before the 2002 comeback tour, and he was replaced at the eleventh hour on guitar by Ken Nicol, formerly of the Albion Band. Nicol had been talking with Rick Kemp about forming a band when Kemp invited him to play for the tour, and this was to herald a significant return to form for the band. CANNOTANSWER | Woods reportedly was uncomfortable with the financial arrangements of the band, health problems forced Johnson into retirement, | Steeleye Span are an English folk rock band formed in 1969. Along with Fairport Convention, they are among the best known acts of the British folk revival, and were among the most commercially successful, thanks to their hit singles "Gaudete" and "All Around My Hat". They had four Top 40 albums and achieved significant sales of "All Around My Hat".
Throughout their history, Steeleye Span have seen many personnel changes. Their typical album is a collection of mostly traditional songs with one or two instrumental tracks of jigs and/or reels added; the traditional songs often include some of the Child Ballads. In their later albums there has been an increased tendency to include music written by the band members, but they have never moved completely away from traditional music, which draws upon pan-British traditions.
History
Early years
Steeleye Span began in late 1969, when London-born bass player Ashley Hutchings departed Fairport Convention, the band he had co-founded in 1967. Fairport had been involved in a road accident in 1969 in which the drummer, Martin Lamble, and Richard Thompson's girlfriend, Jeannie Franklyn, were killed and other band members injured. The survivors convalesced in a rented house near Winchester in Hampshire and worked on the album Liege & Lief. Despite the success of the album, Ashley Hutchings and the band's vocalist Sandy Denny left Fairport Convention.
In part, Hutchings departed because he wanted to pursue a different, more traditional, direction than the other members of Fairport did at that time. However, Fairport's co-founder, guitarist Simon Nicol, stated "Whatever the upfront reasons about musical differences and wanting to concentrate on traditional material, I think the accident was the underlying reason why Ashley felt he couldn't continue with us."
Hutchings' new band was formed after he met established duo Tim Hart and Maddy Prior on the London folk club scene, and the initial line-up was completed by husband and wife team Terry Woods (formerly of Sweeney's Men, later of The Pogues) and Gay Woods. The name Steeleye Span comes from a character in the traditional song "Horkstow Grange" (which they did not actually record until they released an album by that name in 1998). The song gives an account of a fight between John "Steeleye" Span and John Bowlin, neither of whom is proven to have been a real person. Martin Carthy gave Hart the idea to name the band after the song character. When the band discussed names, they decided to choose among the three suggestions "Middlemarch Wait", "Iyubidin's Wait", and "Steeleye Span". Although there were only five members in the band, six ballots appeared and "Steeleye Span" won. Only in 1978 did Hart confess that he had voted twice. The liner notes for their first album include thanks to Carthy for the name suggestion.
With two female singers, the original line-up was unusual for the time, and indeed, never performed live, as the Woodses departed the band shortly after the release of the group's debut album, Hark! The Village Wait (1970). While recording the album, the five members were all living in the same house, an arrangement that produced considerable tensions particularly between Hart and Prior on the one hand and the Woodses on the other. Terry Woods maintains that the members had agreed that if more than one person departed, the remaining members would select a new name, and he was upset that this did not happen when he and Gay Woods left the band. Gay and Terry were replaced by veteran folk musician Martin Carthy and fiddler Peter Knight in a longer-term line-up that toured small concert venues, recorded a number of BBC Radio Sessions, and recorded two albums – Please to See the King (1971) and Ten Man Mop, or Mr. Reservoir Butler Rides Again (1971). While the first album was traditionally performed – guitars, bass and with two guest drummers – Please to See the King was revolutionary in its hard electric sound and lack of drums.
In 1971, the then Steeleye Span line-up minus Maddy Prior contributed to two songs on Scottish folk musician Ray Fisher's album The Bonny Birdy; Martin Carthy and Ashley Hutchings were also involved in the selection and arrangement of some songs released on this album, whilst Ashley Hutchings wrote the sleeve notes. Furthermore, Martin Carthy and Peter Knight performed on four songs released on Roy Bailey's eponymous debut album in 1971.
A new direction
Shortly after the release of their third album, the band brought in manager Jo Lustig, who brought a more commercial sound to their recordings. At that time, traditionalists Carthy and Hutchings left the band to pursue purely folk projects. Their replacements were electric guitarist Bob Johnson and bass player Rick Kemp, who brought strong rock and blues influences to the sound. Rick Kemp subsequently married Maddy Prior and they had two children before divorcing. Their daughter Rose Kemp and their son Alex (who performs as Kemp) both followed their parents into the music industry.
Lustig signed them to the Chrysalis record label, for a deal that was to last for ten albums.
With the release of their fourth album, Below the Salt, later in 1972, the revised line-up had settled on a distinctive electrified rock sound, although they continued to play mostly arrangements of very traditional material, including songs dating back a hundred years or more. Even on the more commercial Parcel of Rogues (1973), the band had no permanent drummer but, in 1973, rock drummer Nigel Pegrum, who had previously recorded with Gnidrolog, The Small Faces and Uriah Heep, joined them, to harden up their sound (as well as occasionally playing flute and oboe).
Also that year the single "Gaudete" from Below the Salt became a Christmas hit single, reaching number 14 in the UK Singles Chart, although, being an a cappella piece, taken from the late renaissance song collection Piae Cantiones from Finland and sung entirely in Latin, this can neither be considered representative of the band's music, nor of the album from which it was taken. This proved to be their commercial breakthrough and saw them performing on Top of the Pops for the first time. They often include it as a concert encore. Their popularity was also helped by the fact that they often performed as an opening act for fellow Chrysalis artists Jethro Tull.
Their sixth album (and sixth member Pegrum's first with the band) was entitled Now We Are Six. Produced by Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson, the album includes the epic track "Thomas the Rhymer", which has been a part of the live set ever since. Although successful, the album is controversial among some fans for the inclusion of nursery rhymes sung by "The St. Eeleye School Choir" (band members singing in the style of children), and the cover of "To Know Him Is to Love Him", featuring a guest appearance from David Bowie on saxophone.
The attempts at humour continued on Commoners Crown (1975), which included Peter Sellers playing electric ukulele on the final track, "New York Girls". Their seventh album also included the epic ballad "Long Lankin" and novelty instrumental "Bach Goes To Limerick".
Mike Batt era
With their star now conspicuously ascendant, the band brought in producer Mike Batt to work on their eighth album, All Around My Hat, and their biggest success would come with the release of the title track as a single – it reached number 5 in the UK Singles Chart in late 1975. The single was also released in other European countries and gave them a breakthrough in the Netherlands and Germany. Other well-known tracks on the album included "Black Jack Davy" (sampled by rappers Goldie Lookin Chain on their track "The Maggot") and the rocky "Hard Times of Old England". While All Around My Hat was the height of the band's commercial success, the good times were not to last long. Despite touring almost every year since 1975, they have not had another hit single, nor any success in the album chart, since the late 1970s.
The follow-up album, Rocket Cottage (1976), also produced by Batt, proved to be a commercial flop, despite having much in common musically with its predecessor. The opening track, "London", was penned by Rick Kemp as a follow-up to "All Around My Hat", in response to a request from the record label that Kemp describes as "we'll have another one of those, please", and released as a single. The song failed to make the UK Chart, in complete contrast to "All Around My Hat", despite having much in common – a 12/8 time signature, upbeat tempo, solo verses and full harmony chorus. Rocket Cottage also included the experimental track "Fighting for Strangers" (with sparse vocals singing concurrently in a variety of keys) and, on the final track, excerpts of studio banter between the band members and a seemingly impromptu rendition of "Camptown Races", in which Prior gets the lyrics wrong.
At the time of their seventh album, Commoners Crown, the advent of punk saw the mainstream market turning away from folk rock almost overnight, heralding a downturn in commercial fortunes for the band. However, as a thank you to their committed fans (and also possibly to garner some publicity for their underperforming album), Steeleye Span showered attendees of a November 1976 concert in London with £8,500 in pound notes (then equivalent to US$13,600). The unannounced idea was Maddy Prior's and, remarkably, no-one was injured in the rush to grab the falling notes. Indeed, contemporary press reports indicated that it took some time for the crowd to even realise what was happening. Thanks to their connection with Mike Batt, band members appeared in Womble costumes on Top of the Pops, performing the Wombles hit "Superwomble".
Late 1970s and early 1980s
While they would never regain the commercial success of All Around My Hat, Steeleye remained popular among British folk rock fans and generally respected within the music industry. It has been widely reported that Peter Knight and Bob Johnson left the band to work on another project together, The King of Elfland's Daughter. The actual situation was more complex. Chrysalis Records agreed to allow Knight and Johnson to work on "King" only as a way to persuade the duo to continue working with Steeleye. Since the record company had no interest in "King" for its own sake, it made no effort to market the album. Chrysalis' ploy failed, however, and Knight and Johnson quit.
Their departure left a significant hole in the band. For the 1977 album, Storm Force Ten, early member Martin Carthy rejoined on guitar. When he originally joined the band for their second album, Carthy had tried to persuade the others to bring John Kirkpatrick on board but the band had chosen Knight instead. This time, Carthy's suggestion was accepted and Kirkpatrick's accordion replaced Knight's fiddle, which gave the recording a very different texture from the Steeleye sound of previous years. Kirkpatrick's one-man morris dances quickly became one of the highlights of the band's show. This line-up also recorded their first album outside of the studio, Live at Last, before a "split" at the end of the decade that proved to be short-lived. Carthy and Kirkpatrick had only intended to play with the band for a few months and had no interest in a longer association.
During 1977 and some time thereafter, Nigel Pegrum and Rick Kemp created a "porno punk" band called The Pork Dukes, using pseudonyms. The Pork Dukes released several albums and singles over the years.
The band were contractually obliged to record a final album for the Chrysalis label and, with Carthy and Kirkpatrick not wanting to rejoin the re-formed band, the door was open for Knight and Johnson to return, in 1980. The album Sails of Silver saw the band moving away from traditional material to a greater focus on self-penned songs, many with historical or pseudo-folk themes. Sails was not a commercial success, in part because Chrysalis chose not to promote the album aggressively but also because many fans felt uncomfortable with the band's new direction in its choice of material. The failure of the album left Hart unhappy enough that he decided to leave the band and give up commercial music entirely, in favour of a reclusive life overseas.
After Sails of Silver there were to be no new albums for several years, and Steeleye became a part-time touring band. The other members spent much of their time and energy working on their various other projects and the band went into a fitful hibernation. "Sails of Silver" was used as a theme song for the science fiction literary show "Hour of The Wolf", on NYC radio station WBAI 99.5FM since the 1980s. This introduced many younger US listeners to the band.
In 1981 Isla St Clair presented a series of four television programmes, called "The Song and The Story", about the history of some folk songs, which won the Prix Jeunesse. St Clair sang the songs, and The Maddy Prior Band did the backing instrumentals.
Wilderness years
For much of the 1980s, the members of the band tended to focus on outside projects of various sorts. Johnson opened a restaurant and then studied for a degree in psychology at the University of Hertfordshire. Pegrum ran a music studio. Prior and Kemp devoted much energy to their own band (The Maddy Prior Band; see Maddy Prior (solo albums)), recording 4 albums, and also had children together. The result was that the band's output dropped sharply, producing only three albums over the space of ten years (including a concert album), although the band continued touring.
After a quiet spell, the group's 12th studio album (and first without Tim Hart) Back in Line was released on the Flutterby label in 1986. With no "relaunch" as such, the band retained a low profile, although they covered "Blackleg Miner" (a composition to support a 1844 strike revised many times by folk artists in the 20th century) to show solidarity with striking miners. Some argued this became a political anthem for the NUM during the miners' strike of 1984–5 and was used to intimidate working miners. Steeleye Span continued to perform the song live and included a different version on their 1986 release Back in Line, which some claim puts greater stress on the line that threatens death against blacklegs .
In 1989, two long-term members departed. One was bassist Rick Kemp, who needed to recover from a serious shoulder injury, exacerbated by playing bass on stage. His eventual replacement (after two tours, each with a different bassist) was Tim Harries, who was brought in less than two weeks before the band was scheduled to start a tour. A friend of Pegrum's, Harries was a self-taught rock bassist, as well as a classically trained pianist and double bassist. With Harries on board, Steeleye released Tempted and Tried (1989), an album that formed the basis for their live set for many years to come.
Not long after recording Tempted, drummer Nigel Pegrum emigrated to Australia for personal relationship reasons. He was replaced by eccentric drummer Liam Genockey (most recently of rock band Gillan), easily identified by his long, plaited beard. He and Knight were simultaneously members of "Moiré Music", a free-jazz band with a classical flavour, led by Trevor Watts. Unlike Pegrum, who employed a traditional rock drumming style, Genockey favoured a more varied drumming style, influenced by both Irish and African drumming, in which he hit, brushed, and rubbed the various surfaces of his drums and cymbals, creating a more varied range of sounds. Consequently, when the band embarked on their 20th Anniversary Tour, they did so with a totally new rhythm section.
Both Harries and Genockey were interested in experimenting with the band's sound, and they helped re-energise the other members' interest in Steeleye. The band began reworking some of their earlier material, seeking new approaches to traditional favourites. For example, Johnson experimented with an arrangement of "Tam Lin", that involved a heavy Bulgarian influence, inspired by Eastern European versions of the Tam Lin legend. In 1992 the band released Tonight's the Night...Live, which demonstrates some of this new energy and direction. The band continued to tour the UK every year, and frequently toured overseas as well.
Maddy 'leaves the bus'
In 1995 almost all the past and present members of the band reunited for a concert to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the band (which would later be released as The Journey). The only former members not present were founding members Terry Woods, Mark Williamson, and Chris Staines.
A by-product of this gig was founding vocalist Gay Woods rejoining the band full-time, partly because Prior was experiencing vocal problems and, for a while, Steeleye toured with two female singers and released the album Time 1996, their first new studio album in seven years.
There were doubts over the future of the band when Prior announced her departure, in 1997, but Steeleye continued in a more productive vein than for many years, with Woods as lead singer, releasing Horkstow Grange (1998), and then Bedlam Born (2000). Fans of Steeleye's "rock" element felt that Horkstow Grange was too quiet and folk-oriented, while fans of the band's "folk" element complained that Bedlam Born was too rock-heavy. Woods received considerable criticism from fans, many of whom did not realise that she was one of the founding members and who compared her singing style unfavourably to Prior's. There was also disagreement among the band about what material to perform; Woods advocated performing old favourites such as "All Around My Hat" and "Alison Gross", while Johnson favoured a set that emphasised their newer material.
Liam Genockey had also left the band in 1997 and, on these albums, the drum kit was manned by Dave Mattacks, who was not an official member of the band.
Breakup and comeback
Reported difficulties among band members saw a split during the recording of Bedlam Born. Woods reportedly was uncomfortable with the financial arrangements of the band, health problems forced Johnson into retirement, and drummer Dave Mattacks' period as an unofficial member came to an end. Rick Kemp resumed playing with the band as a guest replacing Bob Johnson for the Bedlam Born tour, with Harries switching to lead guitar. Woods then left after this tour.
For a while the band consisted of just Peter Knight and Tim Harries, plus various guest musicians, as they fulfilled live commitments. This was an uncertain time for the future of the band, and when Harries announced he was not keen to continue his role, even the willingness of Kemp to return to the line-up full-time was not enough to prevent an 18 month hiatus while Peter Knight and the bands manager, John Dagnell, considered whether it was worth continuing.
In 2002 Steeleye Span reformed with a "classic" line-up (including Prior), bringing an end to the uncertainty of the previous couple of years. Knight hosted a poll on his website, asking the band's fans which Steeleye songs they would most want to see the band re-record. Armed with the results, Knight persuaded Prior and Genockey to rejoin, coaxed Johnson out of a health-induced retirement and, along with Kemp and Knight, they released Present—The Very Best of Steeleye Span (2002), a 2-disc set of new recordings of the songs.
Bob Johnson's health issues prevented him from playing live, shortly before the 2002 comeback tour, and he was replaced at the eleventh hour on guitar by Ken Nicol, formerly of the Albion Band. Nicol had been talking with Rick Kemp about forming a band, when Kemp invited him to play for the tour and this was to herald a significant return to form for the band.
Ken Nicol years
A revitalised lineup consisting of Prior, Kemp, Knight, Genockey and newcomer Ken Nicol released the album They Called Her Babylon early in 2004, to considerable acclaim. The band extensively toured the UK, Europe and Australia, and their relatively prolific output continued with the release of the Christmas album Winter later the same year, as the band ended a busy year of touring with a gala performance in London's Palladium theatre. In 2005 Steeleye Span were awarded the Good Tradition Award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, while the 2005 book, Electric Folk by Britta Sweers devotes much space to the band.
With a new sense of purpose and a stable line-up, the band carried out a UK tour in April and May 2006, followed by dates in Europe and an appearance at the 2006 Cropredy Festival, where they were the headline act on the opening night. The set started with "Bonny Black Hare" and finished with "All Around My Hat", with backing vocals from the Cropredy Crowd. The full play list is at Crop Log 2006. The tour was supported by a live album and DVD of their 2004 tour.
In November 2006 Steeleye released their studio album Bloody Men. Their Autumn/Winter tour started on 24 November 2006 in Basingstoke and ran until just before Christmas. They headlined at their namesake festival, Spanfest 2007 at Kentwell Hall, Suffolk from 27 to 29 July 2007, and returned for Spanfest 2008. However, as Kentwell Hall declined to hold the festival again, it was held at Stanford Hall in Leicestershire. A UK tour took place between 17 April and 16 May 2008.
For their 40th anniversary tour, in 2009, Pete Zorn joined the line-up on bass, as Rick Kemp was unwell. Kemp and Zorn both toured with the band for the winter tour that year, with Zorn playing guitar, and Kemp announced that he would be retiring at the end of the tour – a decision he later reversed, as usual.
Live at a Distance, a live double CD and DVD set, was released in April 2009 by Park Records, and their new studio album entitled Cogs, Wheels & Lovers was released on 26 October 2009. Several tracks from this album featured in the sets of the autumn tour.
Founding member Tim Hart died on 24 December 2009, at his home in La Gomera on the Canary Islands, at the age of 61, after being diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer.
Now We Are Six Again / Wintersmith
In June 2010 Ken Nicol announced that he was leaving Steeleye and the band reassembled for a Spring 2011 tour, with Julian Littman joining the line-up as guitarist, replacing Nicol. Multi-instrumentalist Pete Zorn also continued to play with the band, making them a six-piece for the first time in many years.
In 2011 they released Now We Are Six again, a live double album based on their set at the time, which included full performances of all the songs on their 1974 Now we are Six album.
In October 2013 the band released their 22nd studio album, Wintersmith, containing original songs based on the writings of Terry Pratchett. This was followed by a winter tour of the UK. This album marked a return to form and media attention as the album reached number 77 in the UK Albums Chart, had tracks played on BBC Radio 2 and led to various radio and TV interviews for Terry Pratchett and Maddy Prior as they promoted the album.
Following Pratchett's death, in March 2015, the band made an appearance at the memorial service for him, in April 2016, at Barbican Centre, London.
Peter Knight leaves / Dodgy Bastards album
In November 2013 Peter Knight announced that he would be leaving Steeleye Span at the end of 2013. He was replaced by Jessie May Smart. The band continued to tour regularly and recorded four new tracks for the 2014 'Deluxe' re-release of the Wintersmith album.
In the summer of 2015 they toured North America, with a reduced line up consisting of Prior, Littman, Smart, Genockey and, for the first time, Maddy's son, Alex Kemp, on bass, replacing his father, Rick. An autumn/winter tour of the UK followed with Rick Kemp back in the line-up, along with Andrew 'Spud' Sinclair, replacing Pete Zorn.
In April 2016 Pete Zorn was diagnosed with advanced lung and brain cancer. He died on 19 April.
Andrew Sinclair joined the band permanently in 2016 and the line up toured in October 2016 and announced the release of a new studio album, Dodgy Bastards, in November. The album is a mixture of original compositions, traditional songs and original tunes put to traditional lyrics.
Present day / 50th anniversary
After completing the 'Dodgy Bastards' tour, Rick Kemp retired and has been replaced by Roger Carey, on bass. For the November/December 2017 tour the band was joined by multi-instrumentalist and ex-Bellowhead member Benji Kirkpatrick. Benji is son of former Steeleye Span member, John Kirkpatrick. This seven-piece line-up, the first in the band's history, has continued to tour. 2019 was the band's 50th anniversary year and a new album was released to celebrate the anniversary: Est'd 1969. The band undertook two "50th Anniversary" tours in 2019, in Spring and November. The band played the 'Fields of Avalon' area at the Glastonbury Festival 2019, were the closing act at the Cornbury Music Festival 2019 and even made their debut in Russia at a folk festival called Chasti Sveta (Части света, Parts of the World), in Saint Petersburg. On 17 December they appeared at the Barbican Theatre, in London, with special guests and previous band members Peter Knight, Martin Carthy and John Kirkpatrick. For the November/December 2022 tour, with Jessie May Smart on maternity leave, Violeta Vicci joined the band, on violin. Benji Kirkpatrick left the band in early 2022.
Examples of collaborations
Prior sang backing vocals on the title track of Jethro Tull's 1976 album Too Old To Rock and Roll, Too Young To Die, the song "Salamander's Rag-Time" from the same session and their 1978 single "A Stitch In Time". Later, members of Jethro Tull backed Prior on her album Woman in the Wings. Ray Fisher's rare 1972 album Bonny Birdy includes one track with the High Level Ranters, one with Steeleye Span, and one with Martin Carthy.
Until the 1990s Steeleye often toured as part of a double bill, either supporting Status Quo, or featuring support from artists such as Rock Salt & Nails and The Rankin Family. When Steeleye Span supported Status Quo on tour, in 1996, the latter had just issued their version of "All Around My Hat" as a single. "The video was filmed at Christmas," Prior recalled. "We'd supported them, and I found myself down in the mosh pit. Francis saw me and told the audience, 'Oh look, there's a Maddy lookalike down there… Fuck me, it is Maddy!' I was hoyed over the barrier [to the stage], to join them for the encore. It was all very jolly." Status Quo's single is credited to "Status Quo with Maddy Prior from Steeleye Span" and reached number 47 in the charts.
Discography
Studio albums
Hark! The Village Wait (1970)
Please to See the King (1971)
Ten Man Mop, or Mr. Reservoir Butler Rides Again (1971)
Below the Salt (1972)
Parcel of Rogues (1973)
Now We Are Six (1974)
Commoners Crown (1975)
All Around My Hat (1975)
Rocket Cottage (1976)
Storm Force Ten (1977)
Sails of Silver (1980)
Back in Line (1986)
Tempted and Tried (1989)
Time (1996)
Horkstow Grange (1998)
Bedlam Born (2000)
Present – The Very Best of Steeleye Span (2002)
They Called Her Babylon (2004)
Winter (2004)
Bloody Men (2006)
Cogs, Wheels and Lovers (2009)
Wintersmith (2013)
Dodgy Bastards (2016)
Est'd 1969 (2019)
Lost recordings
In 1995 Steeleye recorded "The Golden Vanity" for the Time album, but it did not appear on it. It was released on the anthology The Best of British Folk Rock. Similarly they recorded "General Taylor" for Ten Man Mop but the song did not appear on it. It resurfaced on the compilation album Individually and Collectively instead. It was also included in another compilation The Lark in The Morning (2006), as well as re-issues of Ten Man Mop. "Bonny Moorhen" was recorded at the time of the Parcel of Rogues session. It appears, however, on the compilation album Original Masters, and is also packaged as part of A Parcel of Steeleye Span. The song "Somewhere in London", recorded for Back in Line (1986) was released instead as a B-side single, but returned to its proper place "Back in Line" when the album was reissued in 1991. "Staring Robin", a song about a man described by Tim Harries as an "Elizabethan psycho", was recorded during the Bedlam Born (2000) sessions, but it was left off the final album as it was deemed by Park Records to be too disturbing.
The track "The Holly and the Ivy" was released as the B-side of the Gaudete single and did not appear on any album. It was later released on the 'Steeleye Span: A rare collection' oddities compilation. Several Steeleye songs have never been recorded for a studio album and have only been made available in their live versions, including several tracks on 'Live at Last' and 'Tonight's the night... Live'.
Personnel
Members
Current members
Maddy Prior – vocals
Liam Genockey – drums, percussion
Andrew "Spud" Sinclair – guitars
Julian Littman – guitars
Jessie May Smart – violin
Roger Carey – bass
Violeta Vicci –
Former members
Tim Hart – guitars, dulcimer, mandolin, vocals
Ashley Hutchings – bass
Gay Woods – vocals, bodhran
Terry Woods – guitars, concertina, vocals
Martin Carthy – guitars, keyboards, vocals
Bob Johnson – guitars, vocals
Nigel Pegrum – drums, percussion, flute
John Kirkpatrick – accordion, vocals
Mark Williamson – bass
Chris Staines – bass
Dave Mattacks – drums, percussion
Tim Harries – bass, piano, guitars, vocals
Michael Gregory – drums, percussion
Terl Bryant – drums, percussion
Ken Nicol – guitars, vocals
Peter Knight – strings, keyboards, guitars, vocals
Pete Zorn – guitars, woodwind
Rick Kemp – bass, drums, vocals
Benji Kirkpatrick – bouzouki, banjo, vocals
Lineups
Timeline
Notes and references
Sources
External links
Official website
Steeleye Span's record label
1969 establishments in England
Articles which contain graphical timelines
Ashley Hutchings
British folk rock groups
Chrysalis Records artists
English folk rock groups
Musical groups established in 1969
RCA Records artists
United Artists Records artists
Female-fronted musical groups | true | [
"\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" is a song released by Paul van Dyk in collaboration with English indie dance band Saint Etienne, with Sarah Cracknell of the group on vocals. A music video (filmed 28 May 2000) was made along with the song that can be found on the Global DVD.\n\nPeaking at number seven on the UK Singles Chart, it remains the highest-charting single on the chart for both artists to date.\n\nTrack listing\n\nCD: Deviant / DVNT36CDS (UK)\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (Radio Mix) - 3:49\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (PvD Mix) - 8:48\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (Take a Break) - 6:25\n\nCD: Deviant / DVNT36CDR (UK)\n \"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (Vandit Mix) - 7:50\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (Club Mix) - 4:52\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (Original Mix) - 6:51\n\nCD: Vandit / 156 871-2 (Germany)\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (Radio Mix) - 3:49\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (Vandit Mix) - 7:49\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (Club Mix) - 4:52\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (PvD Mix) - 8:20\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (Take a Break) - 6:09\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (Original Mix) - 8:07\n\nalso released in the US (Mute / 9129-2)\n\nCD: Avex / AVTCDS-253 (Hong Kong)\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (Radio Mix) - 3:49\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (Vandit Mix) - 8:03\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (PvD Mix) - 9:26\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (Take a Break) - 6:39\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (Club Mix) - 5:54\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (Original Mix) - 8:44\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (Vandit Mix) - 7:49\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (Club Mix) - 4:52\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (PvD Mix) - 8:20\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (Take a Break) - 6:09\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (Original Mix) - 8:07\n\n12\": Deviant / DVNT36X (UK)\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (Vandit Mix) [A] - 8:03\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (Club Mix) [B1] - 5:53\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (Club Dub) [B2] - 5:53\n\n12\": Deviant / DVNT36XR (UK)\n\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (Original Mix) [A] - 8:43\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (Take a Break) [B1] - 7:31\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (Take a Break Dub) [B2] - 7:15\n\n12\": Deviant / DVNT36XP (UK)\n\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (Original Mix) [A] - 8:43\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (PvD Mix) [B] - 9:25\n\n12\": Deviant / DVNT36X(P) (UK)\n\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (PvD Mix) [A] - 9:25\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (Original Mix) [AA] - 8:07\n\n12\": Deviant / DVNT36XPV2 (UK)\n\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (Original Mix) [A] - 8:43\n\n2x12\": Vandit / Vandit 003 (Germany)\n\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (Vandit Mix) [A] - 8:03\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (PvD Mix) [B] - 9:25\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (Take a Break) [C1] - 7:31\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (Club Mix) [C2] - 5:53\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (Original Mix) [D1] - 8:43\n\"Tell Me Why (The Riddle)\" (Take a Break Dub) [D2] - 7:15\n\nalso released in the US (Mute / 9129-0)\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\n2000 singles\nPaul van Dyk songs\nSaint Etienne (band) songs\nSongs written by Bob Stanley (musician)\nSongs written by Pete Wiggs\nSongs written by Paul van Dyk\nSongs written by Sarah Cracknell\n2000 songs\nMute Records singles",
"The Stolen Years () is a 2013 romance and dramatic film directed by Wong Chun-chun and starring Bai Baihe, Joseph Chang and Christine Fan.\n\nPlot\nHe-Mann (Bai Baihe) lost her memories five years ago when she had an accident. When she finally woke up, she could not understand why she and her husband had divorced, why her best friend is now her enemy, or why colleagues all avoided and tried to stay away from her. In order to learn about her past, she starts on her search of her lost memories with the help of her ex-husband. But as they discover more, they then realise.\n\nCast\n Bai Baihe\n Joseph Chang\n Christine Fan\n Amber An\n Ken Lin\n Tse Kwan-ho\n Queenie Tai\n Sky Wu\n\nCritical reception\nAndrew Chan of the Film Critics Circle of Australia writes, \"While it does not feel as realistic as say her best works (“Break Up Club”), this is an easy film to take as it engages without being pretentious and emotes without extravagance.\"\n\nReferences\n\n2013 films\nChinese films\nChinese romantic drama films\nFilms directed by Wong Chun-chun"
] |
[
"Steeleye Span",
"Breakup and comeback",
"When did they breakup?",
"Reported difficulties among band members saw a split during the recording of Bedlam Born.",
"Why did they break up",
"Woods reportedly was uncomfortable with the financial arrangements of the band, health problems forced Johnson into retirement,"
] | C_d8948e2e2537445bab89ef08e6ad5ea4_0 | What year did they comebkac? | 3 | What year did Steeleye Span come back? | Steeleye Span | Reported difficulties among band members saw a split during the recording of Bedlam Born. Woods reportedly was uncomfortable with the financial arrangements of the band, health problems forced Johnson into retirement, and drummer Dave Mattacks' period as an unofficial member came to an end during this time. For a while the band consisted of just Peter Knight and Tim Harries, plus various guest musicians, as they fulfilled live commitments. Rick Kemp resumed playing with the band at some of these gigs, with Harries switching to lead guitar. This was an uncertain time for the future of the band, and when Harries announced he was not keen to continue his role, even the willingness of Kemp to return to the line-up full-time was not enough to prevent what was effectively a break-up. In 2002, Steeleye Span reformed with a "classic" line-up (including Prior), bringing an end to the uncertainty of the previous couple of years. Knight hosted a poll on his website, asking the band's fans which Steeleye songs they would most want to see the band re-record. Armed with the results, Knight persuaded Prior and Genockey to rejoin, coaxed Johnson out of a health-induced retirement, and along with Kemp and Knight, they released Present--The Very Best of Steeleye Span (2002), a 2-disc set of new recordings of the songs. But Bob Johnson's health prevented him from playing live shortly before the 2002 comeback tour, and he was replaced at the eleventh hour on guitar by Ken Nicol, formerly of the Albion Band. Nicol had been talking with Rick Kemp about forming a band when Kemp invited him to play for the tour, and this was to herald a significant return to form for the band. CANNOTANSWER | In 2002, Steeleye Span reformed with a "classic" line-up (including Prior), bringing an end to the uncertainty of the previous couple of years. | Steeleye Span are an English folk rock band formed in 1969. Along with Fairport Convention, they are among the best known acts of the British folk revival, and were among the most commercially successful, thanks to their hit singles "Gaudete" and "All Around My Hat". They had four Top 40 albums and achieved significant sales of "All Around My Hat".
Throughout their history, Steeleye Span have seen many personnel changes. Their typical album is a collection of mostly traditional songs with one or two instrumental tracks of jigs and/or reels added; the traditional songs often include some of the Child Ballads. In their later albums there has been an increased tendency to include music written by the band members, but they have never moved completely away from traditional music, which draws upon pan-British traditions.
History
Early years
Steeleye Span began in late 1969, when London-born bass player Ashley Hutchings departed Fairport Convention, the band he had co-founded in 1967. Fairport had been involved in a road accident in 1969 in which the drummer, Martin Lamble, and Richard Thompson's girlfriend, Jeannie Franklyn, were killed and other band members injured. The survivors convalesced in a rented house near Winchester in Hampshire and worked on the album Liege & Lief. Despite the success of the album, Ashley Hutchings and the band's vocalist Sandy Denny left Fairport Convention.
In part, Hutchings departed because he wanted to pursue a different, more traditional, direction than the other members of Fairport did at that time. However, Fairport's co-founder, guitarist Simon Nicol, stated "Whatever the upfront reasons about musical differences and wanting to concentrate on traditional material, I think the accident was the underlying reason why Ashley felt he couldn't continue with us."
Hutchings' new band was formed after he met established duo Tim Hart and Maddy Prior on the London folk club scene, and the initial line-up was completed by husband and wife team Terry Woods (formerly of Sweeney's Men, later of The Pogues) and Gay Woods. The name Steeleye Span comes from a character in the traditional song "Horkstow Grange" (which they did not actually record until they released an album by that name in 1998). The song gives an account of a fight between John "Steeleye" Span and John Bowlin, neither of whom is proven to have been a real person. Martin Carthy gave Hart the idea to name the band after the song character. When the band discussed names, they decided to choose among the three suggestions "Middlemarch Wait", "Iyubidin's Wait", and "Steeleye Span". Although there were only five members in the band, six ballots appeared and "Steeleye Span" won. Only in 1978 did Hart confess that he had voted twice. The liner notes for their first album include thanks to Carthy for the name suggestion.
With two female singers, the original line-up was unusual for the time, and indeed, never performed live, as the Woodses departed the band shortly after the release of the group's debut album, Hark! The Village Wait (1970). While recording the album, the five members were all living in the same house, an arrangement that produced considerable tensions particularly between Hart and Prior on the one hand and the Woodses on the other. Terry Woods maintains that the members had agreed that if more than one person departed, the remaining members would select a new name, and he was upset that this did not happen when he and Gay Woods left the band. Gay and Terry were replaced by veteran folk musician Martin Carthy and fiddler Peter Knight in a longer-term line-up that toured small concert venues, recorded a number of BBC Radio Sessions, and recorded two albums – Please to See the King (1971) and Ten Man Mop, or Mr. Reservoir Butler Rides Again (1971). While the first album was traditionally performed – guitars, bass and with two guest drummers – Please to See the King was revolutionary in its hard electric sound and lack of drums.
In 1971, the then Steeleye Span line-up minus Maddy Prior contributed to two songs on Scottish folk musician Ray Fisher's album The Bonny Birdy; Martin Carthy and Ashley Hutchings were also involved in the selection and arrangement of some songs released on this album, whilst Ashley Hutchings wrote the sleeve notes. Furthermore, Martin Carthy and Peter Knight performed on four songs released on Roy Bailey's eponymous debut album in 1971.
A new direction
Shortly after the release of their third album, the band brought in manager Jo Lustig, who brought a more commercial sound to their recordings. At that time, traditionalists Carthy and Hutchings left the band to pursue purely folk projects. Their replacements were electric guitarist Bob Johnson and bass player Rick Kemp, who brought strong rock and blues influences to the sound. Rick Kemp subsequently married Maddy Prior and they had two children before divorcing. Their daughter Rose Kemp and their son Alex (who performs as Kemp) both followed their parents into the music industry.
Lustig signed them to the Chrysalis record label, for a deal that was to last for ten albums.
With the release of their fourth album, Below the Salt, later in 1972, the revised line-up had settled on a distinctive electrified rock sound, although they continued to play mostly arrangements of very traditional material, including songs dating back a hundred years or more. Even on the more commercial Parcel of Rogues (1973), the band had no permanent drummer but, in 1973, rock drummer Nigel Pegrum, who had previously recorded with Gnidrolog, The Small Faces and Uriah Heep, joined them, to harden up their sound (as well as occasionally playing flute and oboe).
Also that year the single "Gaudete" from Below the Salt became a Christmas hit single, reaching number 14 in the UK Singles Chart, although, being an a cappella piece, taken from the late renaissance song collection Piae Cantiones from Finland and sung entirely in Latin, this can neither be considered representative of the band's music, nor of the album from which it was taken. This proved to be their commercial breakthrough and saw them performing on Top of the Pops for the first time. They often include it as a concert encore. Their popularity was also helped by the fact that they often performed as an opening act for fellow Chrysalis artists Jethro Tull.
Their sixth album (and sixth member Pegrum's first with the band) was entitled Now We Are Six. Produced by Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson, the album includes the epic track "Thomas the Rhymer", which has been a part of the live set ever since. Although successful, the album is controversial among some fans for the inclusion of nursery rhymes sung by "The St. Eeleye School Choir" (band members singing in the style of children), and the cover of "To Know Him Is to Love Him", featuring a guest appearance from David Bowie on saxophone.
The attempts at humour continued on Commoners Crown (1975), which included Peter Sellers playing electric ukulele on the final track, "New York Girls". Their seventh album also included the epic ballad "Long Lankin" and novelty instrumental "Bach Goes To Limerick".
Mike Batt era
With their star now conspicuously ascendant, the band brought in producer Mike Batt to work on their eighth album, All Around My Hat, and their biggest success would come with the release of the title track as a single – it reached number 5 in the UK Singles Chart in late 1975. The single was also released in other European countries and gave them a breakthrough in the Netherlands and Germany. Other well-known tracks on the album included "Black Jack Davy" (sampled by rappers Goldie Lookin Chain on their track "The Maggot") and the rocky "Hard Times of Old England". While All Around My Hat was the height of the band's commercial success, the good times were not to last long. Despite touring almost every year since 1975, they have not had another hit single, nor any success in the album chart, since the late 1970s.
The follow-up album, Rocket Cottage (1976), also produced by Batt, proved to be a commercial flop, despite having much in common musically with its predecessor. The opening track, "London", was penned by Rick Kemp as a follow-up to "All Around My Hat", in response to a request from the record label that Kemp describes as "we'll have another one of those, please", and released as a single. The song failed to make the UK Chart, in complete contrast to "All Around My Hat", despite having much in common – a 12/8 time signature, upbeat tempo, solo verses and full harmony chorus. Rocket Cottage also included the experimental track "Fighting for Strangers" (with sparse vocals singing concurrently in a variety of keys) and, on the final track, excerpts of studio banter between the band members and a seemingly impromptu rendition of "Camptown Races", in which Prior gets the lyrics wrong.
At the time of their seventh album, Commoners Crown, the advent of punk saw the mainstream market turning away from folk rock almost overnight, heralding a downturn in commercial fortunes for the band. However, as a thank you to their committed fans (and also possibly to garner some publicity for their underperforming album), Steeleye Span showered attendees of a November 1976 concert in London with £8,500 in pound notes (then equivalent to US$13,600). The unannounced idea was Maddy Prior's and, remarkably, no-one was injured in the rush to grab the falling notes. Indeed, contemporary press reports indicated that it took some time for the crowd to even realise what was happening. Thanks to their connection with Mike Batt, band members appeared in Womble costumes on Top of the Pops, performing the Wombles hit "Superwomble".
Late 1970s and early 1980s
While they would never regain the commercial success of All Around My Hat, Steeleye remained popular among British folk rock fans and generally respected within the music industry. It has been widely reported that Peter Knight and Bob Johnson left the band to work on another project together, The King of Elfland's Daughter. The actual situation was more complex. Chrysalis Records agreed to allow Knight and Johnson to work on "King" only as a way to persuade the duo to continue working with Steeleye. Since the record company had no interest in "King" for its own sake, it made no effort to market the album. Chrysalis' ploy failed, however, and Knight and Johnson quit.
Their departure left a significant hole in the band. For the 1977 album, Storm Force Ten, early member Martin Carthy rejoined on guitar. When he originally joined the band for their second album, Carthy had tried to persuade the others to bring John Kirkpatrick on board but the band had chosen Knight instead. This time, Carthy's suggestion was accepted and Kirkpatrick's accordion replaced Knight's fiddle, which gave the recording a very different texture from the Steeleye sound of previous years. Kirkpatrick's one-man morris dances quickly became one of the highlights of the band's show. This line-up also recorded their first album outside of the studio, Live at Last, before a "split" at the end of the decade that proved to be short-lived. Carthy and Kirkpatrick had only intended to play with the band for a few months and had no interest in a longer association.
During 1977 and some time thereafter, Nigel Pegrum and Rick Kemp created a "porno punk" band called The Pork Dukes, using pseudonyms. The Pork Dukes released several albums and singles over the years.
The band were contractually obliged to record a final album for the Chrysalis label and, with Carthy and Kirkpatrick not wanting to rejoin the re-formed band, the door was open for Knight and Johnson to return, in 1980. The album Sails of Silver saw the band moving away from traditional material to a greater focus on self-penned songs, many with historical or pseudo-folk themes. Sails was not a commercial success, in part because Chrysalis chose not to promote the album aggressively but also because many fans felt uncomfortable with the band's new direction in its choice of material. The failure of the album left Hart unhappy enough that he decided to leave the band and give up commercial music entirely, in favour of a reclusive life overseas.
After Sails of Silver there were to be no new albums for several years, and Steeleye became a part-time touring band. The other members spent much of their time and energy working on their various other projects and the band went into a fitful hibernation. "Sails of Silver" was used as a theme song for the science fiction literary show "Hour of The Wolf", on NYC radio station WBAI 99.5FM since the 1980s. This introduced many younger US listeners to the band.
In 1981 Isla St Clair presented a series of four television programmes, called "The Song and The Story", about the history of some folk songs, which won the Prix Jeunesse. St Clair sang the songs, and The Maddy Prior Band did the backing instrumentals.
Wilderness years
For much of the 1980s, the members of the band tended to focus on outside projects of various sorts. Johnson opened a restaurant and then studied for a degree in psychology at the University of Hertfordshire. Pegrum ran a music studio. Prior and Kemp devoted much energy to their own band (The Maddy Prior Band; see Maddy Prior (solo albums)), recording 4 albums, and also had children together. The result was that the band's output dropped sharply, producing only three albums over the space of ten years (including a concert album), although the band continued touring.
After a quiet spell, the group's 12th studio album (and first without Tim Hart) Back in Line was released on the Flutterby label in 1986. With no "relaunch" as such, the band retained a low profile, although they covered "Blackleg Miner" (a composition to support a 1844 strike revised many times by folk artists in the 20th century) to show solidarity with striking miners. Some argued this became a political anthem for the NUM during the miners' strike of 1984–5 and was used to intimidate working miners. Steeleye Span continued to perform the song live and included a different version on their 1986 release Back in Line, which some claim puts greater stress on the line that threatens death against blacklegs .
In 1989, two long-term members departed. One was bassist Rick Kemp, who needed to recover from a serious shoulder injury, exacerbated by playing bass on stage. His eventual replacement (after two tours, each with a different bassist) was Tim Harries, who was brought in less than two weeks before the band was scheduled to start a tour. A friend of Pegrum's, Harries was a self-taught rock bassist, as well as a classically trained pianist and double bassist. With Harries on board, Steeleye released Tempted and Tried (1989), an album that formed the basis for their live set for many years to come.
Not long after recording Tempted, drummer Nigel Pegrum emigrated to Australia for personal relationship reasons. He was replaced by eccentric drummer Liam Genockey (most recently of rock band Gillan), easily identified by his long, plaited beard. He and Knight were simultaneously members of "Moiré Music", a free-jazz band with a classical flavour, led by Trevor Watts. Unlike Pegrum, who employed a traditional rock drumming style, Genockey favoured a more varied drumming style, influenced by both Irish and African drumming, in which he hit, brushed, and rubbed the various surfaces of his drums and cymbals, creating a more varied range of sounds. Consequently, when the band embarked on their 20th Anniversary Tour, they did so with a totally new rhythm section.
Both Harries and Genockey were interested in experimenting with the band's sound, and they helped re-energise the other members' interest in Steeleye. The band began reworking some of their earlier material, seeking new approaches to traditional favourites. For example, Johnson experimented with an arrangement of "Tam Lin", that involved a heavy Bulgarian influence, inspired by Eastern European versions of the Tam Lin legend. In 1992 the band released Tonight's the Night...Live, which demonstrates some of this new energy and direction. The band continued to tour the UK every year, and frequently toured overseas as well.
Maddy 'leaves the bus'
In 1995 almost all the past and present members of the band reunited for a concert to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the band (which would later be released as The Journey). The only former members not present were founding members Terry Woods, Mark Williamson, and Chris Staines.
A by-product of this gig was founding vocalist Gay Woods rejoining the band full-time, partly because Prior was experiencing vocal problems and, for a while, Steeleye toured with two female singers and released the album Time 1996, their first new studio album in seven years.
There were doubts over the future of the band when Prior announced her departure, in 1997, but Steeleye continued in a more productive vein than for many years, with Woods as lead singer, releasing Horkstow Grange (1998), and then Bedlam Born (2000). Fans of Steeleye's "rock" element felt that Horkstow Grange was too quiet and folk-oriented, while fans of the band's "folk" element complained that Bedlam Born was too rock-heavy. Woods received considerable criticism from fans, many of whom did not realise that she was one of the founding members and who compared her singing style unfavourably to Prior's. There was also disagreement among the band about what material to perform; Woods advocated performing old favourites such as "All Around My Hat" and "Alison Gross", while Johnson favoured a set that emphasised their newer material.
Liam Genockey had also left the band in 1997 and, on these albums, the drum kit was manned by Dave Mattacks, who was not an official member of the band.
Breakup and comeback
Reported difficulties among band members saw a split during the recording of Bedlam Born. Woods reportedly was uncomfortable with the financial arrangements of the band, health problems forced Johnson into retirement, and drummer Dave Mattacks' period as an unofficial member came to an end. Rick Kemp resumed playing with the band as a guest replacing Bob Johnson for the Bedlam Born tour, with Harries switching to lead guitar. Woods then left after this tour.
For a while the band consisted of just Peter Knight and Tim Harries, plus various guest musicians, as they fulfilled live commitments. This was an uncertain time for the future of the band, and when Harries announced he was not keen to continue his role, even the willingness of Kemp to return to the line-up full-time was not enough to prevent an 18 month hiatus while Peter Knight and the bands manager, John Dagnell, considered whether it was worth continuing.
In 2002 Steeleye Span reformed with a "classic" line-up (including Prior), bringing an end to the uncertainty of the previous couple of years. Knight hosted a poll on his website, asking the band's fans which Steeleye songs they would most want to see the band re-record. Armed with the results, Knight persuaded Prior and Genockey to rejoin, coaxed Johnson out of a health-induced retirement and, along with Kemp and Knight, they released Present—The Very Best of Steeleye Span (2002), a 2-disc set of new recordings of the songs.
Bob Johnson's health issues prevented him from playing live, shortly before the 2002 comeback tour, and he was replaced at the eleventh hour on guitar by Ken Nicol, formerly of the Albion Band. Nicol had been talking with Rick Kemp about forming a band, when Kemp invited him to play for the tour and this was to herald a significant return to form for the band.
Ken Nicol years
A revitalised lineup consisting of Prior, Kemp, Knight, Genockey and newcomer Ken Nicol released the album They Called Her Babylon early in 2004, to considerable acclaim. The band extensively toured the UK, Europe and Australia, and their relatively prolific output continued with the release of the Christmas album Winter later the same year, as the band ended a busy year of touring with a gala performance in London's Palladium theatre. In 2005 Steeleye Span were awarded the Good Tradition Award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, while the 2005 book, Electric Folk by Britta Sweers devotes much space to the band.
With a new sense of purpose and a stable line-up, the band carried out a UK tour in April and May 2006, followed by dates in Europe and an appearance at the 2006 Cropredy Festival, where they were the headline act on the opening night. The set started with "Bonny Black Hare" and finished with "All Around My Hat", with backing vocals from the Cropredy Crowd. The full play list is at Crop Log 2006. The tour was supported by a live album and DVD of their 2004 tour.
In November 2006 Steeleye released their studio album Bloody Men. Their Autumn/Winter tour started on 24 November 2006 in Basingstoke and ran until just before Christmas. They headlined at their namesake festival, Spanfest 2007 at Kentwell Hall, Suffolk from 27 to 29 July 2007, and returned for Spanfest 2008. However, as Kentwell Hall declined to hold the festival again, it was held at Stanford Hall in Leicestershire. A UK tour took place between 17 April and 16 May 2008.
For their 40th anniversary tour, in 2009, Pete Zorn joined the line-up on bass, as Rick Kemp was unwell. Kemp and Zorn both toured with the band for the winter tour that year, with Zorn playing guitar, and Kemp announced that he would be retiring at the end of the tour – a decision he later reversed, as usual.
Live at a Distance, a live double CD and DVD set, was released in April 2009 by Park Records, and their new studio album entitled Cogs, Wheels & Lovers was released on 26 October 2009. Several tracks from this album featured in the sets of the autumn tour.
Founding member Tim Hart died on 24 December 2009, at his home in La Gomera on the Canary Islands, at the age of 61, after being diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer.
Now We Are Six Again / Wintersmith
In June 2010 Ken Nicol announced that he was leaving Steeleye and the band reassembled for a Spring 2011 tour, with Julian Littman joining the line-up as guitarist, replacing Nicol. Multi-instrumentalist Pete Zorn also continued to play with the band, making them a six-piece for the first time in many years.
In 2011 they released Now We Are Six again, a live double album based on their set at the time, which included full performances of all the songs on their 1974 Now we are Six album.
In October 2013 the band released their 22nd studio album, Wintersmith, containing original songs based on the writings of Terry Pratchett. This was followed by a winter tour of the UK. This album marked a return to form and media attention as the album reached number 77 in the UK Albums Chart, had tracks played on BBC Radio 2 and led to various radio and TV interviews for Terry Pratchett and Maddy Prior as they promoted the album.
Following Pratchett's death, in March 2015, the band made an appearance at the memorial service for him, in April 2016, at Barbican Centre, London.
Peter Knight leaves / Dodgy Bastards album
In November 2013 Peter Knight announced that he would be leaving Steeleye Span at the end of 2013. He was replaced by Jessie May Smart. The band continued to tour regularly and recorded four new tracks for the 2014 'Deluxe' re-release of the Wintersmith album.
In the summer of 2015 they toured North America, with a reduced line up consisting of Prior, Littman, Smart, Genockey and, for the first time, Maddy's son, Alex Kemp, on bass, replacing his father, Rick. An autumn/winter tour of the UK followed with Rick Kemp back in the line-up, along with Andrew 'Spud' Sinclair, replacing Pete Zorn.
In April 2016 Pete Zorn was diagnosed with advanced lung and brain cancer. He died on 19 April.
Andrew Sinclair joined the band permanently in 2016 and the line up toured in October 2016 and announced the release of a new studio album, Dodgy Bastards, in November. The album is a mixture of original compositions, traditional songs and original tunes put to traditional lyrics.
Present day / 50th anniversary
After completing the 'Dodgy Bastards' tour, Rick Kemp retired and has been replaced by Roger Carey, on bass. For the November/December 2017 tour the band was joined by multi-instrumentalist and ex-Bellowhead member Benji Kirkpatrick. Benji is son of former Steeleye Span member, John Kirkpatrick. This seven-piece line-up, the first in the band's history, has continued to tour. 2019 was the band's 50th anniversary year and a new album was released to celebrate the anniversary: Est'd 1969. The band undertook two "50th Anniversary" tours in 2019, in Spring and November. The band played the 'Fields of Avalon' area at the Glastonbury Festival 2019, were the closing act at the Cornbury Music Festival 2019 and even made their debut in Russia at a folk festival called Chasti Sveta (Части света, Parts of the World), in Saint Petersburg. On 17 December they appeared at the Barbican Theatre, in London, with special guests and previous band members Peter Knight, Martin Carthy and John Kirkpatrick. For the November/December 2022 tour, with Jessie May Smart on maternity leave, Violeta Vicci joined the band, on violin. Benji Kirkpatrick left the band in early 2022.
Examples of collaborations
Prior sang backing vocals on the title track of Jethro Tull's 1976 album Too Old To Rock and Roll, Too Young To Die, the song "Salamander's Rag-Time" from the same session and their 1978 single "A Stitch In Time". Later, members of Jethro Tull backed Prior on her album Woman in the Wings. Ray Fisher's rare 1972 album Bonny Birdy includes one track with the High Level Ranters, one with Steeleye Span, and one with Martin Carthy.
Until the 1990s Steeleye often toured as part of a double bill, either supporting Status Quo, or featuring support from artists such as Rock Salt & Nails and The Rankin Family. When Steeleye Span supported Status Quo on tour, in 1996, the latter had just issued their version of "All Around My Hat" as a single. "The video was filmed at Christmas," Prior recalled. "We'd supported them, and I found myself down in the mosh pit. Francis saw me and told the audience, 'Oh look, there's a Maddy lookalike down there… Fuck me, it is Maddy!' I was hoyed over the barrier [to the stage], to join them for the encore. It was all very jolly." Status Quo's single is credited to "Status Quo with Maddy Prior from Steeleye Span" and reached number 47 in the charts.
Discography
Studio albums
Hark! The Village Wait (1970)
Please to See the King (1971)
Ten Man Mop, or Mr. Reservoir Butler Rides Again (1971)
Below the Salt (1972)
Parcel of Rogues (1973)
Now We Are Six (1974)
Commoners Crown (1975)
All Around My Hat (1975)
Rocket Cottage (1976)
Storm Force Ten (1977)
Sails of Silver (1980)
Back in Line (1986)
Tempted and Tried (1989)
Time (1996)
Horkstow Grange (1998)
Bedlam Born (2000)
Present – The Very Best of Steeleye Span (2002)
They Called Her Babylon (2004)
Winter (2004)
Bloody Men (2006)
Cogs, Wheels and Lovers (2009)
Wintersmith (2013)
Dodgy Bastards (2016)
Est'd 1969 (2019)
Lost recordings
In 1995 Steeleye recorded "The Golden Vanity" for the Time album, but it did not appear on it. It was released on the anthology The Best of British Folk Rock. Similarly they recorded "General Taylor" for Ten Man Mop but the song did not appear on it. It resurfaced on the compilation album Individually and Collectively instead. It was also included in another compilation The Lark in The Morning (2006), as well as re-issues of Ten Man Mop. "Bonny Moorhen" was recorded at the time of the Parcel of Rogues session. It appears, however, on the compilation album Original Masters, and is also packaged as part of A Parcel of Steeleye Span. The song "Somewhere in London", recorded for Back in Line (1986) was released instead as a B-side single, but returned to its proper place "Back in Line" when the album was reissued in 1991. "Staring Robin", a song about a man described by Tim Harries as an "Elizabethan psycho", was recorded during the Bedlam Born (2000) sessions, but it was left off the final album as it was deemed by Park Records to be too disturbing.
The track "The Holly and the Ivy" was released as the B-side of the Gaudete single and did not appear on any album. It was later released on the 'Steeleye Span: A rare collection' oddities compilation. Several Steeleye songs have never been recorded for a studio album and have only been made available in their live versions, including several tracks on 'Live at Last' and 'Tonight's the night... Live'.
Personnel
Members
Current members
Maddy Prior – vocals
Liam Genockey – drums, percussion
Andrew "Spud" Sinclair – guitars
Julian Littman – guitars
Jessie May Smart – violin
Roger Carey – bass
Violeta Vicci –
Former members
Tim Hart – guitars, dulcimer, mandolin, vocals
Ashley Hutchings – bass
Gay Woods – vocals, bodhran
Terry Woods – guitars, concertina, vocals
Martin Carthy – guitars, keyboards, vocals
Bob Johnson – guitars, vocals
Nigel Pegrum – drums, percussion, flute
John Kirkpatrick – accordion, vocals
Mark Williamson – bass
Chris Staines – bass
Dave Mattacks – drums, percussion
Tim Harries – bass, piano, guitars, vocals
Michael Gregory – drums, percussion
Terl Bryant – drums, percussion
Ken Nicol – guitars, vocals
Peter Knight – strings, keyboards, guitars, vocals
Pete Zorn – guitars, woodwind
Rick Kemp – bass, drums, vocals
Benji Kirkpatrick – bouzouki, banjo, vocals
Lineups
Timeline
Notes and references
Sources
External links
Official website
Steeleye Span's record label
1969 establishments in England
Articles which contain graphical timelines
Ashley Hutchings
British folk rock groups
Chrysalis Records artists
English folk rock groups
Musical groups established in 1969
RCA Records artists
United Artists Records artists
Female-fronted musical groups | false | [
"The Katy series is a set of novels by Sarah Chauncey Woolsey, writing under the pen-name of Susan Coolidge. The first in the series, What Katy Did, was published in 1872 and followed the next year by What Katy Did at School. What Katy Did Next was released in 1886. Two further novels, Clover (1888) and In the High Valley (1890), focused upon other members of the eponymous character's family. The series was popular with readers in the late 19th century.\n\nThe series was later adapted into a TV series entitled Katy in 1962, and two films, one also called Katy in 1972 and What Katy Did in 1999.\n\nNovels\n What Katy Did\n What Katy Did at School\n What Katy Did Next\n Clover\n In the High Valley\n\nAdaptions\n Katy (TV series, 1962)\n Katy (film, 1972)\n What Katy Did (film, 1999)\n\nLiterary Criticism\nCritics are divided about how much the series played into period gender norms and often compare the series to Little Women. Foster and Simmons argue for its subversion of gender in their book What Katy Read: Feminist Re-Readings of ‘Classic’ Stories for Girls by suggesting the series “deconstructs family hierarchies”.\n\nInfluence\nThe series is unusual for its time by having an entry which focuses not on the family life at home but at school in What Katy Did at School.\n\nIn a 1995 survey, What Katy Did was voted as one of the top 10 books for 12-year-old girls.\n\nSee also\n\nSarah Chauncey Woolsey\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nSeries details at Fantastic Fiction\n\nKaty series\n1870s novels\nNovel series\nSeries of children's books\nNovels by Susan Coolidge\n1880s novels\n1890s novels\n1962 American television series debuts\n1972 films\n1999 films",
"The situation, task, action, result (STAR) format is a technique used by interviewers to gather all the relevant information about a specific capability that the job requires. \n\n Situation: The interviewer wants you to present a recent challenging situation in which you found yourself.\n Task: What were you required to achieve? The interviewer will be looking to see what you were trying to achieve from the situation. Some performance development methods use “Target” rather than “Task”. Job interview candidates who describe a “Target” they set themselves instead of an externally imposed “Task” emphasize their own intrinsic motivation to perform and to develop their performance.\n Action: What did you do? The interviewer will be looking for information on what you did, why you did it and what the alternatives were.\n Results: What was the outcome of your actions? What did you achieve through your actions? Did you meet your objectives? What did you learn from this experience? Have you used this learning since?\n\nThe STAR technique is similar to the SOARA technique.\n\nThe STAR technique is also often complemented with an additional R on the end STARR or STAR(R) with the last R resembling reflection. This R aims to gather insight and interviewee's ability to learn and iterate. Whereas the STAR reveals how and what kind of result on an objective was achieved, the STARR with the additional R helps the interviewer to understand what the interviewee learned from the experience and how they would assimilate experiences. The interviewee can define what they would do (differently, the same, or better) next time being posed with a situation.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nThe ‘STAR’ technique to answer behavioral interview questions\nThe STAR method explained\n\nJob interview"
] |
[
"Steeleye Span",
"Breakup and comeback",
"When did they breakup?",
"Reported difficulties among band members saw a split during the recording of Bedlam Born.",
"Why did they break up",
"Woods reportedly was uncomfortable with the financial arrangements of the band, health problems forced Johnson into retirement,",
"What year did they comebkac?",
"In 2002, Steeleye Span reformed with a \"classic\" line-up (including Prior), bringing an end to the uncertainty of the previous couple of years."
] | C_d8948e2e2537445bab89ef08e6ad5ea4_0 | Who were the members | 4 | Who were the members of Steeleye Span? | Steeleye Span | Reported difficulties among band members saw a split during the recording of Bedlam Born. Woods reportedly was uncomfortable with the financial arrangements of the band, health problems forced Johnson into retirement, and drummer Dave Mattacks' period as an unofficial member came to an end during this time. For a while the band consisted of just Peter Knight and Tim Harries, plus various guest musicians, as they fulfilled live commitments. Rick Kemp resumed playing with the band at some of these gigs, with Harries switching to lead guitar. This was an uncertain time for the future of the band, and when Harries announced he was not keen to continue his role, even the willingness of Kemp to return to the line-up full-time was not enough to prevent what was effectively a break-up. In 2002, Steeleye Span reformed with a "classic" line-up (including Prior), bringing an end to the uncertainty of the previous couple of years. Knight hosted a poll on his website, asking the band's fans which Steeleye songs they would most want to see the band re-record. Armed with the results, Knight persuaded Prior and Genockey to rejoin, coaxed Johnson out of a health-induced retirement, and along with Kemp and Knight, they released Present--The Very Best of Steeleye Span (2002), a 2-disc set of new recordings of the songs. But Bob Johnson's health prevented him from playing live shortly before the 2002 comeback tour, and he was replaced at the eleventh hour on guitar by Ken Nicol, formerly of the Albion Band. Nicol had been talking with Rick Kemp about forming a band when Kemp invited him to play for the tour, and this was to herald a significant return to form for the band. CANNOTANSWER | Knight persuaded Prior and Genockey to rejoin, coaxed Johnson out of a health-induced retirement, and along with Kemp and Knight, | Steeleye Span are an English folk rock band formed in 1969. Along with Fairport Convention, they are among the best known acts of the British folk revival, and were among the most commercially successful, thanks to their hit singles "Gaudete" and "All Around My Hat". They had four Top 40 albums and achieved significant sales of "All Around My Hat".
Throughout their history, Steeleye Span have seen many personnel changes. Their typical album is a collection of mostly traditional songs with one or two instrumental tracks of jigs and/or reels added; the traditional songs often include some of the Child Ballads. In their later albums there has been an increased tendency to include music written by the band members, but they have never moved completely away from traditional music, which draws upon pan-British traditions.
History
Early years
Steeleye Span began in late 1969, when London-born bass player Ashley Hutchings departed Fairport Convention, the band he had co-founded in 1967. Fairport had been involved in a road accident in 1969 in which the drummer, Martin Lamble, and Richard Thompson's girlfriend, Jeannie Franklyn, were killed and other band members injured. The survivors convalesced in a rented house near Winchester in Hampshire and worked on the album Liege & Lief. Despite the success of the album, Ashley Hutchings and the band's vocalist Sandy Denny left Fairport Convention.
In part, Hutchings departed because he wanted to pursue a different, more traditional, direction than the other members of Fairport did at that time. However, Fairport's co-founder, guitarist Simon Nicol, stated "Whatever the upfront reasons about musical differences and wanting to concentrate on traditional material, I think the accident was the underlying reason why Ashley felt he couldn't continue with us."
Hutchings' new band was formed after he met established duo Tim Hart and Maddy Prior on the London folk club scene, and the initial line-up was completed by husband and wife team Terry Woods (formerly of Sweeney's Men, later of The Pogues) and Gay Woods. The name Steeleye Span comes from a character in the traditional song "Horkstow Grange" (which they did not actually record until they released an album by that name in 1998). The song gives an account of a fight between John "Steeleye" Span and John Bowlin, neither of whom is proven to have been a real person. Martin Carthy gave Hart the idea to name the band after the song character. When the band discussed names, they decided to choose among the three suggestions "Middlemarch Wait", "Iyubidin's Wait", and "Steeleye Span". Although there were only five members in the band, six ballots appeared and "Steeleye Span" won. Only in 1978 did Hart confess that he had voted twice. The liner notes for their first album include thanks to Carthy for the name suggestion.
With two female singers, the original line-up was unusual for the time, and indeed, never performed live, as the Woodses departed the band shortly after the release of the group's debut album, Hark! The Village Wait (1970). While recording the album, the five members were all living in the same house, an arrangement that produced considerable tensions particularly between Hart and Prior on the one hand and the Woodses on the other. Terry Woods maintains that the members had agreed that if more than one person departed, the remaining members would select a new name, and he was upset that this did not happen when he and Gay Woods left the band. Gay and Terry were replaced by veteran folk musician Martin Carthy and fiddler Peter Knight in a longer-term line-up that toured small concert venues, recorded a number of BBC Radio Sessions, and recorded two albums – Please to See the King (1971) and Ten Man Mop, or Mr. Reservoir Butler Rides Again (1971). While the first album was traditionally performed – guitars, bass and with two guest drummers – Please to See the King was revolutionary in its hard electric sound and lack of drums.
In 1971, the then Steeleye Span line-up minus Maddy Prior contributed to two songs on Scottish folk musician Ray Fisher's album The Bonny Birdy; Martin Carthy and Ashley Hutchings were also involved in the selection and arrangement of some songs released on this album, whilst Ashley Hutchings wrote the sleeve notes. Furthermore, Martin Carthy and Peter Knight performed on four songs released on Roy Bailey's eponymous debut album in 1971.
A new direction
Shortly after the release of their third album, the band brought in manager Jo Lustig, who brought a more commercial sound to their recordings. At that time, traditionalists Carthy and Hutchings left the band to pursue purely folk projects. Their replacements were electric guitarist Bob Johnson and bass player Rick Kemp, who brought strong rock and blues influences to the sound. Rick Kemp subsequently married Maddy Prior and they had two children before divorcing. Their daughter Rose Kemp and their son Alex (who performs as Kemp) both followed their parents into the music industry.
Lustig signed them to the Chrysalis record label, for a deal that was to last for ten albums.
With the release of their fourth album, Below the Salt, later in 1972, the revised line-up had settled on a distinctive electrified rock sound, although they continued to play mostly arrangements of very traditional material, including songs dating back a hundred years or more. Even on the more commercial Parcel of Rogues (1973), the band had no permanent drummer but, in 1973, rock drummer Nigel Pegrum, who had previously recorded with Gnidrolog, The Small Faces and Uriah Heep, joined them, to harden up their sound (as well as occasionally playing flute and oboe).
Also that year the single "Gaudete" from Below the Salt became a Christmas hit single, reaching number 14 in the UK Singles Chart, although, being an a cappella piece, taken from the late renaissance song collection Piae Cantiones from Finland and sung entirely in Latin, this can neither be considered representative of the band's music, nor of the album from which it was taken. This proved to be their commercial breakthrough and saw them performing on Top of the Pops for the first time. They often include it as a concert encore. Their popularity was also helped by the fact that they often performed as an opening act for fellow Chrysalis artists Jethro Tull.
Their sixth album (and sixth member Pegrum's first with the band) was entitled Now We Are Six. Produced by Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson, the album includes the epic track "Thomas the Rhymer", which has been a part of the live set ever since. Although successful, the album is controversial among some fans for the inclusion of nursery rhymes sung by "The St. Eeleye School Choir" (band members singing in the style of children), and the cover of "To Know Him Is to Love Him", featuring a guest appearance from David Bowie on saxophone.
The attempts at humour continued on Commoners Crown (1975), which included Peter Sellers playing electric ukulele on the final track, "New York Girls". Their seventh album also included the epic ballad "Long Lankin" and novelty instrumental "Bach Goes To Limerick".
Mike Batt era
With their star now conspicuously ascendant, the band brought in producer Mike Batt to work on their eighth album, All Around My Hat, and their biggest success would come with the release of the title track as a single – it reached number 5 in the UK Singles Chart in late 1975. The single was also released in other European countries and gave them a breakthrough in the Netherlands and Germany. Other well-known tracks on the album included "Black Jack Davy" (sampled by rappers Goldie Lookin Chain on their track "The Maggot") and the rocky "Hard Times of Old England". While All Around My Hat was the height of the band's commercial success, the good times were not to last long. Despite touring almost every year since 1975, they have not had another hit single, nor any success in the album chart, since the late 1970s.
The follow-up album, Rocket Cottage (1976), also produced by Batt, proved to be a commercial flop, despite having much in common musically with its predecessor. The opening track, "London", was penned by Rick Kemp as a follow-up to "All Around My Hat", in response to a request from the record label that Kemp describes as "we'll have another one of those, please", and released as a single. The song failed to make the UK Chart, in complete contrast to "All Around My Hat", despite having much in common – a 12/8 time signature, upbeat tempo, solo verses and full harmony chorus. Rocket Cottage also included the experimental track "Fighting for Strangers" (with sparse vocals singing concurrently in a variety of keys) and, on the final track, excerpts of studio banter between the band members and a seemingly impromptu rendition of "Camptown Races", in which Prior gets the lyrics wrong.
At the time of their seventh album, Commoners Crown, the advent of punk saw the mainstream market turning away from folk rock almost overnight, heralding a downturn in commercial fortunes for the band. However, as a thank you to their committed fans (and also possibly to garner some publicity for their underperforming album), Steeleye Span showered attendees of a November 1976 concert in London with £8,500 in pound notes (then equivalent to US$13,600). The unannounced idea was Maddy Prior's and, remarkably, no-one was injured in the rush to grab the falling notes. Indeed, contemporary press reports indicated that it took some time for the crowd to even realise what was happening. Thanks to their connection with Mike Batt, band members appeared in Womble costumes on Top of the Pops, performing the Wombles hit "Superwomble".
Late 1970s and early 1980s
While they would never regain the commercial success of All Around My Hat, Steeleye remained popular among British folk rock fans and generally respected within the music industry. It has been widely reported that Peter Knight and Bob Johnson left the band to work on another project together, The King of Elfland's Daughter. The actual situation was more complex. Chrysalis Records agreed to allow Knight and Johnson to work on "King" only as a way to persuade the duo to continue working with Steeleye. Since the record company had no interest in "King" for its own sake, it made no effort to market the album. Chrysalis' ploy failed, however, and Knight and Johnson quit.
Their departure left a significant hole in the band. For the 1977 album, Storm Force Ten, early member Martin Carthy rejoined on guitar. When he originally joined the band for their second album, Carthy had tried to persuade the others to bring John Kirkpatrick on board but the band had chosen Knight instead. This time, Carthy's suggestion was accepted and Kirkpatrick's accordion replaced Knight's fiddle, which gave the recording a very different texture from the Steeleye sound of previous years. Kirkpatrick's one-man morris dances quickly became one of the highlights of the band's show. This line-up also recorded their first album outside of the studio, Live at Last, before a "split" at the end of the decade that proved to be short-lived. Carthy and Kirkpatrick had only intended to play with the band for a few months and had no interest in a longer association.
During 1977 and some time thereafter, Nigel Pegrum and Rick Kemp created a "porno punk" band called The Pork Dukes, using pseudonyms. The Pork Dukes released several albums and singles over the years.
The band were contractually obliged to record a final album for the Chrysalis label and, with Carthy and Kirkpatrick not wanting to rejoin the re-formed band, the door was open for Knight and Johnson to return, in 1980. The album Sails of Silver saw the band moving away from traditional material to a greater focus on self-penned songs, many with historical or pseudo-folk themes. Sails was not a commercial success, in part because Chrysalis chose not to promote the album aggressively but also because many fans felt uncomfortable with the band's new direction in its choice of material. The failure of the album left Hart unhappy enough that he decided to leave the band and give up commercial music entirely, in favour of a reclusive life overseas.
After Sails of Silver there were to be no new albums for several years, and Steeleye became a part-time touring band. The other members spent much of their time and energy working on their various other projects and the band went into a fitful hibernation. "Sails of Silver" was used as a theme song for the science fiction literary show "Hour of The Wolf", on NYC radio station WBAI 99.5FM since the 1980s. This introduced many younger US listeners to the band.
In 1981 Isla St Clair presented a series of four television programmes, called "The Song and The Story", about the history of some folk songs, which won the Prix Jeunesse. St Clair sang the songs, and The Maddy Prior Band did the backing instrumentals.
Wilderness years
For much of the 1980s, the members of the band tended to focus on outside projects of various sorts. Johnson opened a restaurant and then studied for a degree in psychology at the University of Hertfordshire. Pegrum ran a music studio. Prior and Kemp devoted much energy to their own band (The Maddy Prior Band; see Maddy Prior (solo albums)), recording 4 albums, and also had children together. The result was that the band's output dropped sharply, producing only three albums over the space of ten years (including a concert album), although the band continued touring.
After a quiet spell, the group's 12th studio album (and first without Tim Hart) Back in Line was released on the Flutterby label in 1986. With no "relaunch" as such, the band retained a low profile, although they covered "Blackleg Miner" (a composition to support a 1844 strike revised many times by folk artists in the 20th century) to show solidarity with striking miners. Some argued this became a political anthem for the NUM during the miners' strike of 1984–5 and was used to intimidate working miners. Steeleye Span continued to perform the song live and included a different version on their 1986 release Back in Line, which some claim puts greater stress on the line that threatens death against blacklegs .
In 1989, two long-term members departed. One was bassist Rick Kemp, who needed to recover from a serious shoulder injury, exacerbated by playing bass on stage. His eventual replacement (after two tours, each with a different bassist) was Tim Harries, who was brought in less than two weeks before the band was scheduled to start a tour. A friend of Pegrum's, Harries was a self-taught rock bassist, as well as a classically trained pianist and double bassist. With Harries on board, Steeleye released Tempted and Tried (1989), an album that formed the basis for their live set for many years to come.
Not long after recording Tempted, drummer Nigel Pegrum emigrated to Australia for personal relationship reasons. He was replaced by eccentric drummer Liam Genockey (most recently of rock band Gillan), easily identified by his long, plaited beard. He and Knight were simultaneously members of "Moiré Music", a free-jazz band with a classical flavour, led by Trevor Watts. Unlike Pegrum, who employed a traditional rock drumming style, Genockey favoured a more varied drumming style, influenced by both Irish and African drumming, in which he hit, brushed, and rubbed the various surfaces of his drums and cymbals, creating a more varied range of sounds. Consequently, when the band embarked on their 20th Anniversary Tour, they did so with a totally new rhythm section.
Both Harries and Genockey were interested in experimenting with the band's sound, and they helped re-energise the other members' interest in Steeleye. The band began reworking some of their earlier material, seeking new approaches to traditional favourites. For example, Johnson experimented with an arrangement of "Tam Lin", that involved a heavy Bulgarian influence, inspired by Eastern European versions of the Tam Lin legend. In 1992 the band released Tonight's the Night...Live, which demonstrates some of this new energy and direction. The band continued to tour the UK every year, and frequently toured overseas as well.
Maddy 'leaves the bus'
In 1995 almost all the past and present members of the band reunited for a concert to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the band (which would later be released as The Journey). The only former members not present were founding members Terry Woods, Mark Williamson, and Chris Staines.
A by-product of this gig was founding vocalist Gay Woods rejoining the band full-time, partly because Prior was experiencing vocal problems and, for a while, Steeleye toured with two female singers and released the album Time 1996, their first new studio album in seven years.
There were doubts over the future of the band when Prior announced her departure, in 1997, but Steeleye continued in a more productive vein than for many years, with Woods as lead singer, releasing Horkstow Grange (1998), and then Bedlam Born (2000). Fans of Steeleye's "rock" element felt that Horkstow Grange was too quiet and folk-oriented, while fans of the band's "folk" element complained that Bedlam Born was too rock-heavy. Woods received considerable criticism from fans, many of whom did not realise that she was one of the founding members and who compared her singing style unfavourably to Prior's. There was also disagreement among the band about what material to perform; Woods advocated performing old favourites such as "All Around My Hat" and "Alison Gross", while Johnson favoured a set that emphasised their newer material.
Liam Genockey had also left the band in 1997 and, on these albums, the drum kit was manned by Dave Mattacks, who was not an official member of the band.
Breakup and comeback
Reported difficulties among band members saw a split during the recording of Bedlam Born. Woods reportedly was uncomfortable with the financial arrangements of the band, health problems forced Johnson into retirement, and drummer Dave Mattacks' period as an unofficial member came to an end. Rick Kemp resumed playing with the band as a guest replacing Bob Johnson for the Bedlam Born tour, with Harries switching to lead guitar. Woods then left after this tour.
For a while the band consisted of just Peter Knight and Tim Harries, plus various guest musicians, as they fulfilled live commitments. This was an uncertain time for the future of the band, and when Harries announced he was not keen to continue his role, even the willingness of Kemp to return to the line-up full-time was not enough to prevent an 18 month hiatus while Peter Knight and the bands manager, John Dagnell, considered whether it was worth continuing.
In 2002 Steeleye Span reformed with a "classic" line-up (including Prior), bringing an end to the uncertainty of the previous couple of years. Knight hosted a poll on his website, asking the band's fans which Steeleye songs they would most want to see the band re-record. Armed with the results, Knight persuaded Prior and Genockey to rejoin, coaxed Johnson out of a health-induced retirement and, along with Kemp and Knight, they released Present—The Very Best of Steeleye Span (2002), a 2-disc set of new recordings of the songs.
Bob Johnson's health issues prevented him from playing live, shortly before the 2002 comeback tour, and he was replaced at the eleventh hour on guitar by Ken Nicol, formerly of the Albion Band. Nicol had been talking with Rick Kemp about forming a band, when Kemp invited him to play for the tour and this was to herald a significant return to form for the band.
Ken Nicol years
A revitalised lineup consisting of Prior, Kemp, Knight, Genockey and newcomer Ken Nicol released the album They Called Her Babylon early in 2004, to considerable acclaim. The band extensively toured the UK, Europe and Australia, and their relatively prolific output continued with the release of the Christmas album Winter later the same year, as the band ended a busy year of touring with a gala performance in London's Palladium theatre. In 2005 Steeleye Span were awarded the Good Tradition Award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, while the 2005 book, Electric Folk by Britta Sweers devotes much space to the band.
With a new sense of purpose and a stable line-up, the band carried out a UK tour in April and May 2006, followed by dates in Europe and an appearance at the 2006 Cropredy Festival, where they were the headline act on the opening night. The set started with "Bonny Black Hare" and finished with "All Around My Hat", with backing vocals from the Cropredy Crowd. The full play list is at Crop Log 2006. The tour was supported by a live album and DVD of their 2004 tour.
In November 2006 Steeleye released their studio album Bloody Men. Their Autumn/Winter tour started on 24 November 2006 in Basingstoke and ran until just before Christmas. They headlined at their namesake festival, Spanfest 2007 at Kentwell Hall, Suffolk from 27 to 29 July 2007, and returned for Spanfest 2008. However, as Kentwell Hall declined to hold the festival again, it was held at Stanford Hall in Leicestershire. A UK tour took place between 17 April and 16 May 2008.
For their 40th anniversary tour, in 2009, Pete Zorn joined the line-up on bass, as Rick Kemp was unwell. Kemp and Zorn both toured with the band for the winter tour that year, with Zorn playing guitar, and Kemp announced that he would be retiring at the end of the tour – a decision he later reversed, as usual.
Live at a Distance, a live double CD and DVD set, was released in April 2009 by Park Records, and their new studio album entitled Cogs, Wheels & Lovers was released on 26 October 2009. Several tracks from this album featured in the sets of the autumn tour.
Founding member Tim Hart died on 24 December 2009, at his home in La Gomera on the Canary Islands, at the age of 61, after being diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer.
Now We Are Six Again / Wintersmith
In June 2010 Ken Nicol announced that he was leaving Steeleye and the band reassembled for a Spring 2011 tour, with Julian Littman joining the line-up as guitarist, replacing Nicol. Multi-instrumentalist Pete Zorn also continued to play with the band, making them a six-piece for the first time in many years.
In 2011 they released Now We Are Six again, a live double album based on their set at the time, which included full performances of all the songs on their 1974 Now we are Six album.
In October 2013 the band released their 22nd studio album, Wintersmith, containing original songs based on the writings of Terry Pratchett. This was followed by a winter tour of the UK. This album marked a return to form and media attention as the album reached number 77 in the UK Albums Chart, had tracks played on BBC Radio 2 and led to various radio and TV interviews for Terry Pratchett and Maddy Prior as they promoted the album.
Following Pratchett's death, in March 2015, the band made an appearance at the memorial service for him, in April 2016, at Barbican Centre, London.
Peter Knight leaves / Dodgy Bastards album
In November 2013 Peter Knight announced that he would be leaving Steeleye Span at the end of 2013. He was replaced by Jessie May Smart. The band continued to tour regularly and recorded four new tracks for the 2014 'Deluxe' re-release of the Wintersmith album.
In the summer of 2015 they toured North America, with a reduced line up consisting of Prior, Littman, Smart, Genockey and, for the first time, Maddy's son, Alex Kemp, on bass, replacing his father, Rick. An autumn/winter tour of the UK followed with Rick Kemp back in the line-up, along with Andrew 'Spud' Sinclair, replacing Pete Zorn.
In April 2016 Pete Zorn was diagnosed with advanced lung and brain cancer. He died on 19 April.
Andrew Sinclair joined the band permanently in 2016 and the line up toured in October 2016 and announced the release of a new studio album, Dodgy Bastards, in November. The album is a mixture of original compositions, traditional songs and original tunes put to traditional lyrics.
Present day / 50th anniversary
After completing the 'Dodgy Bastards' tour, Rick Kemp retired and has been replaced by Roger Carey, on bass. For the November/December 2017 tour the band was joined by multi-instrumentalist and ex-Bellowhead member Benji Kirkpatrick. Benji is son of former Steeleye Span member, John Kirkpatrick. This seven-piece line-up, the first in the band's history, has continued to tour. 2019 was the band's 50th anniversary year and a new album was released to celebrate the anniversary: Est'd 1969. The band undertook two "50th Anniversary" tours in 2019, in Spring and November. The band played the 'Fields of Avalon' area at the Glastonbury Festival 2019, were the closing act at the Cornbury Music Festival 2019 and even made their debut in Russia at a folk festival called Chasti Sveta (Части света, Parts of the World), in Saint Petersburg. On 17 December they appeared at the Barbican Theatre, in London, with special guests and previous band members Peter Knight, Martin Carthy and John Kirkpatrick. For the November/December 2022 tour, with Jessie May Smart on maternity leave, Violeta Vicci joined the band, on violin. Benji Kirkpatrick left the band in early 2022.
Examples of collaborations
Prior sang backing vocals on the title track of Jethro Tull's 1976 album Too Old To Rock and Roll, Too Young To Die, the song "Salamander's Rag-Time" from the same session and their 1978 single "A Stitch In Time". Later, members of Jethro Tull backed Prior on her album Woman in the Wings. Ray Fisher's rare 1972 album Bonny Birdy includes one track with the High Level Ranters, one with Steeleye Span, and one with Martin Carthy.
Until the 1990s Steeleye often toured as part of a double bill, either supporting Status Quo, or featuring support from artists such as Rock Salt & Nails and The Rankin Family. When Steeleye Span supported Status Quo on tour, in 1996, the latter had just issued their version of "All Around My Hat" as a single. "The video was filmed at Christmas," Prior recalled. "We'd supported them, and I found myself down in the mosh pit. Francis saw me and told the audience, 'Oh look, there's a Maddy lookalike down there… Fuck me, it is Maddy!' I was hoyed over the barrier [to the stage], to join them for the encore. It was all very jolly." Status Quo's single is credited to "Status Quo with Maddy Prior from Steeleye Span" and reached number 47 in the charts.
Discography
Studio albums
Hark! The Village Wait (1970)
Please to See the King (1971)
Ten Man Mop, or Mr. Reservoir Butler Rides Again (1971)
Below the Salt (1972)
Parcel of Rogues (1973)
Now We Are Six (1974)
Commoners Crown (1975)
All Around My Hat (1975)
Rocket Cottage (1976)
Storm Force Ten (1977)
Sails of Silver (1980)
Back in Line (1986)
Tempted and Tried (1989)
Time (1996)
Horkstow Grange (1998)
Bedlam Born (2000)
Present – The Very Best of Steeleye Span (2002)
They Called Her Babylon (2004)
Winter (2004)
Bloody Men (2006)
Cogs, Wheels and Lovers (2009)
Wintersmith (2013)
Dodgy Bastards (2016)
Est'd 1969 (2019)
Lost recordings
In 1995 Steeleye recorded "The Golden Vanity" for the Time album, but it did not appear on it. It was released on the anthology The Best of British Folk Rock. Similarly they recorded "General Taylor" for Ten Man Mop but the song did not appear on it. It resurfaced on the compilation album Individually and Collectively instead. It was also included in another compilation The Lark in The Morning (2006), as well as re-issues of Ten Man Mop. "Bonny Moorhen" was recorded at the time of the Parcel of Rogues session. It appears, however, on the compilation album Original Masters, and is also packaged as part of A Parcel of Steeleye Span. The song "Somewhere in London", recorded for Back in Line (1986) was released instead as a B-side single, but returned to its proper place "Back in Line" when the album was reissued in 1991. "Staring Robin", a song about a man described by Tim Harries as an "Elizabethan psycho", was recorded during the Bedlam Born (2000) sessions, but it was left off the final album as it was deemed by Park Records to be too disturbing.
The track "The Holly and the Ivy" was released as the B-side of the Gaudete single and did not appear on any album. It was later released on the 'Steeleye Span: A rare collection' oddities compilation. Several Steeleye songs have never been recorded for a studio album and have only been made available in their live versions, including several tracks on 'Live at Last' and 'Tonight's the night... Live'.
Personnel
Members
Current members
Maddy Prior – vocals
Liam Genockey – drums, percussion
Andrew "Spud" Sinclair – guitars
Julian Littman – guitars
Jessie May Smart – violin
Roger Carey – bass
Violeta Vicci –
Former members
Tim Hart – guitars, dulcimer, mandolin, vocals
Ashley Hutchings – bass
Gay Woods – vocals, bodhran
Terry Woods – guitars, concertina, vocals
Martin Carthy – guitars, keyboards, vocals
Bob Johnson – guitars, vocals
Nigel Pegrum – drums, percussion, flute
John Kirkpatrick – accordion, vocals
Mark Williamson – bass
Chris Staines – bass
Dave Mattacks – drums, percussion
Tim Harries – bass, piano, guitars, vocals
Michael Gregory – drums, percussion
Terl Bryant – drums, percussion
Ken Nicol – guitars, vocals
Peter Knight – strings, keyboards, guitars, vocals
Pete Zorn – guitars, woodwind
Rick Kemp – bass, drums, vocals
Benji Kirkpatrick – bouzouki, banjo, vocals
Lineups
Timeline
Notes and references
Sources
External links
Official website
Steeleye Span's record label
1969 establishments in England
Articles which contain graphical timelines
Ashley Hutchings
British folk rock groups
Chrysalis Records artists
English folk rock groups
Musical groups established in 1969
RCA Records artists
United Artists Records artists
Female-fronted musical groups | false | [
"In 1948, the new Romanian Communist regime undertook a political purge of the members of the Romanian Academy. In all, 113 members were removed that June, representing over two-thirds of the total membership at the beginning of the year. Fifty-five members of the \"old\" academy, mainly scientists, were admitted into the \"new\" one. In 1990 and 1994, following the Romanian Revolution, 97 of the purged members were restored to the academy, post-mortem. This list presents the names of the purged members, along with the names of those who died in prison and those who spent time in prison.\n\nPurged members (113)\n\nTitular members (26)\n\nLiterature section (8)\n\nHistory section (14)\n\nSciences section (4)\n\nCorresponding members (58)\n\nLiterature section (20)\n\nHistory section (19)\n\nSciences section (19)\n\nHonorary members (29)\n\nPurged members who died in prison (9)\n\nPurged members who were incarcerated (30)\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n Păun Otiman, \"1948 - Anul imensei jertfe a Academiei Române\", in Academica, Nr. 4 (31), December 2013, p.115-124\n\nPurged\nAcademicians, purged\n1948 in Romania\nPolitical and cultural purges\nSocialist Republic of Romania",
"The following is a list of United States senators and representatives who died while they were serving their terms after 2000.\n\n2000s\n\n2010s\n\n2020s\n\nSee also \n List of United States Congress members who died in office (1790–1899)\n List of United States Congress members who died in office (1900–1949)\n List of United States Congress members who died in office (1950–1999)\n List of United States Congress members killed or wounded in office\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n Memorial Services for members of the U.S. Congress who died in the 1910s\n Memorial Services for members of the U.S. Congress who died in the 1920s\n Memorial Services for members of the U.S. Congress who died in the 1930s\n Memorial Services for members of the U.S. Congress who died in the 1940s\n Memorial Services for members of the U.S. Congress who died in the 1950s\n Memorial Services for members of the U.S. Congress who died in the 1960s\n Memorial Services for members of the U.S. Congress who died in the 1970s\n Memorial Services for members of the U.S. Congress who died in the 1980s\n Memorial Services for members of the U.S. Congress who died in the 1990s\n Memorial Services for members of the U.S. Congress who died in the 2000s\n Addresses for members of the U.S. Congress who died in the 1860s\n Addresses for members of the U.S. Congress who died in the 1870s\n Memorial Addresses for members of the U.S. Congress who died in the 1880s\n Memorial Addresses for members of the U.S. Congress who died in the 1890s\n\n2000"
] |
[
"Steeleye Span",
"Breakup and comeback",
"When did they breakup?",
"Reported difficulties among band members saw a split during the recording of Bedlam Born.",
"Why did they break up",
"Woods reportedly was uncomfortable with the financial arrangements of the band, health problems forced Johnson into retirement,",
"What year did they comebkac?",
"In 2002, Steeleye Span reformed with a \"classic\" line-up (including Prior), bringing an end to the uncertainty of the previous couple of years.",
"Who were the members",
"Knight persuaded Prior and Genockey to rejoin, coaxed Johnson out of a health-induced retirement, and along with Kemp and Knight,"
] | C_d8948e2e2537445bab89ef08e6ad5ea4_0 | Did they produce any albums? | 5 | Did Steeleye Span produce any albums? | Steeleye Span | Reported difficulties among band members saw a split during the recording of Bedlam Born. Woods reportedly was uncomfortable with the financial arrangements of the band, health problems forced Johnson into retirement, and drummer Dave Mattacks' period as an unofficial member came to an end during this time. For a while the band consisted of just Peter Knight and Tim Harries, plus various guest musicians, as they fulfilled live commitments. Rick Kemp resumed playing with the band at some of these gigs, with Harries switching to lead guitar. This was an uncertain time for the future of the band, and when Harries announced he was not keen to continue his role, even the willingness of Kemp to return to the line-up full-time was not enough to prevent what was effectively a break-up. In 2002, Steeleye Span reformed with a "classic" line-up (including Prior), bringing an end to the uncertainty of the previous couple of years. Knight hosted a poll on his website, asking the band's fans which Steeleye songs they would most want to see the band re-record. Armed with the results, Knight persuaded Prior and Genockey to rejoin, coaxed Johnson out of a health-induced retirement, and along with Kemp and Knight, they released Present--The Very Best of Steeleye Span (2002), a 2-disc set of new recordings of the songs. But Bob Johnson's health prevented him from playing live shortly before the 2002 comeback tour, and he was replaced at the eleventh hour on guitar by Ken Nicol, formerly of the Albion Band. Nicol had been talking with Rick Kemp about forming a band when Kemp invited him to play for the tour, and this was to herald a significant return to form for the band. CANNOTANSWER | they released Present--The Very Best of Steeleye Span (2002), a 2-disc set of new recordings of the songs. | Steeleye Span are an English folk rock band formed in 1969. Along with Fairport Convention, they are among the best known acts of the British folk revival, and were among the most commercially successful, thanks to their hit singles "Gaudete" and "All Around My Hat". They had four Top 40 albums and achieved significant sales of "All Around My Hat".
Throughout their history, Steeleye Span have seen many personnel changes. Their typical album is a collection of mostly traditional songs with one or two instrumental tracks of jigs and/or reels added; the traditional songs often include some of the Child Ballads. In their later albums there has been an increased tendency to include music written by the band members, but they have never moved completely away from traditional music, which draws upon pan-British traditions.
History
Early years
Steeleye Span began in late 1969, when London-born bass player Ashley Hutchings departed Fairport Convention, the band he had co-founded in 1967. Fairport had been involved in a road accident in 1969 in which the drummer, Martin Lamble, and Richard Thompson's girlfriend, Jeannie Franklyn, were killed and other band members injured. The survivors convalesced in a rented house near Winchester in Hampshire and worked on the album Liege & Lief. Despite the success of the album, Ashley Hutchings and the band's vocalist Sandy Denny left Fairport Convention.
In part, Hutchings departed because he wanted to pursue a different, more traditional, direction than the other members of Fairport did at that time. However, Fairport's co-founder, guitarist Simon Nicol, stated "Whatever the upfront reasons about musical differences and wanting to concentrate on traditional material, I think the accident was the underlying reason why Ashley felt he couldn't continue with us."
Hutchings' new band was formed after he met established duo Tim Hart and Maddy Prior on the London folk club scene, and the initial line-up was completed by husband and wife team Terry Woods (formerly of Sweeney's Men, later of The Pogues) and Gay Woods. The name Steeleye Span comes from a character in the traditional song "Horkstow Grange" (which they did not actually record until they released an album by that name in 1998). The song gives an account of a fight between John "Steeleye" Span and John Bowlin, neither of whom is proven to have been a real person. Martin Carthy gave Hart the idea to name the band after the song character. When the band discussed names, they decided to choose among the three suggestions "Middlemarch Wait", "Iyubidin's Wait", and "Steeleye Span". Although there were only five members in the band, six ballots appeared and "Steeleye Span" won. Only in 1978 did Hart confess that he had voted twice. The liner notes for their first album include thanks to Carthy for the name suggestion.
With two female singers, the original line-up was unusual for the time, and indeed, never performed live, as the Woodses departed the band shortly after the release of the group's debut album, Hark! The Village Wait (1970). While recording the album, the five members were all living in the same house, an arrangement that produced considerable tensions particularly between Hart and Prior on the one hand and the Woodses on the other. Terry Woods maintains that the members had agreed that if more than one person departed, the remaining members would select a new name, and he was upset that this did not happen when he and Gay Woods left the band. Gay and Terry were replaced by veteran folk musician Martin Carthy and fiddler Peter Knight in a longer-term line-up that toured small concert venues, recorded a number of BBC Radio Sessions, and recorded two albums – Please to See the King (1971) and Ten Man Mop, or Mr. Reservoir Butler Rides Again (1971). While the first album was traditionally performed – guitars, bass and with two guest drummers – Please to See the King was revolutionary in its hard electric sound and lack of drums.
In 1971, the then Steeleye Span line-up minus Maddy Prior contributed to two songs on Scottish folk musician Ray Fisher's album The Bonny Birdy; Martin Carthy and Ashley Hutchings were also involved in the selection and arrangement of some songs released on this album, whilst Ashley Hutchings wrote the sleeve notes. Furthermore, Martin Carthy and Peter Knight performed on four songs released on Roy Bailey's eponymous debut album in 1971.
A new direction
Shortly after the release of their third album, the band brought in manager Jo Lustig, who brought a more commercial sound to their recordings. At that time, traditionalists Carthy and Hutchings left the band to pursue purely folk projects. Their replacements were electric guitarist Bob Johnson and bass player Rick Kemp, who brought strong rock and blues influences to the sound. Rick Kemp subsequently married Maddy Prior and they had two children before divorcing. Their daughter Rose Kemp and their son Alex (who performs as Kemp) both followed their parents into the music industry.
Lustig signed them to the Chrysalis record label, for a deal that was to last for ten albums.
With the release of their fourth album, Below the Salt, later in 1972, the revised line-up had settled on a distinctive electrified rock sound, although they continued to play mostly arrangements of very traditional material, including songs dating back a hundred years or more. Even on the more commercial Parcel of Rogues (1973), the band had no permanent drummer but, in 1973, rock drummer Nigel Pegrum, who had previously recorded with Gnidrolog, The Small Faces and Uriah Heep, joined them, to harden up their sound (as well as occasionally playing flute and oboe).
Also that year the single "Gaudete" from Below the Salt became a Christmas hit single, reaching number 14 in the UK Singles Chart, although, being an a cappella piece, taken from the late renaissance song collection Piae Cantiones from Finland and sung entirely in Latin, this can neither be considered representative of the band's music, nor of the album from which it was taken. This proved to be their commercial breakthrough and saw them performing on Top of the Pops for the first time. They often include it as a concert encore. Their popularity was also helped by the fact that they often performed as an opening act for fellow Chrysalis artists Jethro Tull.
Their sixth album (and sixth member Pegrum's first with the band) was entitled Now We Are Six. Produced by Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson, the album includes the epic track "Thomas the Rhymer", which has been a part of the live set ever since. Although successful, the album is controversial among some fans for the inclusion of nursery rhymes sung by "The St. Eeleye School Choir" (band members singing in the style of children), and the cover of "To Know Him Is to Love Him", featuring a guest appearance from David Bowie on saxophone.
The attempts at humour continued on Commoners Crown (1975), which included Peter Sellers playing electric ukulele on the final track, "New York Girls". Their seventh album also included the epic ballad "Long Lankin" and novelty instrumental "Bach Goes To Limerick".
Mike Batt era
With their star now conspicuously ascendant, the band brought in producer Mike Batt to work on their eighth album, All Around My Hat, and their biggest success would come with the release of the title track as a single – it reached number 5 in the UK Singles Chart in late 1975. The single was also released in other European countries and gave them a breakthrough in the Netherlands and Germany. Other well-known tracks on the album included "Black Jack Davy" (sampled by rappers Goldie Lookin Chain on their track "The Maggot") and the rocky "Hard Times of Old England". While All Around My Hat was the height of the band's commercial success, the good times were not to last long. Despite touring almost every year since 1975, they have not had another hit single, nor any success in the album chart, since the late 1970s.
The follow-up album, Rocket Cottage (1976), also produced by Batt, proved to be a commercial flop, despite having much in common musically with its predecessor. The opening track, "London", was penned by Rick Kemp as a follow-up to "All Around My Hat", in response to a request from the record label that Kemp describes as "we'll have another one of those, please", and released as a single. The song failed to make the UK Chart, in complete contrast to "All Around My Hat", despite having much in common – a 12/8 time signature, upbeat tempo, solo verses and full harmony chorus. Rocket Cottage also included the experimental track "Fighting for Strangers" (with sparse vocals singing concurrently in a variety of keys) and, on the final track, excerpts of studio banter between the band members and a seemingly impromptu rendition of "Camptown Races", in which Prior gets the lyrics wrong.
At the time of their seventh album, Commoners Crown, the advent of punk saw the mainstream market turning away from folk rock almost overnight, heralding a downturn in commercial fortunes for the band. However, as a thank you to their committed fans (and also possibly to garner some publicity for their underperforming album), Steeleye Span showered attendees of a November 1976 concert in London with £8,500 in pound notes (then equivalent to US$13,600). The unannounced idea was Maddy Prior's and, remarkably, no-one was injured in the rush to grab the falling notes. Indeed, contemporary press reports indicated that it took some time for the crowd to even realise what was happening. Thanks to their connection with Mike Batt, band members appeared in Womble costumes on Top of the Pops, performing the Wombles hit "Superwomble".
Late 1970s and early 1980s
While they would never regain the commercial success of All Around My Hat, Steeleye remained popular among British folk rock fans and generally respected within the music industry. It has been widely reported that Peter Knight and Bob Johnson left the band to work on another project together, The King of Elfland's Daughter. The actual situation was more complex. Chrysalis Records agreed to allow Knight and Johnson to work on "King" only as a way to persuade the duo to continue working with Steeleye. Since the record company had no interest in "King" for its own sake, it made no effort to market the album. Chrysalis' ploy failed, however, and Knight and Johnson quit.
Their departure left a significant hole in the band. For the 1977 album, Storm Force Ten, early member Martin Carthy rejoined on guitar. When he originally joined the band for their second album, Carthy had tried to persuade the others to bring John Kirkpatrick on board but the band had chosen Knight instead. This time, Carthy's suggestion was accepted and Kirkpatrick's accordion replaced Knight's fiddle, which gave the recording a very different texture from the Steeleye sound of previous years. Kirkpatrick's one-man morris dances quickly became one of the highlights of the band's show. This line-up also recorded their first album outside of the studio, Live at Last, before a "split" at the end of the decade that proved to be short-lived. Carthy and Kirkpatrick had only intended to play with the band for a few months and had no interest in a longer association.
During 1977 and some time thereafter, Nigel Pegrum and Rick Kemp created a "porno punk" band called The Pork Dukes, using pseudonyms. The Pork Dukes released several albums and singles over the years.
The band were contractually obliged to record a final album for the Chrysalis label and, with Carthy and Kirkpatrick not wanting to rejoin the re-formed band, the door was open for Knight and Johnson to return, in 1980. The album Sails of Silver saw the band moving away from traditional material to a greater focus on self-penned songs, many with historical or pseudo-folk themes. Sails was not a commercial success, in part because Chrysalis chose not to promote the album aggressively but also because many fans felt uncomfortable with the band's new direction in its choice of material. The failure of the album left Hart unhappy enough that he decided to leave the band and give up commercial music entirely, in favour of a reclusive life overseas.
After Sails of Silver there were to be no new albums for several years, and Steeleye became a part-time touring band. The other members spent much of their time and energy working on their various other projects and the band went into a fitful hibernation. "Sails of Silver" was used as a theme song for the science fiction literary show "Hour of The Wolf", on NYC radio station WBAI 99.5FM since the 1980s. This introduced many younger US listeners to the band.
In 1981 Isla St Clair presented a series of four television programmes, called "The Song and The Story", about the history of some folk songs, which won the Prix Jeunesse. St Clair sang the songs, and The Maddy Prior Band did the backing instrumentals.
Wilderness years
For much of the 1980s, the members of the band tended to focus on outside projects of various sorts. Johnson opened a restaurant and then studied for a degree in psychology at the University of Hertfordshire. Pegrum ran a music studio. Prior and Kemp devoted much energy to their own band (The Maddy Prior Band; see Maddy Prior (solo albums)), recording 4 albums, and also had children together. The result was that the band's output dropped sharply, producing only three albums over the space of ten years (including a concert album), although the band continued touring.
After a quiet spell, the group's 12th studio album (and first without Tim Hart) Back in Line was released on the Flutterby label in 1986. With no "relaunch" as such, the band retained a low profile, although they covered "Blackleg Miner" (a composition to support a 1844 strike revised many times by folk artists in the 20th century) to show solidarity with striking miners. Some argued this became a political anthem for the NUM during the miners' strike of 1984–5 and was used to intimidate working miners. Steeleye Span continued to perform the song live and included a different version on their 1986 release Back in Line, which some claim puts greater stress on the line that threatens death against blacklegs .
In 1989, two long-term members departed. One was bassist Rick Kemp, who needed to recover from a serious shoulder injury, exacerbated by playing bass on stage. His eventual replacement (after two tours, each with a different bassist) was Tim Harries, who was brought in less than two weeks before the band was scheduled to start a tour. A friend of Pegrum's, Harries was a self-taught rock bassist, as well as a classically trained pianist and double bassist. With Harries on board, Steeleye released Tempted and Tried (1989), an album that formed the basis for their live set for many years to come.
Not long after recording Tempted, drummer Nigel Pegrum emigrated to Australia for personal relationship reasons. He was replaced by eccentric drummer Liam Genockey (most recently of rock band Gillan), easily identified by his long, plaited beard. He and Knight were simultaneously members of "Moiré Music", a free-jazz band with a classical flavour, led by Trevor Watts. Unlike Pegrum, who employed a traditional rock drumming style, Genockey favoured a more varied drumming style, influenced by both Irish and African drumming, in which he hit, brushed, and rubbed the various surfaces of his drums and cymbals, creating a more varied range of sounds. Consequently, when the band embarked on their 20th Anniversary Tour, they did so with a totally new rhythm section.
Both Harries and Genockey were interested in experimenting with the band's sound, and they helped re-energise the other members' interest in Steeleye. The band began reworking some of their earlier material, seeking new approaches to traditional favourites. For example, Johnson experimented with an arrangement of "Tam Lin", that involved a heavy Bulgarian influence, inspired by Eastern European versions of the Tam Lin legend. In 1992 the band released Tonight's the Night...Live, which demonstrates some of this new energy and direction. The band continued to tour the UK every year, and frequently toured overseas as well.
Maddy 'leaves the bus'
In 1995 almost all the past and present members of the band reunited for a concert to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the band (which would later be released as The Journey). The only former members not present were founding members Terry Woods, Mark Williamson, and Chris Staines.
A by-product of this gig was founding vocalist Gay Woods rejoining the band full-time, partly because Prior was experiencing vocal problems and, for a while, Steeleye toured with two female singers and released the album Time 1996, their first new studio album in seven years.
There were doubts over the future of the band when Prior announced her departure, in 1997, but Steeleye continued in a more productive vein than for many years, with Woods as lead singer, releasing Horkstow Grange (1998), and then Bedlam Born (2000). Fans of Steeleye's "rock" element felt that Horkstow Grange was too quiet and folk-oriented, while fans of the band's "folk" element complained that Bedlam Born was too rock-heavy. Woods received considerable criticism from fans, many of whom did not realise that she was one of the founding members and who compared her singing style unfavourably to Prior's. There was also disagreement among the band about what material to perform; Woods advocated performing old favourites such as "All Around My Hat" and "Alison Gross", while Johnson favoured a set that emphasised their newer material.
Liam Genockey had also left the band in 1997 and, on these albums, the drum kit was manned by Dave Mattacks, who was not an official member of the band.
Breakup and comeback
Reported difficulties among band members saw a split during the recording of Bedlam Born. Woods reportedly was uncomfortable with the financial arrangements of the band, health problems forced Johnson into retirement, and drummer Dave Mattacks' period as an unofficial member came to an end. Rick Kemp resumed playing with the band as a guest replacing Bob Johnson for the Bedlam Born tour, with Harries switching to lead guitar. Woods then left after this tour.
For a while the band consisted of just Peter Knight and Tim Harries, plus various guest musicians, as they fulfilled live commitments. This was an uncertain time for the future of the band, and when Harries announced he was not keen to continue his role, even the willingness of Kemp to return to the line-up full-time was not enough to prevent an 18 month hiatus while Peter Knight and the bands manager, John Dagnell, considered whether it was worth continuing.
In 2002 Steeleye Span reformed with a "classic" line-up (including Prior), bringing an end to the uncertainty of the previous couple of years. Knight hosted a poll on his website, asking the band's fans which Steeleye songs they would most want to see the band re-record. Armed with the results, Knight persuaded Prior and Genockey to rejoin, coaxed Johnson out of a health-induced retirement and, along with Kemp and Knight, they released Present—The Very Best of Steeleye Span (2002), a 2-disc set of new recordings of the songs.
Bob Johnson's health issues prevented him from playing live, shortly before the 2002 comeback tour, and he was replaced at the eleventh hour on guitar by Ken Nicol, formerly of the Albion Band. Nicol had been talking with Rick Kemp about forming a band, when Kemp invited him to play for the tour and this was to herald a significant return to form for the band.
Ken Nicol years
A revitalised lineup consisting of Prior, Kemp, Knight, Genockey and newcomer Ken Nicol released the album They Called Her Babylon early in 2004, to considerable acclaim. The band extensively toured the UK, Europe and Australia, and their relatively prolific output continued with the release of the Christmas album Winter later the same year, as the band ended a busy year of touring with a gala performance in London's Palladium theatre. In 2005 Steeleye Span were awarded the Good Tradition Award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, while the 2005 book, Electric Folk by Britta Sweers devotes much space to the band.
With a new sense of purpose and a stable line-up, the band carried out a UK tour in April and May 2006, followed by dates in Europe and an appearance at the 2006 Cropredy Festival, where they were the headline act on the opening night. The set started with "Bonny Black Hare" and finished with "All Around My Hat", with backing vocals from the Cropredy Crowd. The full play list is at Crop Log 2006. The tour was supported by a live album and DVD of their 2004 tour.
In November 2006 Steeleye released their studio album Bloody Men. Their Autumn/Winter tour started on 24 November 2006 in Basingstoke and ran until just before Christmas. They headlined at their namesake festival, Spanfest 2007 at Kentwell Hall, Suffolk from 27 to 29 July 2007, and returned for Spanfest 2008. However, as Kentwell Hall declined to hold the festival again, it was held at Stanford Hall in Leicestershire. A UK tour took place between 17 April and 16 May 2008.
For their 40th anniversary tour, in 2009, Pete Zorn joined the line-up on bass, as Rick Kemp was unwell. Kemp and Zorn both toured with the band for the winter tour that year, with Zorn playing guitar, and Kemp announced that he would be retiring at the end of the tour – a decision he later reversed, as usual.
Live at a Distance, a live double CD and DVD set, was released in April 2009 by Park Records, and their new studio album entitled Cogs, Wheels & Lovers was released on 26 October 2009. Several tracks from this album featured in the sets of the autumn tour.
Founding member Tim Hart died on 24 December 2009, at his home in La Gomera on the Canary Islands, at the age of 61, after being diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer.
Now We Are Six Again / Wintersmith
In June 2010 Ken Nicol announced that he was leaving Steeleye and the band reassembled for a Spring 2011 tour, with Julian Littman joining the line-up as guitarist, replacing Nicol. Multi-instrumentalist Pete Zorn also continued to play with the band, making them a six-piece for the first time in many years.
In 2011 they released Now We Are Six again, a live double album based on their set at the time, which included full performances of all the songs on their 1974 Now we are Six album.
In October 2013 the band released their 22nd studio album, Wintersmith, containing original songs based on the writings of Terry Pratchett. This was followed by a winter tour of the UK. This album marked a return to form and media attention as the album reached number 77 in the UK Albums Chart, had tracks played on BBC Radio 2 and led to various radio and TV interviews for Terry Pratchett and Maddy Prior as they promoted the album.
Following Pratchett's death, in March 2015, the band made an appearance at the memorial service for him, in April 2016, at Barbican Centre, London.
Peter Knight leaves / Dodgy Bastards album
In November 2013 Peter Knight announced that he would be leaving Steeleye Span at the end of 2013. He was replaced by Jessie May Smart. The band continued to tour regularly and recorded four new tracks for the 2014 'Deluxe' re-release of the Wintersmith album.
In the summer of 2015 they toured North America, with a reduced line up consisting of Prior, Littman, Smart, Genockey and, for the first time, Maddy's son, Alex Kemp, on bass, replacing his father, Rick. An autumn/winter tour of the UK followed with Rick Kemp back in the line-up, along with Andrew 'Spud' Sinclair, replacing Pete Zorn.
In April 2016 Pete Zorn was diagnosed with advanced lung and brain cancer. He died on 19 April.
Andrew Sinclair joined the band permanently in 2016 and the line up toured in October 2016 and announced the release of a new studio album, Dodgy Bastards, in November. The album is a mixture of original compositions, traditional songs and original tunes put to traditional lyrics.
Present day / 50th anniversary
After completing the 'Dodgy Bastards' tour, Rick Kemp retired and has been replaced by Roger Carey, on bass. For the November/December 2017 tour the band was joined by multi-instrumentalist and ex-Bellowhead member Benji Kirkpatrick. Benji is son of former Steeleye Span member, John Kirkpatrick. This seven-piece line-up, the first in the band's history, has continued to tour. 2019 was the band's 50th anniversary year and a new album was released to celebrate the anniversary: Est'd 1969. The band undertook two "50th Anniversary" tours in 2019, in Spring and November. The band played the 'Fields of Avalon' area at the Glastonbury Festival 2019, were the closing act at the Cornbury Music Festival 2019 and even made their debut in Russia at a folk festival called Chasti Sveta (Части света, Parts of the World), in Saint Petersburg. On 17 December they appeared at the Barbican Theatre, in London, with special guests and previous band members Peter Knight, Martin Carthy and John Kirkpatrick. For the November/December 2022 tour, with Jessie May Smart on maternity leave, Violeta Vicci joined the band, on violin. Benji Kirkpatrick left the band in early 2022.
Examples of collaborations
Prior sang backing vocals on the title track of Jethro Tull's 1976 album Too Old To Rock and Roll, Too Young To Die, the song "Salamander's Rag-Time" from the same session and their 1978 single "A Stitch In Time". Later, members of Jethro Tull backed Prior on her album Woman in the Wings. Ray Fisher's rare 1972 album Bonny Birdy includes one track with the High Level Ranters, one with Steeleye Span, and one with Martin Carthy.
Until the 1990s Steeleye often toured as part of a double bill, either supporting Status Quo, or featuring support from artists such as Rock Salt & Nails and The Rankin Family. When Steeleye Span supported Status Quo on tour, in 1996, the latter had just issued their version of "All Around My Hat" as a single. "The video was filmed at Christmas," Prior recalled. "We'd supported them, and I found myself down in the mosh pit. Francis saw me and told the audience, 'Oh look, there's a Maddy lookalike down there… Fuck me, it is Maddy!' I was hoyed over the barrier [to the stage], to join them for the encore. It was all very jolly." Status Quo's single is credited to "Status Quo with Maddy Prior from Steeleye Span" and reached number 47 in the charts.
Discography
Studio albums
Hark! The Village Wait (1970)
Please to See the King (1971)
Ten Man Mop, or Mr. Reservoir Butler Rides Again (1971)
Below the Salt (1972)
Parcel of Rogues (1973)
Now We Are Six (1974)
Commoners Crown (1975)
All Around My Hat (1975)
Rocket Cottage (1976)
Storm Force Ten (1977)
Sails of Silver (1980)
Back in Line (1986)
Tempted and Tried (1989)
Time (1996)
Horkstow Grange (1998)
Bedlam Born (2000)
Present – The Very Best of Steeleye Span (2002)
They Called Her Babylon (2004)
Winter (2004)
Bloody Men (2006)
Cogs, Wheels and Lovers (2009)
Wintersmith (2013)
Dodgy Bastards (2016)
Est'd 1969 (2019)
Lost recordings
In 1995 Steeleye recorded "The Golden Vanity" for the Time album, but it did not appear on it. It was released on the anthology The Best of British Folk Rock. Similarly they recorded "General Taylor" for Ten Man Mop but the song did not appear on it. It resurfaced on the compilation album Individually and Collectively instead. It was also included in another compilation The Lark in The Morning (2006), as well as re-issues of Ten Man Mop. "Bonny Moorhen" was recorded at the time of the Parcel of Rogues session. It appears, however, on the compilation album Original Masters, and is also packaged as part of A Parcel of Steeleye Span. The song "Somewhere in London", recorded for Back in Line (1986) was released instead as a B-side single, but returned to its proper place "Back in Line" when the album was reissued in 1991. "Staring Robin", a song about a man described by Tim Harries as an "Elizabethan psycho", was recorded during the Bedlam Born (2000) sessions, but it was left off the final album as it was deemed by Park Records to be too disturbing.
The track "The Holly and the Ivy" was released as the B-side of the Gaudete single and did not appear on any album. It was later released on the 'Steeleye Span: A rare collection' oddities compilation. Several Steeleye songs have never been recorded for a studio album and have only been made available in their live versions, including several tracks on 'Live at Last' and 'Tonight's the night... Live'.
Personnel
Members
Current members
Maddy Prior – vocals
Liam Genockey – drums, percussion
Andrew "Spud" Sinclair – guitars
Julian Littman – guitars
Jessie May Smart – violin
Roger Carey – bass
Violeta Vicci –
Former members
Tim Hart – guitars, dulcimer, mandolin, vocals
Ashley Hutchings – bass
Gay Woods – vocals, bodhran
Terry Woods – guitars, concertina, vocals
Martin Carthy – guitars, keyboards, vocals
Bob Johnson – guitars, vocals
Nigel Pegrum – drums, percussion, flute
John Kirkpatrick – accordion, vocals
Mark Williamson – bass
Chris Staines – bass
Dave Mattacks – drums, percussion
Tim Harries – bass, piano, guitars, vocals
Michael Gregory – drums, percussion
Terl Bryant – drums, percussion
Ken Nicol – guitars, vocals
Peter Knight – strings, keyboards, guitars, vocals
Pete Zorn – guitars, woodwind
Rick Kemp – bass, drums, vocals
Benji Kirkpatrick – bouzouki, banjo, vocals
Lineups
Timeline
Notes and references
Sources
External links
Official website
Steeleye Span's record label
1969 establishments in England
Articles which contain graphical timelines
Ashley Hutchings
British folk rock groups
Chrysalis Records artists
English folk rock groups
Musical groups established in 1969
RCA Records artists
United Artists Records artists
Female-fronted musical groups | false | [
"Get Into It is the seventh album by rapper/DJ, The Egyptian Lover. The album was released on June 2, 1998 for Egyptian Empire Records and was produced by Egytpian Lover. The album was a mild success and marked the first time since 1988's Filthy that Egyptian Lover made it to the Billboard Charts, making it to #72 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. The album, however, did not produce any hit singles.\n\nTrack listing\n\"Love Theme\" – 4:16\n\"Got Me Goin' (Crazy)\" – 6:49\n\"\"Me\"\" – 3:32\n\"90's Ladies\" – 3:26\n\"Let's Get It On\" – 3:47\n\"Get Into It\" – 2:42\n\"$\" – 5:09\n\"Tear The Roof Off\" – 4:36\n\"Dance Music\" – 5:13\n\"Jam\" – 4:09\n\nReferences\n\nEgyptian Lover albums\n1990 albums\nAlbums produced by Egyptian Lover",
"Back From the Tomb is the fourth studio album and fifth overall by rapper/DJ, Egyptian Lover. The album was released in 1994 for Egyptian Empire Records and was produced by Egyptian Lover. The album was Egyptian Lover's first since 1988's Filthy, however due to Gangsta rap dominating the charts and air waves, the album was a critical and commercial failure and did not make it on any billboard charts or produce any singles.\n\nTrack listing\n\"I'm So Freaky\" – 4:19\n\"Bounce That Bootie\" – 3:50\n\"I Need a Freak\" – 4:51\n\"Gotta Have Ya\" – 4:24\n\"My Lil Telephone Freak (Dial-A-Freak, Pt. 2)\" – 4:32\n\"Make It Talk to Me Baby\" – 3:35\n\"Work, Freak, Pump That Body\" – 7:52\n\"Yea!\" – 4:39\n\"World of Girls\" – 5:18\n\"Release to the Beat\" – 4:39\n\nReferences \n\nEgyptian Lover albums\n1994 albums\nAlbums produced by Egyptian Lover"
] |
[
"Steeleye Span",
"Breakup and comeback",
"When did they breakup?",
"Reported difficulties among band members saw a split during the recording of Bedlam Born.",
"Why did they break up",
"Woods reportedly was uncomfortable with the financial arrangements of the band, health problems forced Johnson into retirement,",
"What year did they comebkac?",
"In 2002, Steeleye Span reformed with a \"classic\" line-up (including Prior), bringing an end to the uncertainty of the previous couple of years.",
"Who were the members",
"Knight persuaded Prior and Genockey to rejoin, coaxed Johnson out of a health-induced retirement, and along with Kemp and Knight,",
"Did they produce any albums?",
"they released Present--The Very Best of Steeleye Span (2002), a 2-disc set of new recordings of the songs."
] | C_d8948e2e2537445bab89ef08e6ad5ea4_0 | What kind of music was it? | 6 | What kind of music was Steeleye Span's? | Steeleye Span | Reported difficulties among band members saw a split during the recording of Bedlam Born. Woods reportedly was uncomfortable with the financial arrangements of the band, health problems forced Johnson into retirement, and drummer Dave Mattacks' period as an unofficial member came to an end during this time. For a while the band consisted of just Peter Knight and Tim Harries, plus various guest musicians, as they fulfilled live commitments. Rick Kemp resumed playing with the band at some of these gigs, with Harries switching to lead guitar. This was an uncertain time for the future of the band, and when Harries announced he was not keen to continue his role, even the willingness of Kemp to return to the line-up full-time was not enough to prevent what was effectively a break-up. In 2002, Steeleye Span reformed with a "classic" line-up (including Prior), bringing an end to the uncertainty of the previous couple of years. Knight hosted a poll on his website, asking the band's fans which Steeleye songs they would most want to see the band re-record. Armed with the results, Knight persuaded Prior and Genockey to rejoin, coaxed Johnson out of a health-induced retirement, and along with Kemp and Knight, they released Present--The Very Best of Steeleye Span (2002), a 2-disc set of new recordings of the songs. But Bob Johnson's health prevented him from playing live shortly before the 2002 comeback tour, and he was replaced at the eleventh hour on guitar by Ken Nicol, formerly of the Albion Band. Nicol had been talking with Rick Kemp about forming a band when Kemp invited him to play for the tour, and this was to herald a significant return to form for the band. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Steeleye Span are an English folk rock band formed in 1969. Along with Fairport Convention, they are among the best known acts of the British folk revival, and were among the most commercially successful, thanks to their hit singles "Gaudete" and "All Around My Hat". They had four Top 40 albums and achieved significant sales of "All Around My Hat".
Throughout their history, Steeleye Span have seen many personnel changes. Their typical album is a collection of mostly traditional songs with one or two instrumental tracks of jigs and/or reels added; the traditional songs often include some of the Child Ballads. In their later albums there has been an increased tendency to include music written by the band members, but they have never moved completely away from traditional music, which draws upon pan-British traditions.
History
Early years
Steeleye Span began in late 1969, when London-born bass player Ashley Hutchings departed Fairport Convention, the band he had co-founded in 1967. Fairport had been involved in a road accident in 1969 in which the drummer, Martin Lamble, and Richard Thompson's girlfriend, Jeannie Franklyn, were killed and other band members injured. The survivors convalesced in a rented house near Winchester in Hampshire and worked on the album Liege & Lief. Despite the success of the album, Ashley Hutchings and the band's vocalist Sandy Denny left Fairport Convention.
In part, Hutchings departed because he wanted to pursue a different, more traditional, direction than the other members of Fairport did at that time. However, Fairport's co-founder, guitarist Simon Nicol, stated "Whatever the upfront reasons about musical differences and wanting to concentrate on traditional material, I think the accident was the underlying reason why Ashley felt he couldn't continue with us."
Hutchings' new band was formed after he met established duo Tim Hart and Maddy Prior on the London folk club scene, and the initial line-up was completed by husband and wife team Terry Woods (formerly of Sweeney's Men, later of The Pogues) and Gay Woods. The name Steeleye Span comes from a character in the traditional song "Horkstow Grange" (which they did not actually record until they released an album by that name in 1998). The song gives an account of a fight between John "Steeleye" Span and John Bowlin, neither of whom is proven to have been a real person. Martin Carthy gave Hart the idea to name the band after the song character. When the band discussed names, they decided to choose among the three suggestions "Middlemarch Wait", "Iyubidin's Wait", and "Steeleye Span". Although there were only five members in the band, six ballots appeared and "Steeleye Span" won. Only in 1978 did Hart confess that he had voted twice. The liner notes for their first album include thanks to Carthy for the name suggestion.
With two female singers, the original line-up was unusual for the time, and indeed, never performed live, as the Woodses departed the band shortly after the release of the group's debut album, Hark! The Village Wait (1970). While recording the album, the five members were all living in the same house, an arrangement that produced considerable tensions particularly between Hart and Prior on the one hand and the Woodses on the other. Terry Woods maintains that the members had agreed that if more than one person departed, the remaining members would select a new name, and he was upset that this did not happen when he and Gay Woods left the band. Gay and Terry were replaced by veteran folk musician Martin Carthy and fiddler Peter Knight in a longer-term line-up that toured small concert venues, recorded a number of BBC Radio Sessions, and recorded two albums – Please to See the King (1971) and Ten Man Mop, or Mr. Reservoir Butler Rides Again (1971). While the first album was traditionally performed – guitars, bass and with two guest drummers – Please to See the King was revolutionary in its hard electric sound and lack of drums.
In 1971, the then Steeleye Span line-up minus Maddy Prior contributed to two songs on Scottish folk musician Ray Fisher's album The Bonny Birdy; Martin Carthy and Ashley Hutchings were also involved in the selection and arrangement of some songs released on this album, whilst Ashley Hutchings wrote the sleeve notes. Furthermore, Martin Carthy and Peter Knight performed on four songs released on Roy Bailey's eponymous debut album in 1971.
A new direction
Shortly after the release of their third album, the band brought in manager Jo Lustig, who brought a more commercial sound to their recordings. At that time, traditionalists Carthy and Hutchings left the band to pursue purely folk projects. Their replacements were electric guitarist Bob Johnson and bass player Rick Kemp, who brought strong rock and blues influences to the sound. Rick Kemp subsequently married Maddy Prior and they had two children before divorcing. Their daughter Rose Kemp and their son Alex (who performs as Kemp) both followed their parents into the music industry.
Lustig signed them to the Chrysalis record label, for a deal that was to last for ten albums.
With the release of their fourth album, Below the Salt, later in 1972, the revised line-up had settled on a distinctive electrified rock sound, although they continued to play mostly arrangements of very traditional material, including songs dating back a hundred years or more. Even on the more commercial Parcel of Rogues (1973), the band had no permanent drummer but, in 1973, rock drummer Nigel Pegrum, who had previously recorded with Gnidrolog, The Small Faces and Uriah Heep, joined them, to harden up their sound (as well as occasionally playing flute and oboe).
Also that year the single "Gaudete" from Below the Salt became a Christmas hit single, reaching number 14 in the UK Singles Chart, although, being an a cappella piece, taken from the late renaissance song collection Piae Cantiones from Finland and sung entirely in Latin, this can neither be considered representative of the band's music, nor of the album from which it was taken. This proved to be their commercial breakthrough and saw them performing on Top of the Pops for the first time. They often include it as a concert encore. Their popularity was also helped by the fact that they often performed as an opening act for fellow Chrysalis artists Jethro Tull.
Their sixth album (and sixth member Pegrum's first with the band) was entitled Now We Are Six. Produced by Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson, the album includes the epic track "Thomas the Rhymer", which has been a part of the live set ever since. Although successful, the album is controversial among some fans for the inclusion of nursery rhymes sung by "The St. Eeleye School Choir" (band members singing in the style of children), and the cover of "To Know Him Is to Love Him", featuring a guest appearance from David Bowie on saxophone.
The attempts at humour continued on Commoners Crown (1975), which included Peter Sellers playing electric ukulele on the final track, "New York Girls". Their seventh album also included the epic ballad "Long Lankin" and novelty instrumental "Bach Goes To Limerick".
Mike Batt era
With their star now conspicuously ascendant, the band brought in producer Mike Batt to work on their eighth album, All Around My Hat, and their biggest success would come with the release of the title track as a single – it reached number 5 in the UK Singles Chart in late 1975. The single was also released in other European countries and gave them a breakthrough in the Netherlands and Germany. Other well-known tracks on the album included "Black Jack Davy" (sampled by rappers Goldie Lookin Chain on their track "The Maggot") and the rocky "Hard Times of Old England". While All Around My Hat was the height of the band's commercial success, the good times were not to last long. Despite touring almost every year since 1975, they have not had another hit single, nor any success in the album chart, since the late 1970s.
The follow-up album, Rocket Cottage (1976), also produced by Batt, proved to be a commercial flop, despite having much in common musically with its predecessor. The opening track, "London", was penned by Rick Kemp as a follow-up to "All Around My Hat", in response to a request from the record label that Kemp describes as "we'll have another one of those, please", and released as a single. The song failed to make the UK Chart, in complete contrast to "All Around My Hat", despite having much in common – a 12/8 time signature, upbeat tempo, solo verses and full harmony chorus. Rocket Cottage also included the experimental track "Fighting for Strangers" (with sparse vocals singing concurrently in a variety of keys) and, on the final track, excerpts of studio banter between the band members and a seemingly impromptu rendition of "Camptown Races", in which Prior gets the lyrics wrong.
At the time of their seventh album, Commoners Crown, the advent of punk saw the mainstream market turning away from folk rock almost overnight, heralding a downturn in commercial fortunes for the band. However, as a thank you to their committed fans (and also possibly to garner some publicity for their underperforming album), Steeleye Span showered attendees of a November 1976 concert in London with £8,500 in pound notes (then equivalent to US$13,600). The unannounced idea was Maddy Prior's and, remarkably, no-one was injured in the rush to grab the falling notes. Indeed, contemporary press reports indicated that it took some time for the crowd to even realise what was happening. Thanks to their connection with Mike Batt, band members appeared in Womble costumes on Top of the Pops, performing the Wombles hit "Superwomble".
Late 1970s and early 1980s
While they would never regain the commercial success of All Around My Hat, Steeleye remained popular among British folk rock fans and generally respected within the music industry. It has been widely reported that Peter Knight and Bob Johnson left the band to work on another project together, The King of Elfland's Daughter. The actual situation was more complex. Chrysalis Records agreed to allow Knight and Johnson to work on "King" only as a way to persuade the duo to continue working with Steeleye. Since the record company had no interest in "King" for its own sake, it made no effort to market the album. Chrysalis' ploy failed, however, and Knight and Johnson quit.
Their departure left a significant hole in the band. For the 1977 album, Storm Force Ten, early member Martin Carthy rejoined on guitar. When he originally joined the band for their second album, Carthy had tried to persuade the others to bring John Kirkpatrick on board but the band had chosen Knight instead. This time, Carthy's suggestion was accepted and Kirkpatrick's accordion replaced Knight's fiddle, which gave the recording a very different texture from the Steeleye sound of previous years. Kirkpatrick's one-man morris dances quickly became one of the highlights of the band's show. This line-up also recorded their first album outside of the studio, Live at Last, before a "split" at the end of the decade that proved to be short-lived. Carthy and Kirkpatrick had only intended to play with the band for a few months and had no interest in a longer association.
During 1977 and some time thereafter, Nigel Pegrum and Rick Kemp created a "porno punk" band called The Pork Dukes, using pseudonyms. The Pork Dukes released several albums and singles over the years.
The band were contractually obliged to record a final album for the Chrysalis label and, with Carthy and Kirkpatrick not wanting to rejoin the re-formed band, the door was open for Knight and Johnson to return, in 1980. The album Sails of Silver saw the band moving away from traditional material to a greater focus on self-penned songs, many with historical or pseudo-folk themes. Sails was not a commercial success, in part because Chrysalis chose not to promote the album aggressively but also because many fans felt uncomfortable with the band's new direction in its choice of material. The failure of the album left Hart unhappy enough that he decided to leave the band and give up commercial music entirely, in favour of a reclusive life overseas.
After Sails of Silver there were to be no new albums for several years, and Steeleye became a part-time touring band. The other members spent much of their time and energy working on their various other projects and the band went into a fitful hibernation. "Sails of Silver" was used as a theme song for the science fiction literary show "Hour of The Wolf", on NYC radio station WBAI 99.5FM since the 1980s. This introduced many younger US listeners to the band.
In 1981 Isla St Clair presented a series of four television programmes, called "The Song and The Story", about the history of some folk songs, which won the Prix Jeunesse. St Clair sang the songs, and The Maddy Prior Band did the backing instrumentals.
Wilderness years
For much of the 1980s, the members of the band tended to focus on outside projects of various sorts. Johnson opened a restaurant and then studied for a degree in psychology at the University of Hertfordshire. Pegrum ran a music studio. Prior and Kemp devoted much energy to their own band (The Maddy Prior Band; see Maddy Prior (solo albums)), recording 4 albums, and also had children together. The result was that the band's output dropped sharply, producing only three albums over the space of ten years (including a concert album), although the band continued touring.
After a quiet spell, the group's 12th studio album (and first without Tim Hart) Back in Line was released on the Flutterby label in 1986. With no "relaunch" as such, the band retained a low profile, although they covered "Blackleg Miner" (a composition to support a 1844 strike revised many times by folk artists in the 20th century) to show solidarity with striking miners. Some argued this became a political anthem for the NUM during the miners' strike of 1984–5 and was used to intimidate working miners. Steeleye Span continued to perform the song live and included a different version on their 1986 release Back in Line, which some claim puts greater stress on the line that threatens death against blacklegs .
In 1989, two long-term members departed. One was bassist Rick Kemp, who needed to recover from a serious shoulder injury, exacerbated by playing bass on stage. His eventual replacement (after two tours, each with a different bassist) was Tim Harries, who was brought in less than two weeks before the band was scheduled to start a tour. A friend of Pegrum's, Harries was a self-taught rock bassist, as well as a classically trained pianist and double bassist. With Harries on board, Steeleye released Tempted and Tried (1989), an album that formed the basis for their live set for many years to come.
Not long after recording Tempted, drummer Nigel Pegrum emigrated to Australia for personal relationship reasons. He was replaced by eccentric drummer Liam Genockey (most recently of rock band Gillan), easily identified by his long, plaited beard. He and Knight were simultaneously members of "Moiré Music", a free-jazz band with a classical flavour, led by Trevor Watts. Unlike Pegrum, who employed a traditional rock drumming style, Genockey favoured a more varied drumming style, influenced by both Irish and African drumming, in which he hit, brushed, and rubbed the various surfaces of his drums and cymbals, creating a more varied range of sounds. Consequently, when the band embarked on their 20th Anniversary Tour, they did so with a totally new rhythm section.
Both Harries and Genockey were interested in experimenting with the band's sound, and they helped re-energise the other members' interest in Steeleye. The band began reworking some of their earlier material, seeking new approaches to traditional favourites. For example, Johnson experimented with an arrangement of "Tam Lin", that involved a heavy Bulgarian influence, inspired by Eastern European versions of the Tam Lin legend. In 1992 the band released Tonight's the Night...Live, which demonstrates some of this new energy and direction. The band continued to tour the UK every year, and frequently toured overseas as well.
Maddy 'leaves the bus'
In 1995 almost all the past and present members of the band reunited for a concert to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the band (which would later be released as The Journey). The only former members not present were founding members Terry Woods, Mark Williamson, and Chris Staines.
A by-product of this gig was founding vocalist Gay Woods rejoining the band full-time, partly because Prior was experiencing vocal problems and, for a while, Steeleye toured with two female singers and released the album Time 1996, their first new studio album in seven years.
There were doubts over the future of the band when Prior announced her departure, in 1997, but Steeleye continued in a more productive vein than for many years, with Woods as lead singer, releasing Horkstow Grange (1998), and then Bedlam Born (2000). Fans of Steeleye's "rock" element felt that Horkstow Grange was too quiet and folk-oriented, while fans of the band's "folk" element complained that Bedlam Born was too rock-heavy. Woods received considerable criticism from fans, many of whom did not realise that she was one of the founding members and who compared her singing style unfavourably to Prior's. There was also disagreement among the band about what material to perform; Woods advocated performing old favourites such as "All Around My Hat" and "Alison Gross", while Johnson favoured a set that emphasised their newer material.
Liam Genockey had also left the band in 1997 and, on these albums, the drum kit was manned by Dave Mattacks, who was not an official member of the band.
Breakup and comeback
Reported difficulties among band members saw a split during the recording of Bedlam Born. Woods reportedly was uncomfortable with the financial arrangements of the band, health problems forced Johnson into retirement, and drummer Dave Mattacks' period as an unofficial member came to an end. Rick Kemp resumed playing with the band as a guest replacing Bob Johnson for the Bedlam Born tour, with Harries switching to lead guitar. Woods then left after this tour.
For a while the band consisted of just Peter Knight and Tim Harries, plus various guest musicians, as they fulfilled live commitments. This was an uncertain time for the future of the band, and when Harries announced he was not keen to continue his role, even the willingness of Kemp to return to the line-up full-time was not enough to prevent an 18 month hiatus while Peter Knight and the bands manager, John Dagnell, considered whether it was worth continuing.
In 2002 Steeleye Span reformed with a "classic" line-up (including Prior), bringing an end to the uncertainty of the previous couple of years. Knight hosted a poll on his website, asking the band's fans which Steeleye songs they would most want to see the band re-record. Armed with the results, Knight persuaded Prior and Genockey to rejoin, coaxed Johnson out of a health-induced retirement and, along with Kemp and Knight, they released Present—The Very Best of Steeleye Span (2002), a 2-disc set of new recordings of the songs.
Bob Johnson's health issues prevented him from playing live, shortly before the 2002 comeback tour, and he was replaced at the eleventh hour on guitar by Ken Nicol, formerly of the Albion Band. Nicol had been talking with Rick Kemp about forming a band, when Kemp invited him to play for the tour and this was to herald a significant return to form for the band.
Ken Nicol years
A revitalised lineup consisting of Prior, Kemp, Knight, Genockey and newcomer Ken Nicol released the album They Called Her Babylon early in 2004, to considerable acclaim. The band extensively toured the UK, Europe and Australia, and their relatively prolific output continued with the release of the Christmas album Winter later the same year, as the band ended a busy year of touring with a gala performance in London's Palladium theatre. In 2005 Steeleye Span were awarded the Good Tradition Award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, while the 2005 book, Electric Folk by Britta Sweers devotes much space to the band.
With a new sense of purpose and a stable line-up, the band carried out a UK tour in April and May 2006, followed by dates in Europe and an appearance at the 2006 Cropredy Festival, where they were the headline act on the opening night. The set started with "Bonny Black Hare" and finished with "All Around My Hat", with backing vocals from the Cropredy Crowd. The full play list is at Crop Log 2006. The tour was supported by a live album and DVD of their 2004 tour.
In November 2006 Steeleye released their studio album Bloody Men. Their Autumn/Winter tour started on 24 November 2006 in Basingstoke and ran until just before Christmas. They headlined at their namesake festival, Spanfest 2007 at Kentwell Hall, Suffolk from 27 to 29 July 2007, and returned for Spanfest 2008. However, as Kentwell Hall declined to hold the festival again, it was held at Stanford Hall in Leicestershire. A UK tour took place between 17 April and 16 May 2008.
For their 40th anniversary tour, in 2009, Pete Zorn joined the line-up on bass, as Rick Kemp was unwell. Kemp and Zorn both toured with the band for the winter tour that year, with Zorn playing guitar, and Kemp announced that he would be retiring at the end of the tour – a decision he later reversed, as usual.
Live at a Distance, a live double CD and DVD set, was released in April 2009 by Park Records, and their new studio album entitled Cogs, Wheels & Lovers was released on 26 October 2009. Several tracks from this album featured in the sets of the autumn tour.
Founding member Tim Hart died on 24 December 2009, at his home in La Gomera on the Canary Islands, at the age of 61, after being diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer.
Now We Are Six Again / Wintersmith
In June 2010 Ken Nicol announced that he was leaving Steeleye and the band reassembled for a Spring 2011 tour, with Julian Littman joining the line-up as guitarist, replacing Nicol. Multi-instrumentalist Pete Zorn also continued to play with the band, making them a six-piece for the first time in many years.
In 2011 they released Now We Are Six again, a live double album based on their set at the time, which included full performances of all the songs on their 1974 Now we are Six album.
In October 2013 the band released their 22nd studio album, Wintersmith, containing original songs based on the writings of Terry Pratchett. This was followed by a winter tour of the UK. This album marked a return to form and media attention as the album reached number 77 in the UK Albums Chart, had tracks played on BBC Radio 2 and led to various radio and TV interviews for Terry Pratchett and Maddy Prior as they promoted the album.
Following Pratchett's death, in March 2015, the band made an appearance at the memorial service for him, in April 2016, at Barbican Centre, London.
Peter Knight leaves / Dodgy Bastards album
In November 2013 Peter Knight announced that he would be leaving Steeleye Span at the end of 2013. He was replaced by Jessie May Smart. The band continued to tour regularly and recorded four new tracks for the 2014 'Deluxe' re-release of the Wintersmith album.
In the summer of 2015 they toured North America, with a reduced line up consisting of Prior, Littman, Smart, Genockey and, for the first time, Maddy's son, Alex Kemp, on bass, replacing his father, Rick. An autumn/winter tour of the UK followed with Rick Kemp back in the line-up, along with Andrew 'Spud' Sinclair, replacing Pete Zorn.
In April 2016 Pete Zorn was diagnosed with advanced lung and brain cancer. He died on 19 April.
Andrew Sinclair joined the band permanently in 2016 and the line up toured in October 2016 and announced the release of a new studio album, Dodgy Bastards, in November. The album is a mixture of original compositions, traditional songs and original tunes put to traditional lyrics.
Present day / 50th anniversary
After completing the 'Dodgy Bastards' tour, Rick Kemp retired and has been replaced by Roger Carey, on bass. For the November/December 2017 tour the band was joined by multi-instrumentalist and ex-Bellowhead member Benji Kirkpatrick. Benji is son of former Steeleye Span member, John Kirkpatrick. This seven-piece line-up, the first in the band's history, has continued to tour. 2019 was the band's 50th anniversary year and a new album was released to celebrate the anniversary: Est'd 1969. The band undertook two "50th Anniversary" tours in 2019, in Spring and November. The band played the 'Fields of Avalon' area at the Glastonbury Festival 2019, were the closing act at the Cornbury Music Festival 2019 and even made their debut in Russia at a folk festival called Chasti Sveta (Части света, Parts of the World), in Saint Petersburg. On 17 December they appeared at the Barbican Theatre, in London, with special guests and previous band members Peter Knight, Martin Carthy and John Kirkpatrick. For the November/December 2022 tour, with Jessie May Smart on maternity leave, Violeta Vicci joined the band, on violin. Benji Kirkpatrick left the band in early 2022.
Examples of collaborations
Prior sang backing vocals on the title track of Jethro Tull's 1976 album Too Old To Rock and Roll, Too Young To Die, the song "Salamander's Rag-Time" from the same session and their 1978 single "A Stitch In Time". Later, members of Jethro Tull backed Prior on her album Woman in the Wings. Ray Fisher's rare 1972 album Bonny Birdy includes one track with the High Level Ranters, one with Steeleye Span, and one with Martin Carthy.
Until the 1990s Steeleye often toured as part of a double bill, either supporting Status Quo, or featuring support from artists such as Rock Salt & Nails and The Rankin Family. When Steeleye Span supported Status Quo on tour, in 1996, the latter had just issued their version of "All Around My Hat" as a single. "The video was filmed at Christmas," Prior recalled. "We'd supported them, and I found myself down in the mosh pit. Francis saw me and told the audience, 'Oh look, there's a Maddy lookalike down there… Fuck me, it is Maddy!' I was hoyed over the barrier [to the stage], to join them for the encore. It was all very jolly." Status Quo's single is credited to "Status Quo with Maddy Prior from Steeleye Span" and reached number 47 in the charts.
Discography
Studio albums
Hark! The Village Wait (1970)
Please to See the King (1971)
Ten Man Mop, or Mr. Reservoir Butler Rides Again (1971)
Below the Salt (1972)
Parcel of Rogues (1973)
Now We Are Six (1974)
Commoners Crown (1975)
All Around My Hat (1975)
Rocket Cottage (1976)
Storm Force Ten (1977)
Sails of Silver (1980)
Back in Line (1986)
Tempted and Tried (1989)
Time (1996)
Horkstow Grange (1998)
Bedlam Born (2000)
Present – The Very Best of Steeleye Span (2002)
They Called Her Babylon (2004)
Winter (2004)
Bloody Men (2006)
Cogs, Wheels and Lovers (2009)
Wintersmith (2013)
Dodgy Bastards (2016)
Est'd 1969 (2019)
Lost recordings
In 1995 Steeleye recorded "The Golden Vanity" for the Time album, but it did not appear on it. It was released on the anthology The Best of British Folk Rock. Similarly they recorded "General Taylor" for Ten Man Mop but the song did not appear on it. It resurfaced on the compilation album Individually and Collectively instead. It was also included in another compilation The Lark in The Morning (2006), as well as re-issues of Ten Man Mop. "Bonny Moorhen" was recorded at the time of the Parcel of Rogues session. It appears, however, on the compilation album Original Masters, and is also packaged as part of A Parcel of Steeleye Span. The song "Somewhere in London", recorded for Back in Line (1986) was released instead as a B-side single, but returned to its proper place "Back in Line" when the album was reissued in 1991. "Staring Robin", a song about a man described by Tim Harries as an "Elizabethan psycho", was recorded during the Bedlam Born (2000) sessions, but it was left off the final album as it was deemed by Park Records to be too disturbing.
The track "The Holly and the Ivy" was released as the B-side of the Gaudete single and did not appear on any album. It was later released on the 'Steeleye Span: A rare collection' oddities compilation. Several Steeleye songs have never been recorded for a studio album and have only been made available in their live versions, including several tracks on 'Live at Last' and 'Tonight's the night... Live'.
Personnel
Members
Current members
Maddy Prior – vocals
Liam Genockey – drums, percussion
Andrew "Spud" Sinclair – guitars
Julian Littman – guitars
Jessie May Smart – violin
Roger Carey – bass
Violeta Vicci –
Former members
Tim Hart – guitars, dulcimer, mandolin, vocals
Ashley Hutchings – bass
Gay Woods – vocals, bodhran
Terry Woods – guitars, concertina, vocals
Martin Carthy – guitars, keyboards, vocals
Bob Johnson – guitars, vocals
Nigel Pegrum – drums, percussion, flute
John Kirkpatrick – accordion, vocals
Mark Williamson – bass
Chris Staines – bass
Dave Mattacks – drums, percussion
Tim Harries – bass, piano, guitars, vocals
Michael Gregory – drums, percussion
Terl Bryant – drums, percussion
Ken Nicol – guitars, vocals
Peter Knight – strings, keyboards, guitars, vocals
Pete Zorn – guitars, woodwind
Rick Kemp – bass, drums, vocals
Benji Kirkpatrick – bouzouki, banjo, vocals
Lineups
Timeline
Notes and references
Sources
External links
Official website
Steeleye Span's record label
1969 establishments in England
Articles which contain graphical timelines
Ashley Hutchings
British folk rock groups
Chrysalis Records artists
English folk rock groups
Musical groups established in 1969
RCA Records artists
United Artists Records artists
Female-fronted musical groups | false | [
"\"What Kind of Fool (Heard All That Before)\" is a song recorded by Australian recording artist Kylie Minogue, released as the lead single from her first greatest hits album Greatest Hits (1992). The song was written by Mike Stock, Minogue and Pete Waterman, and produced by Stock and Waterman.\n\nIt was Minogue's last original single to be released from the record label PWL, as although \"Celebration\" was released as the last single, it was a cover version, not an original single. The single was released on 10 August 1992 as a CD single and had received positive reception from music critics, many praising it as a good last single from PWL. The song peaked at number seventeen and fourteen in Australia and the United Kingdom, respectively.\n\nBackground\nThe song was taken from Minogue's first compilation album Greatest Hits as the first single and last original single to be released by her label PWL, but her second single from the album, \"Celebration\", was taken as the last single. The song was written by Stock and Waterman, as well as Minogue contributing in the lyrics and was produced by Stock and Waterman.\n\nThe cover featured Minogue photographed by close friend Katrina Jebb whilst on holiday in early 1992.\n\nReception\n\nCritical response\nThe song received generally mixed reviews from music critics. Some compared the song with \"I Should Be So Lucky\" and \"Better the Devil You Know\", but many suggested the song was regressive in comparison to Minogue's more mature work from the previous two years. Music Week commented, \"Typically bright and breezy, it is however a little slight of melody and hooks when compared to some ofher previous work – but that won't stop it from continuing her unbroken sequence of Top 20 hits.\" Tom Doyle from Smash Hits called it a \"tweety dance anthem\".\n \nMinogue admitted in an interview with the Australian Sunday Telegraph in October 2008, that she was not fond of the song: \"There's plenty I've cringed about,\" she says. \"There's one track I really didn't like called 'What Kind of Fool'. But I realised you can run, but you can't hide, so I embraced 'I Should Be So Lucky' and the rest of them.\" It also became one of Minogue's least performed tracks. It made its debut, as a short sample only on her 2005 tour Showgirl: The Greatest Hits Tour, and again in sample form on her North American Tour 2009. Minogue has also performed a chorus of the song on impromptu occasions during her 2012 Anti Tour and 2014's Kiss Me Once Tour.\n\nChart performance\nThe song did not receive great commercial attention, although became a moderate hit in the UK and Australia where it debuted at number thirty-seven (after five weeks it climbed and peaked at number seventeen.) The song debuted at number sixteen on the UK Singles Chart. later climbing to number fourteen where it peaked, staying in the charts for five weeks.\nThe song debuted at number twenty-two on the Irish Singles Chart, but became unsuccessful, falling off the charts after two weeks.\n\nMusic video\nThe music video features Minogue sunbathing in front of a blanket, while a male actor is behind it with a rose. It later showed the male and Minogue having an argument in a bedroom. In the bridge, it shows Minogue in a blue plaid dress dancing under a spotlight. She later teases her lover and dances atop a table. The music video later ends with Minogue kissing him and she walks out the room, while the man sits on a chair left alone. The song's reception itself became one of Minogue's least successful singles to date. The single's video recreated scenes made famous by Brigitte Bardot in the 1956 film And God Created Woman. The song was featured on MTV Classics channel in 2011 and was listed at number thirty-four on Evolution of... Kylie Minogue.\n\nFormats and track listings\nThese are the formats and track listings of major single releases of \"What Kind of Fool (Heard All That Before)\".\n\nCD single\n \"What Kind of Fool (Heard All That Before)\"\n \"What Kind of Fool (Heard All That Before)\" [No Tech No Logical Remix]\n \"What Kind of Fool (Heard All That Before)\" [Tech No Logical Remix]\n \"Things Can Only Get Better\" [Original 7\" Mix]\n\n7\" vinyl\n \"What Kind of Fool (Heard All That Before)\"\n \"Things Can Only Get Better\" [Original 7\" Mix]\n\n12\" vinyl\n \"What Kind of Fool (Heard All That Before)\" [No Tech No Logical Remix]\n \"What Kind of Fool (Heard All That Before)\" [Tech No Logical Remix]\n \"Things Can Only Get Better\" [Original 12\" Mix]\n\nCassette single\n \"What Kind of Fool (Heard All That Before)\"\n \"Things Can Only Get Better\" [Original 7\" Mix]\n\nDigital EP \n \"What Kind of Fool (Heard All That Before)\"\n \"What Kind of Fool (Heard All That Before)\" [No Tech No Logical Remix]\n \"What Kind of Fool (Heard All That Before)\" [Tech No Logical Remix]\n \"What Kind of Fool (Heard All That Before)\" [12\" Master Mix]\n \"What Kind of Fool (Heard All That Before)\" [Instrumental]\n \"What Kind of Fool (Heard All That Before)\" [Backing Track]\n \"Things Can Only Get Better\" [Original 7\" Mix]\n \"Things Can Only Get Better\" [Original 12\" Mix]\n \"Things Can Only Get Better\" [Original Instrumental]\n \"Things Can Only Get Better\" [Original Backing Track]\n\nLive performances\nMinogue performed the song on the following concert tours:\n Showgirl: The Greatest Hits Tour (excerpt during \"Smiley Kylie Medley\")\n Showgirl: The Homecoming Tour (excerpt during \"Everything Taboo Medley\")\n For You, for Me (excerpt during \"Everything Taboo Medley\")\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\n1992 singles\n1992 songs\nKylie Minogue songs\nPete Waterman Entertainment singles\nSongs written by Kylie Minogue\nSongs written by Mike Stock (musician)\nSongs written by Pete Waterman",
"What Kind of an American are you?, also known as What Kind of American are you?, is a World War I era song released in 1917. Albert Von Tilzer composed the music. Lew Brown and Charles R. McCarron wrote the lyrics. The song was published by Broadway Music Co. of New York, New York. On the cover is a gray drawing of Uncle Sam pointing. A map of the United States is featured on the lower half of the cover. The song was written for voice and piano.\n\nThe sheet music can be found at Pritzker Military Museum & Library.\n\nAnalysis\nThe song urges Americans (specifically immigrants) to use this war to prove their loyalty to the United States; whether that may be by fighting or by simply standing behind the US's actions. For those who show no support, this question is posed: \"What are you doing over here?\" It upholds the \"us-against-them\" mentality; the \"them\" in this case is Germany. The chorus is as follows:\nWhat kind of an American are you?\nIt's time to show what you intend to do\nIf they trample on Old Glory will you think that they are right,\nOr will you stand behind your land and fight with all your might?\nWhat kind of an American are you?\nThat's a question you'll have to answer to\nIf the Star Spangled Banner don't make you stand and cheer,\nThen what are you doing over here?\n\nExternal links\nWhat Kind of an American are You? at Wolfsonian FIU\nWhat Kind of an American are You? at Acumen\n\nReferences\n\nSongs about the United States\nAmerican patriotic songs\n1917 songs\nSongs of World War I\nSongs written by Albert Von Tilzer\nSongs with lyrics by Lew Brown\nSongs with music by Charles McCarron"
] |
[
"Diplo",
"Career"
] | C_48a01b9a3d1a4e2185b94a26818c6a03_1 | Where did he grow up? | 1 | Where did Diplo grow up? | Diplo | Diplo was born on November 10, 1978, in Tupelo, Mississippi, the son of Barbara Jean (nee Cox) and Thomas Pentz. He is of German and English descent. The influence of home-grown rap played a key role in helping shape his production style. He spent the majority of his youth in Miami, where he got a taste for the characteristic Miami bass. He began attending the University of Central Florida in 1997, and then moved to Philadelphia to continue his studies at Temple University, where he first garnered attention as a DJ. After frequently running into fellow DJ Low Budget, the two began throwing parties under the Hooked on Hollertronix moniker in 2003 as a way of maintaining control of what they were able to play during DJ gigs in Philadelphia. The success of these parties allowed the two to release mixtapes, both separate and together, gathering acclaim across the country. One such mixtape, Never Scared, was named one of the New York Times top ten albums of 2003, and the Hollertronix name became synonymous with parties featuring guests like Maluca Mala, Bun B, Spank Rock, M.I.A., among others. Hollertronix's sound has been described as "disparate genres to be smashed together for maximum attention-grabbing impact" an aesthetic which takes from the "organic, cohesive, whole" aesthetic of acts such as Bun B, Lil Jon, Drama, M.I.A., Bjork, Busta Rhymes, and others. Diplo accentuated the club aesthetic of his Hollertronix music for a more reflective sound on his solo debut, Florida, which was released on the Ninja Tune imprint, Big Dada Records. The album Florida was pressed twice, first with a CD and the second with a CD and DVD. The DVD was created by System D-128, another artist who has collaborated with Diplo on some audio and video projects. Before Florida's DVD accompaniment, another DVD surfaced called Diplo: "Banned in Libya" which was released by Money Studies, the first label to release a solo project by Diplo under his original DJ name Diplodocus. It was a 45 rpm record called "Thingamajawn" for which there is also a music video System D-128 directed. Similar to the Florida DVD, "Banned in Libya" is an experimental audio and video mix of some of Diplo's original music blended with a number of other unidentified sources. His particular affinity for one genre of music called baile funk, or favela funk, would spawn a series of mixtapes (Favela on Blast, Favela Strikes Back), which served to bring the Brazilian dance music of the ghettos to the United States. It was not long before his Hooked on Hollertronix parties would provide him the success necessary to move to the next logical step and build a studio where music would become his full-time focus. With this goal in mind, Diplo built "The Mausoleum," a video studio, recording studio, record label office, gallery, and event space in Philadelphia. Since its inception, The Mausoleum has become the home to recordings by artists like Christina Aguilera, Shakira, M.I.A., Santigold, Spank Rock, Plastic Little, Blaqstarr, Paper Route Gangstaz, and hosted concerts by Glass Candy, Skream, Boys Noize, Nicos Gun, and more. CANNOTANSWER | He spent the majority of his youth in Miami, | Thomas Wesley Pentz (born November 10, 1978), known professionally as Diplo, is an American DJ, songwriter and record producer based in Los Angeles. He is the co-creator and lead member of the electronic dancehall music project Major Lazer, a member of the supergroup LSD with Sia and Labrinth, a member of electronic duo Jack Ü with producer and DJ Skrillex, and a member of Silk City with Mark Ronson. He founded and manages record company Mad Decent, as well as co-founding the non-profit organization Heaps Decent. His 2013 EP, Revolution, debuted at number 68 on the US Billboard 200. The EP's title track was later featured in a commercial for Hyundai and is featured on the WWE 2K16 soundtrack.
Diplo worked with and dated British musician M.I.A., an artist who is credited with giving him exposure in his early career. Later, he M.I.A., and fellow producer Switch created a Jamaican dancehall project and cartoon series titled Major Lazer. Since then, Diplo has worked on production and mixtape projects with many other pop artists, such as Gwen Stefani, Die Antwoord, Britney Spears, Madonna, Shakira, Beyoncé, Ellie Goulding, No Doubt, Justin Bieber, Usher, Snoop Dogg, Trippie Redd, Chris Brown, CL, G-Dragon, Bad Bunny, Kali Uchis, Joji, MØ and Poppy. His alias, short for Diplodocus, derives from his childhood fascination with dinosaurs.
Career
Early life
Diplo was born on November 10, 1978, in Tupelo, Mississippi, the son of Barbara Jean (née Cox) and Thomas Pentz. He is of German and English descent. Diplo graduated from Hendersonville High School in Hendersonville, TN.
The influence of home-grown rap played a key role in helping shape Diplo's production style. Although he was born in Mississippi, he spent the majority of his youth in Miami, where he got a taste for the characteristic Miami bass. He began attending the University of Central Florida in 1997. During his time at UCF, he became a DJ at local radio station WPRK, the radio station at Rollins College. He moved to Philadelphia to continue his studies at Temple University, where he first garnered attention as a DJ. After frequently running into fellow DJ Low Budget, the two began throwing parties under the Hooked on Hollertronix moniker in 2003 as a way of maintaining control of what they were able to play during DJ gigs in Philadelphia. The success of these parties allowed the two to release mixtapes, both separately and together, gathering acclaim across the country. One such mixtape, Never Scared, was named one of The New York Times top ten albums of 2003, and the Hollertronix name became synonymous with parties featuring guests like Maluca Mala, Bun B, Spank Rock, M.I.A., among others. Hollertronix's sound has been described as "disparate genres to be smashed together for maximum attention-grabbing impact" an aesthetic which takes from the "organic, cohesive, whole" aesthetic of acts such as Bun B, Lil Jon, Drama, M.I.A., Björk, Busta Rhymes, and others.
Diplo accentuated the club aesthetic of his Hollertronix music for a more reflective sound on his solo debut, Florida, which was released on the Ninja Tune imprint, Big Dada Records. The album Florida was pressed twice, first with a CD and the second with a CD/DVD Set. The DVD was put together by System D-128, artist and filmmaker who has also collaborated with Diplo on audio and film projects. Before Floridas DVD accompaniment, another DVD surfaced called Diplo: "Banned in Libya" which was released by Money Studies, the first label to release a solo project by Diplo under his original DJ name Diplodocus. It was a 45 rpm record called "Thingamajawn" for which there is also a music video System D-128 directed. Similar to the Florida DVD, "Banned in Libya" is an experimental audio and video mix of some of Diplo's original music blended with a number of other unidentified sources. His particular affinity for one genre of music called baile funk, or favela funk, would spawn a series of mixtapes (Favela on Blast, Favela Strikes Back), which served to bring the Brazilian dance music of the ghettos to the United States.
It was not long before his Hooked on Hollertronix parties would provide him the success necessary to move to the next logical step and build a studio where music would become his full-time focus. With this goal in mind, Diplo built "The Mausoleum", a video studio, recording studio, record label office, gallery, and event space in Philadelphia. Since its inception, The Mausoleum has become the home to recordings by artists like Christina Aguilera, Shakira, M.I.A., Santigold, Spank Rock, Plastic Little, Blaqstarr, Paper Route Gangstaz, and hosted concerts by Glass Candy, Skream, Boys Noize, Nicos Gun, and more.
M.I.A.
After hearing one of his songs in 2004, M.I.A. approached Diplo when he was DJing one night at the Fabric Club in London. Coincidentally, Diplo was playing her songs "Galang" and "Fire Fire" as she entered the club, which he got from a worker at i-D magazine. Diplo added, "She came through and she wanted to meet me 'cause she'd heard my single and the funk mix from one of her A&Rs and she just thought I was right up her alley. Besides me being a white dude from Florida and her being a Sri Lankan girl in England, everything else was the same: [We were both] film graduates, [listened to] all the same music when we were kids, we're going in the same direction right now in music, it was amazing... I always wanted to make a beat with her, but all my beats were really shitty at the time."M.I.A. Confronts the Haters . Pitchfork. Retrieved on October 23, 2010. The two eventually collaborated on a mixtape, Piracy Funds Terrorism Vol. 1, where Arular track acapellas were mashed with other artists' songs. It was listed among 'Albums of the Year' by The New York Times and Pitchfork Media.Booty Call – Page 1 – Music – New York . Village Voice (December 14, 2004). Retrieved on October 23, 2010. The two continued to work together after the release. He was the tour DJ on her 2005 Arular Tour.
Diplo continued to work with M.I.A. and, through her, met London DJ Switch. Together, they created the Grammy-nominated track "Paper Planes", peaking at number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. In 2015, during an interview with Rolling Stone, M.I.A said that Diplo resented her rise to fame in 2005, that he tried to hold her back, and fought with her about becoming successful.
Mad Decent
From this, Diplo went from an unknown DJ to taking off as a producer, landing him collaborations with artists like Shakira, Robyn, Kid Cudi, Bruno Mars, No Doubt and Snoop Dogg, as well as work with Maluca, Kid Sister, Die Antwoord, Alex Clare, Rolo Tomassi, Amanda Blank and Dark Meat. After taking a trip to Brazil to investigate the favela music scene, and fascinated with the energy the scene had to offer, Diplo decided to import a dance-funk group Bonde do Rolê from Brazil for release on his Mad Decent record label (also housed within 'The Mausoleum'). This group would serve to define funk carioca in the United States, spawning a host of others to join the movement. Diplo also spent some time documenting the music, and the favelas of Brazil.
Although favela funk remained an interest (the Favela on Blast documentary just saw release in 2009), his Mad Decent imprint would serve as a blank palette for Diplo to showcase the myriad different sounds he had come across while touring around the world. September 2009 even saw Diplo travel to China to play with Steve Aoki at a show organised by promoters Split Works. Diplo quickly developed a reputation for his extensive touring. In the April 2010 issue of Rolling Stone, Diplo was touted as one of '40 Reasons to be Excited About Music'. This kind of jet setting pushed his label far beyond the favela funk genre with which it initially began. Since its foundation in 2005 Diplo's Mad Decent label has released music by Santigold, Baauer, Lil' Jon, Gucci Mane, Peter Bjorn and John, Rusko, Bosco Delrey, Buraka Som Sistema, Savage Skulls, Dana Sibuea, Oliver Twizt, Jamie Fanatic, Douster, Boy 8-Bit, and Popo.Diplo's Mad Decent Label Teams Up With Downtown Recordings . Pitchfork (March 31, 2009). Retrieved on October 23, 2010.
As Mad Decent continues to grow and release tracks by big-name artists, Diplo's solo career continues to grow at the same rate. He's produced for artists such as Beyoncé, Justin Bieber, Lil Wayne, Britney Spears, Wale, Chris Brown, Ariana Grande, 2 Chainz, Travis Porter, Usher, Azealia Banks, Iggy Azalea, and AlunaGeorge. On October 16, 2015, Diplo released "Be Right There" along with fellow producer Sleepy Tom. The single charted in multiple countries and has over 100 million streams on Spotify. On April 23, 2016, Beyoncé released her critically acclaimed album, Lemonade. Diplo produced two tracks on the album, "All Night", and one of the three singles, "Hold Up". The album debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 and was certified platinum on June 8, 2016. Along with producing tracks on Beyoncé's Lemonade, Diplo collaborated with Canadian DJ duo Zeds Dead on the release "Blame", which featured Swedish singer Elliphant. The track was officially released on July 14, 2016, via Zeds Dead's SoundCloud.
Major Lazer
Diplo's first collaborative full-length record was with Switch, this time under the guise of Major Lazer. Diplo incorporates such disparate influences as Miami Bass and Baile Funk into the high-tech eclecticism of his productions.
After landing a deal with Downtown Records before even recording a note of music, Diplo and Switch set out for Jamaica to record a project that, like most of Diplo's projects before it, would highlight the little-known subgenres, this time of Jamaica's dancehall scene. The two received support by many already established Jamaican artists such as Vybz Kartel, Elephant Man and Ms. Thing, and the resulting record Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do also featured vocals from Santigold, Amanda Blank, Nina Sky, Ricky Blaze and more. When discussing the Major Lazer project, Diplo described the dancehall sound as being "
the end of the world, all the little influences—house, soca, oldies, R&B, jazz—it all ends up in Jamaica." The track "Pon De Floor" from Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do was sampled for Beyoncé's single "Run the World (Girls)".
Major Lazer's first album was followed up with an EP, Lazers Never Die, which was released in 2010. Switch left Major Lazer in 2011, and was replaced by DJs Jillionaire and Walshy Fire. A second album, Free the Universe, was scheduled to be released in November 2012 but was delayed to February 2013, and then to April 15. It features artists such as Ezra Koenig, Bruno Mars, Ward 21, Wyclef, The Partysquad, Shaggy, Tyga, Flux Pavilion and Wynter Gordon. On February 8, 2015, during the Grammy Award ceremony, Diplo revealed details of the third Major Lazer album. He confirmed that the album would incorporate artists such as Ariana Grande, Ellie Goulding and Pusha T. It is called Peace Is the Mission. The first single, "Lean On", is a collaboration with French producer DJ Snake and features vocals from Danish recording artist MØ. The second single, "Powerful", featuring Ellie Goulding and Tarrus Riley, was released simultaneously with the album on June 1, 2015. On November 11, 2015, "Lean On" became Spotify's Most Streamed Song of All Time with over 800 million streams to date. Along with the streaming title, the official video for "Lean On" became one of the most viewed videos on YouTube. It currently has more than 2 billion views. Along with the streaming and viewing milestones, "Lean On" would also go on to achieve double platinum status.
On July 22, 2016, the group released the single "Cold Water", a collaboration with Canadian artist Justin Bieber and Danish singer MØ. The track has already reached over 200 million streams on Spotify, and achieved international commercial success, reaching number one in multiple countries. On November 29, 2016, Major Lazer and Bad Royale released "My Number", a track that samples "54-46 That's My Number" which Pitchfork describes as, "a genre-defining classic from legendary ska/reggae group Toots and the Maytals." This release contained newly recorded vocals from frontman Toots Hibbert specifically designed for Major Lazer, which changed the original lyrics to incorporate the group into the song while keeping the original melody. Their fifth studio album, Music Is the Weapon, features collaborations with Alessia Cara, French Montana, Anitta, Khalid, Skip Marley, Marcus Mumford, J Balvin, El Alfa, Mr Eazi and Nicki Minaj.
Jack Ü
Jack Ü is an American duo made up of Skrillex and Diplo. Jack Ü's debut performance took place at the Mad Decent Block Party in San Diego on September 15, 2013, which is a nationwide tour that record label Mad Decent puts together in order to showcase different artists signed to the label. Diplo announced the project by releasing the Mad Decent Block Party lineup with Jack Ü playing at multiple stops on the tour. After some guessing by many of who Jack Ü was, Diplo finally came out to reveal that "Jack Ü ... means Skrillex and Diplo together". After their New York debut at Electric Zoo was canceled in late August, the duo would soon return to the city for something bigger. On December 31, 2014, Jack Ü sold out Madison Square Garden for one of their biggest performances to date. The duo had support from Rudimental, Yellow Claw and A$AP Ferg.
On February 27, 2015 they released Skrillex and Diplo Present Jack Ü, a co-release between their respective labels OWSLA and Mad Decent. It featured tracks with 2 Chainz, Kiesza, Justin Bieber, AlunaGeorge and Missy Elliott. The first single "Take Ü There" featuring Kiesza was the lead single on the duo's debut album. The single was released as the lead on October 4, 2014. It reached number sixteen on the UK Dance Chart. The official second single, "Where Are Ü Now", was released simultaneously with the album. The song which took both artists in a different direction, featured a collaboration with Canadian pop star Justin Bieber. Peaking at number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100, and number 3 on the UK Singles Chart, "Where Are Ü Now" became the duo's largest hit on both charts thus far. The song would also go on to peak at number three in Australia, which was the highest charting for the single worldwide. The song had huge success in Europe as well, reaching the top-ten in Sweden and Finland, and the top-twenty in Norway, the Czech Republic, Denmark and Slovakia. The final place it had charting success was Bieber's home country, Canada, where it would end up peaking at number 6. On March 29, 2015, Jack Ü closed the main stage at Ultra Music Festival in Miami.
In 2016, the duo won two Grammy Awards for "Grammy Award for Best Dance Album" for "Skrillex and Diplo present Jack Ü" and "Grammy Award for Best Dance" for "Where Are Ü Now?" with Justin Bieber. The latter was also Bieber's first Grammy. They played two sold-out shows including Coachella Valley Music Festival in Indio, California and Lollapalooza in São Paulo, Brazil.
LSD
LSD is a pop supergroup composed of Diplo, Australian singer Sia, and British musician Labrinth. The trio have released five singles thus far, with their song "Thunderclouds" being featured in a commercial for the Samsung Galaxy Note9. Their singles "Genius" and "Audio" have seen official remixes from producers Banx & Ranx and Cid, respectively. LSD's debut album Labrinth, Sia & Diplo Present... LSD was released on April 12, 2019.
Silk City
On January 2, 2018 Diplo announced a new project with British DJ and singer Mark Ronson, entitled Silk City. The duo released their debut single "Only Can Get Better" featuring Daniel Merriweather on May 23, 2018. Their second single, "Feel About You" featuring Mapei, was released on July 20, 2018. The duo's third single, "Loud", saw Diplo reunite with previous collaborators GoldLink & Desiigner. Their 4th and most recent single features British singer/songwriter Dua Lipa, called "Electricity", which was released on September 5, 2018. The music video was released on the same day. In 2018, "Electricity" won a Grammy at the 61st Annual GRAMMY Awards for Best Dance Recording.
Additional work
Beyond Major Lazer and Mad Decent, Diplo has continued to show support for 'all the little influences', the lesser-known music scenes around the globe. Most recently his focus shifted to the Bounce scene in New Orleans, Louisiana for a television piece commissioned by Current.tv. Diplo was nominated for Non-Classical Producer of the Year at the 55th Grammy Awards and 58th Grammy Awards. Diplo had a late night show on BBC Radio 1 / 1Xtra on Saturdays 11:00 p.m.–1:00 a.m. (GMT) called 'Diplo and Friends' where he curates mixes from some of biggest names in dance music. He has now resigned from BBC Radio 1, per 2021. Diplo also has several syndicated Diplo and Friends shows in the United States in Boston, Bakersfield, Cleveland, Columbus, Las Vegas, Spokane, Albuquerque, Lafayette, Denver, and most notably on Los Angeles' 98.7 every Sunday at 9 p.m.
Beginning on October 2, 2015, Diplo, Jillionaire, Walshy Fire and Eric Hamilton debuted "Lazer Sound" on Apple Music's Beats 1. The newest radio show, curated by Diplo, and the Major Lazer crew, consists of interviews, moments on tour and brand new music. The show is on the air every other Saturday of the month. Throughout 2015 and 2016, Diplo performed with Major Lazer and Jack Ü on numerous live TV and award shows. He performed on The Tonight Show, Good Morning America, the iHeart Radio Music Festival, The NRJ Music Awards, the 2015 Latin Grammy Awards and the 2016 Grammy Awards.
In February 2016, Diplo was one of the first and very few mainstream Western artists to perform in Islamabad, Pakistan alongside Adil Omar, Talal Qureshi, SNKM and Elliphant. In 2018 Diplo returned to with Major Lazer for Islamabad's first Mad Decent Block Party alongside Adil Omar, SNKM, Talal Qureshi, Valentino Khan, Chrome Sparks, Lyari Underground and a host of other acts.
In January 2017, Diplo and Autoerotique (a house group from Toronto) released a music video titled "Waist Time" which was filmed in a warehouse in London. He was nominated for two Grammy's in 2016 (The 59th Annual GRAMMY Awards) for Album of the Year (for producer of Beyoncé's album Lemonade and producer for Justin Bieber's album Purpose). He also sang a song "Phurrr" in Bollywood in Imtiaz Ali's film Jab Harry Met Sejal starring Shah Rukh Khan and Anushka Sharma. In 2019, Diplo released the song "So Long" under the moniker Thomas Wesley, featuring American country singer Cam. In a press release, he stated that there are "several forthcoming collaborations with country artists" planned following "So Long", which came in the form of Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley, Chapter 1: Snake Oil released in 2020. The album included the song "Heartless" featuring Morgan Wallen.
Personal life
Diplo has three sons: Lockett and Lazer, with Kathryn Lockhart; and Pace, with Jevon King.
He dated rapper M.I.A. from 2003 to 2008. M.I.A. later said that their tumultuous relationship involved emotional abuse from him. Diplo dated singer Katy Perry for nearly a year in 2014 and 2015.
Diplo is a soccer and cricket fan and supporter of the U.S. men's national team. He also supports Arsenal F.C. and has attended two Tigres UANL matches. He created a mix for the 2014 World Cup and produced the 2018 World Cup official song "Live It Up". Diplo purchased a minority share of Phoenix Rising FC of the USL Championship on January 27, 2016. He stated: "I've been really fortunate to travel all over the world and experience different cultures through music. Wherever I am, Jamaica, Spain, England, China, etc., soccer is a social constant. I see soccer the same way I see music, as a connective tissue linking the world's cultures."
On February 24, 2016, Diplo endorsed Bernie Sanders as the Democratic presidential nominee. Sanders' ad "It's A Revolution" is soundtracked by Diplo's 2013 track "Revolution". On June 9, 2016, Diplo was featured on the cover of the American entertainment media magazine Billboard.
On May 1, 2019, Diplo live-streamed Joe Jonas' Las Vegas wedding to Sophie Turner on Instagram, "not knowing it was a serious wedding". Soon after the couple told the tabloids that Diplo ruined their wedding, the DJ responded on social media. Five months later, Diplo and the Jonas Brothers released a song titled "Lonely". The song's official music video chronicles Diplo's attempts to make amends with Joe Jonas and his brothers.
On July 9, 2020, Diplo joined Senator Kamala Harris and other artists for the "Get Up, Stand Up!" virtual fundraiser in support of Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign.
Sexual misconduct allegations
In November 2020, a Los Angeles woman named Shelly Auguste was granted a restraining order against Diplo. She alleged that he distributed revenge porn of her after she accused him of grooming her and other "very young girls", nonconsensual sexual behaviour, hiring a private investigator in June 2020 to "scare [her] into remaining silent about [their] relationship" and to "scare other women out of coming forward", and threatening others who supported her, in a Twitter thread in October. According to court documents, the woman, who met Diplo in the summer of 2014, when she was 17 and he was 36, began trading sexually explicit images and had an intimate relationship. Sometime later, Diplo filed and was granted a restraining order of his own against Auguste.
The same year, rapper Azealia Banks, who had been discovered by Diplo on social media when she was seventeen, claimed the producer helped her start her career in exchange for favours of sexual nature when she was underage in the fifth episode of her SoundCloud podcast, "Cheapys Two Cents".
In 2021, an unnamed woman sued Diplo for allegedly filming her while taking advantage of her sexually while she was intoxicated and unable to consent after a 2019 Las Vegas concert. She claims Diplo "invited her to a room, kicked out her friends, and would not let her leave until she performed oral sex". 10 days later, the accuser dropped her case, expressing regret about filing it.
DiscographyStudio albums'''
Florida (2004)
Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley, Chapter 1: Snake Oil (as Thomas Wesley) (2020)
MMXX (2020)
Diplo (2022)
Filmography
Film
Television
Awards and nominations
In 2009, he was nominated for his first Grammy Award for Record of the Year for "Paper Planes" shared with M.I.A., Switch. He was then nominated for a second Grammy Award in 2012, for Best Rap Song for "Look at Me Now" shared with Chris Brown, Lil Wayne and Busta Rhymes. Diplo was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2013 and 2016 in the category Producer of the Year, Non-Classic. In 2016, he won Grammy Awards for Best Dance/Electronic Album for Skrillex and Diplo Present Jack Ü and Best Dance Recording for "Where Are Ü Now".
Camerimage
!Ref.
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|2012
| "Express Yourself"
|rowspan=2|Best Music Video
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|
|-
|2013
| "Earthquake"
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|
GAFFA-Prisen Awards
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| rowspan=2|2019
| Himself
| Best International Artist
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|-
| California| Best International Album
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Grammy Awards
|-
|| 2009
| "Paper Planes"
|Record of the Year
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|-
|| 2012
| "Look at Me Now"
|Best Rap Song
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|-
|| 2013
|rowspan="2"| Diplo
|rowspan="2"| Producer of the Year, Non-Classical
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|-
| rowspan="3"| 2016
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|"Where Are Ü Now"
| Best Dance Recording
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|Skrillex and Diplo Present Jack Ü
| Best Dance/Electronic Album
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| rowspan="2"| 2017
| Lemonade
| rowspan="2"|Album of the Year
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| Purpose
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|-
| 2019
| "Electricity"
| Best Dance Recording
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DJ Magazine top 100 DJs
Electronic Music Awards
International Dance Music Awards
!Ref.
|-
| rowspan=3|2011
| rowspan=2|"C'mon"
| Best Electro/Tech House Track
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| rowspan=3|
|-
| Best Trance Track
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|-
| rowspan=8|Himself
| Best Remixer
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|rowspan=2|2013
| Best North American DJ
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| rowspan=2|
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| rowspan=2|Best Producer
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|-
| rowspan=2|2014
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| rowspan=2|
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| rowspan=2|Best North American DJ
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| rowspan=5|2015
|
| rowspan=5|
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| Best Producer
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|-
| Best Dubstep/Drum & Bass DJ
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| "Dirty Vibe"
| Best Dubstep/Drum & Bass Track
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| rowspan=2|Diplo and Friends| rowspan=2|Best Podcast or Radio Mixshow
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| rowspan=5|2016
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|rowspan=5|
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| rowspan=4|Himself
| Best Producer
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| Best Global DJ
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| Best North American DJ
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| Best EDM/Pop DJ
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iHeartRadio Music Awards
!Ref.
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| 2021
| Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley, Chapter 1: Snake Oil| Dance Album of the Year
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PLUG Awards
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| rowspan=2|2005
| Himself
| New Artist of the Year
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| Favela On Blast| rowspan=2|DJ Album of the Year
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| rowspan=2|2006
| FabricLive.24|
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| Himself
| Record Producer of the Year
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| 2007
| FabricLive.24''
| DJ Album of the Year
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UK Music Video Awards
!Ref.
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| 2013
| "Earthquake"
| Best Styling in a Video
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References
External links
1978 births
21st-century American rappers
21st-century American singers
Ableton Live users
American DJs
American expatriates in England
American hip hop DJs
American hip hop musicians
American hip hop record producers
American male songwriters
American people of English descent
American people of German descent
Atlantic Records artists
Because Music artists
BBC Radio 1 presenters
BBC Radio 1Xtra presenters
Electronic dance music DJs
Grammy Award winners
Living people
LSD (group) members
Mad Decent artists
Major Lazer members
Musicians from Florida
People from Miami
Phoenix Rising FC chairmen and investors
Record producers from Florida
Silk City (duo) members
Singers from Florida
Songwriters from Florida
Southern hip hop musicians
Temple University alumni | true | [
"Grow Up may refer to:\nAdvance in age\nProgress toward psychological maturity\nGrow Up (book), a 2007 book by Keith Allen\nGrow Up (video game), 2016 video game\n\nMusic\nGrow Up (Desperate Journalist album), 2017\nGrow Up (The Queers album), 1990\nGrow Up (Svoy album), 2011\nGrow Up, a 2015 EP by HALO\n\"Grow Up\" (Olly Murs song)\n\"Grow Up\" (Paramore song)\n\"Grow Up\" (Simple Plan song)\n\"Grow Up\", a song by Rockwell\n\"Grow Up\", a song from the Bratz album Rock Angelz\n\"Grow Up\", a song by Cher Lloyd from Sticks and Stones\n\nSee also\nGrowing Up (disambiguation)\nGrow Up, Tony Phillips, a 2013 film by Emily Hagins",
"\"When I Grow Up\" is the second single from Swedish recording artist Fever Ray's self-titled debut album, Fever Ray (2009).\n\nCritical reception\nPitchfork Media placed \"When I Grow Up\" at number 36 on the website's list of The Top 100 Tracks of 2009.\n\nMusic video\nThe music video for \"When I Grow Up\" was directed by Martin de Thurah. He said of the video's visual statement:\n\n\"That initial idea was something about something coming out of water—something which was about to take form – a state turning into something new. And a double headed creature not deciding which to turn. But the idea had to take a simpler form, to let the song grow by itself. I remembered a photo I took in Croatia two years ago, a swimming pool with its shining blue color in a grey foggy autumn landscape.\"\n\nThe video premiered on Fever Ray's YouTube channel on 19 February 2009. It has received over 12 million views as of March 2016.\n\n\"When I Grow Up\" was placed at number three on Spins list of The 20 Best Videos of 2009.\n\nTrack listings\niTunes single\n\"When I Grow Up\" – 4:31\n\"When I Grow Up\" (Håkan Lidbo's Encephalitis Remix) – 5:59\n\"When I Grow Up\" (D. Lissvik) – 4:28\n\"Memories from When I Grew Up (Remembered by The Subliminal Kid)\" – 16:41\n\"When I Grow Up\" (Van Rivers Dark Sails on the Horizon Mix) – 9:16\n\"When I Grow Up\" (We Grow Apart Vocal Version by Pär Grindvik) – 6:02\n\"When I Grow Up\" (We Grow Apart Inspiration - Take 2 - By Pär Grindvik) – 7:59\n\"When I Grow Up\" (Scuba's High Up Mix) – 6:17\n\"When I Grow Up\" (Scuba's Straight Down Mix) – 5:54\n\"When I Grow Up\" (Video) – 4:04\n\nSwedish 12\" single \nA1. \"When I Grow Up\" (Van Rivers Dark Sails on the Horizon Mix) – 9:10\nA2. \"When I Grow Up\" (D. Lissvik) – 4:28\nB1. \"Memories from When I Grew Up (Remembered by The Subliminal Kid)\" – 16:41\n\nUK promo CD single \n\"When I Grow Up\" (Edit) – 3:42\n\"When I Grow Up\" (D. Lissvik Radio Edit) – 3:19\n\nNominations\n\nAppearances in other media\nThe song was used as part of the soundtrack for the video game Pro Evolution Soccer 2011.\n\nReferences\n\n2009 singles\n2009 songs\nFever Ray songs\nSongs written by Karin Dreijer"
] |
[
"Diplo",
"Career",
"Where did he grow up?",
"He spent the majority of his youth in Miami,"
] | C_48a01b9a3d1a4e2185b94a26818c6a03_1 | What was his first job? | 2 | What was Diplo's first job? | Diplo | Diplo was born on November 10, 1978, in Tupelo, Mississippi, the son of Barbara Jean (nee Cox) and Thomas Pentz. He is of German and English descent. The influence of home-grown rap played a key role in helping shape his production style. He spent the majority of his youth in Miami, where he got a taste for the characteristic Miami bass. He began attending the University of Central Florida in 1997, and then moved to Philadelphia to continue his studies at Temple University, where he first garnered attention as a DJ. After frequently running into fellow DJ Low Budget, the two began throwing parties under the Hooked on Hollertronix moniker in 2003 as a way of maintaining control of what they were able to play during DJ gigs in Philadelphia. The success of these parties allowed the two to release mixtapes, both separate and together, gathering acclaim across the country. One such mixtape, Never Scared, was named one of the New York Times top ten albums of 2003, and the Hollertronix name became synonymous with parties featuring guests like Maluca Mala, Bun B, Spank Rock, M.I.A., among others. Hollertronix's sound has been described as "disparate genres to be smashed together for maximum attention-grabbing impact" an aesthetic which takes from the "organic, cohesive, whole" aesthetic of acts such as Bun B, Lil Jon, Drama, M.I.A., Bjork, Busta Rhymes, and others. Diplo accentuated the club aesthetic of his Hollertronix music for a more reflective sound on his solo debut, Florida, which was released on the Ninja Tune imprint, Big Dada Records. The album Florida was pressed twice, first with a CD and the second with a CD and DVD. The DVD was created by System D-128, another artist who has collaborated with Diplo on some audio and video projects. Before Florida's DVD accompaniment, another DVD surfaced called Diplo: "Banned in Libya" which was released by Money Studies, the first label to release a solo project by Diplo under his original DJ name Diplodocus. It was a 45 rpm record called "Thingamajawn" for which there is also a music video System D-128 directed. Similar to the Florida DVD, "Banned in Libya" is an experimental audio and video mix of some of Diplo's original music blended with a number of other unidentified sources. His particular affinity for one genre of music called baile funk, or favela funk, would spawn a series of mixtapes (Favela on Blast, Favela Strikes Back), which served to bring the Brazilian dance music of the ghettos to the United States. It was not long before his Hooked on Hollertronix parties would provide him the success necessary to move to the next logical step and build a studio where music would become his full-time focus. With this goal in mind, Diplo built "The Mausoleum," a video studio, recording studio, record label office, gallery, and event space in Philadelphia. Since its inception, The Mausoleum has become the home to recordings by artists like Christina Aguilera, Shakira, M.I.A., Santigold, Spank Rock, Plastic Little, Blaqstarr, Paper Route Gangstaz, and hosted concerts by Glass Candy, Skream, Boys Noize, Nicos Gun, and more. CANNOTANSWER | continue his studies at Temple University, where he first garnered attention as a DJ. | Thomas Wesley Pentz (born November 10, 1978), known professionally as Diplo, is an American DJ, songwriter and record producer based in Los Angeles. He is the co-creator and lead member of the electronic dancehall music project Major Lazer, a member of the supergroup LSD with Sia and Labrinth, a member of electronic duo Jack Ü with producer and DJ Skrillex, and a member of Silk City with Mark Ronson. He founded and manages record company Mad Decent, as well as co-founding the non-profit organization Heaps Decent. His 2013 EP, Revolution, debuted at number 68 on the US Billboard 200. The EP's title track was later featured in a commercial for Hyundai and is featured on the WWE 2K16 soundtrack.
Diplo worked with and dated British musician M.I.A., an artist who is credited with giving him exposure in his early career. Later, he M.I.A., and fellow producer Switch created a Jamaican dancehall project and cartoon series titled Major Lazer. Since then, Diplo has worked on production and mixtape projects with many other pop artists, such as Gwen Stefani, Die Antwoord, Britney Spears, Madonna, Shakira, Beyoncé, Ellie Goulding, No Doubt, Justin Bieber, Usher, Snoop Dogg, Trippie Redd, Chris Brown, CL, G-Dragon, Bad Bunny, Kali Uchis, Joji, MØ and Poppy. His alias, short for Diplodocus, derives from his childhood fascination with dinosaurs.
Career
Early life
Diplo was born on November 10, 1978, in Tupelo, Mississippi, the son of Barbara Jean (née Cox) and Thomas Pentz. He is of German and English descent. Diplo graduated from Hendersonville High School in Hendersonville, TN.
The influence of home-grown rap played a key role in helping shape Diplo's production style. Although he was born in Mississippi, he spent the majority of his youth in Miami, where he got a taste for the characteristic Miami bass. He began attending the University of Central Florida in 1997. During his time at UCF, he became a DJ at local radio station WPRK, the radio station at Rollins College. He moved to Philadelphia to continue his studies at Temple University, where he first garnered attention as a DJ. After frequently running into fellow DJ Low Budget, the two began throwing parties under the Hooked on Hollertronix moniker in 2003 as a way of maintaining control of what they were able to play during DJ gigs in Philadelphia. The success of these parties allowed the two to release mixtapes, both separately and together, gathering acclaim across the country. One such mixtape, Never Scared, was named one of The New York Times top ten albums of 2003, and the Hollertronix name became synonymous with parties featuring guests like Maluca Mala, Bun B, Spank Rock, M.I.A., among others. Hollertronix's sound has been described as "disparate genres to be smashed together for maximum attention-grabbing impact" an aesthetic which takes from the "organic, cohesive, whole" aesthetic of acts such as Bun B, Lil Jon, Drama, M.I.A., Björk, Busta Rhymes, and others.
Diplo accentuated the club aesthetic of his Hollertronix music for a more reflective sound on his solo debut, Florida, which was released on the Ninja Tune imprint, Big Dada Records. The album Florida was pressed twice, first with a CD and the second with a CD/DVD Set. The DVD was put together by System D-128, artist and filmmaker who has also collaborated with Diplo on audio and film projects. Before Floridas DVD accompaniment, another DVD surfaced called Diplo: "Banned in Libya" which was released by Money Studies, the first label to release a solo project by Diplo under his original DJ name Diplodocus. It was a 45 rpm record called "Thingamajawn" for which there is also a music video System D-128 directed. Similar to the Florida DVD, "Banned in Libya" is an experimental audio and video mix of some of Diplo's original music blended with a number of other unidentified sources. His particular affinity for one genre of music called baile funk, or favela funk, would spawn a series of mixtapes (Favela on Blast, Favela Strikes Back), which served to bring the Brazilian dance music of the ghettos to the United States.
It was not long before his Hooked on Hollertronix parties would provide him the success necessary to move to the next logical step and build a studio where music would become his full-time focus. With this goal in mind, Diplo built "The Mausoleum", a video studio, recording studio, record label office, gallery, and event space in Philadelphia. Since its inception, The Mausoleum has become the home to recordings by artists like Christina Aguilera, Shakira, M.I.A., Santigold, Spank Rock, Plastic Little, Blaqstarr, Paper Route Gangstaz, and hosted concerts by Glass Candy, Skream, Boys Noize, Nicos Gun, and more.
M.I.A.
After hearing one of his songs in 2004, M.I.A. approached Diplo when he was DJing one night at the Fabric Club in London. Coincidentally, Diplo was playing her songs "Galang" and "Fire Fire" as she entered the club, which he got from a worker at i-D magazine. Diplo added, "She came through and she wanted to meet me 'cause she'd heard my single and the funk mix from one of her A&Rs and she just thought I was right up her alley. Besides me being a white dude from Florida and her being a Sri Lankan girl in England, everything else was the same: [We were both] film graduates, [listened to] all the same music when we were kids, we're going in the same direction right now in music, it was amazing... I always wanted to make a beat with her, but all my beats were really shitty at the time."M.I.A. Confronts the Haters . Pitchfork. Retrieved on October 23, 2010. The two eventually collaborated on a mixtape, Piracy Funds Terrorism Vol. 1, where Arular track acapellas were mashed with other artists' songs. It was listed among 'Albums of the Year' by The New York Times and Pitchfork Media.Booty Call – Page 1 – Music – New York . Village Voice (December 14, 2004). Retrieved on October 23, 2010. The two continued to work together after the release. He was the tour DJ on her 2005 Arular Tour.
Diplo continued to work with M.I.A. and, through her, met London DJ Switch. Together, they created the Grammy-nominated track "Paper Planes", peaking at number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. In 2015, during an interview with Rolling Stone, M.I.A said that Diplo resented her rise to fame in 2005, that he tried to hold her back, and fought with her about becoming successful.
Mad Decent
From this, Diplo went from an unknown DJ to taking off as a producer, landing him collaborations with artists like Shakira, Robyn, Kid Cudi, Bruno Mars, No Doubt and Snoop Dogg, as well as work with Maluca, Kid Sister, Die Antwoord, Alex Clare, Rolo Tomassi, Amanda Blank and Dark Meat. After taking a trip to Brazil to investigate the favela music scene, and fascinated with the energy the scene had to offer, Diplo decided to import a dance-funk group Bonde do Rolê from Brazil for release on his Mad Decent record label (also housed within 'The Mausoleum'). This group would serve to define funk carioca in the United States, spawning a host of others to join the movement. Diplo also spent some time documenting the music, and the favelas of Brazil.
Although favela funk remained an interest (the Favela on Blast documentary just saw release in 2009), his Mad Decent imprint would serve as a blank palette for Diplo to showcase the myriad different sounds he had come across while touring around the world. September 2009 even saw Diplo travel to China to play with Steve Aoki at a show organised by promoters Split Works. Diplo quickly developed a reputation for his extensive touring. In the April 2010 issue of Rolling Stone, Diplo was touted as one of '40 Reasons to be Excited About Music'. This kind of jet setting pushed his label far beyond the favela funk genre with which it initially began. Since its foundation in 2005 Diplo's Mad Decent label has released music by Santigold, Baauer, Lil' Jon, Gucci Mane, Peter Bjorn and John, Rusko, Bosco Delrey, Buraka Som Sistema, Savage Skulls, Dana Sibuea, Oliver Twizt, Jamie Fanatic, Douster, Boy 8-Bit, and Popo.Diplo's Mad Decent Label Teams Up With Downtown Recordings . Pitchfork (March 31, 2009). Retrieved on October 23, 2010.
As Mad Decent continues to grow and release tracks by big-name artists, Diplo's solo career continues to grow at the same rate. He's produced for artists such as Beyoncé, Justin Bieber, Lil Wayne, Britney Spears, Wale, Chris Brown, Ariana Grande, 2 Chainz, Travis Porter, Usher, Azealia Banks, Iggy Azalea, and AlunaGeorge. On October 16, 2015, Diplo released "Be Right There" along with fellow producer Sleepy Tom. The single charted in multiple countries and has over 100 million streams on Spotify. On April 23, 2016, Beyoncé released her critically acclaimed album, Lemonade. Diplo produced two tracks on the album, "All Night", and one of the three singles, "Hold Up". The album debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 and was certified platinum on June 8, 2016. Along with producing tracks on Beyoncé's Lemonade, Diplo collaborated with Canadian DJ duo Zeds Dead on the release "Blame", which featured Swedish singer Elliphant. The track was officially released on July 14, 2016, via Zeds Dead's SoundCloud.
Major Lazer
Diplo's first collaborative full-length record was with Switch, this time under the guise of Major Lazer. Diplo incorporates such disparate influences as Miami Bass and Baile Funk into the high-tech eclecticism of his productions.
After landing a deal with Downtown Records before even recording a note of music, Diplo and Switch set out for Jamaica to record a project that, like most of Diplo's projects before it, would highlight the little-known subgenres, this time of Jamaica's dancehall scene. The two received support by many already established Jamaican artists such as Vybz Kartel, Elephant Man and Ms. Thing, and the resulting record Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do also featured vocals from Santigold, Amanda Blank, Nina Sky, Ricky Blaze and more. When discussing the Major Lazer project, Diplo described the dancehall sound as being "
the end of the world, all the little influences—house, soca, oldies, R&B, jazz—it all ends up in Jamaica." The track "Pon De Floor" from Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do was sampled for Beyoncé's single "Run the World (Girls)".
Major Lazer's first album was followed up with an EP, Lazers Never Die, which was released in 2010. Switch left Major Lazer in 2011, and was replaced by DJs Jillionaire and Walshy Fire. A second album, Free the Universe, was scheduled to be released in November 2012 but was delayed to February 2013, and then to April 15. It features artists such as Ezra Koenig, Bruno Mars, Ward 21, Wyclef, The Partysquad, Shaggy, Tyga, Flux Pavilion and Wynter Gordon. On February 8, 2015, during the Grammy Award ceremony, Diplo revealed details of the third Major Lazer album. He confirmed that the album would incorporate artists such as Ariana Grande, Ellie Goulding and Pusha T. It is called Peace Is the Mission. The first single, "Lean On", is a collaboration with French producer DJ Snake and features vocals from Danish recording artist MØ. The second single, "Powerful", featuring Ellie Goulding and Tarrus Riley, was released simultaneously with the album on June 1, 2015. On November 11, 2015, "Lean On" became Spotify's Most Streamed Song of All Time with over 800 million streams to date. Along with the streaming title, the official video for "Lean On" became one of the most viewed videos on YouTube. It currently has more than 2 billion views. Along with the streaming and viewing milestones, "Lean On" would also go on to achieve double platinum status.
On July 22, 2016, the group released the single "Cold Water", a collaboration with Canadian artist Justin Bieber and Danish singer MØ. The track has already reached over 200 million streams on Spotify, and achieved international commercial success, reaching number one in multiple countries. On November 29, 2016, Major Lazer and Bad Royale released "My Number", a track that samples "54-46 That's My Number" which Pitchfork describes as, "a genre-defining classic from legendary ska/reggae group Toots and the Maytals." This release contained newly recorded vocals from frontman Toots Hibbert specifically designed for Major Lazer, which changed the original lyrics to incorporate the group into the song while keeping the original melody. Their fifth studio album, Music Is the Weapon, features collaborations with Alessia Cara, French Montana, Anitta, Khalid, Skip Marley, Marcus Mumford, J Balvin, El Alfa, Mr Eazi and Nicki Minaj.
Jack Ü
Jack Ü is an American duo made up of Skrillex and Diplo. Jack Ü's debut performance took place at the Mad Decent Block Party in San Diego on September 15, 2013, which is a nationwide tour that record label Mad Decent puts together in order to showcase different artists signed to the label. Diplo announced the project by releasing the Mad Decent Block Party lineup with Jack Ü playing at multiple stops on the tour. After some guessing by many of who Jack Ü was, Diplo finally came out to reveal that "Jack Ü ... means Skrillex and Diplo together". After their New York debut at Electric Zoo was canceled in late August, the duo would soon return to the city for something bigger. On December 31, 2014, Jack Ü sold out Madison Square Garden for one of their biggest performances to date. The duo had support from Rudimental, Yellow Claw and A$AP Ferg.
On February 27, 2015 they released Skrillex and Diplo Present Jack Ü, a co-release between their respective labels OWSLA and Mad Decent. It featured tracks with 2 Chainz, Kiesza, Justin Bieber, AlunaGeorge and Missy Elliott. The first single "Take Ü There" featuring Kiesza was the lead single on the duo's debut album. The single was released as the lead on October 4, 2014. It reached number sixteen on the UK Dance Chart. The official second single, "Where Are Ü Now", was released simultaneously with the album. The song which took both artists in a different direction, featured a collaboration with Canadian pop star Justin Bieber. Peaking at number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100, and number 3 on the UK Singles Chart, "Where Are Ü Now" became the duo's largest hit on both charts thus far. The song would also go on to peak at number three in Australia, which was the highest charting for the single worldwide. The song had huge success in Europe as well, reaching the top-ten in Sweden and Finland, and the top-twenty in Norway, the Czech Republic, Denmark and Slovakia. The final place it had charting success was Bieber's home country, Canada, where it would end up peaking at number 6. On March 29, 2015, Jack Ü closed the main stage at Ultra Music Festival in Miami.
In 2016, the duo won two Grammy Awards for "Grammy Award for Best Dance Album" for "Skrillex and Diplo present Jack Ü" and "Grammy Award for Best Dance" for "Where Are Ü Now?" with Justin Bieber. The latter was also Bieber's first Grammy. They played two sold-out shows including Coachella Valley Music Festival in Indio, California and Lollapalooza in São Paulo, Brazil.
LSD
LSD is a pop supergroup composed of Diplo, Australian singer Sia, and British musician Labrinth. The trio have released five singles thus far, with their song "Thunderclouds" being featured in a commercial for the Samsung Galaxy Note9. Their singles "Genius" and "Audio" have seen official remixes from producers Banx & Ranx and Cid, respectively. LSD's debut album Labrinth, Sia & Diplo Present... LSD was released on April 12, 2019.
Silk City
On January 2, 2018 Diplo announced a new project with British DJ and singer Mark Ronson, entitled Silk City. The duo released their debut single "Only Can Get Better" featuring Daniel Merriweather on May 23, 2018. Their second single, "Feel About You" featuring Mapei, was released on July 20, 2018. The duo's third single, "Loud", saw Diplo reunite with previous collaborators GoldLink & Desiigner. Their 4th and most recent single features British singer/songwriter Dua Lipa, called "Electricity", which was released on September 5, 2018. The music video was released on the same day. In 2018, "Electricity" won a Grammy at the 61st Annual GRAMMY Awards for Best Dance Recording.
Additional work
Beyond Major Lazer and Mad Decent, Diplo has continued to show support for 'all the little influences', the lesser-known music scenes around the globe. Most recently his focus shifted to the Bounce scene in New Orleans, Louisiana for a television piece commissioned by Current.tv. Diplo was nominated for Non-Classical Producer of the Year at the 55th Grammy Awards and 58th Grammy Awards. Diplo had a late night show on BBC Radio 1 / 1Xtra on Saturdays 11:00 p.m.–1:00 a.m. (GMT) called 'Diplo and Friends' where he curates mixes from some of biggest names in dance music. He has now resigned from BBC Radio 1, per 2021. Diplo also has several syndicated Diplo and Friends shows in the United States in Boston, Bakersfield, Cleveland, Columbus, Las Vegas, Spokane, Albuquerque, Lafayette, Denver, and most notably on Los Angeles' 98.7 every Sunday at 9 p.m.
Beginning on October 2, 2015, Diplo, Jillionaire, Walshy Fire and Eric Hamilton debuted "Lazer Sound" on Apple Music's Beats 1. The newest radio show, curated by Diplo, and the Major Lazer crew, consists of interviews, moments on tour and brand new music. The show is on the air every other Saturday of the month. Throughout 2015 and 2016, Diplo performed with Major Lazer and Jack Ü on numerous live TV and award shows. He performed on The Tonight Show, Good Morning America, the iHeart Radio Music Festival, The NRJ Music Awards, the 2015 Latin Grammy Awards and the 2016 Grammy Awards.
In February 2016, Diplo was one of the first and very few mainstream Western artists to perform in Islamabad, Pakistan alongside Adil Omar, Talal Qureshi, SNKM and Elliphant. In 2018 Diplo returned to with Major Lazer for Islamabad's first Mad Decent Block Party alongside Adil Omar, SNKM, Talal Qureshi, Valentino Khan, Chrome Sparks, Lyari Underground and a host of other acts.
In January 2017, Diplo and Autoerotique (a house group from Toronto) released a music video titled "Waist Time" which was filmed in a warehouse in London. He was nominated for two Grammy's in 2016 (The 59th Annual GRAMMY Awards) for Album of the Year (for producer of Beyoncé's album Lemonade and producer for Justin Bieber's album Purpose). He also sang a song "Phurrr" in Bollywood in Imtiaz Ali's film Jab Harry Met Sejal starring Shah Rukh Khan and Anushka Sharma. In 2019, Diplo released the song "So Long" under the moniker Thomas Wesley, featuring American country singer Cam. In a press release, he stated that there are "several forthcoming collaborations with country artists" planned following "So Long", which came in the form of Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley, Chapter 1: Snake Oil released in 2020. The album included the song "Heartless" featuring Morgan Wallen.
Personal life
Diplo has three sons: Lockett and Lazer, with Kathryn Lockhart; and Pace, with Jevon King.
He dated rapper M.I.A. from 2003 to 2008. M.I.A. later said that their tumultuous relationship involved emotional abuse from him. Diplo dated singer Katy Perry for nearly a year in 2014 and 2015.
Diplo is a soccer and cricket fan and supporter of the U.S. men's national team. He also supports Arsenal F.C. and has attended two Tigres UANL matches. He created a mix for the 2014 World Cup and produced the 2018 World Cup official song "Live It Up". Diplo purchased a minority share of Phoenix Rising FC of the USL Championship on January 27, 2016. He stated: "I've been really fortunate to travel all over the world and experience different cultures through music. Wherever I am, Jamaica, Spain, England, China, etc., soccer is a social constant. I see soccer the same way I see music, as a connective tissue linking the world's cultures."
On February 24, 2016, Diplo endorsed Bernie Sanders as the Democratic presidential nominee. Sanders' ad "It's A Revolution" is soundtracked by Diplo's 2013 track "Revolution". On June 9, 2016, Diplo was featured on the cover of the American entertainment media magazine Billboard.
On May 1, 2019, Diplo live-streamed Joe Jonas' Las Vegas wedding to Sophie Turner on Instagram, "not knowing it was a serious wedding". Soon after the couple told the tabloids that Diplo ruined their wedding, the DJ responded on social media. Five months later, Diplo and the Jonas Brothers released a song titled "Lonely". The song's official music video chronicles Diplo's attempts to make amends with Joe Jonas and his brothers.
On July 9, 2020, Diplo joined Senator Kamala Harris and other artists for the "Get Up, Stand Up!" virtual fundraiser in support of Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign.
Sexual misconduct allegations
In November 2020, a Los Angeles woman named Shelly Auguste was granted a restraining order against Diplo. She alleged that he distributed revenge porn of her after she accused him of grooming her and other "very young girls", nonconsensual sexual behaviour, hiring a private investigator in June 2020 to "scare [her] into remaining silent about [their] relationship" and to "scare other women out of coming forward", and threatening others who supported her, in a Twitter thread in October. According to court documents, the woman, who met Diplo in the summer of 2014, when she was 17 and he was 36, began trading sexually explicit images and had an intimate relationship. Sometime later, Diplo filed and was granted a restraining order of his own against Auguste.
The same year, rapper Azealia Banks, who had been discovered by Diplo on social media when she was seventeen, claimed the producer helped her start her career in exchange for favours of sexual nature when she was underage in the fifth episode of her SoundCloud podcast, "Cheapys Two Cents".
In 2021, an unnamed woman sued Diplo for allegedly filming her while taking advantage of her sexually while she was intoxicated and unable to consent after a 2019 Las Vegas concert. She claims Diplo "invited her to a room, kicked out her friends, and would not let her leave until she performed oral sex". 10 days later, the accuser dropped her case, expressing regret about filing it.
DiscographyStudio albums'''
Florida (2004)
Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley, Chapter 1: Snake Oil (as Thomas Wesley) (2020)
MMXX (2020)
Diplo (2022)
Filmography
Film
Television
Awards and nominations
In 2009, he was nominated for his first Grammy Award for Record of the Year for "Paper Planes" shared with M.I.A., Switch. He was then nominated for a second Grammy Award in 2012, for Best Rap Song for "Look at Me Now" shared with Chris Brown, Lil Wayne and Busta Rhymes. Diplo was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2013 and 2016 in the category Producer of the Year, Non-Classic. In 2016, he won Grammy Awards for Best Dance/Electronic Album for Skrillex and Diplo Present Jack Ü and Best Dance Recording for "Where Are Ü Now".
Camerimage
!Ref.
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|2012
| "Express Yourself"
|rowspan=2|Best Music Video
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|2013
| "Earthquake"
|
|
GAFFA-Prisen Awards
|-
| rowspan=2|2019
| Himself
| Best International Artist
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| California| Best International Album
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Grammy Awards
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|| 2009
| "Paper Planes"
|Record of the Year
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|| 2012
| "Look at Me Now"
|Best Rap Song
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|-
|| 2013
|rowspan="2"| Diplo
|rowspan="2"| Producer of the Year, Non-Classical
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|-
| rowspan="3"| 2016
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|"Where Are Ü Now"
| Best Dance Recording
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|Skrillex and Diplo Present Jack Ü
| Best Dance/Electronic Album
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|-
| rowspan="2"| 2017
| Lemonade
| rowspan="2"|Album of the Year
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| Purpose
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|-
| 2019
| "Electricity"
| Best Dance Recording
|
DJ Magazine top 100 DJs
Electronic Music Awards
International Dance Music Awards
!Ref.
|-
| rowspan=3|2011
| rowspan=2|"C'mon"
| Best Electro/Tech House Track
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| rowspan=3|
|-
| Best Trance Track
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|-
| rowspan=8|Himself
| Best Remixer
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|rowspan=2|2013
| Best North American DJ
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| rowspan=2|Best Producer
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| rowspan=2|2014
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| rowspan=2|
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| rowspan=2|Best North American DJ
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| rowspan=5|2015
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| Best Producer
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| Best Dubstep/Drum & Bass DJ
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| "Dirty Vibe"
| Best Dubstep/Drum & Bass Track
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| rowspan=2|Diplo and Friends| rowspan=2|Best Podcast or Radio Mixshow
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| rowspan=5|2016
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|rowspan=5|
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| rowspan=4|Himself
| Best Producer
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| Best Global DJ
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| Best North American DJ
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| Best EDM/Pop DJ
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iHeartRadio Music Awards
!Ref.
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| 2021
| Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley, Chapter 1: Snake Oil| Dance Album of the Year
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PLUG Awards
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| rowspan=2|2005
| Himself
| New Artist of the Year
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| Favela On Blast| rowspan=2|DJ Album of the Year
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| rowspan=2|2006
| FabricLive.24|
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| Himself
| Record Producer of the Year
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| 2007
| FabricLive.24''
| DJ Album of the Year
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UK Music Video Awards
!Ref.
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| 2013
| "Earthquake"
| Best Styling in a Video
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|
References
External links
1978 births
21st-century American rappers
21st-century American singers
Ableton Live users
American DJs
American expatriates in England
American hip hop DJs
American hip hop musicians
American hip hop record producers
American male songwriters
American people of English descent
American people of German descent
Atlantic Records artists
Because Music artists
BBC Radio 1 presenters
BBC Radio 1Xtra presenters
Electronic dance music DJs
Grammy Award winners
Living people
LSD (group) members
Mad Decent artists
Major Lazer members
Musicians from Florida
People from Miami
Phoenix Rising FC chairmen and investors
Record producers from Florida
Silk City (duo) members
Singers from Florida
Songwriters from Florida
Southern hip hop musicians
Temple University alumni | true | [
"Bildad ( Bildaḏ), the Shuhite, was one of Job's three friends who visited the patriarch in the Hebrew Bible's Book of Job. He was a descendant of Shuah, son of Abraham and Keturah (Genesis 25:1 - 25:2), whose family lived in the deserts of Arabia, or a resident of the district. In speaking with Job, his intent was consolation, but he became an accuser, asking Job what he has done to deserve God's wrath.\n\nSpeeches\nThe three speeches of Bildad are contained in Job 8, Job 18 and Job 25. In substance, they were largely an echo of what had been maintained by Eliphaz the Temanite, the first of Job's friends to speak, but charged with somewhat increased vehemence because he deemed Job's words so impious and wrathful. Bildad was the first to attribute Job's calamity to actual wickedness, albeit indirectly, by accusing his children (who were destroyed, Job 1:19) of sin to warrant their punishment (Job 8:4). His brief third speech, just five verses in length, marked the silencing of the friends.\n\nSee also \nEliphaz\nZophar\n Elihu\n Bildad is also the name of one of the owners of the Pequod in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick.\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n\nHebrew Bible people\nBook of Job",
"Job Carr (July 2, 1813 - August 10, 1887) was the founder of Tacoma, Washington, United States.\n\nA Union veteran of the United States Civil War, Carr came west in 1864 to settle on a 168-acre claim in what is now Tacoma.\n\nCarr was the first permanent European American settler in the area. He built a cabin on his claim, which doubled as the United States Post Office when Carr was appointed Postmaster. He was an early promoter of Tacoma as a potential terminus for the Northern Pacific Railroad, and encouraged settlement in the new town.\n\nA replica of his original cabin stands near the original location, and serves as a museum of both Carr and of early Tacoma.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nJob Carr arrives at future site of Tacoma\nJob Carr Cabin Museum\n\n1813 births\n1887 deaths\nPeople from Tacoma, Washington"
] |
[
"Diplo",
"Career",
"Where did he grow up?",
"He spent the majority of his youth in Miami,",
"What was his first job?",
"continue his studies at Temple University, where he first garnered attention as a DJ."
] | C_48a01b9a3d1a4e2185b94a26818c6a03_1 | What year did he start gaining attention as a DJ? | 3 | What year did Diplo start gaining attention as a DJ? | Diplo | Diplo was born on November 10, 1978, in Tupelo, Mississippi, the son of Barbara Jean (nee Cox) and Thomas Pentz. He is of German and English descent. The influence of home-grown rap played a key role in helping shape his production style. He spent the majority of his youth in Miami, where he got a taste for the characteristic Miami bass. He began attending the University of Central Florida in 1997, and then moved to Philadelphia to continue his studies at Temple University, where he first garnered attention as a DJ. After frequently running into fellow DJ Low Budget, the two began throwing parties under the Hooked on Hollertronix moniker in 2003 as a way of maintaining control of what they were able to play during DJ gigs in Philadelphia. The success of these parties allowed the two to release mixtapes, both separate and together, gathering acclaim across the country. One such mixtape, Never Scared, was named one of the New York Times top ten albums of 2003, and the Hollertronix name became synonymous with parties featuring guests like Maluca Mala, Bun B, Spank Rock, M.I.A., among others. Hollertronix's sound has been described as "disparate genres to be smashed together for maximum attention-grabbing impact" an aesthetic which takes from the "organic, cohesive, whole" aesthetic of acts such as Bun B, Lil Jon, Drama, M.I.A., Bjork, Busta Rhymes, and others. Diplo accentuated the club aesthetic of his Hollertronix music for a more reflective sound on his solo debut, Florida, which was released on the Ninja Tune imprint, Big Dada Records. The album Florida was pressed twice, first with a CD and the second with a CD and DVD. The DVD was created by System D-128, another artist who has collaborated with Diplo on some audio and video projects. Before Florida's DVD accompaniment, another DVD surfaced called Diplo: "Banned in Libya" which was released by Money Studies, the first label to release a solo project by Diplo under his original DJ name Diplodocus. It was a 45 rpm record called "Thingamajawn" for which there is also a music video System D-128 directed. Similar to the Florida DVD, "Banned in Libya" is an experimental audio and video mix of some of Diplo's original music blended with a number of other unidentified sources. His particular affinity for one genre of music called baile funk, or favela funk, would spawn a series of mixtapes (Favela on Blast, Favela Strikes Back), which served to bring the Brazilian dance music of the ghettos to the United States. It was not long before his Hooked on Hollertronix parties would provide him the success necessary to move to the next logical step and build a studio where music would become his full-time focus. With this goal in mind, Diplo built "The Mausoleum," a video studio, recording studio, record label office, gallery, and event space in Philadelphia. Since its inception, The Mausoleum has become the home to recordings by artists like Christina Aguilera, Shakira, M.I.A., Santigold, Spank Rock, Plastic Little, Blaqstarr, Paper Route Gangstaz, and hosted concerts by Glass Candy, Skream, Boys Noize, Nicos Gun, and more. CANNOTANSWER | the two began throwing parties under the Hooked on Hollertronix moniker in 2003 | Thomas Wesley Pentz (born November 10, 1978), known professionally as Diplo, is an American DJ, songwriter and record producer based in Los Angeles. He is the co-creator and lead member of the electronic dancehall music project Major Lazer, a member of the supergroup LSD with Sia and Labrinth, a member of electronic duo Jack Ü with producer and DJ Skrillex, and a member of Silk City with Mark Ronson. He founded and manages record company Mad Decent, as well as co-founding the non-profit organization Heaps Decent. His 2013 EP, Revolution, debuted at number 68 on the US Billboard 200. The EP's title track was later featured in a commercial for Hyundai and is featured on the WWE 2K16 soundtrack.
Diplo worked with and dated British musician M.I.A., an artist who is credited with giving him exposure in his early career. Later, he M.I.A., and fellow producer Switch created a Jamaican dancehall project and cartoon series titled Major Lazer. Since then, Diplo has worked on production and mixtape projects with many other pop artists, such as Gwen Stefani, Die Antwoord, Britney Spears, Madonna, Shakira, Beyoncé, Ellie Goulding, No Doubt, Justin Bieber, Usher, Snoop Dogg, Trippie Redd, Chris Brown, CL, G-Dragon, Bad Bunny, Kali Uchis, Joji, MØ and Poppy. His alias, short for Diplodocus, derives from his childhood fascination with dinosaurs.
Career
Early life
Diplo was born on November 10, 1978, in Tupelo, Mississippi, the son of Barbara Jean (née Cox) and Thomas Pentz. He is of German and English descent. Diplo graduated from Hendersonville High School in Hendersonville, TN.
The influence of home-grown rap played a key role in helping shape Diplo's production style. Although he was born in Mississippi, he spent the majority of his youth in Miami, where he got a taste for the characteristic Miami bass. He began attending the University of Central Florida in 1997. During his time at UCF, he became a DJ at local radio station WPRK, the radio station at Rollins College. He moved to Philadelphia to continue his studies at Temple University, where he first garnered attention as a DJ. After frequently running into fellow DJ Low Budget, the two began throwing parties under the Hooked on Hollertronix moniker in 2003 as a way of maintaining control of what they were able to play during DJ gigs in Philadelphia. The success of these parties allowed the two to release mixtapes, both separately and together, gathering acclaim across the country. One such mixtape, Never Scared, was named one of The New York Times top ten albums of 2003, and the Hollertronix name became synonymous with parties featuring guests like Maluca Mala, Bun B, Spank Rock, M.I.A., among others. Hollertronix's sound has been described as "disparate genres to be smashed together for maximum attention-grabbing impact" an aesthetic which takes from the "organic, cohesive, whole" aesthetic of acts such as Bun B, Lil Jon, Drama, M.I.A., Björk, Busta Rhymes, and others.
Diplo accentuated the club aesthetic of his Hollertronix music for a more reflective sound on his solo debut, Florida, which was released on the Ninja Tune imprint, Big Dada Records. The album Florida was pressed twice, first with a CD and the second with a CD/DVD Set. The DVD was put together by System D-128, artist and filmmaker who has also collaborated with Diplo on audio and film projects. Before Floridas DVD accompaniment, another DVD surfaced called Diplo: "Banned in Libya" which was released by Money Studies, the first label to release a solo project by Diplo under his original DJ name Diplodocus. It was a 45 rpm record called "Thingamajawn" for which there is also a music video System D-128 directed. Similar to the Florida DVD, "Banned in Libya" is an experimental audio and video mix of some of Diplo's original music blended with a number of other unidentified sources. His particular affinity for one genre of music called baile funk, or favela funk, would spawn a series of mixtapes (Favela on Blast, Favela Strikes Back), which served to bring the Brazilian dance music of the ghettos to the United States.
It was not long before his Hooked on Hollertronix parties would provide him the success necessary to move to the next logical step and build a studio where music would become his full-time focus. With this goal in mind, Diplo built "The Mausoleum", a video studio, recording studio, record label office, gallery, and event space in Philadelphia. Since its inception, The Mausoleum has become the home to recordings by artists like Christina Aguilera, Shakira, M.I.A., Santigold, Spank Rock, Plastic Little, Blaqstarr, Paper Route Gangstaz, and hosted concerts by Glass Candy, Skream, Boys Noize, Nicos Gun, and more.
M.I.A.
After hearing one of his songs in 2004, M.I.A. approached Diplo when he was DJing one night at the Fabric Club in London. Coincidentally, Diplo was playing her songs "Galang" and "Fire Fire" as she entered the club, which he got from a worker at i-D magazine. Diplo added, "She came through and she wanted to meet me 'cause she'd heard my single and the funk mix from one of her A&Rs and she just thought I was right up her alley. Besides me being a white dude from Florida and her being a Sri Lankan girl in England, everything else was the same: [We were both] film graduates, [listened to] all the same music when we were kids, we're going in the same direction right now in music, it was amazing... I always wanted to make a beat with her, but all my beats were really shitty at the time."M.I.A. Confronts the Haters . Pitchfork. Retrieved on October 23, 2010. The two eventually collaborated on a mixtape, Piracy Funds Terrorism Vol. 1, where Arular track acapellas were mashed with other artists' songs. It was listed among 'Albums of the Year' by The New York Times and Pitchfork Media.Booty Call – Page 1 – Music – New York . Village Voice (December 14, 2004). Retrieved on October 23, 2010. The two continued to work together after the release. He was the tour DJ on her 2005 Arular Tour.
Diplo continued to work with M.I.A. and, through her, met London DJ Switch. Together, they created the Grammy-nominated track "Paper Planes", peaking at number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. In 2015, during an interview with Rolling Stone, M.I.A said that Diplo resented her rise to fame in 2005, that he tried to hold her back, and fought with her about becoming successful.
Mad Decent
From this, Diplo went from an unknown DJ to taking off as a producer, landing him collaborations with artists like Shakira, Robyn, Kid Cudi, Bruno Mars, No Doubt and Snoop Dogg, as well as work with Maluca, Kid Sister, Die Antwoord, Alex Clare, Rolo Tomassi, Amanda Blank and Dark Meat. After taking a trip to Brazil to investigate the favela music scene, and fascinated with the energy the scene had to offer, Diplo decided to import a dance-funk group Bonde do Rolê from Brazil for release on his Mad Decent record label (also housed within 'The Mausoleum'). This group would serve to define funk carioca in the United States, spawning a host of others to join the movement. Diplo also spent some time documenting the music, and the favelas of Brazil.
Although favela funk remained an interest (the Favela on Blast documentary just saw release in 2009), his Mad Decent imprint would serve as a blank palette for Diplo to showcase the myriad different sounds he had come across while touring around the world. September 2009 even saw Diplo travel to China to play with Steve Aoki at a show organised by promoters Split Works. Diplo quickly developed a reputation for his extensive touring. In the April 2010 issue of Rolling Stone, Diplo was touted as one of '40 Reasons to be Excited About Music'. This kind of jet setting pushed his label far beyond the favela funk genre with which it initially began. Since its foundation in 2005 Diplo's Mad Decent label has released music by Santigold, Baauer, Lil' Jon, Gucci Mane, Peter Bjorn and John, Rusko, Bosco Delrey, Buraka Som Sistema, Savage Skulls, Dana Sibuea, Oliver Twizt, Jamie Fanatic, Douster, Boy 8-Bit, and Popo.Diplo's Mad Decent Label Teams Up With Downtown Recordings . Pitchfork (March 31, 2009). Retrieved on October 23, 2010.
As Mad Decent continues to grow and release tracks by big-name artists, Diplo's solo career continues to grow at the same rate. He's produced for artists such as Beyoncé, Justin Bieber, Lil Wayne, Britney Spears, Wale, Chris Brown, Ariana Grande, 2 Chainz, Travis Porter, Usher, Azealia Banks, Iggy Azalea, and AlunaGeorge. On October 16, 2015, Diplo released "Be Right There" along with fellow producer Sleepy Tom. The single charted in multiple countries and has over 100 million streams on Spotify. On April 23, 2016, Beyoncé released her critically acclaimed album, Lemonade. Diplo produced two tracks on the album, "All Night", and one of the three singles, "Hold Up". The album debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 and was certified platinum on June 8, 2016. Along with producing tracks on Beyoncé's Lemonade, Diplo collaborated with Canadian DJ duo Zeds Dead on the release "Blame", which featured Swedish singer Elliphant. The track was officially released on July 14, 2016, via Zeds Dead's SoundCloud.
Major Lazer
Diplo's first collaborative full-length record was with Switch, this time under the guise of Major Lazer. Diplo incorporates such disparate influences as Miami Bass and Baile Funk into the high-tech eclecticism of his productions.
After landing a deal with Downtown Records before even recording a note of music, Diplo and Switch set out for Jamaica to record a project that, like most of Diplo's projects before it, would highlight the little-known subgenres, this time of Jamaica's dancehall scene. The two received support by many already established Jamaican artists such as Vybz Kartel, Elephant Man and Ms. Thing, and the resulting record Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do also featured vocals from Santigold, Amanda Blank, Nina Sky, Ricky Blaze and more. When discussing the Major Lazer project, Diplo described the dancehall sound as being "
the end of the world, all the little influences—house, soca, oldies, R&B, jazz—it all ends up in Jamaica." The track "Pon De Floor" from Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do was sampled for Beyoncé's single "Run the World (Girls)".
Major Lazer's first album was followed up with an EP, Lazers Never Die, which was released in 2010. Switch left Major Lazer in 2011, and was replaced by DJs Jillionaire and Walshy Fire. A second album, Free the Universe, was scheduled to be released in November 2012 but was delayed to February 2013, and then to April 15. It features artists such as Ezra Koenig, Bruno Mars, Ward 21, Wyclef, The Partysquad, Shaggy, Tyga, Flux Pavilion and Wynter Gordon. On February 8, 2015, during the Grammy Award ceremony, Diplo revealed details of the third Major Lazer album. He confirmed that the album would incorporate artists such as Ariana Grande, Ellie Goulding and Pusha T. It is called Peace Is the Mission. The first single, "Lean On", is a collaboration with French producer DJ Snake and features vocals from Danish recording artist MØ. The second single, "Powerful", featuring Ellie Goulding and Tarrus Riley, was released simultaneously with the album on June 1, 2015. On November 11, 2015, "Lean On" became Spotify's Most Streamed Song of All Time with over 800 million streams to date. Along with the streaming title, the official video for "Lean On" became one of the most viewed videos on YouTube. It currently has more than 2 billion views. Along with the streaming and viewing milestones, "Lean On" would also go on to achieve double platinum status.
On July 22, 2016, the group released the single "Cold Water", a collaboration with Canadian artist Justin Bieber and Danish singer MØ. The track has already reached over 200 million streams on Spotify, and achieved international commercial success, reaching number one in multiple countries. On November 29, 2016, Major Lazer and Bad Royale released "My Number", a track that samples "54-46 That's My Number" which Pitchfork describes as, "a genre-defining classic from legendary ska/reggae group Toots and the Maytals." This release contained newly recorded vocals from frontman Toots Hibbert specifically designed for Major Lazer, which changed the original lyrics to incorporate the group into the song while keeping the original melody. Their fifth studio album, Music Is the Weapon, features collaborations with Alessia Cara, French Montana, Anitta, Khalid, Skip Marley, Marcus Mumford, J Balvin, El Alfa, Mr Eazi and Nicki Minaj.
Jack Ü
Jack Ü is an American duo made up of Skrillex and Diplo. Jack Ü's debut performance took place at the Mad Decent Block Party in San Diego on September 15, 2013, which is a nationwide tour that record label Mad Decent puts together in order to showcase different artists signed to the label. Diplo announced the project by releasing the Mad Decent Block Party lineup with Jack Ü playing at multiple stops on the tour. After some guessing by many of who Jack Ü was, Diplo finally came out to reveal that "Jack Ü ... means Skrillex and Diplo together". After their New York debut at Electric Zoo was canceled in late August, the duo would soon return to the city for something bigger. On December 31, 2014, Jack Ü sold out Madison Square Garden for one of their biggest performances to date. The duo had support from Rudimental, Yellow Claw and A$AP Ferg.
On February 27, 2015 they released Skrillex and Diplo Present Jack Ü, a co-release between their respective labels OWSLA and Mad Decent. It featured tracks with 2 Chainz, Kiesza, Justin Bieber, AlunaGeorge and Missy Elliott. The first single "Take Ü There" featuring Kiesza was the lead single on the duo's debut album. The single was released as the lead on October 4, 2014. It reached number sixteen on the UK Dance Chart. The official second single, "Where Are Ü Now", was released simultaneously with the album. The song which took both artists in a different direction, featured a collaboration with Canadian pop star Justin Bieber. Peaking at number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100, and number 3 on the UK Singles Chart, "Where Are Ü Now" became the duo's largest hit on both charts thus far. The song would also go on to peak at number three in Australia, which was the highest charting for the single worldwide. The song had huge success in Europe as well, reaching the top-ten in Sweden and Finland, and the top-twenty in Norway, the Czech Republic, Denmark and Slovakia. The final place it had charting success was Bieber's home country, Canada, where it would end up peaking at number 6. On March 29, 2015, Jack Ü closed the main stage at Ultra Music Festival in Miami.
In 2016, the duo won two Grammy Awards for "Grammy Award for Best Dance Album" for "Skrillex and Diplo present Jack Ü" and "Grammy Award for Best Dance" for "Where Are Ü Now?" with Justin Bieber. The latter was also Bieber's first Grammy. They played two sold-out shows including Coachella Valley Music Festival in Indio, California and Lollapalooza in São Paulo, Brazil.
LSD
LSD is a pop supergroup composed of Diplo, Australian singer Sia, and British musician Labrinth. The trio have released five singles thus far, with their song "Thunderclouds" being featured in a commercial for the Samsung Galaxy Note9. Their singles "Genius" and "Audio" have seen official remixes from producers Banx & Ranx and Cid, respectively. LSD's debut album Labrinth, Sia & Diplo Present... LSD was released on April 12, 2019.
Silk City
On January 2, 2018 Diplo announced a new project with British DJ and singer Mark Ronson, entitled Silk City. The duo released their debut single "Only Can Get Better" featuring Daniel Merriweather on May 23, 2018. Their second single, "Feel About You" featuring Mapei, was released on July 20, 2018. The duo's third single, "Loud", saw Diplo reunite with previous collaborators GoldLink & Desiigner. Their 4th and most recent single features British singer/songwriter Dua Lipa, called "Electricity", which was released on September 5, 2018. The music video was released on the same day. In 2018, "Electricity" won a Grammy at the 61st Annual GRAMMY Awards for Best Dance Recording.
Additional work
Beyond Major Lazer and Mad Decent, Diplo has continued to show support for 'all the little influences', the lesser-known music scenes around the globe. Most recently his focus shifted to the Bounce scene in New Orleans, Louisiana for a television piece commissioned by Current.tv. Diplo was nominated for Non-Classical Producer of the Year at the 55th Grammy Awards and 58th Grammy Awards. Diplo had a late night show on BBC Radio 1 / 1Xtra on Saturdays 11:00 p.m.–1:00 a.m. (GMT) called 'Diplo and Friends' where he curates mixes from some of biggest names in dance music. He has now resigned from BBC Radio 1, per 2021. Diplo also has several syndicated Diplo and Friends shows in the United States in Boston, Bakersfield, Cleveland, Columbus, Las Vegas, Spokane, Albuquerque, Lafayette, Denver, and most notably on Los Angeles' 98.7 every Sunday at 9 p.m.
Beginning on October 2, 2015, Diplo, Jillionaire, Walshy Fire and Eric Hamilton debuted "Lazer Sound" on Apple Music's Beats 1. The newest radio show, curated by Diplo, and the Major Lazer crew, consists of interviews, moments on tour and brand new music. The show is on the air every other Saturday of the month. Throughout 2015 and 2016, Diplo performed with Major Lazer and Jack Ü on numerous live TV and award shows. He performed on The Tonight Show, Good Morning America, the iHeart Radio Music Festival, The NRJ Music Awards, the 2015 Latin Grammy Awards and the 2016 Grammy Awards.
In February 2016, Diplo was one of the first and very few mainstream Western artists to perform in Islamabad, Pakistan alongside Adil Omar, Talal Qureshi, SNKM and Elliphant. In 2018 Diplo returned to with Major Lazer for Islamabad's first Mad Decent Block Party alongside Adil Omar, SNKM, Talal Qureshi, Valentino Khan, Chrome Sparks, Lyari Underground and a host of other acts.
In January 2017, Diplo and Autoerotique (a house group from Toronto) released a music video titled "Waist Time" which was filmed in a warehouse in London. He was nominated for two Grammy's in 2016 (The 59th Annual GRAMMY Awards) for Album of the Year (for producer of Beyoncé's album Lemonade and producer for Justin Bieber's album Purpose). He also sang a song "Phurrr" in Bollywood in Imtiaz Ali's film Jab Harry Met Sejal starring Shah Rukh Khan and Anushka Sharma. In 2019, Diplo released the song "So Long" under the moniker Thomas Wesley, featuring American country singer Cam. In a press release, he stated that there are "several forthcoming collaborations with country artists" planned following "So Long", which came in the form of Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley, Chapter 1: Snake Oil released in 2020. The album included the song "Heartless" featuring Morgan Wallen.
Personal life
Diplo has three sons: Lockett and Lazer, with Kathryn Lockhart; and Pace, with Jevon King.
He dated rapper M.I.A. from 2003 to 2008. M.I.A. later said that their tumultuous relationship involved emotional abuse from him. Diplo dated singer Katy Perry for nearly a year in 2014 and 2015.
Diplo is a soccer and cricket fan and supporter of the U.S. men's national team. He also supports Arsenal F.C. and has attended two Tigres UANL matches. He created a mix for the 2014 World Cup and produced the 2018 World Cup official song "Live It Up". Diplo purchased a minority share of Phoenix Rising FC of the USL Championship on January 27, 2016. He stated: "I've been really fortunate to travel all over the world and experience different cultures through music. Wherever I am, Jamaica, Spain, England, China, etc., soccer is a social constant. I see soccer the same way I see music, as a connective tissue linking the world's cultures."
On February 24, 2016, Diplo endorsed Bernie Sanders as the Democratic presidential nominee. Sanders' ad "It's A Revolution" is soundtracked by Diplo's 2013 track "Revolution". On June 9, 2016, Diplo was featured on the cover of the American entertainment media magazine Billboard.
On May 1, 2019, Diplo live-streamed Joe Jonas' Las Vegas wedding to Sophie Turner on Instagram, "not knowing it was a serious wedding". Soon after the couple told the tabloids that Diplo ruined their wedding, the DJ responded on social media. Five months later, Diplo and the Jonas Brothers released a song titled "Lonely". The song's official music video chronicles Diplo's attempts to make amends with Joe Jonas and his brothers.
On July 9, 2020, Diplo joined Senator Kamala Harris and other artists for the "Get Up, Stand Up!" virtual fundraiser in support of Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign.
Sexual misconduct allegations
In November 2020, a Los Angeles woman named Shelly Auguste was granted a restraining order against Diplo. She alleged that he distributed revenge porn of her after she accused him of grooming her and other "very young girls", nonconsensual sexual behaviour, hiring a private investigator in June 2020 to "scare [her] into remaining silent about [their] relationship" and to "scare other women out of coming forward", and threatening others who supported her, in a Twitter thread in October. According to court documents, the woman, who met Diplo in the summer of 2014, when she was 17 and he was 36, began trading sexually explicit images and had an intimate relationship. Sometime later, Diplo filed and was granted a restraining order of his own against Auguste.
The same year, rapper Azealia Banks, who had been discovered by Diplo on social media when she was seventeen, claimed the producer helped her start her career in exchange for favours of sexual nature when she was underage in the fifth episode of her SoundCloud podcast, "Cheapys Two Cents".
In 2021, an unnamed woman sued Diplo for allegedly filming her while taking advantage of her sexually while she was intoxicated and unable to consent after a 2019 Las Vegas concert. She claims Diplo "invited her to a room, kicked out her friends, and would not let her leave until she performed oral sex". 10 days later, the accuser dropped her case, expressing regret about filing it.
DiscographyStudio albums'''
Florida (2004)
Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley, Chapter 1: Snake Oil (as Thomas Wesley) (2020)
MMXX (2020)
Diplo (2022)
Filmography
Film
Television
Awards and nominations
In 2009, he was nominated for his first Grammy Award for Record of the Year for "Paper Planes" shared with M.I.A., Switch. He was then nominated for a second Grammy Award in 2012, for Best Rap Song for "Look at Me Now" shared with Chris Brown, Lil Wayne and Busta Rhymes. Diplo was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2013 and 2016 in the category Producer of the Year, Non-Classic. In 2016, he won Grammy Awards for Best Dance/Electronic Album for Skrillex and Diplo Present Jack Ü and Best Dance Recording for "Where Are Ü Now".
Camerimage
!Ref.
|-
|2012
| "Express Yourself"
|rowspan=2|Best Music Video
|
|
|-
|2013
| "Earthquake"
|
|
GAFFA-Prisen Awards
|-
| rowspan=2|2019
| Himself
| Best International Artist
|
|-
| California| Best International Album
|
Grammy Awards
|-
|| 2009
| "Paper Planes"
|Record of the Year
|
|-
|| 2012
| "Look at Me Now"
|Best Rap Song
|
|-
|| 2013
|rowspan="2"| Diplo
|rowspan="2"| Producer of the Year, Non-Classical
|
|-
| rowspan="3"| 2016
|
|-
|"Where Are Ü Now"
| Best Dance Recording
|
|-
|Skrillex and Diplo Present Jack Ü
| Best Dance/Electronic Album
|
|-
| rowspan="2"| 2017
| Lemonade
| rowspan="2"|Album of the Year
|
|-
| Purpose
|
|-
| 2019
| "Electricity"
| Best Dance Recording
|
DJ Magazine top 100 DJs
Electronic Music Awards
International Dance Music Awards
!Ref.
|-
| rowspan=3|2011
| rowspan=2|"C'mon"
| Best Electro/Tech House Track
|
| rowspan=3|
|-
| Best Trance Track
|
|-
| rowspan=8|Himself
| Best Remixer
|
|-
|rowspan=2|2013
| Best North American DJ
|
| rowspan=2|
|-
| rowspan=2|Best Producer
|
|-
| rowspan=2|2014
|
| rowspan=2|
|-
| rowspan=2|Best North American DJ
|
|-
| rowspan=5|2015
|
| rowspan=5|
|-
| Best Producer
|
|-
| Best Dubstep/Drum & Bass DJ
|
|-
| "Dirty Vibe"
| Best Dubstep/Drum & Bass Track
|
|-
| rowspan=2|Diplo and Friends| rowspan=2|Best Podcast or Radio Mixshow
|
|-
| rowspan=5|2016
|
|rowspan=5|
|-
| rowspan=4|Himself
| Best Producer
|
|-
| Best Global DJ
|
|-
| Best North American DJ
|
|-
| Best EDM/Pop DJ
|
iHeartRadio Music Awards
!Ref.
|-
| 2021
| Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley, Chapter 1: Snake Oil| Dance Album of the Year
|
|
PLUG Awards
|-
| rowspan=2|2005
| Himself
| New Artist of the Year
|
|-
| Favela On Blast| rowspan=2|DJ Album of the Year
|
|-
| rowspan=2|2006
| FabricLive.24|
|-
| Himself
| Record Producer of the Year
|
|-
| 2007
| FabricLive.24''
| DJ Album of the Year
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UK Music Video Awards
!Ref.
|-
| 2013
| "Earthquake"
| Best Styling in a Video
|
|
References
External links
1978 births
21st-century American rappers
21st-century American singers
Ableton Live users
American DJs
American expatriates in England
American hip hop DJs
American hip hop musicians
American hip hop record producers
American male songwriters
American people of English descent
American people of German descent
Atlantic Records artists
Because Music artists
BBC Radio 1 presenters
BBC Radio 1Xtra presenters
Electronic dance music DJs
Grammy Award winners
Living people
LSD (group) members
Mad Decent artists
Major Lazer members
Musicians from Florida
People from Miami
Phoenix Rising FC chairmen and investors
Record producers from Florida
Silk City (duo) members
Singers from Florida
Songwriters from Florida
Southern hip hop musicians
Temple University alumni | true | [
"Akbar Sami is a dance choreographer turned DJ and musician. He is known as one of the pioneers of DJ music in India. He became famous with his remix albums such as Jalwa, Jalwa 2, and Jadoo.\n\nCareer \nAkbar Sami started his career as a team dancer with Bollywood celebrities such as Arshad Warsi, Sajid Khan and Longinus Fernandes at the age of 13. He also used to cut tapes for his dance shows. Later, he turned into a choreographer. He forayed into DeeJaying when a manager of a nightclub requested him to fill up the official DJ for that night. Then, he became the resident DJ at a club named Xanadu. After gaining some experience, he did a crash course in deejaying from London.\n\nHe is a self-taught disc jockey. He is one of the few DJ's who started their journey in the 1980s. He made his acting debut as a negative character called Ghoda Bhai in the film called Fattu Sala in 2015.\n\nHe has collaborated with DJ Aqeel, DJ Chetas and DJ Kiran Kamath to remix the title track ‘Aap Se Mausiiquii’ for Himesh Reshammiya from an eponymous album.\n\nIn 2018, he debuted as a singer in the remake of classic Bollywood song \"Kabhi Kabhi\".\n\nReferences \n\nLiving people\nIndian DJs\nIndian choreographers\nYear of birth missing (living people)",
"Michael Babatunde Adeyinka Also known as DJ Tunez is a Nigeria and USA based disc jockey.\nIn 2015, DJ Tunez was asked by Wizkid to join Starboy Entertainment, as the official label DJ, DJ Tunez first production was in 2016's Iskaba, a contagious hit song with Wande Coal. \nHe has collaborated with other acts such as Wizkid, Sarz, Burna Boy, Busiswa, Reekado Banks, Damibliz, Omah Lay and many more.\n\nEarly life\nMichael Babatunde Adeyinka was born in Brooklyn Long Island Hospital, New York, USA.\nHis dream began after DJing his local church's Christmas parties as a teen. This eventually grew into paid gigs DJing church members’ events such as birthday parties and weddings.\nHis African community in South Brooklyn began to take a fancy to his ability to play music with an afrobeats and dancehall inspired atmosphere to audience, the little attention encouraged him to throw parties around the city.\n\nCareer\n2016 was a turning point for DJ Tunez as he collaborated with Wande Coal to dish out what Okayafrica described as Nigeria 2nd Best song of 2017.\nIn 2019 DJ Tunez released a single featuring Wizkid titled \"Gbese\", \"Turn Up\" Featuring Wizkid & Reekado Banks, with supplementary vocals from Rema.\nDJ Tunez event, a Black Friday “Blackout” party, brought about 1,700 people to Queens’ Amazura Concert Hall in November 2019.\n\nDiscography\n\nSelected singles\n \"Glow\" (feat. Iyanya & Khago) 2014\n \"Your Body\" (One Dance Refix feat. Wande Coal) 2016\n \"Cotton Candy\" (DJ Tunez and Leriq) feat. Burna Boy 2017\n \"My Love\" (feat. Adekunle Gold & Del B)\n \"Get Up\" (feat. Sarz)\n \"Iskaba\" (feat. Wande Coal)\n \"Cover Me\" (Starboy feat. Wizkid 2019\n\"Late Night\" (feat. Yxng Bane)\n \"Gbese\" (feat. Wizkid) 2019.\n \"Turn Up\" (feat. Wizkid & Reekado Banks) 2018.\n \"Oshe\" (feat. Juls) 2018\n \"Too Much\" (feat. Flash).\n \"Causing Trouble\" (feat. Oxlade) 2019\n \"Paloma\" (feat. Alpha P. & D3AN Remix) 2020\n \"Majesty\" (feat. Busiswa) 2019\n \"Kelegbe Megbe\" (Remix) · 2020\n \"Enjoyment\" (feat. Kwamz & Flava) 2020\n \"Hello Esther\" (feat. Ice Prince) 2019\n \"Pepesu\" (feat. Dotman) 2018\n \"Cool Me Down\" (feat Wizkid) 2020\n \"Pami\" (feat Wizkid , Adekunle Gold & Omah Lay) 2020\n\nAward & Nominations\nHe has received many Accolades and Nominations,\n\nReferences\n\nLiving people\nNigerian hip hop DJs\nNigerian record producers\nMusicians from Lagos State\nYoruba musicians\nYear of birth missing (living people)"
] |
[
"Diplo",
"Career",
"Where did he grow up?",
"He spent the majority of his youth in Miami,",
"What was his first job?",
"continue his studies at Temple University, where he first garnered attention as a DJ.",
"What year did he start gaining attention as a DJ?",
"the two began throwing parties under the Hooked on Hollertronix moniker in 2003"
] | C_48a01b9a3d1a4e2185b94a26818c6a03_1 | Where was his DJ gig? | 4 | Where was Diplo's DJ gig? | Diplo | Diplo was born on November 10, 1978, in Tupelo, Mississippi, the son of Barbara Jean (nee Cox) and Thomas Pentz. He is of German and English descent. The influence of home-grown rap played a key role in helping shape his production style. He spent the majority of his youth in Miami, where he got a taste for the characteristic Miami bass. He began attending the University of Central Florida in 1997, and then moved to Philadelphia to continue his studies at Temple University, where he first garnered attention as a DJ. After frequently running into fellow DJ Low Budget, the two began throwing parties under the Hooked on Hollertronix moniker in 2003 as a way of maintaining control of what they were able to play during DJ gigs in Philadelphia. The success of these parties allowed the two to release mixtapes, both separate and together, gathering acclaim across the country. One such mixtape, Never Scared, was named one of the New York Times top ten albums of 2003, and the Hollertronix name became synonymous with parties featuring guests like Maluca Mala, Bun B, Spank Rock, M.I.A., among others. Hollertronix's sound has been described as "disparate genres to be smashed together for maximum attention-grabbing impact" an aesthetic which takes from the "organic, cohesive, whole" aesthetic of acts such as Bun B, Lil Jon, Drama, M.I.A., Bjork, Busta Rhymes, and others. Diplo accentuated the club aesthetic of his Hollertronix music for a more reflective sound on his solo debut, Florida, which was released on the Ninja Tune imprint, Big Dada Records. The album Florida was pressed twice, first with a CD and the second with a CD and DVD. The DVD was created by System D-128, another artist who has collaborated with Diplo on some audio and video projects. Before Florida's DVD accompaniment, another DVD surfaced called Diplo: "Banned in Libya" which was released by Money Studies, the first label to release a solo project by Diplo under his original DJ name Diplodocus. It was a 45 rpm record called "Thingamajawn" for which there is also a music video System D-128 directed. Similar to the Florida DVD, "Banned in Libya" is an experimental audio and video mix of some of Diplo's original music blended with a number of other unidentified sources. His particular affinity for one genre of music called baile funk, or favela funk, would spawn a series of mixtapes (Favela on Blast, Favela Strikes Back), which served to bring the Brazilian dance music of the ghettos to the United States. It was not long before his Hooked on Hollertronix parties would provide him the success necessary to move to the next logical step and build a studio where music would become his full-time focus. With this goal in mind, Diplo built "The Mausoleum," a video studio, recording studio, record label office, gallery, and event space in Philadelphia. Since its inception, The Mausoleum has become the home to recordings by artists like Christina Aguilera, Shakira, M.I.A., Santigold, Spank Rock, Plastic Little, Blaqstarr, Paper Route Gangstaz, and hosted concerts by Glass Candy, Skream, Boys Noize, Nicos Gun, and more. CANNOTANSWER | Philadelphia. | Thomas Wesley Pentz (born November 10, 1978), known professionally as Diplo, is an American DJ, songwriter and record producer based in Los Angeles. He is the co-creator and lead member of the electronic dancehall music project Major Lazer, a member of the supergroup LSD with Sia and Labrinth, a member of electronic duo Jack Ü with producer and DJ Skrillex, and a member of Silk City with Mark Ronson. He founded and manages record company Mad Decent, as well as co-founding the non-profit organization Heaps Decent. His 2013 EP, Revolution, debuted at number 68 on the US Billboard 200. The EP's title track was later featured in a commercial for Hyundai and is featured on the WWE 2K16 soundtrack.
Diplo worked with and dated British musician M.I.A., an artist who is credited with giving him exposure in his early career. Later, he M.I.A., and fellow producer Switch created a Jamaican dancehall project and cartoon series titled Major Lazer. Since then, Diplo has worked on production and mixtape projects with many other pop artists, such as Gwen Stefani, Die Antwoord, Britney Spears, Madonna, Shakira, Beyoncé, Ellie Goulding, No Doubt, Justin Bieber, Usher, Snoop Dogg, Trippie Redd, Chris Brown, CL, G-Dragon, Bad Bunny, Kali Uchis, Joji, MØ and Poppy. His alias, short for Diplodocus, derives from his childhood fascination with dinosaurs.
Career
Early life
Diplo was born on November 10, 1978, in Tupelo, Mississippi, the son of Barbara Jean (née Cox) and Thomas Pentz. He is of German and English descent. Diplo graduated from Hendersonville High School in Hendersonville, TN.
The influence of home-grown rap played a key role in helping shape Diplo's production style. Although he was born in Mississippi, he spent the majority of his youth in Miami, where he got a taste for the characteristic Miami bass. He began attending the University of Central Florida in 1997. During his time at UCF, he became a DJ at local radio station WPRK, the radio station at Rollins College. He moved to Philadelphia to continue his studies at Temple University, where he first garnered attention as a DJ. After frequently running into fellow DJ Low Budget, the two began throwing parties under the Hooked on Hollertronix moniker in 2003 as a way of maintaining control of what they were able to play during DJ gigs in Philadelphia. The success of these parties allowed the two to release mixtapes, both separately and together, gathering acclaim across the country. One such mixtape, Never Scared, was named one of The New York Times top ten albums of 2003, and the Hollertronix name became synonymous with parties featuring guests like Maluca Mala, Bun B, Spank Rock, M.I.A., among others. Hollertronix's sound has been described as "disparate genres to be smashed together for maximum attention-grabbing impact" an aesthetic which takes from the "organic, cohesive, whole" aesthetic of acts such as Bun B, Lil Jon, Drama, M.I.A., Björk, Busta Rhymes, and others.
Diplo accentuated the club aesthetic of his Hollertronix music for a more reflective sound on his solo debut, Florida, which was released on the Ninja Tune imprint, Big Dada Records. The album Florida was pressed twice, first with a CD and the second with a CD/DVD Set. The DVD was put together by System D-128, artist and filmmaker who has also collaborated with Diplo on audio and film projects. Before Floridas DVD accompaniment, another DVD surfaced called Diplo: "Banned in Libya" which was released by Money Studies, the first label to release a solo project by Diplo under his original DJ name Diplodocus. It was a 45 rpm record called "Thingamajawn" for which there is also a music video System D-128 directed. Similar to the Florida DVD, "Banned in Libya" is an experimental audio and video mix of some of Diplo's original music blended with a number of other unidentified sources. His particular affinity for one genre of music called baile funk, or favela funk, would spawn a series of mixtapes (Favela on Blast, Favela Strikes Back), which served to bring the Brazilian dance music of the ghettos to the United States.
It was not long before his Hooked on Hollertronix parties would provide him the success necessary to move to the next logical step and build a studio where music would become his full-time focus. With this goal in mind, Diplo built "The Mausoleum", a video studio, recording studio, record label office, gallery, and event space in Philadelphia. Since its inception, The Mausoleum has become the home to recordings by artists like Christina Aguilera, Shakira, M.I.A., Santigold, Spank Rock, Plastic Little, Blaqstarr, Paper Route Gangstaz, and hosted concerts by Glass Candy, Skream, Boys Noize, Nicos Gun, and more.
M.I.A.
After hearing one of his songs in 2004, M.I.A. approached Diplo when he was DJing one night at the Fabric Club in London. Coincidentally, Diplo was playing her songs "Galang" and "Fire Fire" as she entered the club, which he got from a worker at i-D magazine. Diplo added, "She came through and she wanted to meet me 'cause she'd heard my single and the funk mix from one of her A&Rs and she just thought I was right up her alley. Besides me being a white dude from Florida and her being a Sri Lankan girl in England, everything else was the same: [We were both] film graduates, [listened to] all the same music when we were kids, we're going in the same direction right now in music, it was amazing... I always wanted to make a beat with her, but all my beats were really shitty at the time."M.I.A. Confronts the Haters . Pitchfork. Retrieved on October 23, 2010. The two eventually collaborated on a mixtape, Piracy Funds Terrorism Vol. 1, where Arular track acapellas were mashed with other artists' songs. It was listed among 'Albums of the Year' by The New York Times and Pitchfork Media.Booty Call – Page 1 – Music – New York . Village Voice (December 14, 2004). Retrieved on October 23, 2010. The two continued to work together after the release. He was the tour DJ on her 2005 Arular Tour.
Diplo continued to work with M.I.A. and, through her, met London DJ Switch. Together, they created the Grammy-nominated track "Paper Planes", peaking at number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. In 2015, during an interview with Rolling Stone, M.I.A said that Diplo resented her rise to fame in 2005, that he tried to hold her back, and fought with her about becoming successful.
Mad Decent
From this, Diplo went from an unknown DJ to taking off as a producer, landing him collaborations with artists like Shakira, Robyn, Kid Cudi, Bruno Mars, No Doubt and Snoop Dogg, as well as work with Maluca, Kid Sister, Die Antwoord, Alex Clare, Rolo Tomassi, Amanda Blank and Dark Meat. After taking a trip to Brazil to investigate the favela music scene, and fascinated with the energy the scene had to offer, Diplo decided to import a dance-funk group Bonde do Rolê from Brazil for release on his Mad Decent record label (also housed within 'The Mausoleum'). This group would serve to define funk carioca in the United States, spawning a host of others to join the movement. Diplo also spent some time documenting the music, and the favelas of Brazil.
Although favela funk remained an interest (the Favela on Blast documentary just saw release in 2009), his Mad Decent imprint would serve as a blank palette for Diplo to showcase the myriad different sounds he had come across while touring around the world. September 2009 even saw Diplo travel to China to play with Steve Aoki at a show organised by promoters Split Works. Diplo quickly developed a reputation for his extensive touring. In the April 2010 issue of Rolling Stone, Diplo was touted as one of '40 Reasons to be Excited About Music'. This kind of jet setting pushed his label far beyond the favela funk genre with which it initially began. Since its foundation in 2005 Diplo's Mad Decent label has released music by Santigold, Baauer, Lil' Jon, Gucci Mane, Peter Bjorn and John, Rusko, Bosco Delrey, Buraka Som Sistema, Savage Skulls, Dana Sibuea, Oliver Twizt, Jamie Fanatic, Douster, Boy 8-Bit, and Popo.Diplo's Mad Decent Label Teams Up With Downtown Recordings . Pitchfork (March 31, 2009). Retrieved on October 23, 2010.
As Mad Decent continues to grow and release tracks by big-name artists, Diplo's solo career continues to grow at the same rate. He's produced for artists such as Beyoncé, Justin Bieber, Lil Wayne, Britney Spears, Wale, Chris Brown, Ariana Grande, 2 Chainz, Travis Porter, Usher, Azealia Banks, Iggy Azalea, and AlunaGeorge. On October 16, 2015, Diplo released "Be Right There" along with fellow producer Sleepy Tom. The single charted in multiple countries and has over 100 million streams on Spotify. On April 23, 2016, Beyoncé released her critically acclaimed album, Lemonade. Diplo produced two tracks on the album, "All Night", and one of the three singles, "Hold Up". The album debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 and was certified platinum on June 8, 2016. Along with producing tracks on Beyoncé's Lemonade, Diplo collaborated with Canadian DJ duo Zeds Dead on the release "Blame", which featured Swedish singer Elliphant. The track was officially released on July 14, 2016, via Zeds Dead's SoundCloud.
Major Lazer
Diplo's first collaborative full-length record was with Switch, this time under the guise of Major Lazer. Diplo incorporates such disparate influences as Miami Bass and Baile Funk into the high-tech eclecticism of his productions.
After landing a deal with Downtown Records before even recording a note of music, Diplo and Switch set out for Jamaica to record a project that, like most of Diplo's projects before it, would highlight the little-known subgenres, this time of Jamaica's dancehall scene. The two received support by many already established Jamaican artists such as Vybz Kartel, Elephant Man and Ms. Thing, and the resulting record Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do also featured vocals from Santigold, Amanda Blank, Nina Sky, Ricky Blaze and more. When discussing the Major Lazer project, Diplo described the dancehall sound as being "
the end of the world, all the little influences—house, soca, oldies, R&B, jazz—it all ends up in Jamaica." The track "Pon De Floor" from Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do was sampled for Beyoncé's single "Run the World (Girls)".
Major Lazer's first album was followed up with an EP, Lazers Never Die, which was released in 2010. Switch left Major Lazer in 2011, and was replaced by DJs Jillionaire and Walshy Fire. A second album, Free the Universe, was scheduled to be released in November 2012 but was delayed to February 2013, and then to April 15. It features artists such as Ezra Koenig, Bruno Mars, Ward 21, Wyclef, The Partysquad, Shaggy, Tyga, Flux Pavilion and Wynter Gordon. On February 8, 2015, during the Grammy Award ceremony, Diplo revealed details of the third Major Lazer album. He confirmed that the album would incorporate artists such as Ariana Grande, Ellie Goulding and Pusha T. It is called Peace Is the Mission. The first single, "Lean On", is a collaboration with French producer DJ Snake and features vocals from Danish recording artist MØ. The second single, "Powerful", featuring Ellie Goulding and Tarrus Riley, was released simultaneously with the album on June 1, 2015. On November 11, 2015, "Lean On" became Spotify's Most Streamed Song of All Time with over 800 million streams to date. Along with the streaming title, the official video for "Lean On" became one of the most viewed videos on YouTube. It currently has more than 2 billion views. Along with the streaming and viewing milestones, "Lean On" would also go on to achieve double platinum status.
On July 22, 2016, the group released the single "Cold Water", a collaboration with Canadian artist Justin Bieber and Danish singer MØ. The track has already reached over 200 million streams on Spotify, and achieved international commercial success, reaching number one in multiple countries. On November 29, 2016, Major Lazer and Bad Royale released "My Number", a track that samples "54-46 That's My Number" which Pitchfork describes as, "a genre-defining classic from legendary ska/reggae group Toots and the Maytals." This release contained newly recorded vocals from frontman Toots Hibbert specifically designed for Major Lazer, which changed the original lyrics to incorporate the group into the song while keeping the original melody. Their fifth studio album, Music Is the Weapon, features collaborations with Alessia Cara, French Montana, Anitta, Khalid, Skip Marley, Marcus Mumford, J Balvin, El Alfa, Mr Eazi and Nicki Minaj.
Jack Ü
Jack Ü is an American duo made up of Skrillex and Diplo. Jack Ü's debut performance took place at the Mad Decent Block Party in San Diego on September 15, 2013, which is a nationwide tour that record label Mad Decent puts together in order to showcase different artists signed to the label. Diplo announced the project by releasing the Mad Decent Block Party lineup with Jack Ü playing at multiple stops on the tour. After some guessing by many of who Jack Ü was, Diplo finally came out to reveal that "Jack Ü ... means Skrillex and Diplo together". After their New York debut at Electric Zoo was canceled in late August, the duo would soon return to the city for something bigger. On December 31, 2014, Jack Ü sold out Madison Square Garden for one of their biggest performances to date. The duo had support from Rudimental, Yellow Claw and A$AP Ferg.
On February 27, 2015 they released Skrillex and Diplo Present Jack Ü, a co-release between their respective labels OWSLA and Mad Decent. It featured tracks with 2 Chainz, Kiesza, Justin Bieber, AlunaGeorge and Missy Elliott. The first single "Take Ü There" featuring Kiesza was the lead single on the duo's debut album. The single was released as the lead on October 4, 2014. It reached number sixteen on the UK Dance Chart. The official second single, "Where Are Ü Now", was released simultaneously with the album. The song which took both artists in a different direction, featured a collaboration with Canadian pop star Justin Bieber. Peaking at number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100, and number 3 on the UK Singles Chart, "Where Are Ü Now" became the duo's largest hit on both charts thus far. The song would also go on to peak at number three in Australia, which was the highest charting for the single worldwide. The song had huge success in Europe as well, reaching the top-ten in Sweden and Finland, and the top-twenty in Norway, the Czech Republic, Denmark and Slovakia. The final place it had charting success was Bieber's home country, Canada, where it would end up peaking at number 6. On March 29, 2015, Jack Ü closed the main stage at Ultra Music Festival in Miami.
In 2016, the duo won two Grammy Awards for "Grammy Award for Best Dance Album" for "Skrillex and Diplo present Jack Ü" and "Grammy Award for Best Dance" for "Where Are Ü Now?" with Justin Bieber. The latter was also Bieber's first Grammy. They played two sold-out shows including Coachella Valley Music Festival in Indio, California and Lollapalooza in São Paulo, Brazil.
LSD
LSD is a pop supergroup composed of Diplo, Australian singer Sia, and British musician Labrinth. The trio have released five singles thus far, with their song "Thunderclouds" being featured in a commercial for the Samsung Galaxy Note9. Their singles "Genius" and "Audio" have seen official remixes from producers Banx & Ranx and Cid, respectively. LSD's debut album Labrinth, Sia & Diplo Present... LSD was released on April 12, 2019.
Silk City
On January 2, 2018 Diplo announced a new project with British DJ and singer Mark Ronson, entitled Silk City. The duo released their debut single "Only Can Get Better" featuring Daniel Merriweather on May 23, 2018. Their second single, "Feel About You" featuring Mapei, was released on July 20, 2018. The duo's third single, "Loud", saw Diplo reunite with previous collaborators GoldLink & Desiigner. Their 4th and most recent single features British singer/songwriter Dua Lipa, called "Electricity", which was released on September 5, 2018. The music video was released on the same day. In 2018, "Electricity" won a Grammy at the 61st Annual GRAMMY Awards for Best Dance Recording.
Additional work
Beyond Major Lazer and Mad Decent, Diplo has continued to show support for 'all the little influences', the lesser-known music scenes around the globe. Most recently his focus shifted to the Bounce scene in New Orleans, Louisiana for a television piece commissioned by Current.tv. Diplo was nominated for Non-Classical Producer of the Year at the 55th Grammy Awards and 58th Grammy Awards. Diplo had a late night show on BBC Radio 1 / 1Xtra on Saturdays 11:00 p.m.–1:00 a.m. (GMT) called 'Diplo and Friends' where he curates mixes from some of biggest names in dance music. He has now resigned from BBC Radio 1, per 2021. Diplo also has several syndicated Diplo and Friends shows in the United States in Boston, Bakersfield, Cleveland, Columbus, Las Vegas, Spokane, Albuquerque, Lafayette, Denver, and most notably on Los Angeles' 98.7 every Sunday at 9 p.m.
Beginning on October 2, 2015, Diplo, Jillionaire, Walshy Fire and Eric Hamilton debuted "Lazer Sound" on Apple Music's Beats 1. The newest radio show, curated by Diplo, and the Major Lazer crew, consists of interviews, moments on tour and brand new music. The show is on the air every other Saturday of the month. Throughout 2015 and 2016, Diplo performed with Major Lazer and Jack Ü on numerous live TV and award shows. He performed on The Tonight Show, Good Morning America, the iHeart Radio Music Festival, The NRJ Music Awards, the 2015 Latin Grammy Awards and the 2016 Grammy Awards.
In February 2016, Diplo was one of the first and very few mainstream Western artists to perform in Islamabad, Pakistan alongside Adil Omar, Talal Qureshi, SNKM and Elliphant. In 2018 Diplo returned to with Major Lazer for Islamabad's first Mad Decent Block Party alongside Adil Omar, SNKM, Talal Qureshi, Valentino Khan, Chrome Sparks, Lyari Underground and a host of other acts.
In January 2017, Diplo and Autoerotique (a house group from Toronto) released a music video titled "Waist Time" which was filmed in a warehouse in London. He was nominated for two Grammy's in 2016 (The 59th Annual GRAMMY Awards) for Album of the Year (for producer of Beyoncé's album Lemonade and producer for Justin Bieber's album Purpose). He also sang a song "Phurrr" in Bollywood in Imtiaz Ali's film Jab Harry Met Sejal starring Shah Rukh Khan and Anushka Sharma. In 2019, Diplo released the song "So Long" under the moniker Thomas Wesley, featuring American country singer Cam. In a press release, he stated that there are "several forthcoming collaborations with country artists" planned following "So Long", which came in the form of Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley, Chapter 1: Snake Oil released in 2020. The album included the song "Heartless" featuring Morgan Wallen.
Personal life
Diplo has three sons: Lockett and Lazer, with Kathryn Lockhart; and Pace, with Jevon King.
He dated rapper M.I.A. from 2003 to 2008. M.I.A. later said that their tumultuous relationship involved emotional abuse from him. Diplo dated singer Katy Perry for nearly a year in 2014 and 2015.
Diplo is a soccer and cricket fan and supporter of the U.S. men's national team. He also supports Arsenal F.C. and has attended two Tigres UANL matches. He created a mix for the 2014 World Cup and produced the 2018 World Cup official song "Live It Up". Diplo purchased a minority share of Phoenix Rising FC of the USL Championship on January 27, 2016. He stated: "I've been really fortunate to travel all over the world and experience different cultures through music. Wherever I am, Jamaica, Spain, England, China, etc., soccer is a social constant. I see soccer the same way I see music, as a connective tissue linking the world's cultures."
On February 24, 2016, Diplo endorsed Bernie Sanders as the Democratic presidential nominee. Sanders' ad "It's A Revolution" is soundtracked by Diplo's 2013 track "Revolution". On June 9, 2016, Diplo was featured on the cover of the American entertainment media magazine Billboard.
On May 1, 2019, Diplo live-streamed Joe Jonas' Las Vegas wedding to Sophie Turner on Instagram, "not knowing it was a serious wedding". Soon after the couple told the tabloids that Diplo ruined their wedding, the DJ responded on social media. Five months later, Diplo and the Jonas Brothers released a song titled "Lonely". The song's official music video chronicles Diplo's attempts to make amends with Joe Jonas and his brothers.
On July 9, 2020, Diplo joined Senator Kamala Harris and other artists for the "Get Up, Stand Up!" virtual fundraiser in support of Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign.
Sexual misconduct allegations
In November 2020, a Los Angeles woman named Shelly Auguste was granted a restraining order against Diplo. She alleged that he distributed revenge porn of her after she accused him of grooming her and other "very young girls", nonconsensual sexual behaviour, hiring a private investigator in June 2020 to "scare [her] into remaining silent about [their] relationship" and to "scare other women out of coming forward", and threatening others who supported her, in a Twitter thread in October. According to court documents, the woman, who met Diplo in the summer of 2014, when she was 17 and he was 36, began trading sexually explicit images and had an intimate relationship. Sometime later, Diplo filed and was granted a restraining order of his own against Auguste.
The same year, rapper Azealia Banks, who had been discovered by Diplo on social media when she was seventeen, claimed the producer helped her start her career in exchange for favours of sexual nature when she was underage in the fifth episode of her SoundCloud podcast, "Cheapys Two Cents".
In 2021, an unnamed woman sued Diplo for allegedly filming her while taking advantage of her sexually while she was intoxicated and unable to consent after a 2019 Las Vegas concert. She claims Diplo "invited her to a room, kicked out her friends, and would not let her leave until she performed oral sex". 10 days later, the accuser dropped her case, expressing regret about filing it.
DiscographyStudio albums'''
Florida (2004)
Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley, Chapter 1: Snake Oil (as Thomas Wesley) (2020)
MMXX (2020)
Diplo (2022)
Filmography
Film
Television
Awards and nominations
In 2009, he was nominated for his first Grammy Award for Record of the Year for "Paper Planes" shared with M.I.A., Switch. He was then nominated for a second Grammy Award in 2012, for Best Rap Song for "Look at Me Now" shared with Chris Brown, Lil Wayne and Busta Rhymes. Diplo was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2013 and 2016 in the category Producer of the Year, Non-Classic. In 2016, he won Grammy Awards for Best Dance/Electronic Album for Skrillex and Diplo Present Jack Ü and Best Dance Recording for "Where Are Ü Now".
Camerimage
!Ref.
|-
|2012
| "Express Yourself"
|rowspan=2|Best Music Video
|
|
|-
|2013
| "Earthquake"
|
|
GAFFA-Prisen Awards
|-
| rowspan=2|2019
| Himself
| Best International Artist
|
|-
| California| Best International Album
|
Grammy Awards
|-
|| 2009
| "Paper Planes"
|Record of the Year
|
|-
|| 2012
| "Look at Me Now"
|Best Rap Song
|
|-
|| 2013
|rowspan="2"| Diplo
|rowspan="2"| Producer of the Year, Non-Classical
|
|-
| rowspan="3"| 2016
|
|-
|"Where Are Ü Now"
| Best Dance Recording
|
|-
|Skrillex and Diplo Present Jack Ü
| Best Dance/Electronic Album
|
|-
| rowspan="2"| 2017
| Lemonade
| rowspan="2"|Album of the Year
|
|-
| Purpose
|
|-
| 2019
| "Electricity"
| Best Dance Recording
|
DJ Magazine top 100 DJs
Electronic Music Awards
International Dance Music Awards
!Ref.
|-
| rowspan=3|2011
| rowspan=2|"C'mon"
| Best Electro/Tech House Track
|
| rowspan=3|
|-
| Best Trance Track
|
|-
| rowspan=8|Himself
| Best Remixer
|
|-
|rowspan=2|2013
| Best North American DJ
|
| rowspan=2|
|-
| rowspan=2|Best Producer
|
|-
| rowspan=2|2014
|
| rowspan=2|
|-
| rowspan=2|Best North American DJ
|
|-
| rowspan=5|2015
|
| rowspan=5|
|-
| Best Producer
|
|-
| Best Dubstep/Drum & Bass DJ
|
|-
| "Dirty Vibe"
| Best Dubstep/Drum & Bass Track
|
|-
| rowspan=2|Diplo and Friends| rowspan=2|Best Podcast or Radio Mixshow
|
|-
| rowspan=5|2016
|
|rowspan=5|
|-
| rowspan=4|Himself
| Best Producer
|
|-
| Best Global DJ
|
|-
| Best North American DJ
|
|-
| Best EDM/Pop DJ
|
iHeartRadio Music Awards
!Ref.
|-
| 2021
| Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley, Chapter 1: Snake Oil| Dance Album of the Year
|
|
PLUG Awards
|-
| rowspan=2|2005
| Himself
| New Artist of the Year
|
|-
| Favela On Blast| rowspan=2|DJ Album of the Year
|
|-
| rowspan=2|2006
| FabricLive.24|
|-
| Himself
| Record Producer of the Year
|
|-
| 2007
| FabricLive.24''
| DJ Album of the Year
|
UK Music Video Awards
!Ref.
|-
| 2013
| "Earthquake"
| Best Styling in a Video
|
|
References
External links
1978 births
21st-century American rappers
21st-century American singers
Ableton Live users
American DJs
American expatriates in England
American hip hop DJs
American hip hop musicians
American hip hop record producers
American male songwriters
American people of English descent
American people of German descent
Atlantic Records artists
Because Music artists
BBC Radio 1 presenters
BBC Radio 1Xtra presenters
Electronic dance music DJs
Grammy Award winners
Living people
LSD (group) members
Mad Decent artists
Major Lazer members
Musicians from Florida
People from Miami
Phoenix Rising FC chairmen and investors
Record producers from Florida
Silk City (duo) members
Singers from Florida
Songwriters from Florida
Southern hip hop musicians
Temple University alumni | true | [
"Whirl-Y-Gig is the longest-running world music dance club in London, England. It was set up by Ros Madden as an experiment of the Association of Humanistic Psychology in 1981, who passed it on to the capable hands of Richard Sutcliffe aka DJ Monkey Pilot and Mary Sutcliffe four years later. Ros Madden died on 20 October 2011 in Luton. Monkey Pilot plays a wide range of music in the club, primarily world music/dance music fusions, but also many other genres.\n\nWhirl-Y-Gig also appears at festivals, featuring both live bands and DJ sessions. Whirl-y-Gig has hosted stages at the first Phoenix festival, seven years at WOMAD in Reading, Guilfest, Beautiful Days, Canterbury Fayre, the Whitby Musicport Festival and at the first Sunrise Celebration. They also run their own record label called Whirl-Y-Music and have organised their own festival, the Whirl-Y-Fayre, which first took place in August 2013, and has taken place every summer since.\n\nWhirl-Y-Gig's have featured artists such as Banco De Gaia, System 7, Dreadzone, Astralasia, Eat Static, Loop Guru, Baka Beyond, Transglobal Underground, Another Green World and Kamel Nitrate.\n\nWhirl-Y-Gig celebrated its 21st anniversary in 2002, at which point it was one of the longest-running club nights in the United Kingdom. Whirl-y-Gig were still active and as popular as ever at the start of 2020.\n\nReferences\n\nBritish brands\nNightclubs in London\nBritish record labels\nElectronic dance music venues\nWorld music record labels\nWorld music",
"Jorge Valdés Vázquez, better known as DJ Flow or Dímelo Flow, is a Panamanian DJ and producer based in the United States.\n\nEarly life and career beginnings \nDimelo Flow aka (Jorge \"DJ Flow\" Valdés) got his start in the music business carrying records and promoting parties for local Ocala (Florida) DJs Klarc Shepard, DJ Stilo, Rico Sánchez and many others who were influential in Central Florida in early 2003. Introduced to the private party arena of Central Florida with support from fellow disc jockeys he improve his dj skills and started to perfect his craft. \n\nBetween the ages of 20 and 23, with Klarc Shepard's help he landed as on-air talent at Magic 101.3 FM. WTMG in Gainesville Florida. After his position on radio turn into a dead end gig he moved and followed his long time mentor Rico \"The Politician\" Sánchez where he landed an MC role at the long-time running Prana Nightclub in Ybor City, Florida. In 2014, He performed three days a week as a DJ at Green Gators, a Tampa nightclub in town n country where he met Justin Quiles while opening his show. Quiles at the time was on the rise and was still on the look out for fresh talent to add to his group and shared his interest in him and working with major artists in the music industry. Flow then collaborated with Quiles in performing as a DJ and took part in numerous tours nationwide and Europe. After much success in a team environment, Flow was offered a record deal through Quiles record label, Rich Music. \n\nIn June 2017, Flow released his debut single as an artist, \"In the Morning\", featuring Justin Quiles and Fuego. He is signed to the record label Rich Music.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n\n \n\n1989 births\nLiving people\nPanamanian musicians"
] |
[
"Diplo",
"Career",
"Where did he grow up?",
"He spent the majority of his youth in Miami,",
"What was his first job?",
"continue his studies at Temple University, where he first garnered attention as a DJ.",
"What year did he start gaining attention as a DJ?",
"the two began throwing parties under the Hooked on Hollertronix moniker in 2003",
"Where was his DJ gig?",
"Philadelphia."
] | C_48a01b9a3d1a4e2185b94a26818c6a03_1 | Did he record a mixtape? | 5 | Did Diplo record a mixtape? | Diplo | Diplo was born on November 10, 1978, in Tupelo, Mississippi, the son of Barbara Jean (nee Cox) and Thomas Pentz. He is of German and English descent. The influence of home-grown rap played a key role in helping shape his production style. He spent the majority of his youth in Miami, where he got a taste for the characteristic Miami bass. He began attending the University of Central Florida in 1997, and then moved to Philadelphia to continue his studies at Temple University, where he first garnered attention as a DJ. After frequently running into fellow DJ Low Budget, the two began throwing parties under the Hooked on Hollertronix moniker in 2003 as a way of maintaining control of what they were able to play during DJ gigs in Philadelphia. The success of these parties allowed the two to release mixtapes, both separate and together, gathering acclaim across the country. One such mixtape, Never Scared, was named one of the New York Times top ten albums of 2003, and the Hollertronix name became synonymous with parties featuring guests like Maluca Mala, Bun B, Spank Rock, M.I.A., among others. Hollertronix's sound has been described as "disparate genres to be smashed together for maximum attention-grabbing impact" an aesthetic which takes from the "organic, cohesive, whole" aesthetic of acts such as Bun B, Lil Jon, Drama, M.I.A., Bjork, Busta Rhymes, and others. Diplo accentuated the club aesthetic of his Hollertronix music for a more reflective sound on his solo debut, Florida, which was released on the Ninja Tune imprint, Big Dada Records. The album Florida was pressed twice, first with a CD and the second with a CD and DVD. The DVD was created by System D-128, another artist who has collaborated with Diplo on some audio and video projects. Before Florida's DVD accompaniment, another DVD surfaced called Diplo: "Banned in Libya" which was released by Money Studies, the first label to release a solo project by Diplo under his original DJ name Diplodocus. It was a 45 rpm record called "Thingamajawn" for which there is also a music video System D-128 directed. Similar to the Florida DVD, "Banned in Libya" is an experimental audio and video mix of some of Diplo's original music blended with a number of other unidentified sources. His particular affinity for one genre of music called baile funk, or favela funk, would spawn a series of mixtapes (Favela on Blast, Favela Strikes Back), which served to bring the Brazilian dance music of the ghettos to the United States. It was not long before his Hooked on Hollertronix parties would provide him the success necessary to move to the next logical step and build a studio where music would become his full-time focus. With this goal in mind, Diplo built "The Mausoleum," a video studio, recording studio, record label office, gallery, and event space in Philadelphia. Since its inception, The Mausoleum has become the home to recordings by artists like Christina Aguilera, Shakira, M.I.A., Santigold, Spank Rock, Plastic Little, Blaqstarr, Paper Route Gangstaz, and hosted concerts by Glass Candy, Skream, Boys Noize, Nicos Gun, and more. CANNOTANSWER | The success of these parties allowed the two to release mixtapes, both separate and together, | Thomas Wesley Pentz (born November 10, 1978), known professionally as Diplo, is an American DJ, songwriter and record producer based in Los Angeles. He is the co-creator and lead member of the electronic dancehall music project Major Lazer, a member of the supergroup LSD with Sia and Labrinth, a member of electronic duo Jack Ü with producer and DJ Skrillex, and a member of Silk City with Mark Ronson. He founded and manages record company Mad Decent, as well as co-founding the non-profit organization Heaps Decent. His 2013 EP, Revolution, debuted at number 68 on the US Billboard 200. The EP's title track was later featured in a commercial for Hyundai and is featured on the WWE 2K16 soundtrack.
Diplo worked with and dated British musician M.I.A., an artist who is credited with giving him exposure in his early career. Later, he M.I.A., and fellow producer Switch created a Jamaican dancehall project and cartoon series titled Major Lazer. Since then, Diplo has worked on production and mixtape projects with many other pop artists, such as Gwen Stefani, Die Antwoord, Britney Spears, Madonna, Shakira, Beyoncé, Ellie Goulding, No Doubt, Justin Bieber, Usher, Snoop Dogg, Trippie Redd, Chris Brown, CL, G-Dragon, Bad Bunny, Kali Uchis, Joji, MØ and Poppy. His alias, short for Diplodocus, derives from his childhood fascination with dinosaurs.
Career
Early life
Diplo was born on November 10, 1978, in Tupelo, Mississippi, the son of Barbara Jean (née Cox) and Thomas Pentz. He is of German and English descent. Diplo graduated from Hendersonville High School in Hendersonville, TN.
The influence of home-grown rap played a key role in helping shape Diplo's production style. Although he was born in Mississippi, he spent the majority of his youth in Miami, where he got a taste for the characteristic Miami bass. He began attending the University of Central Florida in 1997. During his time at UCF, he became a DJ at local radio station WPRK, the radio station at Rollins College. He moved to Philadelphia to continue his studies at Temple University, where he first garnered attention as a DJ. After frequently running into fellow DJ Low Budget, the two began throwing parties under the Hooked on Hollertronix moniker in 2003 as a way of maintaining control of what they were able to play during DJ gigs in Philadelphia. The success of these parties allowed the two to release mixtapes, both separately and together, gathering acclaim across the country. One such mixtape, Never Scared, was named one of The New York Times top ten albums of 2003, and the Hollertronix name became synonymous with parties featuring guests like Maluca Mala, Bun B, Spank Rock, M.I.A., among others. Hollertronix's sound has been described as "disparate genres to be smashed together for maximum attention-grabbing impact" an aesthetic which takes from the "organic, cohesive, whole" aesthetic of acts such as Bun B, Lil Jon, Drama, M.I.A., Björk, Busta Rhymes, and others.
Diplo accentuated the club aesthetic of his Hollertronix music for a more reflective sound on his solo debut, Florida, which was released on the Ninja Tune imprint, Big Dada Records. The album Florida was pressed twice, first with a CD and the second with a CD/DVD Set. The DVD was put together by System D-128, artist and filmmaker who has also collaborated with Diplo on audio and film projects. Before Floridas DVD accompaniment, another DVD surfaced called Diplo: "Banned in Libya" which was released by Money Studies, the first label to release a solo project by Diplo under his original DJ name Diplodocus. It was a 45 rpm record called "Thingamajawn" for which there is also a music video System D-128 directed. Similar to the Florida DVD, "Banned in Libya" is an experimental audio and video mix of some of Diplo's original music blended with a number of other unidentified sources. His particular affinity for one genre of music called baile funk, or favela funk, would spawn a series of mixtapes (Favela on Blast, Favela Strikes Back), which served to bring the Brazilian dance music of the ghettos to the United States.
It was not long before his Hooked on Hollertronix parties would provide him the success necessary to move to the next logical step and build a studio where music would become his full-time focus. With this goal in mind, Diplo built "The Mausoleum", a video studio, recording studio, record label office, gallery, and event space in Philadelphia. Since its inception, The Mausoleum has become the home to recordings by artists like Christina Aguilera, Shakira, M.I.A., Santigold, Spank Rock, Plastic Little, Blaqstarr, Paper Route Gangstaz, and hosted concerts by Glass Candy, Skream, Boys Noize, Nicos Gun, and more.
M.I.A.
After hearing one of his songs in 2004, M.I.A. approached Diplo when he was DJing one night at the Fabric Club in London. Coincidentally, Diplo was playing her songs "Galang" and "Fire Fire" as she entered the club, which he got from a worker at i-D magazine. Diplo added, "She came through and she wanted to meet me 'cause she'd heard my single and the funk mix from one of her A&Rs and she just thought I was right up her alley. Besides me being a white dude from Florida and her being a Sri Lankan girl in England, everything else was the same: [We were both] film graduates, [listened to] all the same music when we were kids, we're going in the same direction right now in music, it was amazing... I always wanted to make a beat with her, but all my beats were really shitty at the time."M.I.A. Confronts the Haters . Pitchfork. Retrieved on October 23, 2010. The two eventually collaborated on a mixtape, Piracy Funds Terrorism Vol. 1, where Arular track acapellas were mashed with other artists' songs. It was listed among 'Albums of the Year' by The New York Times and Pitchfork Media.Booty Call – Page 1 – Music – New York . Village Voice (December 14, 2004). Retrieved on October 23, 2010. The two continued to work together after the release. He was the tour DJ on her 2005 Arular Tour.
Diplo continued to work with M.I.A. and, through her, met London DJ Switch. Together, they created the Grammy-nominated track "Paper Planes", peaking at number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. In 2015, during an interview with Rolling Stone, M.I.A said that Diplo resented her rise to fame in 2005, that he tried to hold her back, and fought with her about becoming successful.
Mad Decent
From this, Diplo went from an unknown DJ to taking off as a producer, landing him collaborations with artists like Shakira, Robyn, Kid Cudi, Bruno Mars, No Doubt and Snoop Dogg, as well as work with Maluca, Kid Sister, Die Antwoord, Alex Clare, Rolo Tomassi, Amanda Blank and Dark Meat. After taking a trip to Brazil to investigate the favela music scene, and fascinated with the energy the scene had to offer, Diplo decided to import a dance-funk group Bonde do Rolê from Brazil for release on his Mad Decent record label (also housed within 'The Mausoleum'). This group would serve to define funk carioca in the United States, spawning a host of others to join the movement. Diplo also spent some time documenting the music, and the favelas of Brazil.
Although favela funk remained an interest (the Favela on Blast documentary just saw release in 2009), his Mad Decent imprint would serve as a blank palette for Diplo to showcase the myriad different sounds he had come across while touring around the world. September 2009 even saw Diplo travel to China to play with Steve Aoki at a show organised by promoters Split Works. Diplo quickly developed a reputation for his extensive touring. In the April 2010 issue of Rolling Stone, Diplo was touted as one of '40 Reasons to be Excited About Music'. This kind of jet setting pushed his label far beyond the favela funk genre with which it initially began. Since its foundation in 2005 Diplo's Mad Decent label has released music by Santigold, Baauer, Lil' Jon, Gucci Mane, Peter Bjorn and John, Rusko, Bosco Delrey, Buraka Som Sistema, Savage Skulls, Dana Sibuea, Oliver Twizt, Jamie Fanatic, Douster, Boy 8-Bit, and Popo.Diplo's Mad Decent Label Teams Up With Downtown Recordings . Pitchfork (March 31, 2009). Retrieved on October 23, 2010.
As Mad Decent continues to grow and release tracks by big-name artists, Diplo's solo career continues to grow at the same rate. He's produced for artists such as Beyoncé, Justin Bieber, Lil Wayne, Britney Spears, Wale, Chris Brown, Ariana Grande, 2 Chainz, Travis Porter, Usher, Azealia Banks, Iggy Azalea, and AlunaGeorge. On October 16, 2015, Diplo released "Be Right There" along with fellow producer Sleepy Tom. The single charted in multiple countries and has over 100 million streams on Spotify. On April 23, 2016, Beyoncé released her critically acclaimed album, Lemonade. Diplo produced two tracks on the album, "All Night", and one of the three singles, "Hold Up". The album debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 and was certified platinum on June 8, 2016. Along with producing tracks on Beyoncé's Lemonade, Diplo collaborated with Canadian DJ duo Zeds Dead on the release "Blame", which featured Swedish singer Elliphant. The track was officially released on July 14, 2016, via Zeds Dead's SoundCloud.
Major Lazer
Diplo's first collaborative full-length record was with Switch, this time under the guise of Major Lazer. Diplo incorporates such disparate influences as Miami Bass and Baile Funk into the high-tech eclecticism of his productions.
After landing a deal with Downtown Records before even recording a note of music, Diplo and Switch set out for Jamaica to record a project that, like most of Diplo's projects before it, would highlight the little-known subgenres, this time of Jamaica's dancehall scene. The two received support by many already established Jamaican artists such as Vybz Kartel, Elephant Man and Ms. Thing, and the resulting record Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do also featured vocals from Santigold, Amanda Blank, Nina Sky, Ricky Blaze and more. When discussing the Major Lazer project, Diplo described the dancehall sound as being "
the end of the world, all the little influences—house, soca, oldies, R&B, jazz—it all ends up in Jamaica." The track "Pon De Floor" from Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do was sampled for Beyoncé's single "Run the World (Girls)".
Major Lazer's first album was followed up with an EP, Lazers Never Die, which was released in 2010. Switch left Major Lazer in 2011, and was replaced by DJs Jillionaire and Walshy Fire. A second album, Free the Universe, was scheduled to be released in November 2012 but was delayed to February 2013, and then to April 15. It features artists such as Ezra Koenig, Bruno Mars, Ward 21, Wyclef, The Partysquad, Shaggy, Tyga, Flux Pavilion and Wynter Gordon. On February 8, 2015, during the Grammy Award ceremony, Diplo revealed details of the third Major Lazer album. He confirmed that the album would incorporate artists such as Ariana Grande, Ellie Goulding and Pusha T. It is called Peace Is the Mission. The first single, "Lean On", is a collaboration with French producer DJ Snake and features vocals from Danish recording artist MØ. The second single, "Powerful", featuring Ellie Goulding and Tarrus Riley, was released simultaneously with the album on June 1, 2015. On November 11, 2015, "Lean On" became Spotify's Most Streamed Song of All Time with over 800 million streams to date. Along with the streaming title, the official video for "Lean On" became one of the most viewed videos on YouTube. It currently has more than 2 billion views. Along with the streaming and viewing milestones, "Lean On" would also go on to achieve double platinum status.
On July 22, 2016, the group released the single "Cold Water", a collaboration with Canadian artist Justin Bieber and Danish singer MØ. The track has already reached over 200 million streams on Spotify, and achieved international commercial success, reaching number one in multiple countries. On November 29, 2016, Major Lazer and Bad Royale released "My Number", a track that samples "54-46 That's My Number" which Pitchfork describes as, "a genre-defining classic from legendary ska/reggae group Toots and the Maytals." This release contained newly recorded vocals from frontman Toots Hibbert specifically designed for Major Lazer, which changed the original lyrics to incorporate the group into the song while keeping the original melody. Their fifth studio album, Music Is the Weapon, features collaborations with Alessia Cara, French Montana, Anitta, Khalid, Skip Marley, Marcus Mumford, J Balvin, El Alfa, Mr Eazi and Nicki Minaj.
Jack Ü
Jack Ü is an American duo made up of Skrillex and Diplo. Jack Ü's debut performance took place at the Mad Decent Block Party in San Diego on September 15, 2013, which is a nationwide tour that record label Mad Decent puts together in order to showcase different artists signed to the label. Diplo announced the project by releasing the Mad Decent Block Party lineup with Jack Ü playing at multiple stops on the tour. After some guessing by many of who Jack Ü was, Diplo finally came out to reveal that "Jack Ü ... means Skrillex and Diplo together". After their New York debut at Electric Zoo was canceled in late August, the duo would soon return to the city for something bigger. On December 31, 2014, Jack Ü sold out Madison Square Garden for one of their biggest performances to date. The duo had support from Rudimental, Yellow Claw and A$AP Ferg.
On February 27, 2015 they released Skrillex and Diplo Present Jack Ü, a co-release between their respective labels OWSLA and Mad Decent. It featured tracks with 2 Chainz, Kiesza, Justin Bieber, AlunaGeorge and Missy Elliott. The first single "Take Ü There" featuring Kiesza was the lead single on the duo's debut album. The single was released as the lead on October 4, 2014. It reached number sixteen on the UK Dance Chart. The official second single, "Where Are Ü Now", was released simultaneously with the album. The song which took both artists in a different direction, featured a collaboration with Canadian pop star Justin Bieber. Peaking at number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100, and number 3 on the UK Singles Chart, "Where Are Ü Now" became the duo's largest hit on both charts thus far. The song would also go on to peak at number three in Australia, which was the highest charting for the single worldwide. The song had huge success in Europe as well, reaching the top-ten in Sweden and Finland, and the top-twenty in Norway, the Czech Republic, Denmark and Slovakia. The final place it had charting success was Bieber's home country, Canada, where it would end up peaking at number 6. On March 29, 2015, Jack Ü closed the main stage at Ultra Music Festival in Miami.
In 2016, the duo won two Grammy Awards for "Grammy Award for Best Dance Album" for "Skrillex and Diplo present Jack Ü" and "Grammy Award for Best Dance" for "Where Are Ü Now?" with Justin Bieber. The latter was also Bieber's first Grammy. They played two sold-out shows including Coachella Valley Music Festival in Indio, California and Lollapalooza in São Paulo, Brazil.
LSD
LSD is a pop supergroup composed of Diplo, Australian singer Sia, and British musician Labrinth. The trio have released five singles thus far, with their song "Thunderclouds" being featured in a commercial for the Samsung Galaxy Note9. Their singles "Genius" and "Audio" have seen official remixes from producers Banx & Ranx and Cid, respectively. LSD's debut album Labrinth, Sia & Diplo Present... LSD was released on April 12, 2019.
Silk City
On January 2, 2018 Diplo announced a new project with British DJ and singer Mark Ronson, entitled Silk City. The duo released their debut single "Only Can Get Better" featuring Daniel Merriweather on May 23, 2018. Their second single, "Feel About You" featuring Mapei, was released on July 20, 2018. The duo's third single, "Loud", saw Diplo reunite with previous collaborators GoldLink & Desiigner. Their 4th and most recent single features British singer/songwriter Dua Lipa, called "Electricity", which was released on September 5, 2018. The music video was released on the same day. In 2018, "Electricity" won a Grammy at the 61st Annual GRAMMY Awards for Best Dance Recording.
Additional work
Beyond Major Lazer and Mad Decent, Diplo has continued to show support for 'all the little influences', the lesser-known music scenes around the globe. Most recently his focus shifted to the Bounce scene in New Orleans, Louisiana for a television piece commissioned by Current.tv. Diplo was nominated for Non-Classical Producer of the Year at the 55th Grammy Awards and 58th Grammy Awards. Diplo had a late night show on BBC Radio 1 / 1Xtra on Saturdays 11:00 p.m.–1:00 a.m. (GMT) called 'Diplo and Friends' where he curates mixes from some of biggest names in dance music. He has now resigned from BBC Radio 1, per 2021. Diplo also has several syndicated Diplo and Friends shows in the United States in Boston, Bakersfield, Cleveland, Columbus, Las Vegas, Spokane, Albuquerque, Lafayette, Denver, and most notably on Los Angeles' 98.7 every Sunday at 9 p.m.
Beginning on October 2, 2015, Diplo, Jillionaire, Walshy Fire and Eric Hamilton debuted "Lazer Sound" on Apple Music's Beats 1. The newest radio show, curated by Diplo, and the Major Lazer crew, consists of interviews, moments on tour and brand new music. The show is on the air every other Saturday of the month. Throughout 2015 and 2016, Diplo performed with Major Lazer and Jack Ü on numerous live TV and award shows. He performed on The Tonight Show, Good Morning America, the iHeart Radio Music Festival, The NRJ Music Awards, the 2015 Latin Grammy Awards and the 2016 Grammy Awards.
In February 2016, Diplo was one of the first and very few mainstream Western artists to perform in Islamabad, Pakistan alongside Adil Omar, Talal Qureshi, SNKM and Elliphant. In 2018 Diplo returned to with Major Lazer for Islamabad's first Mad Decent Block Party alongside Adil Omar, SNKM, Talal Qureshi, Valentino Khan, Chrome Sparks, Lyari Underground and a host of other acts.
In January 2017, Diplo and Autoerotique (a house group from Toronto) released a music video titled "Waist Time" which was filmed in a warehouse in London. He was nominated for two Grammy's in 2016 (The 59th Annual GRAMMY Awards) for Album of the Year (for producer of Beyoncé's album Lemonade and producer for Justin Bieber's album Purpose). He also sang a song "Phurrr" in Bollywood in Imtiaz Ali's film Jab Harry Met Sejal starring Shah Rukh Khan and Anushka Sharma. In 2019, Diplo released the song "So Long" under the moniker Thomas Wesley, featuring American country singer Cam. In a press release, he stated that there are "several forthcoming collaborations with country artists" planned following "So Long", which came in the form of Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley, Chapter 1: Snake Oil released in 2020. The album included the song "Heartless" featuring Morgan Wallen.
Personal life
Diplo has three sons: Lockett and Lazer, with Kathryn Lockhart; and Pace, with Jevon King.
He dated rapper M.I.A. from 2003 to 2008. M.I.A. later said that their tumultuous relationship involved emotional abuse from him. Diplo dated singer Katy Perry for nearly a year in 2014 and 2015.
Diplo is a soccer and cricket fan and supporter of the U.S. men's national team. He also supports Arsenal F.C. and has attended two Tigres UANL matches. He created a mix for the 2014 World Cup and produced the 2018 World Cup official song "Live It Up". Diplo purchased a minority share of Phoenix Rising FC of the USL Championship on January 27, 2016. He stated: "I've been really fortunate to travel all over the world and experience different cultures through music. Wherever I am, Jamaica, Spain, England, China, etc., soccer is a social constant. I see soccer the same way I see music, as a connective tissue linking the world's cultures."
On February 24, 2016, Diplo endorsed Bernie Sanders as the Democratic presidential nominee. Sanders' ad "It's A Revolution" is soundtracked by Diplo's 2013 track "Revolution". On June 9, 2016, Diplo was featured on the cover of the American entertainment media magazine Billboard.
On May 1, 2019, Diplo live-streamed Joe Jonas' Las Vegas wedding to Sophie Turner on Instagram, "not knowing it was a serious wedding". Soon after the couple told the tabloids that Diplo ruined their wedding, the DJ responded on social media. Five months later, Diplo and the Jonas Brothers released a song titled "Lonely". The song's official music video chronicles Diplo's attempts to make amends with Joe Jonas and his brothers.
On July 9, 2020, Diplo joined Senator Kamala Harris and other artists for the "Get Up, Stand Up!" virtual fundraiser in support of Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign.
Sexual misconduct allegations
In November 2020, a Los Angeles woman named Shelly Auguste was granted a restraining order against Diplo. She alleged that he distributed revenge porn of her after she accused him of grooming her and other "very young girls", nonconsensual sexual behaviour, hiring a private investigator in June 2020 to "scare [her] into remaining silent about [their] relationship" and to "scare other women out of coming forward", and threatening others who supported her, in a Twitter thread in October. According to court documents, the woman, who met Diplo in the summer of 2014, when she was 17 and he was 36, began trading sexually explicit images and had an intimate relationship. Sometime later, Diplo filed and was granted a restraining order of his own against Auguste.
The same year, rapper Azealia Banks, who had been discovered by Diplo on social media when she was seventeen, claimed the producer helped her start her career in exchange for favours of sexual nature when she was underage in the fifth episode of her SoundCloud podcast, "Cheapys Two Cents".
In 2021, an unnamed woman sued Diplo for allegedly filming her while taking advantage of her sexually while she was intoxicated and unable to consent after a 2019 Las Vegas concert. She claims Diplo "invited her to a room, kicked out her friends, and would not let her leave until she performed oral sex". 10 days later, the accuser dropped her case, expressing regret about filing it.
DiscographyStudio albums'''
Florida (2004)
Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley, Chapter 1: Snake Oil (as Thomas Wesley) (2020)
MMXX (2020)
Diplo (2022)
Filmography
Film
Television
Awards and nominations
In 2009, he was nominated for his first Grammy Award for Record of the Year for "Paper Planes" shared with M.I.A., Switch. He was then nominated for a second Grammy Award in 2012, for Best Rap Song for "Look at Me Now" shared with Chris Brown, Lil Wayne and Busta Rhymes. Diplo was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2013 and 2016 in the category Producer of the Year, Non-Classic. In 2016, he won Grammy Awards for Best Dance/Electronic Album for Skrillex and Diplo Present Jack Ü and Best Dance Recording for "Where Are Ü Now".
Camerimage
!Ref.
|-
|2012
| "Express Yourself"
|rowspan=2|Best Music Video
|
|
|-
|2013
| "Earthquake"
|
|
GAFFA-Prisen Awards
|-
| rowspan=2|2019
| Himself
| Best International Artist
|
|-
| California| Best International Album
|
Grammy Awards
|-
|| 2009
| "Paper Planes"
|Record of the Year
|
|-
|| 2012
| "Look at Me Now"
|Best Rap Song
|
|-
|| 2013
|rowspan="2"| Diplo
|rowspan="2"| Producer of the Year, Non-Classical
|
|-
| rowspan="3"| 2016
|
|-
|"Where Are Ü Now"
| Best Dance Recording
|
|-
|Skrillex and Diplo Present Jack Ü
| Best Dance/Electronic Album
|
|-
| rowspan="2"| 2017
| Lemonade
| rowspan="2"|Album of the Year
|
|-
| Purpose
|
|-
| 2019
| "Electricity"
| Best Dance Recording
|
DJ Magazine top 100 DJs
Electronic Music Awards
International Dance Music Awards
!Ref.
|-
| rowspan=3|2011
| rowspan=2|"C'mon"
| Best Electro/Tech House Track
|
| rowspan=3|
|-
| Best Trance Track
|
|-
| rowspan=8|Himself
| Best Remixer
|
|-
|rowspan=2|2013
| Best North American DJ
|
| rowspan=2|
|-
| rowspan=2|Best Producer
|
|-
| rowspan=2|2014
|
| rowspan=2|
|-
| rowspan=2|Best North American DJ
|
|-
| rowspan=5|2015
|
| rowspan=5|
|-
| Best Producer
|
|-
| Best Dubstep/Drum & Bass DJ
|
|-
| "Dirty Vibe"
| Best Dubstep/Drum & Bass Track
|
|-
| rowspan=2|Diplo and Friends| rowspan=2|Best Podcast or Radio Mixshow
|
|-
| rowspan=5|2016
|
|rowspan=5|
|-
| rowspan=4|Himself
| Best Producer
|
|-
| Best Global DJ
|
|-
| Best North American DJ
|
|-
| Best EDM/Pop DJ
|
iHeartRadio Music Awards
!Ref.
|-
| 2021
| Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley, Chapter 1: Snake Oil| Dance Album of the Year
|
|
PLUG Awards
|-
| rowspan=2|2005
| Himself
| New Artist of the Year
|
|-
| Favela On Blast| rowspan=2|DJ Album of the Year
|
|-
| rowspan=2|2006
| FabricLive.24|
|-
| Himself
| Record Producer of the Year
|
|-
| 2007
| FabricLive.24''
| DJ Album of the Year
|
UK Music Video Awards
!Ref.
|-
| 2013
| "Earthquake"
| Best Styling in a Video
|
|
References
External links
1978 births
21st-century American rappers
21st-century American singers
Ableton Live users
American DJs
American expatriates in England
American hip hop DJs
American hip hop musicians
American hip hop record producers
American male songwriters
American people of English descent
American people of German descent
Atlantic Records artists
Because Music artists
BBC Radio 1 presenters
BBC Radio 1Xtra presenters
Electronic dance music DJs
Grammy Award winners
Living people
LSD (group) members
Mad Decent artists
Major Lazer members
Musicians from Florida
People from Miami
Phoenix Rising FC chairmen and investors
Record producers from Florida
Silk City (duo) members
Singers from Florida
Songwriters from Florida
Southern hip hop musicians
Temple University alumni | false | [
"Dj Fantan (born Arnold Kamudyariwa) is a Zimbabwean record producer, record executive, DJ and Zimdancehall chanter.\n\nEarly life and education \nDj Fantan was born in Mbare, Harare where he grew up. He attended his early education at Gwinyai Primary School then did his secondary education at George Stark high School where he met his business partner Levels Chillspot.\n\nIn 2011, Fantan turned his bedroom set up into a recording studio, establishing Chillspot Recordz with Levels. The duo went on to discover talents from around Zimbabwe through producing riddims which popularised the Zimdancehall genre hence its growth. In 2013, his production with Levels (Zimbo Flavor Riddim) went on to win Riddim of the year. In 2014, they won Conscious Riddim of the year (Pure Niceness) and Best Collaboration Riddim (Mad Levels) then Riddim of the year 2015 (Stage Riddim) at the Zimdancehall Awards.\n\nOn 3 January 2021, DJ Fantan and colleagues were arrested for violeting COVID-19 regulations after hosting a New Year's Eve bash that attracted thousands of people. Their initial sentence of 12 months jail term was reduced to three months with an option to pay a $2 000 fine each, which they did on conditions of good behaviour from then to 2025.\n\nMix tape sole productions\n\nMadlevel Riddim 2013\nZimdancehall Mixtape 2013\nThe Dj Fantan Zimdancehall Mixtape 2014\nZim Lovers Mixtape 2014\nZimdancehall Mixtape 2014\n\nReferences\n\nZimbabwean musicians\n\nLiving people\n\n1987 births",
"Solid Foundation is the debut compilation mixtape by the record label Quality Control Music. It was released on February 3, 2014. It features artists from the label including Migos, Rich The Kid, Skippa Da Flippa, Jose Guapo, Johnny Cinco, Lil Duke, Chill Will, Dirty Dave, Cartie & Losie. The mixtape has only one outside appearance, from Gucci Mane. Its production was handled by Murda Beatz, Mercy, Dee Money, 30 Roc, Spiffy, Zaytoven, Hittman Traxx, Butla, Metro Boomin, Will A Fool, Young CEO and JB Did It, among others.\n\nBackground\nThe mixtape was scheduled to drop during Super Bowl Sunday, but it was delayed by several hours.\n\nPromotion\nBefore the mixtape's release, a promotional vlog directed by Keemotion was released.\n\nReception\nJake Rohn for BET wrote, \"For fans who enjoy the hard-hitting beats that have established the South in the mainstream, Solid Foundation is exactly what name suggests, but as a group, Quality Control Music still has a ways to go if they're looking to keep building.\"\n\nTrack listing\n\nReferences\n\nQuality Control Music albums\n2014 mixtape albums\nRecord label compilation albums"
] |
[
"Diplo",
"Career",
"Where did he grow up?",
"He spent the majority of his youth in Miami,",
"What was his first job?",
"continue his studies at Temple University, where he first garnered attention as a DJ.",
"What year did he start gaining attention as a DJ?",
"the two began throwing parties under the Hooked on Hollertronix moniker in 2003",
"Where was his DJ gig?",
"Philadelphia.",
"Did he record a mixtape?",
"The success of these parties allowed the two to release mixtapes, both separate and together,"
] | C_48a01b9a3d1a4e2185b94a26818c6a03_1 | What was the name of his album? | 6 | What was the name of Diplo's album? | Diplo | Diplo was born on November 10, 1978, in Tupelo, Mississippi, the son of Barbara Jean (nee Cox) and Thomas Pentz. He is of German and English descent. The influence of home-grown rap played a key role in helping shape his production style. He spent the majority of his youth in Miami, where he got a taste for the characteristic Miami bass. He began attending the University of Central Florida in 1997, and then moved to Philadelphia to continue his studies at Temple University, where he first garnered attention as a DJ. After frequently running into fellow DJ Low Budget, the two began throwing parties under the Hooked on Hollertronix moniker in 2003 as a way of maintaining control of what they were able to play during DJ gigs in Philadelphia. The success of these parties allowed the two to release mixtapes, both separate and together, gathering acclaim across the country. One such mixtape, Never Scared, was named one of the New York Times top ten albums of 2003, and the Hollertronix name became synonymous with parties featuring guests like Maluca Mala, Bun B, Spank Rock, M.I.A., among others. Hollertronix's sound has been described as "disparate genres to be smashed together for maximum attention-grabbing impact" an aesthetic which takes from the "organic, cohesive, whole" aesthetic of acts such as Bun B, Lil Jon, Drama, M.I.A., Bjork, Busta Rhymes, and others. Diplo accentuated the club aesthetic of his Hollertronix music for a more reflective sound on his solo debut, Florida, which was released on the Ninja Tune imprint, Big Dada Records. The album Florida was pressed twice, first with a CD and the second with a CD and DVD. The DVD was created by System D-128, another artist who has collaborated with Diplo on some audio and video projects. Before Florida's DVD accompaniment, another DVD surfaced called Diplo: "Banned in Libya" which was released by Money Studies, the first label to release a solo project by Diplo under his original DJ name Diplodocus. It was a 45 rpm record called "Thingamajawn" for which there is also a music video System D-128 directed. Similar to the Florida DVD, "Banned in Libya" is an experimental audio and video mix of some of Diplo's original music blended with a number of other unidentified sources. His particular affinity for one genre of music called baile funk, or favela funk, would spawn a series of mixtapes (Favela on Blast, Favela Strikes Back), which served to bring the Brazilian dance music of the ghettos to the United States. It was not long before his Hooked on Hollertronix parties would provide him the success necessary to move to the next logical step and build a studio where music would become his full-time focus. With this goal in mind, Diplo built "The Mausoleum," a video studio, recording studio, record label office, gallery, and event space in Philadelphia. Since its inception, The Mausoleum has become the home to recordings by artists like Christina Aguilera, Shakira, M.I.A., Santigold, Spank Rock, Plastic Little, Blaqstarr, Paper Route Gangstaz, and hosted concerts by Glass Candy, Skream, Boys Noize, Nicos Gun, and more. CANNOTANSWER | Never Scared, | Thomas Wesley Pentz (born November 10, 1978), known professionally as Diplo, is an American DJ, songwriter and record producer based in Los Angeles. He is the co-creator and lead member of the electronic dancehall music project Major Lazer, a member of the supergroup LSD with Sia and Labrinth, a member of electronic duo Jack Ü with producer and DJ Skrillex, and a member of Silk City with Mark Ronson. He founded and manages record company Mad Decent, as well as co-founding the non-profit organization Heaps Decent. His 2013 EP, Revolution, debuted at number 68 on the US Billboard 200. The EP's title track was later featured in a commercial for Hyundai and is featured on the WWE 2K16 soundtrack.
Diplo worked with and dated British musician M.I.A., an artist who is credited with giving him exposure in his early career. Later, he M.I.A., and fellow producer Switch created a Jamaican dancehall project and cartoon series titled Major Lazer. Since then, Diplo has worked on production and mixtape projects with many other pop artists, such as Gwen Stefani, Die Antwoord, Britney Spears, Madonna, Shakira, Beyoncé, Ellie Goulding, No Doubt, Justin Bieber, Usher, Snoop Dogg, Trippie Redd, Chris Brown, CL, G-Dragon, Bad Bunny, Kali Uchis, Joji, MØ and Poppy. His alias, short for Diplodocus, derives from his childhood fascination with dinosaurs.
Career
Early life
Diplo was born on November 10, 1978, in Tupelo, Mississippi, the son of Barbara Jean (née Cox) and Thomas Pentz. He is of German and English descent. Diplo graduated from Hendersonville High School in Hendersonville, TN.
The influence of home-grown rap played a key role in helping shape Diplo's production style. Although he was born in Mississippi, he spent the majority of his youth in Miami, where he got a taste for the characteristic Miami bass. He began attending the University of Central Florida in 1997. During his time at UCF, he became a DJ at local radio station WPRK, the radio station at Rollins College. He moved to Philadelphia to continue his studies at Temple University, where he first garnered attention as a DJ. After frequently running into fellow DJ Low Budget, the two began throwing parties under the Hooked on Hollertronix moniker in 2003 as a way of maintaining control of what they were able to play during DJ gigs in Philadelphia. The success of these parties allowed the two to release mixtapes, both separately and together, gathering acclaim across the country. One such mixtape, Never Scared, was named one of The New York Times top ten albums of 2003, and the Hollertronix name became synonymous with parties featuring guests like Maluca Mala, Bun B, Spank Rock, M.I.A., among others. Hollertronix's sound has been described as "disparate genres to be smashed together for maximum attention-grabbing impact" an aesthetic which takes from the "organic, cohesive, whole" aesthetic of acts such as Bun B, Lil Jon, Drama, M.I.A., Björk, Busta Rhymes, and others.
Diplo accentuated the club aesthetic of his Hollertronix music for a more reflective sound on his solo debut, Florida, which was released on the Ninja Tune imprint, Big Dada Records. The album Florida was pressed twice, first with a CD and the second with a CD/DVD Set. The DVD was put together by System D-128, artist and filmmaker who has also collaborated with Diplo on audio and film projects. Before Floridas DVD accompaniment, another DVD surfaced called Diplo: "Banned in Libya" which was released by Money Studies, the first label to release a solo project by Diplo under his original DJ name Diplodocus. It was a 45 rpm record called "Thingamajawn" for which there is also a music video System D-128 directed. Similar to the Florida DVD, "Banned in Libya" is an experimental audio and video mix of some of Diplo's original music blended with a number of other unidentified sources. His particular affinity for one genre of music called baile funk, or favela funk, would spawn a series of mixtapes (Favela on Blast, Favela Strikes Back), which served to bring the Brazilian dance music of the ghettos to the United States.
It was not long before his Hooked on Hollertronix parties would provide him the success necessary to move to the next logical step and build a studio where music would become his full-time focus. With this goal in mind, Diplo built "The Mausoleum", a video studio, recording studio, record label office, gallery, and event space in Philadelphia. Since its inception, The Mausoleum has become the home to recordings by artists like Christina Aguilera, Shakira, M.I.A., Santigold, Spank Rock, Plastic Little, Blaqstarr, Paper Route Gangstaz, and hosted concerts by Glass Candy, Skream, Boys Noize, Nicos Gun, and more.
M.I.A.
After hearing one of his songs in 2004, M.I.A. approached Diplo when he was DJing one night at the Fabric Club in London. Coincidentally, Diplo was playing her songs "Galang" and "Fire Fire" as she entered the club, which he got from a worker at i-D magazine. Diplo added, "She came through and she wanted to meet me 'cause she'd heard my single and the funk mix from one of her A&Rs and she just thought I was right up her alley. Besides me being a white dude from Florida and her being a Sri Lankan girl in England, everything else was the same: [We were both] film graduates, [listened to] all the same music when we were kids, we're going in the same direction right now in music, it was amazing... I always wanted to make a beat with her, but all my beats were really shitty at the time."M.I.A. Confronts the Haters . Pitchfork. Retrieved on October 23, 2010. The two eventually collaborated on a mixtape, Piracy Funds Terrorism Vol. 1, where Arular track acapellas were mashed with other artists' songs. It was listed among 'Albums of the Year' by The New York Times and Pitchfork Media.Booty Call – Page 1 – Music – New York . Village Voice (December 14, 2004). Retrieved on October 23, 2010. The two continued to work together after the release. He was the tour DJ on her 2005 Arular Tour.
Diplo continued to work with M.I.A. and, through her, met London DJ Switch. Together, they created the Grammy-nominated track "Paper Planes", peaking at number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. In 2015, during an interview with Rolling Stone, M.I.A said that Diplo resented her rise to fame in 2005, that he tried to hold her back, and fought with her about becoming successful.
Mad Decent
From this, Diplo went from an unknown DJ to taking off as a producer, landing him collaborations with artists like Shakira, Robyn, Kid Cudi, Bruno Mars, No Doubt and Snoop Dogg, as well as work with Maluca, Kid Sister, Die Antwoord, Alex Clare, Rolo Tomassi, Amanda Blank and Dark Meat. After taking a trip to Brazil to investigate the favela music scene, and fascinated with the energy the scene had to offer, Diplo decided to import a dance-funk group Bonde do Rolê from Brazil for release on his Mad Decent record label (also housed within 'The Mausoleum'). This group would serve to define funk carioca in the United States, spawning a host of others to join the movement. Diplo also spent some time documenting the music, and the favelas of Brazil.
Although favela funk remained an interest (the Favela on Blast documentary just saw release in 2009), his Mad Decent imprint would serve as a blank palette for Diplo to showcase the myriad different sounds he had come across while touring around the world. September 2009 even saw Diplo travel to China to play with Steve Aoki at a show organised by promoters Split Works. Diplo quickly developed a reputation for his extensive touring. In the April 2010 issue of Rolling Stone, Diplo was touted as one of '40 Reasons to be Excited About Music'. This kind of jet setting pushed his label far beyond the favela funk genre with which it initially began. Since its foundation in 2005 Diplo's Mad Decent label has released music by Santigold, Baauer, Lil' Jon, Gucci Mane, Peter Bjorn and John, Rusko, Bosco Delrey, Buraka Som Sistema, Savage Skulls, Dana Sibuea, Oliver Twizt, Jamie Fanatic, Douster, Boy 8-Bit, and Popo.Diplo's Mad Decent Label Teams Up With Downtown Recordings . Pitchfork (March 31, 2009). Retrieved on October 23, 2010.
As Mad Decent continues to grow and release tracks by big-name artists, Diplo's solo career continues to grow at the same rate. He's produced for artists such as Beyoncé, Justin Bieber, Lil Wayne, Britney Spears, Wale, Chris Brown, Ariana Grande, 2 Chainz, Travis Porter, Usher, Azealia Banks, Iggy Azalea, and AlunaGeorge. On October 16, 2015, Diplo released "Be Right There" along with fellow producer Sleepy Tom. The single charted in multiple countries and has over 100 million streams on Spotify. On April 23, 2016, Beyoncé released her critically acclaimed album, Lemonade. Diplo produced two tracks on the album, "All Night", and one of the three singles, "Hold Up". The album debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 and was certified platinum on June 8, 2016. Along with producing tracks on Beyoncé's Lemonade, Diplo collaborated with Canadian DJ duo Zeds Dead on the release "Blame", which featured Swedish singer Elliphant. The track was officially released on July 14, 2016, via Zeds Dead's SoundCloud.
Major Lazer
Diplo's first collaborative full-length record was with Switch, this time under the guise of Major Lazer. Diplo incorporates such disparate influences as Miami Bass and Baile Funk into the high-tech eclecticism of his productions.
After landing a deal with Downtown Records before even recording a note of music, Diplo and Switch set out for Jamaica to record a project that, like most of Diplo's projects before it, would highlight the little-known subgenres, this time of Jamaica's dancehall scene. The two received support by many already established Jamaican artists such as Vybz Kartel, Elephant Man and Ms. Thing, and the resulting record Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do also featured vocals from Santigold, Amanda Blank, Nina Sky, Ricky Blaze and more. When discussing the Major Lazer project, Diplo described the dancehall sound as being "
the end of the world, all the little influences—house, soca, oldies, R&B, jazz—it all ends up in Jamaica." The track "Pon De Floor" from Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do was sampled for Beyoncé's single "Run the World (Girls)".
Major Lazer's first album was followed up with an EP, Lazers Never Die, which was released in 2010. Switch left Major Lazer in 2011, and was replaced by DJs Jillionaire and Walshy Fire. A second album, Free the Universe, was scheduled to be released in November 2012 but was delayed to February 2013, and then to April 15. It features artists such as Ezra Koenig, Bruno Mars, Ward 21, Wyclef, The Partysquad, Shaggy, Tyga, Flux Pavilion and Wynter Gordon. On February 8, 2015, during the Grammy Award ceremony, Diplo revealed details of the third Major Lazer album. He confirmed that the album would incorporate artists such as Ariana Grande, Ellie Goulding and Pusha T. It is called Peace Is the Mission. The first single, "Lean On", is a collaboration with French producer DJ Snake and features vocals from Danish recording artist MØ. The second single, "Powerful", featuring Ellie Goulding and Tarrus Riley, was released simultaneously with the album on June 1, 2015. On November 11, 2015, "Lean On" became Spotify's Most Streamed Song of All Time with over 800 million streams to date. Along with the streaming title, the official video for "Lean On" became one of the most viewed videos on YouTube. It currently has more than 2 billion views. Along with the streaming and viewing milestones, "Lean On" would also go on to achieve double platinum status.
On July 22, 2016, the group released the single "Cold Water", a collaboration with Canadian artist Justin Bieber and Danish singer MØ. The track has already reached over 200 million streams on Spotify, and achieved international commercial success, reaching number one in multiple countries. On November 29, 2016, Major Lazer and Bad Royale released "My Number", a track that samples "54-46 That's My Number" which Pitchfork describes as, "a genre-defining classic from legendary ska/reggae group Toots and the Maytals." This release contained newly recorded vocals from frontman Toots Hibbert specifically designed for Major Lazer, which changed the original lyrics to incorporate the group into the song while keeping the original melody. Their fifth studio album, Music Is the Weapon, features collaborations with Alessia Cara, French Montana, Anitta, Khalid, Skip Marley, Marcus Mumford, J Balvin, El Alfa, Mr Eazi and Nicki Minaj.
Jack Ü
Jack Ü is an American duo made up of Skrillex and Diplo. Jack Ü's debut performance took place at the Mad Decent Block Party in San Diego on September 15, 2013, which is a nationwide tour that record label Mad Decent puts together in order to showcase different artists signed to the label. Diplo announced the project by releasing the Mad Decent Block Party lineup with Jack Ü playing at multiple stops on the tour. After some guessing by many of who Jack Ü was, Diplo finally came out to reveal that "Jack Ü ... means Skrillex and Diplo together". After their New York debut at Electric Zoo was canceled in late August, the duo would soon return to the city for something bigger. On December 31, 2014, Jack Ü sold out Madison Square Garden for one of their biggest performances to date. The duo had support from Rudimental, Yellow Claw and A$AP Ferg.
On February 27, 2015 they released Skrillex and Diplo Present Jack Ü, a co-release between their respective labels OWSLA and Mad Decent. It featured tracks with 2 Chainz, Kiesza, Justin Bieber, AlunaGeorge and Missy Elliott. The first single "Take Ü There" featuring Kiesza was the lead single on the duo's debut album. The single was released as the lead on October 4, 2014. It reached number sixteen on the UK Dance Chart. The official second single, "Where Are Ü Now", was released simultaneously with the album. The song which took both artists in a different direction, featured a collaboration with Canadian pop star Justin Bieber. Peaking at number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100, and number 3 on the UK Singles Chart, "Where Are Ü Now" became the duo's largest hit on both charts thus far. The song would also go on to peak at number three in Australia, which was the highest charting for the single worldwide. The song had huge success in Europe as well, reaching the top-ten in Sweden and Finland, and the top-twenty in Norway, the Czech Republic, Denmark and Slovakia. The final place it had charting success was Bieber's home country, Canada, where it would end up peaking at number 6. On March 29, 2015, Jack Ü closed the main stage at Ultra Music Festival in Miami.
In 2016, the duo won two Grammy Awards for "Grammy Award for Best Dance Album" for "Skrillex and Diplo present Jack Ü" and "Grammy Award for Best Dance" for "Where Are Ü Now?" with Justin Bieber. The latter was also Bieber's first Grammy. They played two sold-out shows including Coachella Valley Music Festival in Indio, California and Lollapalooza in São Paulo, Brazil.
LSD
LSD is a pop supergroup composed of Diplo, Australian singer Sia, and British musician Labrinth. The trio have released five singles thus far, with their song "Thunderclouds" being featured in a commercial for the Samsung Galaxy Note9. Their singles "Genius" and "Audio" have seen official remixes from producers Banx & Ranx and Cid, respectively. LSD's debut album Labrinth, Sia & Diplo Present... LSD was released on April 12, 2019.
Silk City
On January 2, 2018 Diplo announced a new project with British DJ and singer Mark Ronson, entitled Silk City. The duo released their debut single "Only Can Get Better" featuring Daniel Merriweather on May 23, 2018. Their second single, "Feel About You" featuring Mapei, was released on July 20, 2018. The duo's third single, "Loud", saw Diplo reunite with previous collaborators GoldLink & Desiigner. Their 4th and most recent single features British singer/songwriter Dua Lipa, called "Electricity", which was released on September 5, 2018. The music video was released on the same day. In 2018, "Electricity" won a Grammy at the 61st Annual GRAMMY Awards for Best Dance Recording.
Additional work
Beyond Major Lazer and Mad Decent, Diplo has continued to show support for 'all the little influences', the lesser-known music scenes around the globe. Most recently his focus shifted to the Bounce scene in New Orleans, Louisiana for a television piece commissioned by Current.tv. Diplo was nominated for Non-Classical Producer of the Year at the 55th Grammy Awards and 58th Grammy Awards. Diplo had a late night show on BBC Radio 1 / 1Xtra on Saturdays 11:00 p.m.–1:00 a.m. (GMT) called 'Diplo and Friends' where he curates mixes from some of biggest names in dance music. He has now resigned from BBC Radio 1, per 2021. Diplo also has several syndicated Diplo and Friends shows in the United States in Boston, Bakersfield, Cleveland, Columbus, Las Vegas, Spokane, Albuquerque, Lafayette, Denver, and most notably on Los Angeles' 98.7 every Sunday at 9 p.m.
Beginning on October 2, 2015, Diplo, Jillionaire, Walshy Fire and Eric Hamilton debuted "Lazer Sound" on Apple Music's Beats 1. The newest radio show, curated by Diplo, and the Major Lazer crew, consists of interviews, moments on tour and brand new music. The show is on the air every other Saturday of the month. Throughout 2015 and 2016, Diplo performed with Major Lazer and Jack Ü on numerous live TV and award shows. He performed on The Tonight Show, Good Morning America, the iHeart Radio Music Festival, The NRJ Music Awards, the 2015 Latin Grammy Awards and the 2016 Grammy Awards.
In February 2016, Diplo was one of the first and very few mainstream Western artists to perform in Islamabad, Pakistan alongside Adil Omar, Talal Qureshi, SNKM and Elliphant. In 2018 Diplo returned to with Major Lazer for Islamabad's first Mad Decent Block Party alongside Adil Omar, SNKM, Talal Qureshi, Valentino Khan, Chrome Sparks, Lyari Underground and a host of other acts.
In January 2017, Diplo and Autoerotique (a house group from Toronto) released a music video titled "Waist Time" which was filmed in a warehouse in London. He was nominated for two Grammy's in 2016 (The 59th Annual GRAMMY Awards) for Album of the Year (for producer of Beyoncé's album Lemonade and producer for Justin Bieber's album Purpose). He also sang a song "Phurrr" in Bollywood in Imtiaz Ali's film Jab Harry Met Sejal starring Shah Rukh Khan and Anushka Sharma. In 2019, Diplo released the song "So Long" under the moniker Thomas Wesley, featuring American country singer Cam. In a press release, he stated that there are "several forthcoming collaborations with country artists" planned following "So Long", which came in the form of Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley, Chapter 1: Snake Oil released in 2020. The album included the song "Heartless" featuring Morgan Wallen.
Personal life
Diplo has three sons: Lockett and Lazer, with Kathryn Lockhart; and Pace, with Jevon King.
He dated rapper M.I.A. from 2003 to 2008. M.I.A. later said that their tumultuous relationship involved emotional abuse from him. Diplo dated singer Katy Perry for nearly a year in 2014 and 2015.
Diplo is a soccer and cricket fan and supporter of the U.S. men's national team. He also supports Arsenal F.C. and has attended two Tigres UANL matches. He created a mix for the 2014 World Cup and produced the 2018 World Cup official song "Live It Up". Diplo purchased a minority share of Phoenix Rising FC of the USL Championship on January 27, 2016. He stated: "I've been really fortunate to travel all over the world and experience different cultures through music. Wherever I am, Jamaica, Spain, England, China, etc., soccer is a social constant. I see soccer the same way I see music, as a connective tissue linking the world's cultures."
On February 24, 2016, Diplo endorsed Bernie Sanders as the Democratic presidential nominee. Sanders' ad "It's A Revolution" is soundtracked by Diplo's 2013 track "Revolution". On June 9, 2016, Diplo was featured on the cover of the American entertainment media magazine Billboard.
On May 1, 2019, Diplo live-streamed Joe Jonas' Las Vegas wedding to Sophie Turner on Instagram, "not knowing it was a serious wedding". Soon after the couple told the tabloids that Diplo ruined their wedding, the DJ responded on social media. Five months later, Diplo and the Jonas Brothers released a song titled "Lonely". The song's official music video chronicles Diplo's attempts to make amends with Joe Jonas and his brothers.
On July 9, 2020, Diplo joined Senator Kamala Harris and other artists for the "Get Up, Stand Up!" virtual fundraiser in support of Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign.
Sexual misconduct allegations
In November 2020, a Los Angeles woman named Shelly Auguste was granted a restraining order against Diplo. She alleged that he distributed revenge porn of her after she accused him of grooming her and other "very young girls", nonconsensual sexual behaviour, hiring a private investigator in June 2020 to "scare [her] into remaining silent about [their] relationship" and to "scare other women out of coming forward", and threatening others who supported her, in a Twitter thread in October. According to court documents, the woman, who met Diplo in the summer of 2014, when she was 17 and he was 36, began trading sexually explicit images and had an intimate relationship. Sometime later, Diplo filed and was granted a restraining order of his own against Auguste.
The same year, rapper Azealia Banks, who had been discovered by Diplo on social media when she was seventeen, claimed the producer helped her start her career in exchange for favours of sexual nature when she was underage in the fifth episode of her SoundCloud podcast, "Cheapys Two Cents".
In 2021, an unnamed woman sued Diplo for allegedly filming her while taking advantage of her sexually while she was intoxicated and unable to consent after a 2019 Las Vegas concert. She claims Diplo "invited her to a room, kicked out her friends, and would not let her leave until she performed oral sex". 10 days later, the accuser dropped her case, expressing regret about filing it.
DiscographyStudio albums'''
Florida (2004)
Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley, Chapter 1: Snake Oil (as Thomas Wesley) (2020)
MMXX (2020)
Diplo (2022)
Filmography
Film
Television
Awards and nominations
In 2009, he was nominated for his first Grammy Award for Record of the Year for "Paper Planes" shared with M.I.A., Switch. He was then nominated for a second Grammy Award in 2012, for Best Rap Song for "Look at Me Now" shared with Chris Brown, Lil Wayne and Busta Rhymes. Diplo was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2013 and 2016 in the category Producer of the Year, Non-Classic. In 2016, he won Grammy Awards for Best Dance/Electronic Album for Skrillex and Diplo Present Jack Ü and Best Dance Recording for "Where Are Ü Now".
Camerimage
!Ref.
|-
|2012
| "Express Yourself"
|rowspan=2|Best Music Video
|
|
|-
|2013
| "Earthquake"
|
|
GAFFA-Prisen Awards
|-
| rowspan=2|2019
| Himself
| Best International Artist
|
|-
| California| Best International Album
|
Grammy Awards
|-
|| 2009
| "Paper Planes"
|Record of the Year
|
|-
|| 2012
| "Look at Me Now"
|Best Rap Song
|
|-
|| 2013
|rowspan="2"| Diplo
|rowspan="2"| Producer of the Year, Non-Classical
|
|-
| rowspan="3"| 2016
|
|-
|"Where Are Ü Now"
| Best Dance Recording
|
|-
|Skrillex and Diplo Present Jack Ü
| Best Dance/Electronic Album
|
|-
| rowspan="2"| 2017
| Lemonade
| rowspan="2"|Album of the Year
|
|-
| Purpose
|
|-
| 2019
| "Electricity"
| Best Dance Recording
|
DJ Magazine top 100 DJs
Electronic Music Awards
International Dance Music Awards
!Ref.
|-
| rowspan=3|2011
| rowspan=2|"C'mon"
| Best Electro/Tech House Track
|
| rowspan=3|
|-
| Best Trance Track
|
|-
| rowspan=8|Himself
| Best Remixer
|
|-
|rowspan=2|2013
| Best North American DJ
|
| rowspan=2|
|-
| rowspan=2|Best Producer
|
|-
| rowspan=2|2014
|
| rowspan=2|
|-
| rowspan=2|Best North American DJ
|
|-
| rowspan=5|2015
|
| rowspan=5|
|-
| Best Producer
|
|-
| Best Dubstep/Drum & Bass DJ
|
|-
| "Dirty Vibe"
| Best Dubstep/Drum & Bass Track
|
|-
| rowspan=2|Diplo and Friends| rowspan=2|Best Podcast or Radio Mixshow
|
|-
| rowspan=5|2016
|
|rowspan=5|
|-
| rowspan=4|Himself
| Best Producer
|
|-
| Best Global DJ
|
|-
| Best North American DJ
|
|-
| Best EDM/Pop DJ
|
iHeartRadio Music Awards
!Ref.
|-
| 2021
| Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley, Chapter 1: Snake Oil| Dance Album of the Year
|
|
PLUG Awards
|-
| rowspan=2|2005
| Himself
| New Artist of the Year
|
|-
| Favela On Blast| rowspan=2|DJ Album of the Year
|
|-
| rowspan=2|2006
| FabricLive.24|
|-
| Himself
| Record Producer of the Year
|
|-
| 2007
| FabricLive.24''
| DJ Album of the Year
|
UK Music Video Awards
!Ref.
|-
| 2013
| "Earthquake"
| Best Styling in a Video
|
|
References
External links
1978 births
21st-century American rappers
21st-century American singers
Ableton Live users
American DJs
American expatriates in England
American hip hop DJs
American hip hop musicians
American hip hop record producers
American male songwriters
American people of English descent
American people of German descent
Atlantic Records artists
Because Music artists
BBC Radio 1 presenters
BBC Radio 1Xtra presenters
Electronic dance music DJs
Grammy Award winners
Living people
LSD (group) members
Mad Decent artists
Major Lazer members
Musicians from Florida
People from Miami
Phoenix Rising FC chairmen and investors
Record producers from Florida
Silk City (duo) members
Singers from Florida
Songwriters from Florida
Southern hip hop musicians
Temple University alumni | true | [
"White Witch is the title of the second studio album by the group Andrea True Connection. It was released in 1977. The album had two singles: and \"N.Y., You Got Me Dancing\" and \"What's Your Name, What's Your Number\". This was the last album released by the group and the vocalist Andrea True would release a new album as a solo release only in 1980.\n\nBackground and production\nAfter the success of her first album and the gold-certified single More, More, More, the band begun to prepeare for their second release. The album production included studio musicians with a new band assembled for the tour, the second line-up, which included future Kiss guitarist Bruce Kulick, it was also produce by the disco pioneers Michael Zager and Jerry Love.\n\nSingles\nThe first single of the album was \"N.Y., You Got Me Dancing\", it was released in 1977 and became True's second biggest hit, reaching No. 27 on Billboard's pop chart, and #4 on the U.S. club chart, it also peaked #89 in the Canadian RPM's chart. \"What's Your Name, What's Your Number\" was released as the second and last single of the album (and also of the group) in 1978 and reached #9 on the U.S. club chart, #34 in the UK and #56 on the Billboard Hot 100\n\nCritical reception\n\nThe album received mixed reviews from music critics. Alex Henderson from the Allmusic website gave the album two and a half stars out of five in a mixed review which he wrote that \"while White Witch isn't a bad album, it falls short of the excellence her first album, More, More, More.\" He also stated that there are a few gems in the album \"including the Michael Zager-produced \"What's Your Name, What's Your Number\" and the exuberant, Gregg Diamond-produced \"N.Y., You Got Me Dancing\"\" according to him they're both \"exercises in unapologetically campy fun.\" He concluded that the album \"LP is strictly for diehard disco collectors.\"\n\nTrack listing\nsource:\n\nReferences\n\n1977 albums\nAndrea True albums\nBuddah Records albums",
"\"John Wesley Harding\" is a song by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan that appears as the opening track on his 1967 album of the same name.\n\nWriting and recording\nDylan told Jann Wenner in a 1969 Rolling Stone interview that the song \"started out to be a long ballad. I was gonna write a ballad on ... like maybe one of those old cowboy ... you know, a real long ballad. But in the middle of the second verse, I got tired. I had a tune, and I didn't want to waste the tune; it was a nice little melody, so I just wrote a quick third verse, and I recorded that.\" Biographer Clinton Heylin states that Dylan has had a well-documented interest in outlaw cowboys, including Jesse James and Billy the Kid, and in the past Dylan has said that his favorite folk song was \"John Hardy\", whose real-life title character in 1893 murdered another man over a game of craps. John Wesley Hardin was another late-19th century outlaw. Dylan has stated that he chose John Wesley Hardin for his protagonist over other badmen because his name \"[fit] in the tempo\" of the song. Dylan added the g to the end of Hardin's name by mistake.\n\nThe song was recorded in two takes on November 6, 1967, in Studio A of Columbia Music Row Studios in Nashville, Tennessee. Both of these were considered for the album, but the second take was ultimately chosen.\n\nThemes\nDylan has said that he did not have a clear notion of what the song was about. He told Cameron Crowe in 1985 that after recording the John Wesley Harding album, he \"didn't know what to make of it. ... So I figured the best thing to do would be to put out the album as quickly as possible, call it John Wesley Harding because that was the one song that I had no idea what it was about, why it was even on the album. So I figured I'd call the album that, call attention to it, make it something special...\" It was the only title that he considered for the album. He told a Newsweek interviewer in 1969 that the songs on his country Nashville Skyline album: \"These are the type of songs that I always felt like writing. The songs reflect more of the inner me than the songs of the past. They're more to my base than, say, 'John Wesley Harding'. There I felt like everyone expected me to be a poet so that's what I tried to be.\"\n\nCover versions\n\"John Wesley Harding\" has been covered by McKendree Spring on their 1969 eponymous album, as well as Tom Russell and Wesley Willis.\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \"John Wesley Harding\" lyrics on official website\n\n1967 songs\nSongs written by Bob Dylan\nBob Dylan songs\nSong recordings produced by Bob Johnston"
] |
[
"Diplo",
"Career",
"Where did he grow up?",
"He spent the majority of his youth in Miami,",
"What was his first job?",
"continue his studies at Temple University, where he first garnered attention as a DJ.",
"What year did he start gaining attention as a DJ?",
"the two began throwing parties under the Hooked on Hollertronix moniker in 2003",
"Where was his DJ gig?",
"Philadelphia.",
"Did he record a mixtape?",
"The success of these parties allowed the two to release mixtapes, both separate and together,",
"What was the name of his album?",
"Never Scared,"
] | C_48a01b9a3d1a4e2185b94a26818c6a03_1 | Did the album do well? | 7 | Did Diplo's album, "Never Scared" do well? | Diplo | Diplo was born on November 10, 1978, in Tupelo, Mississippi, the son of Barbara Jean (nee Cox) and Thomas Pentz. He is of German and English descent. The influence of home-grown rap played a key role in helping shape his production style. He spent the majority of his youth in Miami, where he got a taste for the characteristic Miami bass. He began attending the University of Central Florida in 1997, and then moved to Philadelphia to continue his studies at Temple University, where he first garnered attention as a DJ. After frequently running into fellow DJ Low Budget, the two began throwing parties under the Hooked on Hollertronix moniker in 2003 as a way of maintaining control of what they were able to play during DJ gigs in Philadelphia. The success of these parties allowed the two to release mixtapes, both separate and together, gathering acclaim across the country. One such mixtape, Never Scared, was named one of the New York Times top ten albums of 2003, and the Hollertronix name became synonymous with parties featuring guests like Maluca Mala, Bun B, Spank Rock, M.I.A., among others. Hollertronix's sound has been described as "disparate genres to be smashed together for maximum attention-grabbing impact" an aesthetic which takes from the "organic, cohesive, whole" aesthetic of acts such as Bun B, Lil Jon, Drama, M.I.A., Bjork, Busta Rhymes, and others. Diplo accentuated the club aesthetic of his Hollertronix music for a more reflective sound on his solo debut, Florida, which was released on the Ninja Tune imprint, Big Dada Records. The album Florida was pressed twice, first with a CD and the second with a CD and DVD. The DVD was created by System D-128, another artist who has collaborated with Diplo on some audio and video projects. Before Florida's DVD accompaniment, another DVD surfaced called Diplo: "Banned in Libya" which was released by Money Studies, the first label to release a solo project by Diplo under his original DJ name Diplodocus. It was a 45 rpm record called "Thingamajawn" for which there is also a music video System D-128 directed. Similar to the Florida DVD, "Banned in Libya" is an experimental audio and video mix of some of Diplo's original music blended with a number of other unidentified sources. His particular affinity for one genre of music called baile funk, or favela funk, would spawn a series of mixtapes (Favela on Blast, Favela Strikes Back), which served to bring the Brazilian dance music of the ghettos to the United States. It was not long before his Hooked on Hollertronix parties would provide him the success necessary to move to the next logical step and build a studio where music would become his full-time focus. With this goal in mind, Diplo built "The Mausoleum," a video studio, recording studio, record label office, gallery, and event space in Philadelphia. Since its inception, The Mausoleum has become the home to recordings by artists like Christina Aguilera, Shakira, M.I.A., Santigold, Spank Rock, Plastic Little, Blaqstarr, Paper Route Gangstaz, and hosted concerts by Glass Candy, Skream, Boys Noize, Nicos Gun, and more. CANNOTANSWER | was named one of the New York Times top ten albums of 2003, | Thomas Wesley Pentz (born November 10, 1978), known professionally as Diplo, is an American DJ, songwriter and record producer based in Los Angeles. He is the co-creator and lead member of the electronic dancehall music project Major Lazer, a member of the supergroup LSD with Sia and Labrinth, a member of electronic duo Jack Ü with producer and DJ Skrillex, and a member of Silk City with Mark Ronson. He founded and manages record company Mad Decent, as well as co-founding the non-profit organization Heaps Decent. His 2013 EP, Revolution, debuted at number 68 on the US Billboard 200. The EP's title track was later featured in a commercial for Hyundai and is featured on the WWE 2K16 soundtrack.
Diplo worked with and dated British musician M.I.A., an artist who is credited with giving him exposure in his early career. Later, he M.I.A., and fellow producer Switch created a Jamaican dancehall project and cartoon series titled Major Lazer. Since then, Diplo has worked on production and mixtape projects with many other pop artists, such as Gwen Stefani, Die Antwoord, Britney Spears, Madonna, Shakira, Beyoncé, Ellie Goulding, No Doubt, Justin Bieber, Usher, Snoop Dogg, Trippie Redd, Chris Brown, CL, G-Dragon, Bad Bunny, Kali Uchis, Joji, MØ and Poppy. His alias, short for Diplodocus, derives from his childhood fascination with dinosaurs.
Career
Early life
Diplo was born on November 10, 1978, in Tupelo, Mississippi, the son of Barbara Jean (née Cox) and Thomas Pentz. He is of German and English descent. Diplo graduated from Hendersonville High School in Hendersonville, TN.
The influence of home-grown rap played a key role in helping shape Diplo's production style. Although he was born in Mississippi, he spent the majority of his youth in Miami, where he got a taste for the characteristic Miami bass. He began attending the University of Central Florida in 1997. During his time at UCF, he became a DJ at local radio station WPRK, the radio station at Rollins College. He moved to Philadelphia to continue his studies at Temple University, where he first garnered attention as a DJ. After frequently running into fellow DJ Low Budget, the two began throwing parties under the Hooked on Hollertronix moniker in 2003 as a way of maintaining control of what they were able to play during DJ gigs in Philadelphia. The success of these parties allowed the two to release mixtapes, both separately and together, gathering acclaim across the country. One such mixtape, Never Scared, was named one of The New York Times top ten albums of 2003, and the Hollertronix name became synonymous with parties featuring guests like Maluca Mala, Bun B, Spank Rock, M.I.A., among others. Hollertronix's sound has been described as "disparate genres to be smashed together for maximum attention-grabbing impact" an aesthetic which takes from the "organic, cohesive, whole" aesthetic of acts such as Bun B, Lil Jon, Drama, M.I.A., Björk, Busta Rhymes, and others.
Diplo accentuated the club aesthetic of his Hollertronix music for a more reflective sound on his solo debut, Florida, which was released on the Ninja Tune imprint, Big Dada Records. The album Florida was pressed twice, first with a CD and the second with a CD/DVD Set. The DVD was put together by System D-128, artist and filmmaker who has also collaborated with Diplo on audio and film projects. Before Floridas DVD accompaniment, another DVD surfaced called Diplo: "Banned in Libya" which was released by Money Studies, the first label to release a solo project by Diplo under his original DJ name Diplodocus. It was a 45 rpm record called "Thingamajawn" for which there is also a music video System D-128 directed. Similar to the Florida DVD, "Banned in Libya" is an experimental audio and video mix of some of Diplo's original music blended with a number of other unidentified sources. His particular affinity for one genre of music called baile funk, or favela funk, would spawn a series of mixtapes (Favela on Blast, Favela Strikes Back), which served to bring the Brazilian dance music of the ghettos to the United States.
It was not long before his Hooked on Hollertronix parties would provide him the success necessary to move to the next logical step and build a studio where music would become his full-time focus. With this goal in mind, Diplo built "The Mausoleum", a video studio, recording studio, record label office, gallery, and event space in Philadelphia. Since its inception, The Mausoleum has become the home to recordings by artists like Christina Aguilera, Shakira, M.I.A., Santigold, Spank Rock, Plastic Little, Blaqstarr, Paper Route Gangstaz, and hosted concerts by Glass Candy, Skream, Boys Noize, Nicos Gun, and more.
M.I.A.
After hearing one of his songs in 2004, M.I.A. approached Diplo when he was DJing one night at the Fabric Club in London. Coincidentally, Diplo was playing her songs "Galang" and "Fire Fire" as she entered the club, which he got from a worker at i-D magazine. Diplo added, "She came through and she wanted to meet me 'cause she'd heard my single and the funk mix from one of her A&Rs and she just thought I was right up her alley. Besides me being a white dude from Florida and her being a Sri Lankan girl in England, everything else was the same: [We were both] film graduates, [listened to] all the same music when we were kids, we're going in the same direction right now in music, it was amazing... I always wanted to make a beat with her, but all my beats were really shitty at the time."M.I.A. Confronts the Haters . Pitchfork. Retrieved on October 23, 2010. The two eventually collaborated on a mixtape, Piracy Funds Terrorism Vol. 1, where Arular track acapellas were mashed with other artists' songs. It was listed among 'Albums of the Year' by The New York Times and Pitchfork Media.Booty Call – Page 1 – Music – New York . Village Voice (December 14, 2004). Retrieved on October 23, 2010. The two continued to work together after the release. He was the tour DJ on her 2005 Arular Tour.
Diplo continued to work with M.I.A. and, through her, met London DJ Switch. Together, they created the Grammy-nominated track "Paper Planes", peaking at number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. In 2015, during an interview with Rolling Stone, M.I.A said that Diplo resented her rise to fame in 2005, that he tried to hold her back, and fought with her about becoming successful.
Mad Decent
From this, Diplo went from an unknown DJ to taking off as a producer, landing him collaborations with artists like Shakira, Robyn, Kid Cudi, Bruno Mars, No Doubt and Snoop Dogg, as well as work with Maluca, Kid Sister, Die Antwoord, Alex Clare, Rolo Tomassi, Amanda Blank and Dark Meat. After taking a trip to Brazil to investigate the favela music scene, and fascinated with the energy the scene had to offer, Diplo decided to import a dance-funk group Bonde do Rolê from Brazil for release on his Mad Decent record label (also housed within 'The Mausoleum'). This group would serve to define funk carioca in the United States, spawning a host of others to join the movement. Diplo also spent some time documenting the music, and the favelas of Brazil.
Although favela funk remained an interest (the Favela on Blast documentary just saw release in 2009), his Mad Decent imprint would serve as a blank palette for Diplo to showcase the myriad different sounds he had come across while touring around the world. September 2009 even saw Diplo travel to China to play with Steve Aoki at a show organised by promoters Split Works. Diplo quickly developed a reputation for his extensive touring. In the April 2010 issue of Rolling Stone, Diplo was touted as one of '40 Reasons to be Excited About Music'. This kind of jet setting pushed his label far beyond the favela funk genre with which it initially began. Since its foundation in 2005 Diplo's Mad Decent label has released music by Santigold, Baauer, Lil' Jon, Gucci Mane, Peter Bjorn and John, Rusko, Bosco Delrey, Buraka Som Sistema, Savage Skulls, Dana Sibuea, Oliver Twizt, Jamie Fanatic, Douster, Boy 8-Bit, and Popo.Diplo's Mad Decent Label Teams Up With Downtown Recordings . Pitchfork (March 31, 2009). Retrieved on October 23, 2010.
As Mad Decent continues to grow and release tracks by big-name artists, Diplo's solo career continues to grow at the same rate. He's produced for artists such as Beyoncé, Justin Bieber, Lil Wayne, Britney Spears, Wale, Chris Brown, Ariana Grande, 2 Chainz, Travis Porter, Usher, Azealia Banks, Iggy Azalea, and AlunaGeorge. On October 16, 2015, Diplo released "Be Right There" along with fellow producer Sleepy Tom. The single charted in multiple countries and has over 100 million streams on Spotify. On April 23, 2016, Beyoncé released her critically acclaimed album, Lemonade. Diplo produced two tracks on the album, "All Night", and one of the three singles, "Hold Up". The album debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 and was certified platinum on June 8, 2016. Along with producing tracks on Beyoncé's Lemonade, Diplo collaborated with Canadian DJ duo Zeds Dead on the release "Blame", which featured Swedish singer Elliphant. The track was officially released on July 14, 2016, via Zeds Dead's SoundCloud.
Major Lazer
Diplo's first collaborative full-length record was with Switch, this time under the guise of Major Lazer. Diplo incorporates such disparate influences as Miami Bass and Baile Funk into the high-tech eclecticism of his productions.
After landing a deal with Downtown Records before even recording a note of music, Diplo and Switch set out for Jamaica to record a project that, like most of Diplo's projects before it, would highlight the little-known subgenres, this time of Jamaica's dancehall scene. The two received support by many already established Jamaican artists such as Vybz Kartel, Elephant Man and Ms. Thing, and the resulting record Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do also featured vocals from Santigold, Amanda Blank, Nina Sky, Ricky Blaze and more. When discussing the Major Lazer project, Diplo described the dancehall sound as being "
the end of the world, all the little influences—house, soca, oldies, R&B, jazz—it all ends up in Jamaica." The track "Pon De Floor" from Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do was sampled for Beyoncé's single "Run the World (Girls)".
Major Lazer's first album was followed up with an EP, Lazers Never Die, which was released in 2010. Switch left Major Lazer in 2011, and was replaced by DJs Jillionaire and Walshy Fire. A second album, Free the Universe, was scheduled to be released in November 2012 but was delayed to February 2013, and then to April 15. It features artists such as Ezra Koenig, Bruno Mars, Ward 21, Wyclef, The Partysquad, Shaggy, Tyga, Flux Pavilion and Wynter Gordon. On February 8, 2015, during the Grammy Award ceremony, Diplo revealed details of the third Major Lazer album. He confirmed that the album would incorporate artists such as Ariana Grande, Ellie Goulding and Pusha T. It is called Peace Is the Mission. The first single, "Lean On", is a collaboration with French producer DJ Snake and features vocals from Danish recording artist MØ. The second single, "Powerful", featuring Ellie Goulding and Tarrus Riley, was released simultaneously with the album on June 1, 2015. On November 11, 2015, "Lean On" became Spotify's Most Streamed Song of All Time with over 800 million streams to date. Along with the streaming title, the official video for "Lean On" became one of the most viewed videos on YouTube. It currently has more than 2 billion views. Along with the streaming and viewing milestones, "Lean On" would also go on to achieve double platinum status.
On July 22, 2016, the group released the single "Cold Water", a collaboration with Canadian artist Justin Bieber and Danish singer MØ. The track has already reached over 200 million streams on Spotify, and achieved international commercial success, reaching number one in multiple countries. On November 29, 2016, Major Lazer and Bad Royale released "My Number", a track that samples "54-46 That's My Number" which Pitchfork describes as, "a genre-defining classic from legendary ska/reggae group Toots and the Maytals." This release contained newly recorded vocals from frontman Toots Hibbert specifically designed for Major Lazer, which changed the original lyrics to incorporate the group into the song while keeping the original melody. Their fifth studio album, Music Is the Weapon, features collaborations with Alessia Cara, French Montana, Anitta, Khalid, Skip Marley, Marcus Mumford, J Balvin, El Alfa, Mr Eazi and Nicki Minaj.
Jack Ü
Jack Ü is an American duo made up of Skrillex and Diplo. Jack Ü's debut performance took place at the Mad Decent Block Party in San Diego on September 15, 2013, which is a nationwide tour that record label Mad Decent puts together in order to showcase different artists signed to the label. Diplo announced the project by releasing the Mad Decent Block Party lineup with Jack Ü playing at multiple stops on the tour. After some guessing by many of who Jack Ü was, Diplo finally came out to reveal that "Jack Ü ... means Skrillex and Diplo together". After their New York debut at Electric Zoo was canceled in late August, the duo would soon return to the city for something bigger. On December 31, 2014, Jack Ü sold out Madison Square Garden for one of their biggest performances to date. The duo had support from Rudimental, Yellow Claw and A$AP Ferg.
On February 27, 2015 they released Skrillex and Diplo Present Jack Ü, a co-release between their respective labels OWSLA and Mad Decent. It featured tracks with 2 Chainz, Kiesza, Justin Bieber, AlunaGeorge and Missy Elliott. The first single "Take Ü There" featuring Kiesza was the lead single on the duo's debut album. The single was released as the lead on October 4, 2014. It reached number sixteen on the UK Dance Chart. The official second single, "Where Are Ü Now", was released simultaneously with the album. The song which took both artists in a different direction, featured a collaboration with Canadian pop star Justin Bieber. Peaking at number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100, and number 3 on the UK Singles Chart, "Where Are Ü Now" became the duo's largest hit on both charts thus far. The song would also go on to peak at number three in Australia, which was the highest charting for the single worldwide. The song had huge success in Europe as well, reaching the top-ten in Sweden and Finland, and the top-twenty in Norway, the Czech Republic, Denmark and Slovakia. The final place it had charting success was Bieber's home country, Canada, where it would end up peaking at number 6. On March 29, 2015, Jack Ü closed the main stage at Ultra Music Festival in Miami.
In 2016, the duo won two Grammy Awards for "Grammy Award for Best Dance Album" for "Skrillex and Diplo present Jack Ü" and "Grammy Award for Best Dance" for "Where Are Ü Now?" with Justin Bieber. The latter was also Bieber's first Grammy. They played two sold-out shows including Coachella Valley Music Festival in Indio, California and Lollapalooza in São Paulo, Brazil.
LSD
LSD is a pop supergroup composed of Diplo, Australian singer Sia, and British musician Labrinth. The trio have released five singles thus far, with their song "Thunderclouds" being featured in a commercial for the Samsung Galaxy Note9. Their singles "Genius" and "Audio" have seen official remixes from producers Banx & Ranx and Cid, respectively. LSD's debut album Labrinth, Sia & Diplo Present... LSD was released on April 12, 2019.
Silk City
On January 2, 2018 Diplo announced a new project with British DJ and singer Mark Ronson, entitled Silk City. The duo released their debut single "Only Can Get Better" featuring Daniel Merriweather on May 23, 2018. Their second single, "Feel About You" featuring Mapei, was released on July 20, 2018. The duo's third single, "Loud", saw Diplo reunite with previous collaborators GoldLink & Desiigner. Their 4th and most recent single features British singer/songwriter Dua Lipa, called "Electricity", which was released on September 5, 2018. The music video was released on the same day. In 2018, "Electricity" won a Grammy at the 61st Annual GRAMMY Awards for Best Dance Recording.
Additional work
Beyond Major Lazer and Mad Decent, Diplo has continued to show support for 'all the little influences', the lesser-known music scenes around the globe. Most recently his focus shifted to the Bounce scene in New Orleans, Louisiana for a television piece commissioned by Current.tv. Diplo was nominated for Non-Classical Producer of the Year at the 55th Grammy Awards and 58th Grammy Awards. Diplo had a late night show on BBC Radio 1 / 1Xtra on Saturdays 11:00 p.m.–1:00 a.m. (GMT) called 'Diplo and Friends' where he curates mixes from some of biggest names in dance music. He has now resigned from BBC Radio 1, per 2021. Diplo also has several syndicated Diplo and Friends shows in the United States in Boston, Bakersfield, Cleveland, Columbus, Las Vegas, Spokane, Albuquerque, Lafayette, Denver, and most notably on Los Angeles' 98.7 every Sunday at 9 p.m.
Beginning on October 2, 2015, Diplo, Jillionaire, Walshy Fire and Eric Hamilton debuted "Lazer Sound" on Apple Music's Beats 1. The newest radio show, curated by Diplo, and the Major Lazer crew, consists of interviews, moments on tour and brand new music. The show is on the air every other Saturday of the month. Throughout 2015 and 2016, Diplo performed with Major Lazer and Jack Ü on numerous live TV and award shows. He performed on The Tonight Show, Good Morning America, the iHeart Radio Music Festival, The NRJ Music Awards, the 2015 Latin Grammy Awards and the 2016 Grammy Awards.
In February 2016, Diplo was one of the first and very few mainstream Western artists to perform in Islamabad, Pakistan alongside Adil Omar, Talal Qureshi, SNKM and Elliphant. In 2018 Diplo returned to with Major Lazer for Islamabad's first Mad Decent Block Party alongside Adil Omar, SNKM, Talal Qureshi, Valentino Khan, Chrome Sparks, Lyari Underground and a host of other acts.
In January 2017, Diplo and Autoerotique (a house group from Toronto) released a music video titled "Waist Time" which was filmed in a warehouse in London. He was nominated for two Grammy's in 2016 (The 59th Annual GRAMMY Awards) for Album of the Year (for producer of Beyoncé's album Lemonade and producer for Justin Bieber's album Purpose). He also sang a song "Phurrr" in Bollywood in Imtiaz Ali's film Jab Harry Met Sejal starring Shah Rukh Khan and Anushka Sharma. In 2019, Diplo released the song "So Long" under the moniker Thomas Wesley, featuring American country singer Cam. In a press release, he stated that there are "several forthcoming collaborations with country artists" planned following "So Long", which came in the form of Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley, Chapter 1: Snake Oil released in 2020. The album included the song "Heartless" featuring Morgan Wallen.
Personal life
Diplo has three sons: Lockett and Lazer, with Kathryn Lockhart; and Pace, with Jevon King.
He dated rapper M.I.A. from 2003 to 2008. M.I.A. later said that their tumultuous relationship involved emotional abuse from him. Diplo dated singer Katy Perry for nearly a year in 2014 and 2015.
Diplo is a soccer and cricket fan and supporter of the U.S. men's national team. He also supports Arsenal F.C. and has attended two Tigres UANL matches. He created a mix for the 2014 World Cup and produced the 2018 World Cup official song "Live It Up". Diplo purchased a minority share of Phoenix Rising FC of the USL Championship on January 27, 2016. He stated: "I've been really fortunate to travel all over the world and experience different cultures through music. Wherever I am, Jamaica, Spain, England, China, etc., soccer is a social constant. I see soccer the same way I see music, as a connective tissue linking the world's cultures."
On February 24, 2016, Diplo endorsed Bernie Sanders as the Democratic presidential nominee. Sanders' ad "It's A Revolution" is soundtracked by Diplo's 2013 track "Revolution". On June 9, 2016, Diplo was featured on the cover of the American entertainment media magazine Billboard.
On May 1, 2019, Diplo live-streamed Joe Jonas' Las Vegas wedding to Sophie Turner on Instagram, "not knowing it was a serious wedding". Soon after the couple told the tabloids that Diplo ruined their wedding, the DJ responded on social media. Five months later, Diplo and the Jonas Brothers released a song titled "Lonely". The song's official music video chronicles Diplo's attempts to make amends with Joe Jonas and his brothers.
On July 9, 2020, Diplo joined Senator Kamala Harris and other artists for the "Get Up, Stand Up!" virtual fundraiser in support of Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign.
Sexual misconduct allegations
In November 2020, a Los Angeles woman named Shelly Auguste was granted a restraining order against Diplo. She alleged that he distributed revenge porn of her after she accused him of grooming her and other "very young girls", nonconsensual sexual behaviour, hiring a private investigator in June 2020 to "scare [her] into remaining silent about [their] relationship" and to "scare other women out of coming forward", and threatening others who supported her, in a Twitter thread in October. According to court documents, the woman, who met Diplo in the summer of 2014, when she was 17 and he was 36, began trading sexually explicit images and had an intimate relationship. Sometime later, Diplo filed and was granted a restraining order of his own against Auguste.
The same year, rapper Azealia Banks, who had been discovered by Diplo on social media when she was seventeen, claimed the producer helped her start her career in exchange for favours of sexual nature when she was underage in the fifth episode of her SoundCloud podcast, "Cheapys Two Cents".
In 2021, an unnamed woman sued Diplo for allegedly filming her while taking advantage of her sexually while she was intoxicated and unable to consent after a 2019 Las Vegas concert. She claims Diplo "invited her to a room, kicked out her friends, and would not let her leave until she performed oral sex". 10 days later, the accuser dropped her case, expressing regret about filing it.
DiscographyStudio albums'''
Florida (2004)
Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley, Chapter 1: Snake Oil (as Thomas Wesley) (2020)
MMXX (2020)
Diplo (2022)
Filmography
Film
Television
Awards and nominations
In 2009, he was nominated for his first Grammy Award for Record of the Year for "Paper Planes" shared with M.I.A., Switch. He was then nominated for a second Grammy Award in 2012, for Best Rap Song for "Look at Me Now" shared with Chris Brown, Lil Wayne and Busta Rhymes. Diplo was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2013 and 2016 in the category Producer of the Year, Non-Classic. In 2016, he won Grammy Awards for Best Dance/Electronic Album for Skrillex and Diplo Present Jack Ü and Best Dance Recording for "Where Are Ü Now".
Camerimage
!Ref.
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|2012
| "Express Yourself"
|rowspan=2|Best Music Video
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|-
|2013
| "Earthquake"
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GAFFA-Prisen Awards
|-
| rowspan=2|2019
| Himself
| Best International Artist
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| California| Best International Album
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Grammy Awards
|-
|| 2009
| "Paper Planes"
|Record of the Year
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|| 2012
| "Look at Me Now"
|Best Rap Song
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|-
|| 2013
|rowspan="2"| Diplo
|rowspan="2"| Producer of the Year, Non-Classical
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|-
| rowspan="3"| 2016
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|-
|"Where Are Ü Now"
| Best Dance Recording
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|-
|Skrillex and Diplo Present Jack Ü
| Best Dance/Electronic Album
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| rowspan="2"| 2017
| Lemonade
| rowspan="2"|Album of the Year
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| Purpose
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|-
| 2019
| "Electricity"
| Best Dance Recording
|
DJ Magazine top 100 DJs
Electronic Music Awards
International Dance Music Awards
!Ref.
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| rowspan=3|2011
| rowspan=2|"C'mon"
| Best Electro/Tech House Track
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| rowspan=3|
|-
| Best Trance Track
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|-
| rowspan=8|Himself
| Best Remixer
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|rowspan=2|2013
| Best North American DJ
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| rowspan=2|
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| rowspan=2|Best Producer
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| rowspan=2|2014
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| rowspan=2|
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| rowspan=2|Best North American DJ
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| rowspan=5|2015
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| rowspan=5|
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| Best Producer
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| Best Dubstep/Drum & Bass DJ
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| "Dirty Vibe"
| Best Dubstep/Drum & Bass Track
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| rowspan=2|Diplo and Friends| rowspan=2|Best Podcast or Radio Mixshow
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| rowspan=5|2016
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|rowspan=5|
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| rowspan=4|Himself
| Best Producer
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| Best Global DJ
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| Best North American DJ
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| Best EDM/Pop DJ
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iHeartRadio Music Awards
!Ref.
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| 2021
| Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley, Chapter 1: Snake Oil| Dance Album of the Year
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PLUG Awards
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| rowspan=2|2005
| Himself
| New Artist of the Year
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| Favela On Blast| rowspan=2|DJ Album of the Year
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| rowspan=2|2006
| FabricLive.24|
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| Himself
| Record Producer of the Year
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| 2007
| FabricLive.24''
| DJ Album of the Year
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UK Music Video Awards
!Ref.
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| 2013
| "Earthquake"
| Best Styling in a Video
|
|
References
External links
1978 births
21st-century American rappers
21st-century American singers
Ableton Live users
American DJs
American expatriates in England
American hip hop DJs
American hip hop musicians
American hip hop record producers
American male songwriters
American people of English descent
American people of German descent
Atlantic Records artists
Because Music artists
BBC Radio 1 presenters
BBC Radio 1Xtra presenters
Electronic dance music DJs
Grammy Award winners
Living people
LSD (group) members
Mad Decent artists
Major Lazer members
Musicians from Florida
People from Miami
Phoenix Rising FC chairmen and investors
Record producers from Florida
Silk City (duo) members
Singers from Florida
Songwriters from Florida
Southern hip hop musicians
Temple University alumni | true | [
"Follow Me is the second album of Dutch singer Do.\n\nIt did well in the Netherlands, debuting at #8 in the Mega Top 100 (album chart).\n\nAlbum information\nAfter her successful debut album Do she began working on her second album with her best friend and musical partner Glenn Corneille. They made a basis for the next album but Glenn Corneille died in a car disaster. However, Do needed to go on, so she started again where she left off.\n\nThe album contains 12 songs. Do co-wrote 3 songs; Love Me, Tune Into Me and When Everything is Gone. It features several different music genres, such as Pop, Jazz, Gospel and Country.\n\nTrack listing\n\nChart positions\n\nReferences\n.\n\n2006 albums\nDo (singer) albums\nSony BMG albums",
"Treddin' on Thin Ice is the debut album by UK grime artist Wiley released on XL Recordings. It was released on 26 April 2004. The album is seen as a critical success in grime music with an enduring and influential forward facing sound. However, commercially the album did not do as well, with one single (\"Wot Do U Call It\", a song addressing the debate over the categorization of grime) making the top 40 in the UK music charts.\n\nTrack listing\n\nCertifications\n\nReferences\n\n2004 debut albums\nWiley (musician) albums\nXL Recordings albums"
] |
[
"Diplo",
"Career",
"Where did he grow up?",
"He spent the majority of his youth in Miami,",
"What was his first job?",
"continue his studies at Temple University, where he first garnered attention as a DJ.",
"What year did he start gaining attention as a DJ?",
"the two began throwing parties under the Hooked on Hollertronix moniker in 2003",
"Where was his DJ gig?",
"Philadelphia.",
"Did he record a mixtape?",
"The success of these parties allowed the two to release mixtapes, both separate and together,",
"What was the name of his album?",
"Never Scared,",
"Did the album do well?",
"was named one of the New York Times top ten albums of 2003,"
] | C_48a01b9a3d1a4e2185b94a26818c6a03_1 | Who else performed on the album? | 8 | Aside from Hooked on Hollertronics, who else performed on the album "Never Scared"? | Diplo | Diplo was born on November 10, 1978, in Tupelo, Mississippi, the son of Barbara Jean (nee Cox) and Thomas Pentz. He is of German and English descent. The influence of home-grown rap played a key role in helping shape his production style. He spent the majority of his youth in Miami, where he got a taste for the characteristic Miami bass. He began attending the University of Central Florida in 1997, and then moved to Philadelphia to continue his studies at Temple University, where he first garnered attention as a DJ. After frequently running into fellow DJ Low Budget, the two began throwing parties under the Hooked on Hollertronix moniker in 2003 as a way of maintaining control of what they were able to play during DJ gigs in Philadelphia. The success of these parties allowed the two to release mixtapes, both separate and together, gathering acclaim across the country. One such mixtape, Never Scared, was named one of the New York Times top ten albums of 2003, and the Hollertronix name became synonymous with parties featuring guests like Maluca Mala, Bun B, Spank Rock, M.I.A., among others. Hollertronix's sound has been described as "disparate genres to be smashed together for maximum attention-grabbing impact" an aesthetic which takes from the "organic, cohesive, whole" aesthetic of acts such as Bun B, Lil Jon, Drama, M.I.A., Bjork, Busta Rhymes, and others. Diplo accentuated the club aesthetic of his Hollertronix music for a more reflective sound on his solo debut, Florida, which was released on the Ninja Tune imprint, Big Dada Records. The album Florida was pressed twice, first with a CD and the second with a CD and DVD. The DVD was created by System D-128, another artist who has collaborated with Diplo on some audio and video projects. Before Florida's DVD accompaniment, another DVD surfaced called Diplo: "Banned in Libya" which was released by Money Studies, the first label to release a solo project by Diplo under his original DJ name Diplodocus. It was a 45 rpm record called "Thingamajawn" for which there is also a music video System D-128 directed. Similar to the Florida DVD, "Banned in Libya" is an experimental audio and video mix of some of Diplo's original music blended with a number of other unidentified sources. His particular affinity for one genre of music called baile funk, or favela funk, would spawn a series of mixtapes (Favela on Blast, Favela Strikes Back), which served to bring the Brazilian dance music of the ghettos to the United States. It was not long before his Hooked on Hollertronix parties would provide him the success necessary to move to the next logical step and build a studio where music would become his full-time focus. With this goal in mind, Diplo built "The Mausoleum," a video studio, recording studio, record label office, gallery, and event space in Philadelphia. Since its inception, The Mausoleum has become the home to recordings by artists like Christina Aguilera, Shakira, M.I.A., Santigold, Spank Rock, Plastic Little, Blaqstarr, Paper Route Gangstaz, and hosted concerts by Glass Candy, Skream, Boys Noize, Nicos Gun, and more. CANNOTANSWER | DJ Low Budget, | Thomas Wesley Pentz (born November 10, 1978), known professionally as Diplo, is an American DJ, songwriter and record producer based in Los Angeles. He is the co-creator and lead member of the electronic dancehall music project Major Lazer, a member of the supergroup LSD with Sia and Labrinth, a member of electronic duo Jack Ü with producer and DJ Skrillex, and a member of Silk City with Mark Ronson. He founded and manages record company Mad Decent, as well as co-founding the non-profit organization Heaps Decent. His 2013 EP, Revolution, debuted at number 68 on the US Billboard 200. The EP's title track was later featured in a commercial for Hyundai and is featured on the WWE 2K16 soundtrack.
Diplo worked with and dated British musician M.I.A., an artist who is credited with giving him exposure in his early career. Later, he M.I.A., and fellow producer Switch created a Jamaican dancehall project and cartoon series titled Major Lazer. Since then, Diplo has worked on production and mixtape projects with many other pop artists, such as Gwen Stefani, Die Antwoord, Britney Spears, Madonna, Shakira, Beyoncé, Ellie Goulding, No Doubt, Justin Bieber, Usher, Snoop Dogg, Trippie Redd, Chris Brown, CL, G-Dragon, Bad Bunny, Kali Uchis, Joji, MØ and Poppy. His alias, short for Diplodocus, derives from his childhood fascination with dinosaurs.
Career
Early life
Diplo was born on November 10, 1978, in Tupelo, Mississippi, the son of Barbara Jean (née Cox) and Thomas Pentz. He is of German and English descent. Diplo graduated from Hendersonville High School in Hendersonville, TN.
The influence of home-grown rap played a key role in helping shape Diplo's production style. Although he was born in Mississippi, he spent the majority of his youth in Miami, where he got a taste for the characteristic Miami bass. He began attending the University of Central Florida in 1997. During his time at UCF, he became a DJ at local radio station WPRK, the radio station at Rollins College. He moved to Philadelphia to continue his studies at Temple University, where he first garnered attention as a DJ. After frequently running into fellow DJ Low Budget, the two began throwing parties under the Hooked on Hollertronix moniker in 2003 as a way of maintaining control of what they were able to play during DJ gigs in Philadelphia. The success of these parties allowed the two to release mixtapes, both separately and together, gathering acclaim across the country. One such mixtape, Never Scared, was named one of The New York Times top ten albums of 2003, and the Hollertronix name became synonymous with parties featuring guests like Maluca Mala, Bun B, Spank Rock, M.I.A., among others. Hollertronix's sound has been described as "disparate genres to be smashed together for maximum attention-grabbing impact" an aesthetic which takes from the "organic, cohesive, whole" aesthetic of acts such as Bun B, Lil Jon, Drama, M.I.A., Björk, Busta Rhymes, and others.
Diplo accentuated the club aesthetic of his Hollertronix music for a more reflective sound on his solo debut, Florida, which was released on the Ninja Tune imprint, Big Dada Records. The album Florida was pressed twice, first with a CD and the second with a CD/DVD Set. The DVD was put together by System D-128, artist and filmmaker who has also collaborated with Diplo on audio and film projects. Before Floridas DVD accompaniment, another DVD surfaced called Diplo: "Banned in Libya" which was released by Money Studies, the first label to release a solo project by Diplo under his original DJ name Diplodocus. It was a 45 rpm record called "Thingamajawn" for which there is also a music video System D-128 directed. Similar to the Florida DVD, "Banned in Libya" is an experimental audio and video mix of some of Diplo's original music blended with a number of other unidentified sources. His particular affinity for one genre of music called baile funk, or favela funk, would spawn a series of mixtapes (Favela on Blast, Favela Strikes Back), which served to bring the Brazilian dance music of the ghettos to the United States.
It was not long before his Hooked on Hollertronix parties would provide him the success necessary to move to the next logical step and build a studio where music would become his full-time focus. With this goal in mind, Diplo built "The Mausoleum", a video studio, recording studio, record label office, gallery, and event space in Philadelphia. Since its inception, The Mausoleum has become the home to recordings by artists like Christina Aguilera, Shakira, M.I.A., Santigold, Spank Rock, Plastic Little, Blaqstarr, Paper Route Gangstaz, and hosted concerts by Glass Candy, Skream, Boys Noize, Nicos Gun, and more.
M.I.A.
After hearing one of his songs in 2004, M.I.A. approached Diplo when he was DJing one night at the Fabric Club in London. Coincidentally, Diplo was playing her songs "Galang" and "Fire Fire" as she entered the club, which he got from a worker at i-D magazine. Diplo added, "She came through and she wanted to meet me 'cause she'd heard my single and the funk mix from one of her A&Rs and she just thought I was right up her alley. Besides me being a white dude from Florida and her being a Sri Lankan girl in England, everything else was the same: [We were both] film graduates, [listened to] all the same music when we were kids, we're going in the same direction right now in music, it was amazing... I always wanted to make a beat with her, but all my beats were really shitty at the time."M.I.A. Confronts the Haters . Pitchfork. Retrieved on October 23, 2010. The two eventually collaborated on a mixtape, Piracy Funds Terrorism Vol. 1, where Arular track acapellas were mashed with other artists' songs. It was listed among 'Albums of the Year' by The New York Times and Pitchfork Media.Booty Call – Page 1 – Music – New York . Village Voice (December 14, 2004). Retrieved on October 23, 2010. The two continued to work together after the release. He was the tour DJ on her 2005 Arular Tour.
Diplo continued to work with M.I.A. and, through her, met London DJ Switch. Together, they created the Grammy-nominated track "Paper Planes", peaking at number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. In 2015, during an interview with Rolling Stone, M.I.A said that Diplo resented her rise to fame in 2005, that he tried to hold her back, and fought with her about becoming successful.
Mad Decent
From this, Diplo went from an unknown DJ to taking off as a producer, landing him collaborations with artists like Shakira, Robyn, Kid Cudi, Bruno Mars, No Doubt and Snoop Dogg, as well as work with Maluca, Kid Sister, Die Antwoord, Alex Clare, Rolo Tomassi, Amanda Blank and Dark Meat. After taking a trip to Brazil to investigate the favela music scene, and fascinated with the energy the scene had to offer, Diplo decided to import a dance-funk group Bonde do Rolê from Brazil for release on his Mad Decent record label (also housed within 'The Mausoleum'). This group would serve to define funk carioca in the United States, spawning a host of others to join the movement. Diplo also spent some time documenting the music, and the favelas of Brazil.
Although favela funk remained an interest (the Favela on Blast documentary just saw release in 2009), his Mad Decent imprint would serve as a blank palette for Diplo to showcase the myriad different sounds he had come across while touring around the world. September 2009 even saw Diplo travel to China to play with Steve Aoki at a show organised by promoters Split Works. Diplo quickly developed a reputation for his extensive touring. In the April 2010 issue of Rolling Stone, Diplo was touted as one of '40 Reasons to be Excited About Music'. This kind of jet setting pushed his label far beyond the favela funk genre with which it initially began. Since its foundation in 2005 Diplo's Mad Decent label has released music by Santigold, Baauer, Lil' Jon, Gucci Mane, Peter Bjorn and John, Rusko, Bosco Delrey, Buraka Som Sistema, Savage Skulls, Dana Sibuea, Oliver Twizt, Jamie Fanatic, Douster, Boy 8-Bit, and Popo.Diplo's Mad Decent Label Teams Up With Downtown Recordings . Pitchfork (March 31, 2009). Retrieved on October 23, 2010.
As Mad Decent continues to grow and release tracks by big-name artists, Diplo's solo career continues to grow at the same rate. He's produced for artists such as Beyoncé, Justin Bieber, Lil Wayne, Britney Spears, Wale, Chris Brown, Ariana Grande, 2 Chainz, Travis Porter, Usher, Azealia Banks, Iggy Azalea, and AlunaGeorge. On October 16, 2015, Diplo released "Be Right There" along with fellow producer Sleepy Tom. The single charted in multiple countries and has over 100 million streams on Spotify. On April 23, 2016, Beyoncé released her critically acclaimed album, Lemonade. Diplo produced two tracks on the album, "All Night", and one of the three singles, "Hold Up". The album debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 and was certified platinum on June 8, 2016. Along with producing tracks on Beyoncé's Lemonade, Diplo collaborated with Canadian DJ duo Zeds Dead on the release "Blame", which featured Swedish singer Elliphant. The track was officially released on July 14, 2016, via Zeds Dead's SoundCloud.
Major Lazer
Diplo's first collaborative full-length record was with Switch, this time under the guise of Major Lazer. Diplo incorporates such disparate influences as Miami Bass and Baile Funk into the high-tech eclecticism of his productions.
After landing a deal with Downtown Records before even recording a note of music, Diplo and Switch set out for Jamaica to record a project that, like most of Diplo's projects before it, would highlight the little-known subgenres, this time of Jamaica's dancehall scene. The two received support by many already established Jamaican artists such as Vybz Kartel, Elephant Man and Ms. Thing, and the resulting record Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do also featured vocals from Santigold, Amanda Blank, Nina Sky, Ricky Blaze and more. When discussing the Major Lazer project, Diplo described the dancehall sound as being "
the end of the world, all the little influences—house, soca, oldies, R&B, jazz—it all ends up in Jamaica." The track "Pon De Floor" from Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do was sampled for Beyoncé's single "Run the World (Girls)".
Major Lazer's first album was followed up with an EP, Lazers Never Die, which was released in 2010. Switch left Major Lazer in 2011, and was replaced by DJs Jillionaire and Walshy Fire. A second album, Free the Universe, was scheduled to be released in November 2012 but was delayed to February 2013, and then to April 15. It features artists such as Ezra Koenig, Bruno Mars, Ward 21, Wyclef, The Partysquad, Shaggy, Tyga, Flux Pavilion and Wynter Gordon. On February 8, 2015, during the Grammy Award ceremony, Diplo revealed details of the third Major Lazer album. He confirmed that the album would incorporate artists such as Ariana Grande, Ellie Goulding and Pusha T. It is called Peace Is the Mission. The first single, "Lean On", is a collaboration with French producer DJ Snake and features vocals from Danish recording artist MØ. The second single, "Powerful", featuring Ellie Goulding and Tarrus Riley, was released simultaneously with the album on June 1, 2015. On November 11, 2015, "Lean On" became Spotify's Most Streamed Song of All Time with over 800 million streams to date. Along with the streaming title, the official video for "Lean On" became one of the most viewed videos on YouTube. It currently has more than 2 billion views. Along with the streaming and viewing milestones, "Lean On" would also go on to achieve double platinum status.
On July 22, 2016, the group released the single "Cold Water", a collaboration with Canadian artist Justin Bieber and Danish singer MØ. The track has already reached over 200 million streams on Spotify, and achieved international commercial success, reaching number one in multiple countries. On November 29, 2016, Major Lazer and Bad Royale released "My Number", a track that samples "54-46 That's My Number" which Pitchfork describes as, "a genre-defining classic from legendary ska/reggae group Toots and the Maytals." This release contained newly recorded vocals from frontman Toots Hibbert specifically designed for Major Lazer, which changed the original lyrics to incorporate the group into the song while keeping the original melody. Their fifth studio album, Music Is the Weapon, features collaborations with Alessia Cara, French Montana, Anitta, Khalid, Skip Marley, Marcus Mumford, J Balvin, El Alfa, Mr Eazi and Nicki Minaj.
Jack Ü
Jack Ü is an American duo made up of Skrillex and Diplo. Jack Ü's debut performance took place at the Mad Decent Block Party in San Diego on September 15, 2013, which is a nationwide tour that record label Mad Decent puts together in order to showcase different artists signed to the label. Diplo announced the project by releasing the Mad Decent Block Party lineup with Jack Ü playing at multiple stops on the tour. After some guessing by many of who Jack Ü was, Diplo finally came out to reveal that "Jack Ü ... means Skrillex and Diplo together". After their New York debut at Electric Zoo was canceled in late August, the duo would soon return to the city for something bigger. On December 31, 2014, Jack Ü sold out Madison Square Garden for one of their biggest performances to date. The duo had support from Rudimental, Yellow Claw and A$AP Ferg.
On February 27, 2015 they released Skrillex and Diplo Present Jack Ü, a co-release between their respective labels OWSLA and Mad Decent. It featured tracks with 2 Chainz, Kiesza, Justin Bieber, AlunaGeorge and Missy Elliott. The first single "Take Ü There" featuring Kiesza was the lead single on the duo's debut album. The single was released as the lead on October 4, 2014. It reached number sixteen on the UK Dance Chart. The official second single, "Where Are Ü Now", was released simultaneously with the album. The song which took both artists in a different direction, featured a collaboration with Canadian pop star Justin Bieber. Peaking at number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100, and number 3 on the UK Singles Chart, "Where Are Ü Now" became the duo's largest hit on both charts thus far. The song would also go on to peak at number three in Australia, which was the highest charting for the single worldwide. The song had huge success in Europe as well, reaching the top-ten in Sweden and Finland, and the top-twenty in Norway, the Czech Republic, Denmark and Slovakia. The final place it had charting success was Bieber's home country, Canada, where it would end up peaking at number 6. On March 29, 2015, Jack Ü closed the main stage at Ultra Music Festival in Miami.
In 2016, the duo won two Grammy Awards for "Grammy Award for Best Dance Album" for "Skrillex and Diplo present Jack Ü" and "Grammy Award for Best Dance" for "Where Are Ü Now?" with Justin Bieber. The latter was also Bieber's first Grammy. They played two sold-out shows including Coachella Valley Music Festival in Indio, California and Lollapalooza in São Paulo, Brazil.
LSD
LSD is a pop supergroup composed of Diplo, Australian singer Sia, and British musician Labrinth. The trio have released five singles thus far, with their song "Thunderclouds" being featured in a commercial for the Samsung Galaxy Note9. Their singles "Genius" and "Audio" have seen official remixes from producers Banx & Ranx and Cid, respectively. LSD's debut album Labrinth, Sia & Diplo Present... LSD was released on April 12, 2019.
Silk City
On January 2, 2018 Diplo announced a new project with British DJ and singer Mark Ronson, entitled Silk City. The duo released their debut single "Only Can Get Better" featuring Daniel Merriweather on May 23, 2018. Their second single, "Feel About You" featuring Mapei, was released on July 20, 2018. The duo's third single, "Loud", saw Diplo reunite with previous collaborators GoldLink & Desiigner. Their 4th and most recent single features British singer/songwriter Dua Lipa, called "Electricity", which was released on September 5, 2018. The music video was released on the same day. In 2018, "Electricity" won a Grammy at the 61st Annual GRAMMY Awards for Best Dance Recording.
Additional work
Beyond Major Lazer and Mad Decent, Diplo has continued to show support for 'all the little influences', the lesser-known music scenes around the globe. Most recently his focus shifted to the Bounce scene in New Orleans, Louisiana for a television piece commissioned by Current.tv. Diplo was nominated for Non-Classical Producer of the Year at the 55th Grammy Awards and 58th Grammy Awards. Diplo had a late night show on BBC Radio 1 / 1Xtra on Saturdays 11:00 p.m.–1:00 a.m. (GMT) called 'Diplo and Friends' where he curates mixes from some of biggest names in dance music. He has now resigned from BBC Radio 1, per 2021. Diplo also has several syndicated Diplo and Friends shows in the United States in Boston, Bakersfield, Cleveland, Columbus, Las Vegas, Spokane, Albuquerque, Lafayette, Denver, and most notably on Los Angeles' 98.7 every Sunday at 9 p.m.
Beginning on October 2, 2015, Diplo, Jillionaire, Walshy Fire and Eric Hamilton debuted "Lazer Sound" on Apple Music's Beats 1. The newest radio show, curated by Diplo, and the Major Lazer crew, consists of interviews, moments on tour and brand new music. The show is on the air every other Saturday of the month. Throughout 2015 and 2016, Diplo performed with Major Lazer and Jack Ü on numerous live TV and award shows. He performed on The Tonight Show, Good Morning America, the iHeart Radio Music Festival, The NRJ Music Awards, the 2015 Latin Grammy Awards and the 2016 Grammy Awards.
In February 2016, Diplo was one of the first and very few mainstream Western artists to perform in Islamabad, Pakistan alongside Adil Omar, Talal Qureshi, SNKM and Elliphant. In 2018 Diplo returned to with Major Lazer for Islamabad's first Mad Decent Block Party alongside Adil Omar, SNKM, Talal Qureshi, Valentino Khan, Chrome Sparks, Lyari Underground and a host of other acts.
In January 2017, Diplo and Autoerotique (a house group from Toronto) released a music video titled "Waist Time" which was filmed in a warehouse in London. He was nominated for two Grammy's in 2016 (The 59th Annual GRAMMY Awards) for Album of the Year (for producer of Beyoncé's album Lemonade and producer for Justin Bieber's album Purpose). He also sang a song "Phurrr" in Bollywood in Imtiaz Ali's film Jab Harry Met Sejal starring Shah Rukh Khan and Anushka Sharma. In 2019, Diplo released the song "So Long" under the moniker Thomas Wesley, featuring American country singer Cam. In a press release, he stated that there are "several forthcoming collaborations with country artists" planned following "So Long", which came in the form of Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley, Chapter 1: Snake Oil released in 2020. The album included the song "Heartless" featuring Morgan Wallen.
Personal life
Diplo has three sons: Lockett and Lazer, with Kathryn Lockhart; and Pace, with Jevon King.
He dated rapper M.I.A. from 2003 to 2008. M.I.A. later said that their tumultuous relationship involved emotional abuse from him. Diplo dated singer Katy Perry for nearly a year in 2014 and 2015.
Diplo is a soccer and cricket fan and supporter of the U.S. men's national team. He also supports Arsenal F.C. and has attended two Tigres UANL matches. He created a mix for the 2014 World Cup and produced the 2018 World Cup official song "Live It Up". Diplo purchased a minority share of Phoenix Rising FC of the USL Championship on January 27, 2016. He stated: "I've been really fortunate to travel all over the world and experience different cultures through music. Wherever I am, Jamaica, Spain, England, China, etc., soccer is a social constant. I see soccer the same way I see music, as a connective tissue linking the world's cultures."
On February 24, 2016, Diplo endorsed Bernie Sanders as the Democratic presidential nominee. Sanders' ad "It's A Revolution" is soundtracked by Diplo's 2013 track "Revolution". On June 9, 2016, Diplo was featured on the cover of the American entertainment media magazine Billboard.
On May 1, 2019, Diplo live-streamed Joe Jonas' Las Vegas wedding to Sophie Turner on Instagram, "not knowing it was a serious wedding". Soon after the couple told the tabloids that Diplo ruined their wedding, the DJ responded on social media. Five months later, Diplo and the Jonas Brothers released a song titled "Lonely". The song's official music video chronicles Diplo's attempts to make amends with Joe Jonas and his brothers.
On July 9, 2020, Diplo joined Senator Kamala Harris and other artists for the "Get Up, Stand Up!" virtual fundraiser in support of Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign.
Sexual misconduct allegations
In November 2020, a Los Angeles woman named Shelly Auguste was granted a restraining order against Diplo. She alleged that he distributed revenge porn of her after she accused him of grooming her and other "very young girls", nonconsensual sexual behaviour, hiring a private investigator in June 2020 to "scare [her] into remaining silent about [their] relationship" and to "scare other women out of coming forward", and threatening others who supported her, in a Twitter thread in October. According to court documents, the woman, who met Diplo in the summer of 2014, when she was 17 and he was 36, began trading sexually explicit images and had an intimate relationship. Sometime later, Diplo filed and was granted a restraining order of his own against Auguste.
The same year, rapper Azealia Banks, who had been discovered by Diplo on social media when she was seventeen, claimed the producer helped her start her career in exchange for favours of sexual nature when she was underage in the fifth episode of her SoundCloud podcast, "Cheapys Two Cents".
In 2021, an unnamed woman sued Diplo for allegedly filming her while taking advantage of her sexually while she was intoxicated and unable to consent after a 2019 Las Vegas concert. She claims Diplo "invited her to a room, kicked out her friends, and would not let her leave until she performed oral sex". 10 days later, the accuser dropped her case, expressing regret about filing it.
DiscographyStudio albums'''
Florida (2004)
Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley, Chapter 1: Snake Oil (as Thomas Wesley) (2020)
MMXX (2020)
Diplo (2022)
Filmography
Film
Television
Awards and nominations
In 2009, he was nominated for his first Grammy Award for Record of the Year for "Paper Planes" shared with M.I.A., Switch. He was then nominated for a second Grammy Award in 2012, for Best Rap Song for "Look at Me Now" shared with Chris Brown, Lil Wayne and Busta Rhymes. Diplo was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2013 and 2016 in the category Producer of the Year, Non-Classic. In 2016, he won Grammy Awards for Best Dance/Electronic Album for Skrillex and Diplo Present Jack Ü and Best Dance Recording for "Where Are Ü Now".
Camerimage
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|2012
| "Express Yourself"
|rowspan=2|Best Music Video
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|2013
| "Earthquake"
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GAFFA-Prisen Awards
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| rowspan=2|2019
| Himself
| Best International Artist
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| California| Best International Album
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Grammy Awards
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|| 2009
| "Paper Planes"
|Record of the Year
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|| 2012
| "Look at Me Now"
|Best Rap Song
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|| 2013
|rowspan="2"| Diplo
|rowspan="2"| Producer of the Year, Non-Classical
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| rowspan="3"| 2016
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|"Where Are Ü Now"
| Best Dance Recording
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|Skrillex and Diplo Present Jack Ü
| Best Dance/Electronic Album
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| rowspan="2"| 2017
| Lemonade
| rowspan="2"|Album of the Year
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| Purpose
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| 2019
| "Electricity"
| Best Dance Recording
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DJ Magazine top 100 DJs
Electronic Music Awards
International Dance Music Awards
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| rowspan=3|2011
| rowspan=2|"C'mon"
| Best Electro/Tech House Track
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| Best Trance Track
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| rowspan=8|Himself
| Best Remixer
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|rowspan=2|2013
| Best North American DJ
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| rowspan=2|Best Producer
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| rowspan=2|2014
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| rowspan=2|Best North American DJ
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| rowspan=5|2015
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| Best Producer
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| Best Dubstep/Drum & Bass DJ
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| "Dirty Vibe"
| Best Dubstep/Drum & Bass Track
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| rowspan=2|Diplo and Friends| rowspan=2|Best Podcast or Radio Mixshow
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| rowspan=5|2016
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| rowspan=4|Himself
| Best Producer
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| Best EDM/Pop DJ
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iHeartRadio Music Awards
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| 2021
| Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley, Chapter 1: Snake Oil| Dance Album of the Year
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PLUG Awards
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| rowspan=2|2005
| Himself
| New Artist of the Year
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| Favela On Blast| rowspan=2|DJ Album of the Year
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| rowspan=2|2006
| FabricLive.24|
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| Himself
| Record Producer of the Year
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| 2007
| FabricLive.24''
| DJ Album of the Year
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UK Music Video Awards
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| 2013
| "Earthquake"
| Best Styling in a Video
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References
External links
1978 births
21st-century American rappers
21st-century American singers
Ableton Live users
American DJs
American expatriates in England
American hip hop DJs
American hip hop musicians
American hip hop record producers
American male songwriters
American people of English descent
American people of German descent
Atlantic Records artists
Because Music artists
BBC Radio 1 presenters
BBC Radio 1Xtra presenters
Electronic dance music DJs
Grammy Award winners
Living people
LSD (group) members
Mad Decent artists
Major Lazer members
Musicians from Florida
People from Miami
Phoenix Rising FC chairmen and investors
Record producers from Florida
Silk City (duo) members
Singers from Florida
Songwriters from Florida
Southern hip hop musicians
Temple University alumni | true | [
"Faces of Love is the second extended play by South Korean singer Suzy. It was released by JYP Entertainment and distributed by IRIVER on January 29, 2018. The extended play features seven original tracks including the title track \"Holiday\".\n\nBackground and release \nOn January 2, JYP Entertainment reviled that Suzy went to Los Angeles on January 1 to film her music video for her second mini album. On January 4, JYP announced that the artist will be releasing her second solo mini album on January 29 and will be dropping a pre-release track on January 22. On January 16, a prequel video of the mini album Faces of Love was released featuring Suzy showing different concepts to her tracks. The tracks titles of the mini album were unveiled on the same day along with the pre-release date of the track \"I'm in Love With Someone Else\". On January 17, a teaser of the pre-released track \"I'm in Love With Someone Else\" was released. On January 18, teaser photos of Suzy for the track \"I'm in Love With Someone Else\" were released. On January 19, teaser photos for the title track \"Holiday\" were released. On January 20, teaser photos for the track \"Midnight\" were released. On January 21, teaser photos for the track \"SObeR\" and additional teaser photos for \"Midnight\" were released. On January 22, \"I'm in Love With Someone Else\" was released along with a music video and a live video. A lyrics photo and a cover of the track were also released. On the same day, additional teaser photos of \"SObeR\" were released. On January 24, the first teaser of the title track \"Holiday\" was released. On the same day, additional photos of \"I'm in Love With Someone Else\" were released. On January 25, the second teaser of \"Holiday\" was released along with photo teasers. On January 26, the third teaser of \"Holiday\" was released. On the same day, the first poster of the mini album Faces of Love was released along with additional photo teasers of \"Holiday\". On January 28, album spoiler video was released and other photo teasers of the mini album. On January 29, the mini album was released along with the title track \"Holiday\".\n\nOn February 14, Suzy released a music video for her track \"SObeR\".\n\nPromotion \nOn January 29, Suzy held a press showcase where she talked about her second mini album Faces of Love and performed some of the tracks.\n\nSuzy started promoting the tracks \"Holiday\" and \"SObeR\" on South Korean music shows on February 2.\n\nTrack listing\n\nCharts\n\nSales\n\nReferences\n\nJYP Entertainment EPs\nKorean-language EPs\n2018 EPs",
"\"Nothing Else\" is a song by American Christian musician Cody Carnes. The song was released on January 4, 2019, as the lead single from his second studio album, Run to the Father (2020). Carnes co-wrote the song with Hank Bentley and Jessie Early. Carnes collaborated with Austin Davis and McKendree Tucker in producing the single.\n\n\"Nothing Else\" peaked at No. 31 on the US Hot Christian Songs chart.\n\nBackground\n\"Nothing Else\" was Cody Carnes' first single of 2019, following the release of \"Cover the Earth\" alongside Kari Jobe in 2018. Carnes shared the story behind the song with FreeCCM.\n\nComposition\n\"Nothing Else\" is composed in the key of C with a tempo of 68 beats per minute and a musical time signature of .\n\nCommercial performance\n\"Nothing Else\" debuted at No. 35 on the US Hot Christian Songs chart dated January 19, 2019, concurrently charting at No. 17 on the Christian Digital Song Sales chart.\n\nMusic videos\nThe lyric video of \"Nothing Else\" was published on January 2, 2019, on Cody Carnes' YouTube channel. The live music video of the song, performed by Cody Carnes, recorded at Passion 2019, was published on February 6, 2019, on Cody Carnes' YouTube channel.\n\nTrack listing\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nRelease history\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n on PraiseCharts\n\n2019 singles\n2019 songs\nCody Carnes songs\nSongs written by Cody Carnes"
] |
[
"Arthur Tedder, 1st Baron Tedder",
"Inter-war years"
] | C_1e3c6550d3a840938d56448facb44e4c_0 | What years were the Inter-war years? | 1 | What years were the Inter-war years? | Arthur Tedder, 1st Baron Tedder | Tedder was given command of No. 274 Squadron, equipped with the Handley Page V/1500, the largest RAF bomber of its time, at RAF Bircham Newton in May 1919. On 1 August 1919, Tedder accepted a permanent commission in the new Royal Air Force (RAF). Renamed No. 207 Squadron in February 1920 and equipped with DH9a bombers, the squadron was briefly deployed to Turkey in 1922-23 during the Chanak Crisis. Tedder attended the RN Staff College in late 1923 and through the spring of 1924. Promoted to wing commander on 1 January 1924, Tedder became station commander at RAF Digby and Commandant of No. 2 Flying Training School RAF there in September 1924, before joining the air staff in the Directorate of Training at the Air Ministry in January 1927. He attended the Imperial Defence College in 1928 and then became Assistant Commandant at the RAF Staff College in January 1929. Promoted to group captain on 1 January 1931, he went to the Air Armament School at RAF Eastchurch as officer commanding in January 1932. On 4 April 1934 he became Director of Training at the Air Ministry, gaining promotion to air commodore on 1 July 1934. In November 1936, Tedder was appointed Air Officer Commanding (AOC) RAF Far Eastern Forces which gave him command over RAF units from Burma to Hong Kong and Borneo. Appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath on 1 February 1937, he was promoted to air vice marshal on 1 July 1937 and became Director General for Research in the Air Ministry in July 1938. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Marshal of the Royal Air Force Arthur William Tedder, 1st Baron Tedder, (11 July 1890 – 3 June 1967) was a senior Royal Air Force commander. He was a pilot and squadron commander in the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War and he went on to serve as a senior officer in the Royal Air Force during the inter-war years when he served in Turkey, Great Britain and the Far East.
During the Second World War, as Air Officer Commanding RAF Middle East Command, Tedder directed air operations in the Mediterranean and North Africa, including the evacuation of Crete and Operation Crusader in North Africa. His bombing tactics became known as the "Tedder Carpet". Later in the war Tedder took command of Mediterranean Air Command and in that role was closely involved in the planning of the Allied invasion of Sicily and then the Allied invasion of Italy. When Operation Overlord—the invasion of France—came to be planned, Tedder was appointed Deputy Supreme Commander at Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force under General Eisenhower.
After the war, Tedder served as Chief of the Air Staff, in which role he advocated increased recruiting in the face of many airmen leaving the service, doubled the size of RAF Fighter Command and implemented arrangements for the Berlin Airlift in 1948. In addition, he held senior positions in business and academia.
Early life
Tedder was born the son of Sir Arthur John Tedder and Emily Charlotte Tedder (née Bryson) at the Glenguin Distillery (now Glengoyne) in the Campsie Fells, north of Glasgow. His father was distinguished as the Commissioner of the Board of Customs who devised the old age pension scheme. His father's occupation meant that the young Tedder saw different parts of the British Isles, spending 1895 to 1898 in Lerwick in the Shetland Isles and 1899–1901 in Elgin, in the County of Moray. In 1902 the family moved to Croydon in Surrey where Tedder attended Whitgift School until 1909, when he went up to the University of Cambridge. Tedder spent his university years (1909–13) at Magdalene College, where he read history. He was awarded a lower second class honours degree in June 1912.
Tedder spent the summer of 1912 in Berlin studying German. With the start of a new academic year, he decided to return to Magdalene for a fourth year in order that he might prepare himself for a career as a diplomat. On 2 September 1913, during his last year at Magdalene, Tedder gained a reserve commission as a second lieutenant in the Dorsetshire Regiment.
After university, Tedder joined the Colonial Service as a cadet and departed Britain in February 1914, serving in the administration in Fiji. He did not find colonial life in Fiji to his liking, and when war was declared, he returned to Britain so that he could join the regular Army.
Military career
First World War
Tedder was promoted to lieutenant in the Dorset Regiment on 14 October 1914, and arrived back in Britain in December. He was posted to a reserve unit at Wyke Regis on the Dorset coast where he seriously injured his knee in February. Following his injury Tedder was unable to carry out full infantry service and, although he briefly carried out duties at a base camp in Calais, he pressed for a transfer to the Royal Flying Corps.
In January 1916, Tedder was accepted into the Royal Flying Corps and he was asked to attend the No. 1 School of Aeronautics. in Reading. He was promoted to captain on 21 March 1916. In April he attended the Central Flying School where he learned to fly and gained his 'wings'. In June 1916, Tedder served as a pilot with No. 25 Squadron RFC flying the Bristol Scout C on the Western Front. On 9 August 1916, Tedder was given additional responsibilities as he was made a flight commander with 25 Squadron. The first day of 1917 saw Tedder promoted to major and appointed officer commanding No. 70 Squadron RFC. Tedder remained on the Western Front and his new squadron was equipped with the Sopwith 1½ Strutter. He was awarded the Italian Silver Medal for Military Valour on 26 May 1917.
Tedder was appointed officer commanding No. 67 Squadron at RFC Shawbury on 25 June 1917 and became commander of the School of Navigation and Bomb Dropping in Egypt the following year. Another change soon followed and on 24 June 1918 Tedder was appointed officer commanding 38th Wing, also based in Egypt. He was promoted to the temporary rank of lieutenant colonel on 23 July 1918 (rank relinquished on 2 April 1919).
Inter-war years
Tedder was given command of No. 274 Squadron, equipped with the Handley Page V/1500, the largest RAF bomber of its time, at RAF Bircham Newton in May 1919. On 1 August 1919, Tedder accepted a permanent commission in the new Royal Air Force (RAF). Renamed No. 207 Squadron in February 1920 and equipped with DH9a bombers, the squadron was briefly deployed to Turkey in 1922–23 during the Chanak Crisis. Tedder attended the RN Staff College in late 1923 and through the spring of 1924.
Promoted to wing commander on 1 January 1924, Tedder became station commander at RAF Digby and the Commandant of No. 2 Flying Training School there in September 1924, before joining the air staff in the Directorate of Training at the Air Ministry in January 1927. He attended the Imperial Defence College in 1928 and then became Assistant Commandant at the RAF Staff College in January 1929. Promoted to group captain on 1 January 1931, he went to the Air Armament School at RAF Eastchurch as officer commanding in January 1932. On 4 April 1934 he became Director of Training at the Air Ministry, gaining promotion to air commodore on 1 July 1934.
In November 1936, Tedder was appointed Air Officer Commanding (AOC) RAF Far Eastern Forces which gave him command over RAF units from Burma to Hong Kong and Borneo. Appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath on 1 February 1937, he was promoted to air vice marshal on 1 July 1937 and became Director General for Research in the Air Ministry in July 1938.
Second World War
At the outbreak of war in 1939, Tedder's department was transferred to the newly created Ministry of Aircraft Production, but Tedder was unable to form a good working relationship with the minister, Lord Beaverbrook and consequently with Prime Minister Churchill and on 29 November 1940, he became Deputy Air Officer Commanding in Chief, RAF Middle East Command with the acting rank of air marshal.
Tedder was appointed as Air Officer Commanding in Chief, RAF Middle East Command on 1 June 1941, with the temporary rank of air marshal (made permanent in April 1942). He had not been Churchill's first choice for the role but when the preferred choice (Air Vice-Marshal O T Boyd) was captured, Tedder was appointed. As head of the RAF Middle East Command, he commanded air operations in the Mediterranean and North Africa, including the evacuation of Crete in May 1941 and Operation Crusader in North Africa in late 1941. Tedder was advanced to Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in the 1942 New Year Honours, mentioned in despatches for his services in the Middle East on 30 June 1942 and promoted to the temporary rank of air chief marshal on 3 July 1942.
Tedder oversaw the buildup of the air arm in the Western Desert and, more importantly, the development of new more effective operational and administrative policies which turned it into a highly effective force which was key to the Allied victory at the decisive Battle of El Alamein in October 1942. One of his bombing tactics became known as the "Tedder Carpet". He was advanced to Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath on 27 November 1942 in recognition of his services in the Middle East.
In February 1943 Tedder took command of Mediterranean Air Command, serving under U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower (the theatre commander), and in that role was closely involved in the planning of the Allied invasion of Sicily and then the Allied invasion of Italy. He was awarded the American Legion of Merit on 27 August 1943 and awarded the Grand Cross of the Polish Order of Polonia Restituta on 1 October 1943. He went on to be Commander of Mediterranean Allied Air Forces, which took in an expanded group of air forces, in December 1943.
When Operation Overlord—the invasion of France—came to be planned, Tedder was appointed Deputy Supreme Commander at SHAEF beneath General Eisenhower, taking up the role in January 1944. However he developed an antipathy towards the British General Bernard Montgomery and during the difficult Battle of Normandy and later, he was a critic of Montgomery's performance and advocated Montgomery's removal from command. In the last year of the war, Tedder was sent to the Soviet Union to seek assistance as the Western Front came under pressure during the Battle of the Bulge. When the unconditional surrender of the Germans came in May 1945 Tedder signed on behalf of General Eisenhower. He was promoted to the substantive rank of air chief marshal on 6 June 1945. Tedder was awarded the Soviet Order of Kutuzov (1st Class) on 28 August 1945 and promoted to Marshal of the Royal Air Force on 12 September 1945.
After the war
Tedder took over from Charles Portal as Chief of the Air Staff on 1 January 1946. In that role he advocated increased recruiting in the face of many airmen leaving the service, doubled the size of Fighter Command and implemented arrangements for the Berlin Airlift in 1948. He was granted a peerage as Baron Tedder, of Glenguin in the County of Stirling on 8 February 1946 and received the American Distinguished Service Medal on 14 June 1946. In 1947 he delivered the Lees Knowles Lecture, which was then published as Air Power in War. He moved on to become chairman, British Joint Services Mission in Washington in January 1950 before retiring in May 1951. In 1951 Tedder accepted an invitation to chair the Royal Commission on University Education in Dundee which ultimately led to the creation of the Queen's College, Dundee as a college of the University of St Andrews. His son John would later be a professor at both the University of Dundee (as Queen's College eventually became) and at St Andrews.
Later life
Tedder was the author of a highly regarded essay on the history of the Royal Navy and also composed his war memoirs. In November 1950 he was elected Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. He also served as Chairman of the Standard Motor Company from 1954 to 1960 and vice-chairman of the Board of Governors of the BBC. In his later years he developed Parkinson's disease and died at his home at Banstead in Surrey on 3 June 1967.
His ashes are buried in St Clement Danes in London, the RAF church. His name can be seen on a memorial in Westminster Abbey.
Family life
In 1915 Tedder married Rosalinde Maclardy; they had two sons and a daughter. Following the death of his first wife in an aircraft crash in Egypt in January 1943, Tedder married Marie (Toppy) Black (née Seton) in October 1943. Tedder was the father of: Dick (killed in France 1940), John Michael (1926–1994; Late Purdie Professor of Chemistry, University of St. Andrews), Richard (Professor of Virology at UCL) and Mena.
Arms
References
Sources
Further reading
External links
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
1890 births
1967 deaths
Dorset Regiment officers
Royal Flying Corps officers
British Army personnel of World War I
Royal Air Force personnel of World War I
Royal Air Force air marshals of World War II
Chiefs of the Air Staff (United Kingdom)
Marshals of the Royal Air Force
Barons in the Peerage of the United Kingdom
Grand Crosses of the Order of the Crown (Belgium)
Grand Croix of the Légion d'honneur
Knights Grand Cross of the Order of Orange-Nassau
Grand Crosses of the Order of Polonia Restituta
Grand Crosses of the Order of George I with Swords
Recipients of the Order of Kutuzov, 1st class
Recipients of the Croix de guerre (Belgium)
Recipients of the Croix de Guerre 1939–1945 (France)
Foreign recipients of the Distinguished Service Medal (United States)
Chief Commanders of the Legion of Merit
Recipients of the Silver Medal of Military Valor
Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath
Alumni of Magdalene College, Cambridge
Chancellors of the University of Cambridge
People educated at Whitgift School
Operation Overlord people
Presidents of Surrey County Cricket Club
Legion of Frontiersmen members
British writers
People with Parkinson's disease
Scottish aviators
People from Stirling (council area)
People associated with the University of Dundee
Royalty and nobility with disabilities
Alumni of the Royal College of Defence Studies
Graduates of the Royal Naval College, Greenwich
Recipients of the Distinguished Service Medal (US Army)
British air attachés
Peers created by George VI | false | [
"Kattowitz is the German name for the Polish city of Katowice.\n\nKattowitz may also refer to:\n\nPlaces\n Katowice (parliamentary constituency)\n Kattowitz (region)\n Katowice Forest Park\n Katowice Voivodeship\n\nSports\n1. FC Kattowitz, an ethnically German association football club playing in what was Kattowitz, Silesia Province in Germany (now Katowice, Silesian Voivodeship, Poland) and was active during the inter-war period and World War II when the two countries struggled over control of the region\nGermania Kattowitz, an ethnically German association football club playing in what was Kattowitz, Upper Silesia in Germany (now Katowice, Poland) before the First World War and shortly afterwards\nDiana Kattowitz, an ethnically German association football club playing in what was Kattowitz, Upper Silesia in Germany (now Katowice, Poland) during the inter-war period\n\nOther\n Kattowitzer Volkswille, a newspaper in Weimar Germany\n\nSee also",
"The Inter-American Conference on Problems of War and Peace informally known as the Chapultepec Conference, was held in Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City on February 21 to March 8, 1945, between the United States and 19 Latin American countries. Argentina was not invited because it had not declared war on the Axis Powers in World War II. The original goals were to discuss the status of Argentina, the role of the United Nations and postwar American economic aid. The second goal was postponed. There was agreement that Argentina could rejoin the inter-American community if it were to declare war on Nazi Germany. The Latin American countries feared that American commitment to the United Nations would in some ways be in conflict with the Pan-American ideals. Therefore, the conference adopted a formal resolution called the Act of Chapultepec which proclaimed the principle of collective self-defense through regional pacts. This policy was adopted by the United Nations and Article 51 of the UN charter, which authorized regional security arrangements. The provisions also provided the basis for the Rio Treaty of 1947, which was an inter-American collective security pact.\n\nSee also\n Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance of 1947\nPan-American Conference\n\nNotes\n\nFurther reading\n Connell-Smith, Gordon. The inter-American system (1966).\n Inman, Samuel Guy. Inter-American Conferences, 1826-1954: History and Problems. Washington: University Press 1965. \n Mecham, J. Lloyd. The United States and Inter-American Security, 1889-1960. Austin: University of Texas Press 1961.\n Smith, Gaddis. The Last Years of the Monroe Doctrine (1994)\n\nUnited States–South American relations\nOrganization of American States treaties\nDiplomatic conferences in Mexico\n1945 in Mexico"
] |
[
"Arthur Tedder, 1st Baron Tedder",
"Inter-war years",
"What years were the Inter-war years?",
"I don't know."
] | C_1e3c6550d3a840938d56448facb44e4c_0 | Are there any other interesting aspects about this article? | 2 | Are there any other interesting aspects about this article besides the inter war years? | Arthur Tedder, 1st Baron Tedder | Tedder was given command of No. 274 Squadron, equipped with the Handley Page V/1500, the largest RAF bomber of its time, at RAF Bircham Newton in May 1919. On 1 August 1919, Tedder accepted a permanent commission in the new Royal Air Force (RAF). Renamed No. 207 Squadron in February 1920 and equipped with DH9a bombers, the squadron was briefly deployed to Turkey in 1922-23 during the Chanak Crisis. Tedder attended the RN Staff College in late 1923 and through the spring of 1924. Promoted to wing commander on 1 January 1924, Tedder became station commander at RAF Digby and Commandant of No. 2 Flying Training School RAF there in September 1924, before joining the air staff in the Directorate of Training at the Air Ministry in January 1927. He attended the Imperial Defence College in 1928 and then became Assistant Commandant at the RAF Staff College in January 1929. Promoted to group captain on 1 January 1931, he went to the Air Armament School at RAF Eastchurch as officer commanding in January 1932. On 4 April 1934 he became Director of Training at the Air Ministry, gaining promotion to air commodore on 1 July 1934. In November 1936, Tedder was appointed Air Officer Commanding (AOC) RAF Far Eastern Forces which gave him command over RAF units from Burma to Hong Kong and Borneo. Appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath on 1 February 1937, he was promoted to air vice marshal on 1 July 1937 and became Director General for Research in the Air Ministry in July 1938. CANNOTANSWER | Promoted to wing commander on 1 January 1924, Tedder became station commander at RAF Digby and Commandant of No. 2 Flying Training School RAF | Marshal of the Royal Air Force Arthur William Tedder, 1st Baron Tedder, (11 July 1890 – 3 June 1967) was a senior Royal Air Force commander. He was a pilot and squadron commander in the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War and he went on to serve as a senior officer in the Royal Air Force during the inter-war years when he served in Turkey, Great Britain and the Far East.
During the Second World War, as Air Officer Commanding RAF Middle East Command, Tedder directed air operations in the Mediterranean and North Africa, including the evacuation of Crete and Operation Crusader in North Africa. His bombing tactics became known as the "Tedder Carpet". Later in the war Tedder took command of Mediterranean Air Command and in that role was closely involved in the planning of the Allied invasion of Sicily and then the Allied invasion of Italy. When Operation Overlord—the invasion of France—came to be planned, Tedder was appointed Deputy Supreme Commander at Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force under General Eisenhower.
After the war, Tedder served as Chief of the Air Staff, in which role he advocated increased recruiting in the face of many airmen leaving the service, doubled the size of RAF Fighter Command and implemented arrangements for the Berlin Airlift in 1948. In addition, he held senior positions in business and academia.
Early life
Tedder was born the son of Sir Arthur John Tedder and Emily Charlotte Tedder (née Bryson) at the Glenguin Distillery (now Glengoyne) in the Campsie Fells, north of Glasgow. His father was distinguished as the Commissioner of the Board of Customs who devised the old age pension scheme. His father's occupation meant that the young Tedder saw different parts of the British Isles, spending 1895 to 1898 in Lerwick in the Shetland Isles and 1899–1901 in Elgin, in the County of Moray. In 1902 the family moved to Croydon in Surrey where Tedder attended Whitgift School until 1909, when he went up to the University of Cambridge. Tedder spent his university years (1909–13) at Magdalene College, where he read history. He was awarded a lower second class honours degree in June 1912.
Tedder spent the summer of 1912 in Berlin studying German. With the start of a new academic year, he decided to return to Magdalene for a fourth year in order that he might prepare himself for a career as a diplomat. On 2 September 1913, during his last year at Magdalene, Tedder gained a reserve commission as a second lieutenant in the Dorsetshire Regiment.
After university, Tedder joined the Colonial Service as a cadet and departed Britain in February 1914, serving in the administration in Fiji. He did not find colonial life in Fiji to his liking, and when war was declared, he returned to Britain so that he could join the regular Army.
Military career
First World War
Tedder was promoted to lieutenant in the Dorset Regiment on 14 October 1914, and arrived back in Britain in December. He was posted to a reserve unit at Wyke Regis on the Dorset coast where he seriously injured his knee in February. Following his injury Tedder was unable to carry out full infantry service and, although he briefly carried out duties at a base camp in Calais, he pressed for a transfer to the Royal Flying Corps.
In January 1916, Tedder was accepted into the Royal Flying Corps and he was asked to attend the No. 1 School of Aeronautics. in Reading. He was promoted to captain on 21 March 1916. In April he attended the Central Flying School where he learned to fly and gained his 'wings'. In June 1916, Tedder served as a pilot with No. 25 Squadron RFC flying the Bristol Scout C on the Western Front. On 9 August 1916, Tedder was given additional responsibilities as he was made a flight commander with 25 Squadron. The first day of 1917 saw Tedder promoted to major and appointed officer commanding No. 70 Squadron RFC. Tedder remained on the Western Front and his new squadron was equipped with the Sopwith 1½ Strutter. He was awarded the Italian Silver Medal for Military Valour on 26 May 1917.
Tedder was appointed officer commanding No. 67 Squadron at RFC Shawbury on 25 June 1917 and became commander of the School of Navigation and Bomb Dropping in Egypt the following year. Another change soon followed and on 24 June 1918 Tedder was appointed officer commanding 38th Wing, also based in Egypt. He was promoted to the temporary rank of lieutenant colonel on 23 July 1918 (rank relinquished on 2 April 1919).
Inter-war years
Tedder was given command of No. 274 Squadron, equipped with the Handley Page V/1500, the largest RAF bomber of its time, at RAF Bircham Newton in May 1919. On 1 August 1919, Tedder accepted a permanent commission in the new Royal Air Force (RAF). Renamed No. 207 Squadron in February 1920 and equipped with DH9a bombers, the squadron was briefly deployed to Turkey in 1922–23 during the Chanak Crisis. Tedder attended the RN Staff College in late 1923 and through the spring of 1924.
Promoted to wing commander on 1 January 1924, Tedder became station commander at RAF Digby and the Commandant of No. 2 Flying Training School there in September 1924, before joining the air staff in the Directorate of Training at the Air Ministry in January 1927. He attended the Imperial Defence College in 1928 and then became Assistant Commandant at the RAF Staff College in January 1929. Promoted to group captain on 1 January 1931, he went to the Air Armament School at RAF Eastchurch as officer commanding in January 1932. On 4 April 1934 he became Director of Training at the Air Ministry, gaining promotion to air commodore on 1 July 1934.
In November 1936, Tedder was appointed Air Officer Commanding (AOC) RAF Far Eastern Forces which gave him command over RAF units from Burma to Hong Kong and Borneo. Appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath on 1 February 1937, he was promoted to air vice marshal on 1 July 1937 and became Director General for Research in the Air Ministry in July 1938.
Second World War
At the outbreak of war in 1939, Tedder's department was transferred to the newly created Ministry of Aircraft Production, but Tedder was unable to form a good working relationship with the minister, Lord Beaverbrook and consequently with Prime Minister Churchill and on 29 November 1940, he became Deputy Air Officer Commanding in Chief, RAF Middle East Command with the acting rank of air marshal.
Tedder was appointed as Air Officer Commanding in Chief, RAF Middle East Command on 1 June 1941, with the temporary rank of air marshal (made permanent in April 1942). He had not been Churchill's first choice for the role but when the preferred choice (Air Vice-Marshal O T Boyd) was captured, Tedder was appointed. As head of the RAF Middle East Command, he commanded air operations in the Mediterranean and North Africa, including the evacuation of Crete in May 1941 and Operation Crusader in North Africa in late 1941. Tedder was advanced to Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in the 1942 New Year Honours, mentioned in despatches for his services in the Middle East on 30 June 1942 and promoted to the temporary rank of air chief marshal on 3 July 1942.
Tedder oversaw the buildup of the air arm in the Western Desert and, more importantly, the development of new more effective operational and administrative policies which turned it into a highly effective force which was key to the Allied victory at the decisive Battle of El Alamein in October 1942. One of his bombing tactics became known as the "Tedder Carpet". He was advanced to Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath on 27 November 1942 in recognition of his services in the Middle East.
In February 1943 Tedder took command of Mediterranean Air Command, serving under U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower (the theatre commander), and in that role was closely involved in the planning of the Allied invasion of Sicily and then the Allied invasion of Italy. He was awarded the American Legion of Merit on 27 August 1943 and awarded the Grand Cross of the Polish Order of Polonia Restituta on 1 October 1943. He went on to be Commander of Mediterranean Allied Air Forces, which took in an expanded group of air forces, in December 1943.
When Operation Overlord—the invasion of France—came to be planned, Tedder was appointed Deputy Supreme Commander at SHAEF beneath General Eisenhower, taking up the role in January 1944. However he developed an antipathy towards the British General Bernard Montgomery and during the difficult Battle of Normandy and later, he was a critic of Montgomery's performance and advocated Montgomery's removal from command. In the last year of the war, Tedder was sent to the Soviet Union to seek assistance as the Western Front came under pressure during the Battle of the Bulge. When the unconditional surrender of the Germans came in May 1945 Tedder signed on behalf of General Eisenhower. He was promoted to the substantive rank of air chief marshal on 6 June 1945. Tedder was awarded the Soviet Order of Kutuzov (1st Class) on 28 August 1945 and promoted to Marshal of the Royal Air Force on 12 September 1945.
After the war
Tedder took over from Charles Portal as Chief of the Air Staff on 1 January 1946. In that role he advocated increased recruiting in the face of many airmen leaving the service, doubled the size of Fighter Command and implemented arrangements for the Berlin Airlift in 1948. He was granted a peerage as Baron Tedder, of Glenguin in the County of Stirling on 8 February 1946 and received the American Distinguished Service Medal on 14 June 1946. In 1947 he delivered the Lees Knowles Lecture, which was then published as Air Power in War. He moved on to become chairman, British Joint Services Mission in Washington in January 1950 before retiring in May 1951. In 1951 Tedder accepted an invitation to chair the Royal Commission on University Education in Dundee which ultimately led to the creation of the Queen's College, Dundee as a college of the University of St Andrews. His son John would later be a professor at both the University of Dundee (as Queen's College eventually became) and at St Andrews.
Later life
Tedder was the author of a highly regarded essay on the history of the Royal Navy and also composed his war memoirs. In November 1950 he was elected Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. He also served as Chairman of the Standard Motor Company from 1954 to 1960 and vice-chairman of the Board of Governors of the BBC. In his later years he developed Parkinson's disease and died at his home at Banstead in Surrey on 3 June 1967.
His ashes are buried in St Clement Danes in London, the RAF church. His name can be seen on a memorial in Westminster Abbey.
Family life
In 1915 Tedder married Rosalinde Maclardy; they had two sons and a daughter. Following the death of his first wife in an aircraft crash in Egypt in January 1943, Tedder married Marie (Toppy) Black (née Seton) in October 1943. Tedder was the father of: Dick (killed in France 1940), John Michael (1926–1994; Late Purdie Professor of Chemistry, University of St. Andrews), Richard (Professor of Virology at UCL) and Mena.
Arms
References
Sources
Further reading
External links
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
1890 births
1967 deaths
Dorset Regiment officers
Royal Flying Corps officers
British Army personnel of World War I
Royal Air Force personnel of World War I
Royal Air Force air marshals of World War II
Chiefs of the Air Staff (United Kingdom)
Marshals of the Royal Air Force
Barons in the Peerage of the United Kingdom
Grand Crosses of the Order of the Crown (Belgium)
Grand Croix of the Légion d'honneur
Knights Grand Cross of the Order of Orange-Nassau
Grand Crosses of the Order of Polonia Restituta
Grand Crosses of the Order of George I with Swords
Recipients of the Order of Kutuzov, 1st class
Recipients of the Croix de guerre (Belgium)
Recipients of the Croix de Guerre 1939–1945 (France)
Foreign recipients of the Distinguished Service Medal (United States)
Chief Commanders of the Legion of Merit
Recipients of the Silver Medal of Military Valor
Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath
Alumni of Magdalene College, Cambridge
Chancellors of the University of Cambridge
People educated at Whitgift School
Operation Overlord people
Presidents of Surrey County Cricket Club
Legion of Frontiersmen members
British writers
People with Parkinson's disease
Scottish aviators
People from Stirling (council area)
People associated with the University of Dundee
Royalty and nobility with disabilities
Alumni of the Royal College of Defence Studies
Graduates of the Royal Naval College, Greenwich
Recipients of the Distinguished Service Medal (US Army)
British air attachés
Peers created by George VI | 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"
] |
[
"Arthur Tedder, 1st Baron Tedder",
"Inter-war years",
"What years were the Inter-war years?",
"I don't know.",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"Promoted to wing commander on 1 January 1924, Tedder became station commander at RAF Digby and Commandant of No. 2 Flying Training School RAF"
] | C_1e3c6550d3a840938d56448facb44e4c_0 | What kind of training did he receive there? | 3 | What kind of training did Arthur Tedder receive at RAF Digby? | Arthur Tedder, 1st Baron Tedder | Tedder was given command of No. 274 Squadron, equipped with the Handley Page V/1500, the largest RAF bomber of its time, at RAF Bircham Newton in May 1919. On 1 August 1919, Tedder accepted a permanent commission in the new Royal Air Force (RAF). Renamed No. 207 Squadron in February 1920 and equipped with DH9a bombers, the squadron was briefly deployed to Turkey in 1922-23 during the Chanak Crisis. Tedder attended the RN Staff College in late 1923 and through the spring of 1924. Promoted to wing commander on 1 January 1924, Tedder became station commander at RAF Digby and Commandant of No. 2 Flying Training School RAF there in September 1924, before joining the air staff in the Directorate of Training at the Air Ministry in January 1927. He attended the Imperial Defence College in 1928 and then became Assistant Commandant at the RAF Staff College in January 1929. Promoted to group captain on 1 January 1931, he went to the Air Armament School at RAF Eastchurch as officer commanding in January 1932. On 4 April 1934 he became Director of Training at the Air Ministry, gaining promotion to air commodore on 1 July 1934. In November 1936, Tedder was appointed Air Officer Commanding (AOC) RAF Far Eastern Forces which gave him command over RAF units from Burma to Hong Kong and Borneo. Appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath on 1 February 1937, he was promoted to air vice marshal on 1 July 1937 and became Director General for Research in the Air Ministry in July 1938. CANNOTANSWER | Flying Training | Marshal of the Royal Air Force Arthur William Tedder, 1st Baron Tedder, (11 July 1890 – 3 June 1967) was a senior Royal Air Force commander. He was a pilot and squadron commander in the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War and he went on to serve as a senior officer in the Royal Air Force during the inter-war years when he served in Turkey, Great Britain and the Far East.
During the Second World War, as Air Officer Commanding RAF Middle East Command, Tedder directed air operations in the Mediterranean and North Africa, including the evacuation of Crete and Operation Crusader in North Africa. His bombing tactics became known as the "Tedder Carpet". Later in the war Tedder took command of Mediterranean Air Command and in that role was closely involved in the planning of the Allied invasion of Sicily and then the Allied invasion of Italy. When Operation Overlord—the invasion of France—came to be planned, Tedder was appointed Deputy Supreme Commander at Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force under General Eisenhower.
After the war, Tedder served as Chief of the Air Staff, in which role he advocated increased recruiting in the face of many airmen leaving the service, doubled the size of RAF Fighter Command and implemented arrangements for the Berlin Airlift in 1948. In addition, he held senior positions in business and academia.
Early life
Tedder was born the son of Sir Arthur John Tedder and Emily Charlotte Tedder (née Bryson) at the Glenguin Distillery (now Glengoyne) in the Campsie Fells, north of Glasgow. His father was distinguished as the Commissioner of the Board of Customs who devised the old age pension scheme. His father's occupation meant that the young Tedder saw different parts of the British Isles, spending 1895 to 1898 in Lerwick in the Shetland Isles and 1899–1901 in Elgin, in the County of Moray. In 1902 the family moved to Croydon in Surrey where Tedder attended Whitgift School until 1909, when he went up to the University of Cambridge. Tedder spent his university years (1909–13) at Magdalene College, where he read history. He was awarded a lower second class honours degree in June 1912.
Tedder spent the summer of 1912 in Berlin studying German. With the start of a new academic year, he decided to return to Magdalene for a fourth year in order that he might prepare himself for a career as a diplomat. On 2 September 1913, during his last year at Magdalene, Tedder gained a reserve commission as a second lieutenant in the Dorsetshire Regiment.
After university, Tedder joined the Colonial Service as a cadet and departed Britain in February 1914, serving in the administration in Fiji. He did not find colonial life in Fiji to his liking, and when war was declared, he returned to Britain so that he could join the regular Army.
Military career
First World War
Tedder was promoted to lieutenant in the Dorset Regiment on 14 October 1914, and arrived back in Britain in December. He was posted to a reserve unit at Wyke Regis on the Dorset coast where he seriously injured his knee in February. Following his injury Tedder was unable to carry out full infantry service and, although he briefly carried out duties at a base camp in Calais, he pressed for a transfer to the Royal Flying Corps.
In January 1916, Tedder was accepted into the Royal Flying Corps and he was asked to attend the No. 1 School of Aeronautics. in Reading. He was promoted to captain on 21 March 1916. In April he attended the Central Flying School where he learned to fly and gained his 'wings'. In June 1916, Tedder served as a pilot with No. 25 Squadron RFC flying the Bristol Scout C on the Western Front. On 9 August 1916, Tedder was given additional responsibilities as he was made a flight commander with 25 Squadron. The first day of 1917 saw Tedder promoted to major and appointed officer commanding No. 70 Squadron RFC. Tedder remained on the Western Front and his new squadron was equipped with the Sopwith 1½ Strutter. He was awarded the Italian Silver Medal for Military Valour on 26 May 1917.
Tedder was appointed officer commanding No. 67 Squadron at RFC Shawbury on 25 June 1917 and became commander of the School of Navigation and Bomb Dropping in Egypt the following year. Another change soon followed and on 24 June 1918 Tedder was appointed officer commanding 38th Wing, also based in Egypt. He was promoted to the temporary rank of lieutenant colonel on 23 July 1918 (rank relinquished on 2 April 1919).
Inter-war years
Tedder was given command of No. 274 Squadron, equipped with the Handley Page V/1500, the largest RAF bomber of its time, at RAF Bircham Newton in May 1919. On 1 August 1919, Tedder accepted a permanent commission in the new Royal Air Force (RAF). Renamed No. 207 Squadron in February 1920 and equipped with DH9a bombers, the squadron was briefly deployed to Turkey in 1922–23 during the Chanak Crisis. Tedder attended the RN Staff College in late 1923 and through the spring of 1924.
Promoted to wing commander on 1 January 1924, Tedder became station commander at RAF Digby and the Commandant of No. 2 Flying Training School there in September 1924, before joining the air staff in the Directorate of Training at the Air Ministry in January 1927. He attended the Imperial Defence College in 1928 and then became Assistant Commandant at the RAF Staff College in January 1929. Promoted to group captain on 1 January 1931, he went to the Air Armament School at RAF Eastchurch as officer commanding in January 1932. On 4 April 1934 he became Director of Training at the Air Ministry, gaining promotion to air commodore on 1 July 1934.
In November 1936, Tedder was appointed Air Officer Commanding (AOC) RAF Far Eastern Forces which gave him command over RAF units from Burma to Hong Kong and Borneo. Appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath on 1 February 1937, he was promoted to air vice marshal on 1 July 1937 and became Director General for Research in the Air Ministry in July 1938.
Second World War
At the outbreak of war in 1939, Tedder's department was transferred to the newly created Ministry of Aircraft Production, but Tedder was unable to form a good working relationship with the minister, Lord Beaverbrook and consequently with Prime Minister Churchill and on 29 November 1940, he became Deputy Air Officer Commanding in Chief, RAF Middle East Command with the acting rank of air marshal.
Tedder was appointed as Air Officer Commanding in Chief, RAF Middle East Command on 1 June 1941, with the temporary rank of air marshal (made permanent in April 1942). He had not been Churchill's first choice for the role but when the preferred choice (Air Vice-Marshal O T Boyd) was captured, Tedder was appointed. As head of the RAF Middle East Command, he commanded air operations in the Mediterranean and North Africa, including the evacuation of Crete in May 1941 and Operation Crusader in North Africa in late 1941. Tedder was advanced to Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in the 1942 New Year Honours, mentioned in despatches for his services in the Middle East on 30 June 1942 and promoted to the temporary rank of air chief marshal on 3 July 1942.
Tedder oversaw the buildup of the air arm in the Western Desert and, more importantly, the development of new more effective operational and administrative policies which turned it into a highly effective force which was key to the Allied victory at the decisive Battle of El Alamein in October 1942. One of his bombing tactics became known as the "Tedder Carpet". He was advanced to Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath on 27 November 1942 in recognition of his services in the Middle East.
In February 1943 Tedder took command of Mediterranean Air Command, serving under U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower (the theatre commander), and in that role was closely involved in the planning of the Allied invasion of Sicily and then the Allied invasion of Italy. He was awarded the American Legion of Merit on 27 August 1943 and awarded the Grand Cross of the Polish Order of Polonia Restituta on 1 October 1943. He went on to be Commander of Mediterranean Allied Air Forces, which took in an expanded group of air forces, in December 1943.
When Operation Overlord—the invasion of France—came to be planned, Tedder was appointed Deputy Supreme Commander at SHAEF beneath General Eisenhower, taking up the role in January 1944. However he developed an antipathy towards the British General Bernard Montgomery and during the difficult Battle of Normandy and later, he was a critic of Montgomery's performance and advocated Montgomery's removal from command. In the last year of the war, Tedder was sent to the Soviet Union to seek assistance as the Western Front came under pressure during the Battle of the Bulge. When the unconditional surrender of the Germans came in May 1945 Tedder signed on behalf of General Eisenhower. He was promoted to the substantive rank of air chief marshal on 6 June 1945. Tedder was awarded the Soviet Order of Kutuzov (1st Class) on 28 August 1945 and promoted to Marshal of the Royal Air Force on 12 September 1945.
After the war
Tedder took over from Charles Portal as Chief of the Air Staff on 1 January 1946. In that role he advocated increased recruiting in the face of many airmen leaving the service, doubled the size of Fighter Command and implemented arrangements for the Berlin Airlift in 1948. He was granted a peerage as Baron Tedder, of Glenguin in the County of Stirling on 8 February 1946 and received the American Distinguished Service Medal on 14 June 1946. In 1947 he delivered the Lees Knowles Lecture, which was then published as Air Power in War. He moved on to become chairman, British Joint Services Mission in Washington in January 1950 before retiring in May 1951. In 1951 Tedder accepted an invitation to chair the Royal Commission on University Education in Dundee which ultimately led to the creation of the Queen's College, Dundee as a college of the University of St Andrews. His son John would later be a professor at both the University of Dundee (as Queen's College eventually became) and at St Andrews.
Later life
Tedder was the author of a highly regarded essay on the history of the Royal Navy and also composed his war memoirs. In November 1950 he was elected Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. He also served as Chairman of the Standard Motor Company from 1954 to 1960 and vice-chairman of the Board of Governors of the BBC. In his later years he developed Parkinson's disease and died at his home at Banstead in Surrey on 3 June 1967.
His ashes are buried in St Clement Danes in London, the RAF church. His name can be seen on a memorial in Westminster Abbey.
Family life
In 1915 Tedder married Rosalinde Maclardy; they had two sons and a daughter. Following the death of his first wife in an aircraft crash in Egypt in January 1943, Tedder married Marie (Toppy) Black (née Seton) in October 1943. Tedder was the father of: Dick (killed in France 1940), John Michael (1926–1994; Late Purdie Professor of Chemistry, University of St. Andrews), Richard (Professor of Virology at UCL) and Mena.
Arms
References
Sources
Further reading
External links
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
1890 births
1967 deaths
Dorset Regiment officers
Royal Flying Corps officers
British Army personnel of World War I
Royal Air Force personnel of World War I
Royal Air Force air marshals of World War II
Chiefs of the Air Staff (United Kingdom)
Marshals of the Royal Air Force
Barons in the Peerage of the United Kingdom
Grand Crosses of the Order of the Crown (Belgium)
Grand Croix of the Légion d'honneur
Knights Grand Cross of the Order of Orange-Nassau
Grand Crosses of the Order of Polonia Restituta
Grand Crosses of the Order of George I with Swords
Recipients of the Order of Kutuzov, 1st class
Recipients of the Croix de guerre (Belgium)
Recipients of the Croix de Guerre 1939–1945 (France)
Foreign recipients of the Distinguished Service Medal (United States)
Chief Commanders of the Legion of Merit
Recipients of the Silver Medal of Military Valor
Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath
Alumni of Magdalene College, Cambridge
Chancellors of the University of Cambridge
People educated at Whitgift School
Operation Overlord people
Presidents of Surrey County Cricket Club
Legion of Frontiersmen members
British writers
People with Parkinson's disease
Scottish aviators
People from Stirling (council area)
People associated with the University of Dundee
Royalty and nobility with disabilities
Alumni of the Royal College of Defence Studies
Graduates of the Royal Naval College, Greenwich
Recipients of the Distinguished Service Medal (US Army)
British air attachés
Peers created by George VI | true | [
"Person analysis is a phase of training needs analysis directed at identifying which individuals within an organization should receive training and what training they should receive.\n\nA person analysis identifies individuals who are not meeting the desired performance requirements or goals.\n\nReferences\n\nTraining",
"\"What Kind of Fool (Heard All That Before)\" is a song recorded by Australian recording artist Kylie Minogue, released as the lead single from her first greatest hits album Greatest Hits (1992). The song was written by Mike Stock, Minogue and Pete Waterman, and produced by Stock and Waterman.\n\nIt was Minogue's last original single to be released from the record label PWL, as although \"Celebration\" was released as the last single, it was a cover version, not an original single. The single was released on 10 August 1992 as a CD single and had received positive reception from music critics, many praising it as a good last single from PWL. The song peaked at number seventeen and fourteen in Australia and the United Kingdom, respectively.\n\nBackground\nThe song was taken from Minogue's first compilation album Greatest Hits as the first single and last original single to be released by her label PWL, but her second single from the album, \"Celebration\", was taken as the last single. The song was written by Stock and Waterman, as well as Minogue contributing in the lyrics and was produced by Stock and Waterman.\n\nThe cover featured Minogue photographed by close friend Katrina Jebb whilst on holiday in early 1992.\n\nReception\n\nCritical response\nThe song received generally mixed reviews from music critics. Some compared the song with \"I Should Be So Lucky\" and \"Better the Devil You Know\", but many suggested the song was regressive in comparison to Minogue's more mature work from the previous two years. Music Week commented, \"Typically bright and breezy, it is however a little slight of melody and hooks when compared to some ofher previous work – but that won't stop it from continuing her unbroken sequence of Top 20 hits.\" Tom Doyle from Smash Hits called it a \"tweety dance anthem\".\n \nMinogue admitted in an interview with the Australian Sunday Telegraph in October 2008, that she was not fond of the song: \"There's plenty I've cringed about,\" she says. \"There's one track I really didn't like called 'What Kind of Fool'. But I realised you can run, but you can't hide, so I embraced 'I Should Be So Lucky' and the rest of them.\" It also became one of Minogue's least performed tracks. It made its debut, as a short sample only on her 2005 tour Showgirl: The Greatest Hits Tour, and again in sample form on her North American Tour 2009. Minogue has also performed a chorus of the song on impromptu occasions during her 2012 Anti Tour and 2014's Kiss Me Once Tour.\n\nChart performance\nThe song did not receive great commercial attention, although became a moderate hit in the UK and Australia where it debuted at number thirty-seven (after five weeks it climbed and peaked at number seventeen.) The song debuted at number sixteen on the UK Singles Chart. later climbing to number fourteen where it peaked, staying in the charts for five weeks.\nThe song debuted at number twenty-two on the Irish Singles Chart, but became unsuccessful, falling off the charts after two weeks.\n\nMusic video\nThe music video features Minogue sunbathing in front of a blanket, while a male actor is behind it with a rose. It later showed the male and Minogue having an argument in a bedroom. In the bridge, it shows Minogue in a blue plaid dress dancing under a spotlight. She later teases her lover and dances atop a table. The music video later ends with Minogue kissing him and she walks out the room, while the man sits on a chair left alone. The song's reception itself became one of Minogue's least successful singles to date. The single's video recreated scenes made famous by Brigitte Bardot in the 1956 film And God Created Woman. The song was featured on MTV Classics channel in 2011 and was listed at number thirty-four on Evolution of... Kylie Minogue.\n\nFormats and track listings\nThese are the formats and track listings of major single releases of \"What Kind of Fool (Heard All That Before)\".\n\nCD single\n \"What Kind of Fool (Heard All That Before)\"\n \"What Kind of Fool (Heard All That Before)\" [No Tech No Logical Remix]\n \"What Kind of Fool (Heard All That Before)\" [Tech No Logical Remix]\n \"Things Can Only Get Better\" [Original 7\" Mix]\n\n7\" vinyl\n \"What Kind of Fool (Heard All That Before)\"\n \"Things Can Only Get Better\" [Original 7\" Mix]\n\n12\" vinyl\n \"What Kind of Fool (Heard All That Before)\" [No Tech No Logical Remix]\n \"What Kind of Fool (Heard All That Before)\" [Tech No Logical Remix]\n \"Things Can Only Get Better\" [Original 12\" Mix]\n\nCassette single\n \"What Kind of Fool (Heard All That Before)\"\n \"Things Can Only Get Better\" [Original 7\" Mix]\n\nDigital EP \n \"What Kind of Fool (Heard All That Before)\"\n \"What Kind of Fool (Heard All That Before)\" [No Tech No Logical Remix]\n \"What Kind of Fool (Heard All That Before)\" [Tech No Logical Remix]\n \"What Kind of Fool (Heard All That Before)\" [12\" Master Mix]\n \"What Kind of Fool (Heard All That Before)\" [Instrumental]\n \"What Kind of Fool (Heard All That Before)\" [Backing Track]\n \"Things Can Only Get Better\" [Original 7\" Mix]\n \"Things Can Only Get Better\" [Original 12\" Mix]\n \"Things Can Only Get Better\" [Original Instrumental]\n \"Things Can Only Get Better\" [Original Backing Track]\n\nLive performances\nMinogue performed the song on the following concert tours:\n Showgirl: The Greatest Hits Tour (excerpt during \"Smiley Kylie Medley\")\n Showgirl: The Homecoming Tour (excerpt during \"Everything Taboo Medley\")\n For You, for Me (excerpt during \"Everything Taboo Medley\")\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\n1992 singles\n1992 songs\nKylie Minogue songs\nPete Waterman Entertainment singles\nSongs written by Kylie Minogue\nSongs written by Mike Stock (musician)\nSongs written by Pete Waterman"
] |
[
"Arthur Tedder, 1st Baron Tedder",
"Inter-war years",
"What years were the Inter-war years?",
"I don't know.",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"Promoted to wing commander on 1 January 1924, Tedder became station commander at RAF Digby and Commandant of No. 2 Flying Training School RAF",
"What kind of training did he receive there?",
"Flying Training"
] | C_1e3c6550d3a840938d56448facb44e4c_0 | What did he do after that? | 4 | What did Arthur Tedder do after becoming a station commander? | Arthur Tedder, 1st Baron Tedder | Tedder was given command of No. 274 Squadron, equipped with the Handley Page V/1500, the largest RAF bomber of its time, at RAF Bircham Newton in May 1919. On 1 August 1919, Tedder accepted a permanent commission in the new Royal Air Force (RAF). Renamed No. 207 Squadron in February 1920 and equipped with DH9a bombers, the squadron was briefly deployed to Turkey in 1922-23 during the Chanak Crisis. Tedder attended the RN Staff College in late 1923 and through the spring of 1924. Promoted to wing commander on 1 January 1924, Tedder became station commander at RAF Digby and Commandant of No. 2 Flying Training School RAF there in September 1924, before joining the air staff in the Directorate of Training at the Air Ministry in January 1927. He attended the Imperial Defence College in 1928 and then became Assistant Commandant at the RAF Staff College in January 1929. Promoted to group captain on 1 January 1931, he went to the Air Armament School at RAF Eastchurch as officer commanding in January 1932. On 4 April 1934 he became Director of Training at the Air Ministry, gaining promotion to air commodore on 1 July 1934. In November 1936, Tedder was appointed Air Officer Commanding (AOC) RAF Far Eastern Forces which gave him command over RAF units from Burma to Hong Kong and Borneo. Appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath on 1 February 1937, he was promoted to air vice marshal on 1 July 1937 and became Director General for Research in the Air Ministry in July 1938. CANNOTANSWER | He attended the Imperial Defence College in 1928 and then became Assistant Commandant at the RAF Staff College | Marshal of the Royal Air Force Arthur William Tedder, 1st Baron Tedder, (11 July 1890 – 3 June 1967) was a senior Royal Air Force commander. He was a pilot and squadron commander in the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War and he went on to serve as a senior officer in the Royal Air Force during the inter-war years when he served in Turkey, Great Britain and the Far East.
During the Second World War, as Air Officer Commanding RAF Middle East Command, Tedder directed air operations in the Mediterranean and North Africa, including the evacuation of Crete and Operation Crusader in North Africa. His bombing tactics became known as the "Tedder Carpet". Later in the war Tedder took command of Mediterranean Air Command and in that role was closely involved in the planning of the Allied invasion of Sicily and then the Allied invasion of Italy. When Operation Overlord—the invasion of France—came to be planned, Tedder was appointed Deputy Supreme Commander at Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force under General Eisenhower.
After the war, Tedder served as Chief of the Air Staff, in which role he advocated increased recruiting in the face of many airmen leaving the service, doubled the size of RAF Fighter Command and implemented arrangements for the Berlin Airlift in 1948. In addition, he held senior positions in business and academia.
Early life
Tedder was born the son of Sir Arthur John Tedder and Emily Charlotte Tedder (née Bryson) at the Glenguin Distillery (now Glengoyne) in the Campsie Fells, north of Glasgow. His father was distinguished as the Commissioner of the Board of Customs who devised the old age pension scheme. His father's occupation meant that the young Tedder saw different parts of the British Isles, spending 1895 to 1898 in Lerwick in the Shetland Isles and 1899–1901 in Elgin, in the County of Moray. In 1902 the family moved to Croydon in Surrey where Tedder attended Whitgift School until 1909, when he went up to the University of Cambridge. Tedder spent his university years (1909–13) at Magdalene College, where he read history. He was awarded a lower second class honours degree in June 1912.
Tedder spent the summer of 1912 in Berlin studying German. With the start of a new academic year, he decided to return to Magdalene for a fourth year in order that he might prepare himself for a career as a diplomat. On 2 September 1913, during his last year at Magdalene, Tedder gained a reserve commission as a second lieutenant in the Dorsetshire Regiment.
After university, Tedder joined the Colonial Service as a cadet and departed Britain in February 1914, serving in the administration in Fiji. He did not find colonial life in Fiji to his liking, and when war was declared, he returned to Britain so that he could join the regular Army.
Military career
First World War
Tedder was promoted to lieutenant in the Dorset Regiment on 14 October 1914, and arrived back in Britain in December. He was posted to a reserve unit at Wyke Regis on the Dorset coast where he seriously injured his knee in February. Following his injury Tedder was unable to carry out full infantry service and, although he briefly carried out duties at a base camp in Calais, he pressed for a transfer to the Royal Flying Corps.
In January 1916, Tedder was accepted into the Royal Flying Corps and he was asked to attend the No. 1 School of Aeronautics. in Reading. He was promoted to captain on 21 March 1916. In April he attended the Central Flying School where he learned to fly and gained his 'wings'. In June 1916, Tedder served as a pilot with No. 25 Squadron RFC flying the Bristol Scout C on the Western Front. On 9 August 1916, Tedder was given additional responsibilities as he was made a flight commander with 25 Squadron. The first day of 1917 saw Tedder promoted to major and appointed officer commanding No. 70 Squadron RFC. Tedder remained on the Western Front and his new squadron was equipped with the Sopwith 1½ Strutter. He was awarded the Italian Silver Medal for Military Valour on 26 May 1917.
Tedder was appointed officer commanding No. 67 Squadron at RFC Shawbury on 25 June 1917 and became commander of the School of Navigation and Bomb Dropping in Egypt the following year. Another change soon followed and on 24 June 1918 Tedder was appointed officer commanding 38th Wing, also based in Egypt. He was promoted to the temporary rank of lieutenant colonel on 23 July 1918 (rank relinquished on 2 April 1919).
Inter-war years
Tedder was given command of No. 274 Squadron, equipped with the Handley Page V/1500, the largest RAF bomber of its time, at RAF Bircham Newton in May 1919. On 1 August 1919, Tedder accepted a permanent commission in the new Royal Air Force (RAF). Renamed No. 207 Squadron in February 1920 and equipped with DH9a bombers, the squadron was briefly deployed to Turkey in 1922–23 during the Chanak Crisis. Tedder attended the RN Staff College in late 1923 and through the spring of 1924.
Promoted to wing commander on 1 January 1924, Tedder became station commander at RAF Digby and the Commandant of No. 2 Flying Training School there in September 1924, before joining the air staff in the Directorate of Training at the Air Ministry in January 1927. He attended the Imperial Defence College in 1928 and then became Assistant Commandant at the RAF Staff College in January 1929. Promoted to group captain on 1 January 1931, he went to the Air Armament School at RAF Eastchurch as officer commanding in January 1932. On 4 April 1934 he became Director of Training at the Air Ministry, gaining promotion to air commodore on 1 July 1934.
In November 1936, Tedder was appointed Air Officer Commanding (AOC) RAF Far Eastern Forces which gave him command over RAF units from Burma to Hong Kong and Borneo. Appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath on 1 February 1937, he was promoted to air vice marshal on 1 July 1937 and became Director General for Research in the Air Ministry in July 1938.
Second World War
At the outbreak of war in 1939, Tedder's department was transferred to the newly created Ministry of Aircraft Production, but Tedder was unable to form a good working relationship with the minister, Lord Beaverbrook and consequently with Prime Minister Churchill and on 29 November 1940, he became Deputy Air Officer Commanding in Chief, RAF Middle East Command with the acting rank of air marshal.
Tedder was appointed as Air Officer Commanding in Chief, RAF Middle East Command on 1 June 1941, with the temporary rank of air marshal (made permanent in April 1942). He had not been Churchill's first choice for the role but when the preferred choice (Air Vice-Marshal O T Boyd) was captured, Tedder was appointed. As head of the RAF Middle East Command, he commanded air operations in the Mediterranean and North Africa, including the evacuation of Crete in May 1941 and Operation Crusader in North Africa in late 1941. Tedder was advanced to Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in the 1942 New Year Honours, mentioned in despatches for his services in the Middle East on 30 June 1942 and promoted to the temporary rank of air chief marshal on 3 July 1942.
Tedder oversaw the buildup of the air arm in the Western Desert and, more importantly, the development of new more effective operational and administrative policies which turned it into a highly effective force which was key to the Allied victory at the decisive Battle of El Alamein in October 1942. One of his bombing tactics became known as the "Tedder Carpet". He was advanced to Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath on 27 November 1942 in recognition of his services in the Middle East.
In February 1943 Tedder took command of Mediterranean Air Command, serving under U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower (the theatre commander), and in that role was closely involved in the planning of the Allied invasion of Sicily and then the Allied invasion of Italy. He was awarded the American Legion of Merit on 27 August 1943 and awarded the Grand Cross of the Polish Order of Polonia Restituta on 1 October 1943. He went on to be Commander of Mediterranean Allied Air Forces, which took in an expanded group of air forces, in December 1943.
When Operation Overlord—the invasion of France—came to be planned, Tedder was appointed Deputy Supreme Commander at SHAEF beneath General Eisenhower, taking up the role in January 1944. However he developed an antipathy towards the British General Bernard Montgomery and during the difficult Battle of Normandy and later, he was a critic of Montgomery's performance and advocated Montgomery's removal from command. In the last year of the war, Tedder was sent to the Soviet Union to seek assistance as the Western Front came under pressure during the Battle of the Bulge. When the unconditional surrender of the Germans came in May 1945 Tedder signed on behalf of General Eisenhower. He was promoted to the substantive rank of air chief marshal on 6 June 1945. Tedder was awarded the Soviet Order of Kutuzov (1st Class) on 28 August 1945 and promoted to Marshal of the Royal Air Force on 12 September 1945.
After the war
Tedder took over from Charles Portal as Chief of the Air Staff on 1 January 1946. In that role he advocated increased recruiting in the face of many airmen leaving the service, doubled the size of Fighter Command and implemented arrangements for the Berlin Airlift in 1948. He was granted a peerage as Baron Tedder, of Glenguin in the County of Stirling on 8 February 1946 and received the American Distinguished Service Medal on 14 June 1946. In 1947 he delivered the Lees Knowles Lecture, which was then published as Air Power in War. He moved on to become chairman, British Joint Services Mission in Washington in January 1950 before retiring in May 1951. In 1951 Tedder accepted an invitation to chair the Royal Commission on University Education in Dundee which ultimately led to the creation of the Queen's College, Dundee as a college of the University of St Andrews. His son John would later be a professor at both the University of Dundee (as Queen's College eventually became) and at St Andrews.
Later life
Tedder was the author of a highly regarded essay on the history of the Royal Navy and also composed his war memoirs. In November 1950 he was elected Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. He also served as Chairman of the Standard Motor Company from 1954 to 1960 and vice-chairman of the Board of Governors of the BBC. In his later years he developed Parkinson's disease and died at his home at Banstead in Surrey on 3 June 1967.
His ashes are buried in St Clement Danes in London, the RAF church. His name can be seen on a memorial in Westminster Abbey.
Family life
In 1915 Tedder married Rosalinde Maclardy; they had two sons and a daughter. Following the death of his first wife in an aircraft crash in Egypt in January 1943, Tedder married Marie (Toppy) Black (née Seton) in October 1943. Tedder was the father of: Dick (killed in France 1940), John Michael (1926–1994; Late Purdie Professor of Chemistry, University of St. Andrews), Richard (Professor of Virology at UCL) and Mena.
Arms
References
Sources
Further reading
External links
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
1890 births
1967 deaths
Dorset Regiment officers
Royal Flying Corps officers
British Army personnel of World War I
Royal Air Force personnel of World War I
Royal Air Force air marshals of World War II
Chiefs of the Air Staff (United Kingdom)
Marshals of the Royal Air Force
Barons in the Peerage of the United Kingdom
Grand Crosses of the Order of the Crown (Belgium)
Grand Croix of the Légion d'honneur
Knights Grand Cross of the Order of Orange-Nassau
Grand Crosses of the Order of Polonia Restituta
Grand Crosses of the Order of George I with Swords
Recipients of the Order of Kutuzov, 1st class
Recipients of the Croix de guerre (Belgium)
Recipients of the Croix de Guerre 1939–1945 (France)
Foreign recipients of the Distinguished Service Medal (United States)
Chief Commanders of the Legion of Merit
Recipients of the Silver Medal of Military Valor
Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath
Alumni of Magdalene College, Cambridge
Chancellors of the University of Cambridge
People educated at Whitgift School
Operation Overlord people
Presidents of Surrey County Cricket Club
Legion of Frontiersmen members
British writers
People with Parkinson's disease
Scottish aviators
People from Stirling (council area)
People associated with the University of Dundee
Royalty and nobility with disabilities
Alumni of the Royal College of Defence Studies
Graduates of the Royal Naval College, Greenwich
Recipients of the Distinguished Service Medal (US Army)
British air attachés
Peers created by George VI | true | [
"\"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)",
"Follow Me! is a series of television programmes produced by Bayerischer Rundfunk and the BBC in the late 1970s to provide a crash course in the English language. It became popular in many overseas countries as a first introduction to English; in 1983, one hundred million people watched the show in China alone, featuring Kathy Flower.\n\nThe British actor Francis Matthews hosted and narrated the series.\n\nThe course consists of sixty lessons. Each lesson lasts from 12 to 15 minutes and covers a specific lexis. The lessons follow a consistent group of actors, with the relationships between their characters developing during the course.\n\nFollow Me! actors\n Francis Matthews\n Raymond Mason\n David Savile\n Ian Bamforth\n Keith Alexander\n Diane Mercer\n Jane Argyle\n Diana King\n Veronica Leigh\n Elaine Wells\n Danielle Cohn\n Lashawnda Bell\n\nEpisodes \n \"What's your name\"\n \"How are you\"\n \"Can you help me\"\n \"Left, right, straight ahead\"\n \"Where are they\"\n \"What's the time\"\n \"What's this What's that\"\n \"I like it very much\"\n \"Have you got any wine\"\n \"What are they doing\"\n \"Can I have your name, please\"\n \"What does she look like\"\n \"No smoking\"\n \"It's on the first floor\"\n \"Where's he gone\"\n \"Going away\"\n \"Buying things\"\n \"Why do you like it\"\n \"What do you need\"\n \"I sometimes work late\"\n \"Welcome to Britain\"\n \"Who's that\"\n \"What would you like to do\"\n \"How can I get there?\"\n \"Where is it\"\n \"What's the date\"\n \"Whose is it\"\n \"I enjoy it\"\n \"How many and how much\"\n \"What have you done\"\n \"Haven't we met before\"\n \"What did you say\"\n \"Please stop\"\n \"How can I get to Brightly\"\n \"Where can I get it\"\n \"There's a concert on Wednesday\"\n \"What's it like\"\n \"What do you think of him\"\n \"I need someone\"\n \"What were you doing\"\n \"What do you do\"\n \"What do you know about him\"\n \"You shouldn't do that\"\n \"I hope you enjoy your holiday\"\n \"Where can I see a football match\"\n \"When will it be ready\"\n \"Where did you go\"\n \"I think it's awful\"\n \"A room with a view\"\n \"You'll be ill\"\n \"I don't believe in strikes\"\n \"They look tired\"\n \"Would you like to\"\n \"Holiday plans\"\n \"The second shelf on the left\"\n \"When you are ready\"\n \"Tell them about Britain\"\n \"I liked everything\"\n \"Classical or modern\"\n \"Finale\"\n\nReferences \n\n BBC article about the series in China\n\nExternal links \n Follow Me – Beginner level \n Follow Me – Elementary level\n Follow Me – Intermediate level\n Follow Me – Advanced level\n\nAdult education television series\nEnglish-language education television programming"
] |
[
"Jack Benny",
"Characters"
] | C_ba2f4e4587194625aaaea4afd0fcb333_0 | what characters did jack benny play | 1 | what characters did jack benny play | Jack Benny | Benny's comic persona changed over the course of his career. At some point he developed a miserly persona. This stage character was everything that Jack Benny was not: cheap, petty, vain and self-congratulatory. His comic rendering of these traits was the linchpin to the success of his show. Benny set himself up as comedic foil, allowing his supporting characters to draw laughs at the expense of his own flaws. With his humanism and vulnerability in an era where few male characters were allowed such character traits, Benny made what could have been unlikable into an everyman character. Benny said: "I don't care who gets the laughs on my show, as long as the show is funny." Benny felt he got the credit or blame either way, not the actor saying the lines, so there was emphasis on the comedic bottom line. This attitude reached its apogee in a broadcast structured as a Hollywood bus tour of the stars' homes. Each "stop" on the tour was at a house belonging to one of the show's supporting cast, who would then have a scene which included jokes about the absent Benny. Not until the final moments of the program did the bus arrive at Jack Benny's house, at which point the listening audience heard Benny's only line of the episode: "Driver, here's where I get off." Few stars possessed the combination of daring, humility and comic timing to commit to such an extended payoff. Mary Livingstone, his wife, was a supporting character, as his wisecracking and not especially deferential female friend. She was not quite his girlfriend, since Benny would often try to date movie stars like Barbara Stanwyck, and occasionally had stage girlfriends, such as "Gladys Zybisco". Don Wilson, the rotund announcer, also appeared on the show. He also announced for Fanny Brice's hit Baby Snooks. Bandleader Phil Harris appeared as a jive talking, alcoholic philanderer whose repartee was profoundly risque for its time. Boy tenor Dennis Day appeared as a sheltered, naive youth who often got the better of his boss. This character was originated by Kenny Baker whom Day replaced. Singer Larry Stevens replaced Dennis Day from November 5, 1944 to March 10, 1946, while the latter served in the Navy. CANNOTANSWER | At some point he developed a miserly persona. | Benjamin Kubelsky (February 14, 1894 – December 26, 1974), known professionally as Jack Benny, was an American entertainer, who evolved from a modest success playing violin on the vaudeville circuit to one of the leading entertainers of the twentieth century with a highly popular comedic career in radio, television, and film. He was known for his comic timing and the ability to cause laughter with a pregnant pause or a single expression, such as his signature exasperated "Well!"
His radio and television programs, popular from 1932 until his death in 1974, were a major influence on the sitcom genre. Benny often portrayed his character as a miser who obliviously played his violin badly and ridiculously claimed to be 39 years of age, regardless of his actual age.
Early life
Benny was born Benjamin Kubelsky in Chicago on February 14, 1894, and grew up in nearby Waukegan. He was the son of Jewish immigrants Meyer Kubelsky (1864–1946) and Emma Sachs Kubelsky (1869–1917), sometimes called "Naomi." Meyer was a saloon owner and later a haberdasher who had emigrated to America from Poland. Emma had emigrated from Lithuania. At the age of 6, Benny began studying violin, an instrument that became his trademark; his parents hoped for him to become a professional violinist. He loved the instrument but hated to practice. His music teacher was Otto Graham Sr., a neighbor and father of football player Otto Graham. At 14, Benny was playing in dance bands and his high school orchestra. He was a dreamer and poor at his studies, ultimately getting expelled from high school. He later did poorly in business school and in attempts to join his father's business. In 1911, he began playing the violin in local vaudeville theaters for $7.50 a week (about $ in 2020 dollars). He was joined on the circuit by Ned Miller, a young composer and singer.
That same year, Benny was playing in the same theater as the young Marx Brothers. Minnie, their mother, enjoyed Benny's violin playing and invited him to accompany her boys in their act. Benny's parents refused to let their son go on the road at 17, but it was the beginning of his long friendship with the Marx Brothers, especially Zeppo Marx.
The next year, Benny formed a vaudeville musical duo with pianist Cora Folsom Salisbury, a buxom 45-year-old divorcée who needed a partner for her act. This angered famous violinist Jan Kubelik, who feared that the young vaudevillian with a similar name would damage his reputation. Under legal pressure, Benjamin Kubelsky agreed to change his name to Ben K. Benny, sometimes spelled Bennie. When Salisbury left the act, Benny found a new pianist, Lyman Woods, and renamed the act "From Grand Opera to Ragtime." They worked together for five years and slowly integrated comedy elements into the show. They reached the Palace Theater, the "Mecca of Vaudeville," and did not do well. Benny left show business briefly in 1917 to join the United States Navy during World War I, often entertaining fellow sailors with his violin playing. One evening, his violin performance was booed by the sailors, so with prompting from fellow sailor and actor Pat O'Brien, he ad-libbed his way out of the jam and left them laughing. He received more comedy spots in the revues and did well, earning a reputation as a comedian and musician. Despite stories to the contrary, no reliable evidence indicates Jack Benny was aboard during the 1915 Eastland disaster or scheduled to be on the excursion; possibly the basis for this report was that Eastland was a training vessel during World War I and Benny received his training in the Great Lakes naval base where Eastland was stationed.
Shortly after the war, Benny developed a one-man act, "Ben K. Benny: Fiddle Funology." He then received legal pressure from Ben Bernie, a "patter-and-fiddle" performer, regarding his name, so he adopted the sailor's nickname of Jack. By 1921, the fiddle was more of a prop, and the low-key comedy took over.
Benny had some romantic encounters, including one with dancer Mary Kelly, whose devoutly Catholic family forced her to turn down his proposal because he was Jewish. Benny was introduced to Kelly by Gracie Allen.
In 1922, Benny accompanied Zeppo Marx to a Passover Seder in Vancouver at the residence where he met 17-year-old Sadie Marks (whose family was friends with, but not related to, the Marx family). Their first meeting did not go well when he tried to leave during Sadie's violin performance. They met again in 1926. Jack had not remembered their earlier meeting and instantly fell for her. They married the following year. She was working in the hosiery section of the Hollywood Boulevard branch of the May Company, where Benny courted her. Called on to fill in for the "dumb girl" part in a Benny routine, Sadie proved to be a natural comedienne. Adopting the stage name Mary Livingstone, Sadie collaborated with Benny throughout most of his career. They later adopted a daughter, Joan (1934-2021). Sadie's older sister Babe would often be the target of jokes about unattractive or masculine women, while her younger brother Hilliard would later produce Benny's radio and TV work.
In 1929, Benny's agent, Sam Lyons, convinced Irving Thalberg, American film producer at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, to watch Benny at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles. Benny signed a five-year contract with MGM, where his first role was in The Hollywood Revue of 1929. The next film, Chasing Rainbows, did not do well, and after several months Benny was released from his contract and returned to Broadway in Earl Carroll's Vanities. At first dubious about the viability of radio, Benny grew eager to break into the new medium. In 1932, after a four-week nightclub run, he was invited onto Ed Sullivan's radio program, uttering his first radio spiel "This is Jack Benny talking. There will be a slight pause while you say, 'Who cares?
Radio
Benny had been a minor vaudeville performer before becoming a national figure with The Jack Benny Program, a weekly radio show that ran from 1932 to 1948 on NBC and from 1949 to 1955 on CBS. It was among the most highly rated programs during its run.
Benny's long radio career began on April 6, 1932, when the NBC Commercial Program Department auditioned him for the N. W. Ayer & Son agency and their client, Canada Dry, after which Bertha Brainard, head of the division, said, "We think Mr. Benny is excellent for radio and, while the audition was unassisted as far as orchestra was concerned, we believe he would make a great bet for an air program." Recalling the experience in 1956, Benny said Ed Sullivan had invited him to guest on his program (1932), and "the agency for Canada Dry ginger ale heard me and offered me a job."
With Canada Dry ginger ale as a sponsor, Benny came to radio on The Canada Dry Program, on May 2, 1932, broadcast on Mondays and Wednesdays on the NBC Blue Network, featuring George Olsen and his orchestra. After a few shows, Benny hired Harry Conn as writer. The show continued on Blue for six months until October 26, moving to CBS on October 30, now airing Thursdays and Sundays. With Ted Weems leading the band, Benny stayed on CBS until January 26, 1933, when Canada Dry opted not to renew Benny's contract after it attempted to replace Conn with Sid Silvers, who would have also gotten a co-starring role. Unlike later incarnations of the Benny show, The Canada Dry Program was primarily a musical program.
Benny then appeared on The Chevrolet Program, airing on the NBC Red Network between March 17, 1933 until April 1, 1934, initially airing on Fridays (replacing Al Jolson), moving to Sunday nights in the fall. The show, which featured Benny and Livingstone alongside Frank Black's orchestra and vocalists James Melton and (later) Frank Parker, ended after General Motors' president insisted on a musical program. He continued with sponsor General Tire on Fridays through the end of September.
The show switched networks to CBS on January 2, 1949, as part of CBS president William S. Paley's notorious "raid" on NBC talent in 1948–1949. It stayed there for the remainder of its radio run, ending on May 22, 1955. CBS aired repeat episodes from 1956 to 1958 as The Best of Benny.
Television
After making his television debut in 1949 on local Los Angeles station KTTV, then a CBS affiliate, the network television version of The Jack Benny Program ran from October 28, 1950, to 1965, all but the last season on CBS. Initially scheduled as a series of five "specials" during the 1950–1951 season, the show appeared every six weeks for the 1951–1952 season, every four weeks for the 1952–1953 season and every three weeks in 1953–1954. For the 1953–1954 season, half the episodes were live and half were filmed during the summer, to allow Benny to continue doing his radio show. From the fall of 1954 to 1960, it appeared every other week, and from 1960 to 1965 it was seen weekly.
On March 28, 1954, Benny co-hosted General Foods 25th Anniversary Show: A Salute to Rodgers and Hammerstein with Groucho Marx and Mary Martin. In September 1954, CBS premiered Chrysler's Shower of Stars co-hosted by Jack Benny and William Lundigan. It enjoyed a successful run from 1954 until 1958. Both television shows often overlapped the radio show. In fact, the radio show alluded frequently to its television counterparts. Often as not, Benny would sign off the radio show in such circumstances with the line "Well, good night, folks. I'll see you on television."
When Benny moved to television, audiences learned that his verbal talent was matched by his controlled repertory of dead-pan facial expressions and gesture. The program was similar to the radio show (several of the radio scripts were recycled for television, as was somewhat common with other radio shows that moved to television), but with the addition of visual gags. Lucky Strike was the sponsor. Benny did his opening and closing monologues before a live audience, which he regarded as essential to timing of the material. As in other TV comedy shows, a laugh track was added to "sweeten" the soundtrack, as when the studio audience missed some close-up comedy because of cameras or microphones obstructing their view. Television viewers became accustomed to live without Mary Livingstone, who was afflicted by a striking case of stage fright that didn't lessen even after performing with Benny for 20 years. Hence, Livingstone appeared rarely if at all on the television show. In fact, for the last few years of the radio show, she pre-recorded her lines and Jack and Mary's daughter, Joan, stood in for the live taping, with Mary's lines later edited into the tape replacing Joan's before broadcast. Mary Livingstone finally retired from show business permanently in 1958, as her friend Gracie Allen had done.
Benny's television program relied more on guest stars and less on his regulars than his radio program. In fact, the only radio cast members who appeared regularly on the television program as well were Don Wilson and Eddie Anderson. Singer Dennis Day appeared sporadically, and Harris had left the radio program in 1952, although he did make a guest appearance on the television show (Bob Crosby, Phil's "replacement", frequently appeared on television through 1956). A frequent guest was the Canadian-born singer-violinist Gisele Mackenzie.
As a gag, Benny made a 1957 appearance on the then-wildly popular $64,000 Question. His category of choice was "Violins", but after answering the first question correctly Benny opted out of continuing, leaving the show with just $64; host Hal March gave Benny the prize money out of his own pocket. March made an appearance on Benny's show the same year.
Benny was able to attract guests who rarely, if ever, appeared on television. In 1953, both Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart made their television debuts on Benny's program.
Another guest star on the Jack Benny show was Rod Serling, who starred in a spoof of The Twilight Zone in which Benny goes to his own house and finds that no one knows who he is; Jack runs away screaming in panic; Serling breaks the fourth wall and remarks not to worry about Benny on the grounds that anyone who has been 39 years old as long as he has is a citizen of the "Twilo Zone."
Canadian singer Gisele MacKenzie, who toured with Benny in the early 1950s, guest starred seven times on The Jack Benny Program. Benny was so impressed with MacKenzie's talents that he served as co-executive producer and guest starred on her 1957–1958 NBC variety show, The Gisele MacKenzie Show.
In 1964, Walt Disney was a guest, primarily to promote his production of Mary Poppins. Benny persuaded Disney to give him over 110 free admission tickets to Disneyland for his friends and one for his wife, but later in the show Disney apparently sent his pet tiger after Benny as revenge, at which point Benny opened his umbrella and soared above the stage like Mary Poppins.
In due course the ratings game finally got to Benny, too. CBS dropped the show in 1964, citing Benny's lack of appeal to the younger demographic the network began courting, and he went to NBC, his original network, in the fall, only to be out-rated by CBS's Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. The network dropped Benny at the end of the season. He continued to make occasional specials into the 1970s, the last one airing in January 1974. Benny also appeared on The Lucy Show twice: Once as a plumber who resembles Jack Benny and in 1967 "Lucy Gets Jack Benny's account" where Lucy takes Jack on a tour of his new money vault. In the late 1960s, Benny did a series of commercials for Texaco Sky Chief gasoline, using his "stingy" television persona, always telling the attendant after being implored, "Jack Benny, won't you please fill up?", "I'll take a gallon."
In his unpublished autobiography, I Always Had Shoes (portions of which were later incorporated by Jack's daughter, Joan Benny, into her memoir of her parents, Sunday Nights at Seven), Benny said that he, not NBC, made the decision to end his TV series in 1965. He said that while the ratings were still very good (he cited a figure of some 18 million viewers per week, although he qualified that figure by saying he never believed the ratings services were doing anything more than guessing, no matter what they promised), advertisers were complaining that commercial time on his show was costing nearly twice as much as what they paid for most other shows, and he had grown tired of what was called the "rate race." Thus, after some three decades on radio and television in a weekly program, Jack Benny went out on top. In fairness, Benny himself shared Fred Allen's ambivalence about television, though not quite to Allen's extent. "By my second year in television, I saw that the camera was a man-eating monster ... It gave a performer close-up exposure that, week after week, threatened his existence as an interesting entertainer."
In a joint appearance with Phil Silvers on Dick Cavett's show, Benny recalled that he had advised Silvers not to appear on television. However, Silvers ignored Benny's advice and proceeded to win several Emmy awards as Sergeant Bilko on the popular series The Phil Silvers Show.
Films
Benny also acted in films, including the Academy Award-winning The Hollywood Revue of 1929, Broadway Melody of 1936 (as a benign nemesis for Eleanor Powell and Robert Taylor), George Washington Slept Here (1942), and notably, Charley's Aunt (1941) and To Be or Not to Be (1942). He and Livingstone also appeared in Ed Sullivan's Mr. Broadway (1933) as themselves. Benny often parodied contemporary films and genres on the radio program, and the 1940 film Buck Benny Rides Again features all the main radio characters in a funny Western parody adapted from program skits. The failure of one cinematic Benny vehicle, The Horn Blows at Midnight, became a running gag on his radio and television programs, although contemporary viewers may not find the film as disappointing as the jokes suggest.
Benny may have had an uncredited cameo role in Casablanca, claimed by a contemporary newspaper article and advertisement and reportedly in the Casablanca press book. When asked in his column "Movie Answer Man", film critic Roger Ebert first replied, "It looks something like him. That's all I can say." He wrote in a later column, "I think you're right."
Benny also was caricatured in several Warner Brothers cartoons including Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur (1939, as Casper the Caveman), I Love to Singa, Slap Happy Pappy, and Goofy Groceries (1936, 1940, and 1941 respectively, as Jack Bunny), Malibu Beach Party (1940, as himself), and The Mouse that Jack Built (1959). The last of these is probably the most memorable: Robert McKimson engaged Benny and his actual cast (Mary Livingstone, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, and Don Wilson) to do the voices for the mouse versions of their characters, with Mel Blanc—the usual Warner Brothers cartoon voicemeister—reprising his old vocal turn as the always-aging Maxwell, always a phat-phat-bang! away from collapse. In the cartoon, Benny and Livingstone agree to spend their anniversary at the Kit-Kat Club, which they discover the hard way is inside the mouth of a live cat. Before the cat can devour the mice, Benny himself awakens from his dream, then shakes his head, smiles wryly, and mutters, "Imagine, me and Mary as little mice." Then, he glances toward the cat lying on a throw rug in a corner and sees his and Livingstone's cartoon alter egos scampering out of the cat's mouth. The cartoon ends with a classic Benny look of befuddlement. It was rumored that Benny requested that, in lieu of monetary compensation, he receive a copy of the finished film.
Benny made a cameo appearance in It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
Final years
After his broadcasting career ended, Benny performed live as a standup comedian.
In the 1960s Benny was the headlining act at Harrah's Lake Tahoe with performer Harry James, and Vocalist Ray Vasquez.
Benny made one of his final television appearances on January 23, 1974, as a guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, the day before his final television special aired. Benny was preparing to star in the film version of Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys when his health failed later the same year. He prevailed upon his longtime best friend, George Burns, to take his place on a nightclub tour while preparing for the film. Burns ultimately had to replace Benny in the film as well, going on to win an Academy Award for his performance.
Despite his failing health, Benny would go on to make one last appearance on The Tonight Show on August 21, 1974 with Rich Little as guest host. Benny also made several appearances on The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast in his final 18 months, roasting Ronald Reagan, Johnny Carson, Bob Hope and Lucille Ball, in addition to himself being roasted in February 1974. The Lucille Ball roast, his last public performance, aired on February 7, 1975, several weeks after his death.
Death
In October 1974, Benny cancelled a performance in Dallas after suffering a dizzy spell, coupled with numbness in his arms. Despite a battery of tests, Benny's ailment could not be determined. When he complained of stomach pains in early December, a first test showed nothing, but a subsequent examination showed that he had inoperable pancreatic cancer. Benny went into a coma at home on December 22, 1974. While in a coma, he was visited by close friends including George Burns, Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Carson, John Rowles and then Governor Ronald Reagan. He died on December 26, 1974, at age 80. At the funeral, Burns, Benny's best friend for more than fifty years, attempted to deliver a eulogy but broke down shortly after he began and was unable to continue. Hope also delivered a eulogy in which he stated, "For a man who was the undisputed master of comedic timing, you would have to say this is the only time when Jack Benny's timing was all wrong. He left us much too soon." Benny was interred in a crypt at Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California. His will arranged for a single long-stemmed red rose to be delivered to his widow, Mary Livingstone, every day for the rest of her life. Livingstone died eight and a half years later on June 30, 1983, at the age of 78.
In trying to explain his successful life, Benny summed it up by stating: "Everything good that happened to me happened by accident. I was not filled with ambition nor fired by a drive toward a clear-cut goal. I never knew exactly where I was going."
Upon his death, Benny's family donated his personal, professional and business papers, as well as a collection of his television shows, to UCLA. The university established the Jack Benny Award for Comedy in his honor in 1977 to recognize outstanding people in the field of comedy. Johnny Carson was the first award recipient. Benny also donated a Stradivarius violin (purchased in 1957) to the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. Benny had quipped, "If it isn't a $30,000 Strad, I'm out $120."
Honors and tributes
In 1960, Benny was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame with three stars. His stars for television and motion pictures are located at 6370 and 6650 Hollywood Boulevard, respectively, and at 1505 Vine Street for radio. He was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1988 and the National Radio Hall of Fame in 1989. He was also inducted into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame.
Benny was inducted as a laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the Order of Lincoln (the state's highest honor) by the governor of Illinois in 1972 in the area of the performing arts.
When the price of a standard first-class U.S. postal stamp was increased to 39 cents in 2006, fans petitioned for a Jack Benny stamp to honor his stage persona's perpetual age. The U.S. Postal Service had issued a stamp depicting Benny in 1991 as part of a booklet of stamps honoring comedians; however, the stamp was issued at the then-current rate of 29 cents.
Jack Benny Middle School in Waukegan is named after Benny. Its motto matches his famous statement as "Home of the '39ers." A statue of Benny with his violin stands in downtown Waukegan.
The British comedian Benny Hill, whose original name was Alfred Hawthorne Hill, changed his name as a tribute to Jack Benny.
He was mentioned by Doc Brown in Back to the Future in which he guesses who would be Secretary of the Treasury by 1985, not believing Ronald Reagan was President of the United States of America. In reality, Benny died before 1985.
Filmography
Selected radio appearances
References
Further reading
The New York Times, April 16, 1953, p. 43, "Jack Benny plans more work on TV"
The New York Times, March 16, 1960, p. 75, "Canned laughter: Comedians are crying on the inside about CBS rule that public know of its use"
Jack Benny, Mary Livingstone Benny, Hilliard Marks with Marcia Borie, Doubleday & Company, 1978, 322 p.
Sunday Nights at Seven: The Jack Benny Story, Jack Benny and Joan Benny, Warner Books, 1990, 302 p.
CBS: Reflections in a Bloodshot Eye, by Robert Metz, New American Library, 1978.
The Laugh Crafters: Comedy Writing in Radio and TV's Golden Age, by Jordan R. Young; Past Times Publishing, 1999.
Well! Reflections on the Life and Career of Jack Benny, edited by Michael Leannah, BearManor Media, 2007.
Jack Benny v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 25 T.C. 197 (1955).
Balzer, George. They'll Break Your Heart (unpublished autobiography, undated), available at jackbenny.org.
Hilmes, M. (1997). Radio voices American broadcasting, 1922–1952. Minnesota Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Josefsberg, Milt. (1977) The Jack Benny Show. New Rochelle: Arlington House.
Leannah, Michael, editor. (2007) Well! Reflections on the Life and Career of Jack Benny. BearManor Media. Contributing authors: Frank Bresee, Clair Schulz, Kay Linaker, Janine Marr, Pam Munter, Mark Higgins, B. J. Borsody, Charles A. Beckett, Jordan R. Young, Philip G. Harwood, Noell Wolfgram Evans, Jack Benny, Michael Leannah, Steve Newvine, Ron Sayles, Kathryn Fuller-Seeley, Marc Reed, Derek Tague, Michael J. Hayde, Steve Thompson, Michael Mildredson
Wise, James. Stars in Blue: Movie Actors in America's Sea Services. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997.
Zolotow, Maurice. "Jack Benny: the fine art of self-disparagement" in Zolotow, No People Like Show People, Random House (New York: 1951); rpt Bantam Books (New York: 1952).
External links
Jack Benny at the National Radio Hall of Fame
Jack Benny Fred Allen Feud
International Jack Benny Fan Club
Jack Benny on grubstreet.ca
Copies of Jack Benny's Radio and TV scripts, with handwritten edits
Jack Benny Center for the Arts (archived)
Jack Benny papers at the University of Wyoming—American Heritage Center
FBI file on Jack Benny
Audio
All available Jack Benny radio programs in mp3
Jack Benny Show – OTR Podcast
Video
1894 births
1974 deaths
20th-century American comedians
20th-century American male actors
20th-century American male musicians
20th-century American musicians
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"The Mouse That Jack Built is a 1959 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodie cartoon short starring Jack Benny and the regular cast of The Jack Benny Program as mice. The short, released on April 4, 1959, was written by Tedd Pierce and directed by Robert McKimson.\n\nPlot\nSomewhere in Beverly Hills, in the house of Jack Benny (a sign out front proclaims, \"Star of Stage * Screen * Radio * Television...also cartoons\"), a mouse version of Jack is practicing his violin—off-key—and saying to himself, \"Who is this guy Isaac Stern?\" (In real life Benny and Stern were good friends.) Outside Jack's mouse hole, a cat is lying in wait, wearing ear muffs to filter out the discordant sound of Jack's violin.\n\nJack calls his servant, Rochester (portrayed as a dark brown mouse) to get his white suit, which Rochester is wearing at the time. Jack tells the valet that his rental period is up (a week for $5.00, equal to $ today) and he needs the suit because he is taking Mary Livingstone out for her birthday, and, true to character, is looking for a good cheap restaurant.\n\nWhile waiting for Mary, Jack decides to count his cheese in a basement vault. Using a coin on a string, he opens the lock, which appears to be a coin-operated lock from a pay toilet. As soon as he walks through the door, he takes a cane from a nail on the wall and starts humming \"We're in the Money\". When he reaches the bottom of the stairs, he reaches through a hole and trips a razor blade hanging above the passageway like a guillotine. He then comes up to a derringer and uses the cane to trip the trigger on the derringer. Finally, he comes up to another hole, reaches through with the cane and trips a mousetrap. He then reaches the vault door, opens a combination lock, pulls the door open and numerous sound effects including various alarms, a foghorn and machine gun noises are heard. Ed, the vault guard, asks \"Halt! Who goes there?\", and then an exchange is heard where Ed, apparently having been in the vault for a long time, asks \"We win the war yet?\" When Benny assures Ed that the war has been won, thinking that Benny was referring to World War I, Ed says: \"Good. What do you think they'll do with the Kaiser?\"\n\nMary arrives while Jack is inspecting his cheese vault, and he emerges wondering who has been pilfering his best gorgonzola. A fat rodent version of Don Wilson attempts to deliver a commercial when Jack advises him that this is a movie and not a television program, Don storming off in a huff when Jack refuses to let him do a scene. When Mary suggests a place, Jack's eyes ring up like an old cash register with a dollar sign ($) and \"no sale\", they discuss other options (she sarcastically suggests the Monkey House at the Griffith Park Zoo). As they discuss their options, the cat writes a message extolling the \"Kit Kat Club\" (\"entertainers admitted free\") and sends it to Jack as a paper airplane. Jack and Mary putter off in his Maxwell with Rochester behind the wheel until they reach the Kit Kat Club by following the arrows pointing to it. While en route, Mary asks for champagne, while Jack says that he prefers a good \"mousecatel\". Unbeknownst to them, the \"club\" is actually the maw of the cat, and as Jack and Mary enter, the cat's mouth closes on them.\n\nJack cries: \"Help! Help!\" as the camera cuts to the live-action Jack Benny, who wakes up and, breaking the fourth wall, tells the audience: \"Gee, what a crazy dream! Imagine, Mary and me as two little mice trapped inside a cat! And I was playing the violin!\" At that point, Jack is interrupted by the sound of a discordant \"Rock-a-Bye Baby\" played on the violin, coming from within Jack's live-action cat. From there, the rodent versions of Jack and Mary emerge unharmed from the live-action cat. Following one last bit of animation (where the rodent Jack and Mary return to their mousehole), the real Jack Benny does one of his famous \"takes\" as the cartoon fades out.\n\nVoice cast\nThe cartoon is noticeable to credit all of the voice actors rather than only crediting Mel Blanc. The list of actors includes:\n Jack Benny as Jack/Himself\n Don Wilson as Don\n Mary Livingstone as Mary\n Eddie \"Rochester\" Anderson as Rochester\n Mel Blanc as the Maxwell / Ed, the vault guard\n\nProduction\nThe cartoon was released on April 4, 1959. Written by Tedd Pierce, it is a parody of The Jack Benny Program starring the voices of Jack Benny, Mary Livingstone (in her final public performance), Don Wilson and Eddie \"Rochester\" Anderson as rodent caricatures of their respective radio and television characters, with Mel Blanc reprising his imitation of Benny's Maxwell automobile (also assuming the voice of \"Ed\", Jack's underground vault guard, usually portrayed on radio and TV by Joseph Kearns). The title is a play on the nursery rhyme \"This is the House that Jack Built\". As revealed on the audio commentary for this short, Benny only supplied his voice, but not his violin playing, as evidenced by the \"pre-score\" music of the violin soloist attempting to play as badly as Benny did on the radio show.\n\nHome media\nThe Mouse That Jack Built is available on Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3, Disc 2.\n\nSee also\n List of American films of 1959\n\nThe Honeymousers, another TV show parody (that is, of The Honeymooners), featuring mice as caricatures of the TV actors. In this case, however, the original actors did not perform. The voices were impressions done by June Foray (Alice), Bea Benaderet (Trixie), Daws Butler (Ralph) and Mel Blanc (Ed). Blanc had stated that he did not like doing impressions, believing that to be like stealing from other actors. This personal objection may have led to Warner Bros. using the actual cast of The Jack Benny Program to do their own voices in The Mouse that Jack Built.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\nThe Mouse That Jack Built at Big Cartoon Database\n\n1959 animated films\n1959 films\nMerrie Melodies short films\nWarner Bros. Cartoons animated short films\nAmerican films\nAnimation based on real people\nEnglish-language films\nFilms directed by Robert McKimson\n1950s American animated films\nFilms based on radio series\nFilms scored by Milt Franklyn",
"Jack's Big Music Show is an American musical children's television series produced by Nickelodeon for its sister channel Noggin. It was created and executive produced by David Rudman, Todd Hannert, and Adam Rudman through their company Spiffy Pictures. The main character is a young puppet musician named Jack (played by David Rudman) who has a musical clubhouse in his backyard. The premiere episode was simulcast on both Nickelodeon and Noggin on September 12, 2005. The show ran for two seasons and 26 episodes in total, which finished airing on October 13, 2007.\n\nThe popularity of the show made the idea of appearing on it attractive to musicians. An executive from Nick Jr. in 2006 said that they were \"clamoring to get onto Jack's Big Music Show.\" In 2008, the show was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Pre-School Children's Series.\n\nIn May 2007, production was suddenly disbanded and it was announced that no new episodes would be produced. The last episode aired on October 13, 2007. However, it continued to rerun on Nick Jr. until December 26, 2014. The last episodes to air as a part of the show's final rerun were \"Snow Day\" and \"The Grumpy Squirrel\" as part of the Nick Jr. Holiday Party.\n\nPlot\nThe series focuses on music-loving Jack, his best friend Mary, and his drum-playing dog Mel, all of whom are puppets. The show takes place in Jack's backyard clubhouse and centers on the characters' passion for music. The characters play music in every episode and are often accompanied by other puppets or human musicians. Each episode starts with Jack's mom calling him that he has to leave for an activity soon. They feature two music videos by children's musical artists and a performance by the Schwartzman Quartet about the episode's theme. At the end of each episode, a big \"finale\" song is played. Sometimes, Jack leaves and tells his mom what they did today, while other times they continue to play music in the clubhouse. Mel can be seen popping up during the credits.\n\nCharacters\n\nMain\nThe main characters are Jack, Mary, Mel, and the Schwartzman Quartet.\n Jack (performed by David Rudman) is a young musician who has a backyard clubhouse full of musical instruments. A blue mouse-like creature with short green hair, he wears an orange sweater with an asterisk on the front. Jack has a very busy schedule, and at the beginning of each episode, his unseen mother mentions a new class or activity that he is attending. He is named after Jack Benny, the host of The Jack Benny Program.\n Mary (performed by Alice Dinnean) is Jack's best friend, an accordionist. A yellow mouse-like creature with curly purple hair, she wears a red sweater with a heart symbol on the front. Mary is smart, attentive, and likes to find music in unexpected places. Her catchphrase is \"What a day!\", which she says at the end of each episode. She is named after Mary Livingstone from The Jack Benny Program.\n Mel (performed by John Kennedy) is Jack's drum-playing dog, a gifted inventor. He is pink with green stripes and a green spot around his left eye. He has created all of the contraptions in Jack's clubhouse, including the music video player, and operates them in each episode. He can only talk using \"ruff\" noises, but Jack understands him. He is named after Mel Blanc from The Jack Benny Program.\n The Schwartzman Quartet (performed by various puppeteers) is a barbershop quartet of four brothers who visit Jack's clubhouse every day to sing a short song. Almost identical to one another, they are all turquoise with stringy red hair, freckles, and matching striped sweaters. They are named after the Sportsmen Quartet from The Jack Benny Program.\n\nGuests\n Earl the Squirrel – appears in \"Mel's Super Swell Dance Party,\" \"Silly Show,\" \"Snow Day,\" and \"Jack's Big Orchestra\"\n The Little Bad Wolf (performed by Eric Jacobson) – appears in the episode of the same name and \"Jack's Big Orchestra\"\n The Bongo Birds – appear in the episode of the same name and \"Jack's Big Orchestra\"\n The Bugs – appear in \"Bug Love\" and \"Jack's Big Orchestra\"\n Henry the Monster (performed by Joey Mazzarino) – appears in the \"Music Monster\" and \"Jack's Big Orchestra\"\n The Squirrels – appear in \"Leonard the Country Squirrel,\" \"Jack's Big Orchestra\" and Jack's Super Swell Sing-Along\"\n M.C. Turtle – appears in \"Jack's Super Swell Sing-Along\"\n Sheldon the Squirrel (performed by John Kennedy) – appears in \"The Grumpy Squirrel\" and \"Jack's Big Orchestra\"\n Gertrude the Groundhog (performed by Stephanie D'Abruzzo) – appears in \"Groundhog Day\"\n Scat Cat (performed by Stephanie D'Abruzzo) – appears in the episode of the same name\n Phil the Coo-Coo Bird (performed by Eric Jacobson) – appears in the episode of the same name\n Leonard the Country Squirrel (performed by Matt Vogel) – appears in the episode of the same name\n Spunky the Alien (performed by Joey Mazzarino) – appears in the episode of the same name\n Royal Messenger Marvin (performed by John Kennedy) – appears in \"King of Swing\"\n\nGuest musicians\n\n Yolanda Adams\n Angélique Kidjo\n Laurie Berkner\n Andrew Bird\n Buddy Guy\n Steve Burns\n Steven Drozd\n Comic Book Heroes\n Guy Davis\n The Dirty Sock Funtime Band\n Rebecca Frezza\n Jerry Lawson \n Leon Thomas III\n The Mighty Weaklings\n Milkshake\n Lisa Loeb\n Music for Aardvarks and Other Mammals\n Jamia Simone Nash\n Nuttin' But Stringz\n Cathy Richardson\n Audra Rox\n Sweet Honey in the Rock\n David Pleasant\n Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players\n The Quiet Two\n Anne Harris\n\nEpisodes\n\nSeries overview\n\nSeason 1 (2005–06)\n\nSeason 2 (2007)\n\nInfluences\nIn an interview on the Nick Jr. website, Rudman says that The Jack Benny Show was an influence on Jack's Big Music Show (along with The Little Rascals).\n\nThe names Jack, Mary, Mel, and the \"Schwartzman Quartet\" are references to characters on The Jack Benny Program (Jack Benny, Mary Livingstone, Mel Blanc, and the Sportsmen Quartet). Other possible name references to Jack Benny Program regulars include Sheldon and Leonard (Sheldon Leonard), Phil the Coo-Coo Bird (Phil Harris), and Gertrude the Groundhog (Bea Benaderet's recurring character Gertrude Gearshift)\n\nHannert says that the music is influenced by Chuck Berry and the whole history of rock and roll.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n \n \n\nAmerican children's musical television series\n2000s American children's television series\n2000s American music television series\n2005 American television series debuts\nAmerican television shows featuring puppetry\n2007 American television series endings\nNick Jr. original programming\nNoggin (brand) original programming\nEnglish-language television shows\nAmerican preschool education television series\n2000s preschool education television series"
] |
[
"Jack Benny",
"Characters",
"what characters did jack benny play",
"At some point he developed a miserly persona."
] | C_ba2f4e4587194625aaaea4afd0fcb333_0 | what other characters did he play | 2 | Besides the miserly persona, what other characters did Jack Benny play? | Jack Benny | Benny's comic persona changed over the course of his career. At some point he developed a miserly persona. This stage character was everything that Jack Benny was not: cheap, petty, vain and self-congratulatory. His comic rendering of these traits was the linchpin to the success of his show. Benny set himself up as comedic foil, allowing his supporting characters to draw laughs at the expense of his own flaws. With his humanism and vulnerability in an era where few male characters were allowed such character traits, Benny made what could have been unlikable into an everyman character. Benny said: "I don't care who gets the laughs on my show, as long as the show is funny." Benny felt he got the credit or blame either way, not the actor saying the lines, so there was emphasis on the comedic bottom line. This attitude reached its apogee in a broadcast structured as a Hollywood bus tour of the stars' homes. Each "stop" on the tour was at a house belonging to one of the show's supporting cast, who would then have a scene which included jokes about the absent Benny. Not until the final moments of the program did the bus arrive at Jack Benny's house, at which point the listening audience heard Benny's only line of the episode: "Driver, here's where I get off." Few stars possessed the combination of daring, humility and comic timing to commit to such an extended payoff. Mary Livingstone, his wife, was a supporting character, as his wisecracking and not especially deferential female friend. She was not quite his girlfriend, since Benny would often try to date movie stars like Barbara Stanwyck, and occasionally had stage girlfriends, such as "Gladys Zybisco". Don Wilson, the rotund announcer, also appeared on the show. He also announced for Fanny Brice's hit Baby Snooks. Bandleader Phil Harris appeared as a jive talking, alcoholic philanderer whose repartee was profoundly risque for its time. Boy tenor Dennis Day appeared as a sheltered, naive youth who often got the better of his boss. This character was originated by Kenny Baker whom Day replaced. Singer Larry Stevens replaced Dennis Day from November 5, 1944 to March 10, 1946, while the latter served in the Navy. CANNOTANSWER | Benny set himself up as comedic foil, | Benjamin Kubelsky (February 14, 1894 – December 26, 1974), known professionally as Jack Benny, was an American entertainer, who evolved from a modest success playing violin on the vaudeville circuit to one of the leading entertainers of the twentieth century with a highly popular comedic career in radio, television, and film. He was known for his comic timing and the ability to cause laughter with a pregnant pause or a single expression, such as his signature exasperated "Well!"
His radio and television programs, popular from 1932 until his death in 1974, were a major influence on the sitcom genre. Benny often portrayed his character as a miser who obliviously played his violin badly and ridiculously claimed to be 39 years of age, regardless of his actual age.
Early life
Benny was born Benjamin Kubelsky in Chicago on February 14, 1894, and grew up in nearby Waukegan. He was the son of Jewish immigrants Meyer Kubelsky (1864–1946) and Emma Sachs Kubelsky (1869–1917), sometimes called "Naomi." Meyer was a saloon owner and later a haberdasher who had emigrated to America from Poland. Emma had emigrated from Lithuania. At the age of 6, Benny began studying violin, an instrument that became his trademark; his parents hoped for him to become a professional violinist. He loved the instrument but hated to practice. His music teacher was Otto Graham Sr., a neighbor and father of football player Otto Graham. At 14, Benny was playing in dance bands and his high school orchestra. He was a dreamer and poor at his studies, ultimately getting expelled from high school. He later did poorly in business school and in attempts to join his father's business. In 1911, he began playing the violin in local vaudeville theaters for $7.50 a week (about $ in 2020 dollars). He was joined on the circuit by Ned Miller, a young composer and singer.
That same year, Benny was playing in the same theater as the young Marx Brothers. Minnie, their mother, enjoyed Benny's violin playing and invited him to accompany her boys in their act. Benny's parents refused to let their son go on the road at 17, but it was the beginning of his long friendship with the Marx Brothers, especially Zeppo Marx.
The next year, Benny formed a vaudeville musical duo with pianist Cora Folsom Salisbury, a buxom 45-year-old divorcée who needed a partner for her act. This angered famous violinist Jan Kubelik, who feared that the young vaudevillian with a similar name would damage his reputation. Under legal pressure, Benjamin Kubelsky agreed to change his name to Ben K. Benny, sometimes spelled Bennie. When Salisbury left the act, Benny found a new pianist, Lyman Woods, and renamed the act "From Grand Opera to Ragtime." They worked together for five years and slowly integrated comedy elements into the show. They reached the Palace Theater, the "Mecca of Vaudeville," and did not do well. Benny left show business briefly in 1917 to join the United States Navy during World War I, often entertaining fellow sailors with his violin playing. One evening, his violin performance was booed by the sailors, so with prompting from fellow sailor and actor Pat O'Brien, he ad-libbed his way out of the jam and left them laughing. He received more comedy spots in the revues and did well, earning a reputation as a comedian and musician. Despite stories to the contrary, no reliable evidence indicates Jack Benny was aboard during the 1915 Eastland disaster or scheduled to be on the excursion; possibly the basis for this report was that Eastland was a training vessel during World War I and Benny received his training in the Great Lakes naval base where Eastland was stationed.
Shortly after the war, Benny developed a one-man act, "Ben K. Benny: Fiddle Funology." He then received legal pressure from Ben Bernie, a "patter-and-fiddle" performer, regarding his name, so he adopted the sailor's nickname of Jack. By 1921, the fiddle was more of a prop, and the low-key comedy took over.
Benny had some romantic encounters, including one with dancer Mary Kelly, whose devoutly Catholic family forced her to turn down his proposal because he was Jewish. Benny was introduced to Kelly by Gracie Allen.
In 1922, Benny accompanied Zeppo Marx to a Passover Seder in Vancouver at the residence where he met 17-year-old Sadie Marks (whose family was friends with, but not related to, the Marx family). Their first meeting did not go well when he tried to leave during Sadie's violin performance. They met again in 1926. Jack had not remembered their earlier meeting and instantly fell for her. They married the following year. She was working in the hosiery section of the Hollywood Boulevard branch of the May Company, where Benny courted her. Called on to fill in for the "dumb girl" part in a Benny routine, Sadie proved to be a natural comedienne. Adopting the stage name Mary Livingstone, Sadie collaborated with Benny throughout most of his career. They later adopted a daughter, Joan (1934-2021). Sadie's older sister Babe would often be the target of jokes about unattractive or masculine women, while her younger brother Hilliard would later produce Benny's radio and TV work.
In 1929, Benny's agent, Sam Lyons, convinced Irving Thalberg, American film producer at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, to watch Benny at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles. Benny signed a five-year contract with MGM, where his first role was in The Hollywood Revue of 1929. The next film, Chasing Rainbows, did not do well, and after several months Benny was released from his contract and returned to Broadway in Earl Carroll's Vanities. At first dubious about the viability of radio, Benny grew eager to break into the new medium. In 1932, after a four-week nightclub run, he was invited onto Ed Sullivan's radio program, uttering his first radio spiel "This is Jack Benny talking. There will be a slight pause while you say, 'Who cares?
Radio
Benny had been a minor vaudeville performer before becoming a national figure with The Jack Benny Program, a weekly radio show that ran from 1932 to 1948 on NBC and from 1949 to 1955 on CBS. It was among the most highly rated programs during its run.
Benny's long radio career began on April 6, 1932, when the NBC Commercial Program Department auditioned him for the N. W. Ayer & Son agency and their client, Canada Dry, after which Bertha Brainard, head of the division, said, "We think Mr. Benny is excellent for radio and, while the audition was unassisted as far as orchestra was concerned, we believe he would make a great bet for an air program." Recalling the experience in 1956, Benny said Ed Sullivan had invited him to guest on his program (1932), and "the agency for Canada Dry ginger ale heard me and offered me a job."
With Canada Dry ginger ale as a sponsor, Benny came to radio on The Canada Dry Program, on May 2, 1932, broadcast on Mondays and Wednesdays on the NBC Blue Network, featuring George Olsen and his orchestra. After a few shows, Benny hired Harry Conn as writer. The show continued on Blue for six months until October 26, moving to CBS on October 30, now airing Thursdays and Sundays. With Ted Weems leading the band, Benny stayed on CBS until January 26, 1933, when Canada Dry opted not to renew Benny's contract after it attempted to replace Conn with Sid Silvers, who would have also gotten a co-starring role. Unlike later incarnations of the Benny show, The Canada Dry Program was primarily a musical program.
Benny then appeared on The Chevrolet Program, airing on the NBC Red Network between March 17, 1933 until April 1, 1934, initially airing on Fridays (replacing Al Jolson), moving to Sunday nights in the fall. The show, which featured Benny and Livingstone alongside Frank Black's orchestra and vocalists James Melton and (later) Frank Parker, ended after General Motors' president insisted on a musical program. He continued with sponsor General Tire on Fridays through the end of September.
The show switched networks to CBS on January 2, 1949, as part of CBS president William S. Paley's notorious "raid" on NBC talent in 1948–1949. It stayed there for the remainder of its radio run, ending on May 22, 1955. CBS aired repeat episodes from 1956 to 1958 as The Best of Benny.
Television
After making his television debut in 1949 on local Los Angeles station KTTV, then a CBS affiliate, the network television version of The Jack Benny Program ran from October 28, 1950, to 1965, all but the last season on CBS. Initially scheduled as a series of five "specials" during the 1950–1951 season, the show appeared every six weeks for the 1951–1952 season, every four weeks for the 1952–1953 season and every three weeks in 1953–1954. For the 1953–1954 season, half the episodes were live and half were filmed during the summer, to allow Benny to continue doing his radio show. From the fall of 1954 to 1960, it appeared every other week, and from 1960 to 1965 it was seen weekly.
On March 28, 1954, Benny co-hosted General Foods 25th Anniversary Show: A Salute to Rodgers and Hammerstein with Groucho Marx and Mary Martin. In September 1954, CBS premiered Chrysler's Shower of Stars co-hosted by Jack Benny and William Lundigan. It enjoyed a successful run from 1954 until 1958. Both television shows often overlapped the radio show. In fact, the radio show alluded frequently to its television counterparts. Often as not, Benny would sign off the radio show in such circumstances with the line "Well, good night, folks. I'll see you on television."
When Benny moved to television, audiences learned that his verbal talent was matched by his controlled repertory of dead-pan facial expressions and gesture. The program was similar to the radio show (several of the radio scripts were recycled for television, as was somewhat common with other radio shows that moved to television), but with the addition of visual gags. Lucky Strike was the sponsor. Benny did his opening and closing monologues before a live audience, which he regarded as essential to timing of the material. As in other TV comedy shows, a laugh track was added to "sweeten" the soundtrack, as when the studio audience missed some close-up comedy because of cameras or microphones obstructing their view. Television viewers became accustomed to live without Mary Livingstone, who was afflicted by a striking case of stage fright that didn't lessen even after performing with Benny for 20 years. Hence, Livingstone appeared rarely if at all on the television show. In fact, for the last few years of the radio show, she pre-recorded her lines and Jack and Mary's daughter, Joan, stood in for the live taping, with Mary's lines later edited into the tape replacing Joan's before broadcast. Mary Livingstone finally retired from show business permanently in 1958, as her friend Gracie Allen had done.
Benny's television program relied more on guest stars and less on his regulars than his radio program. In fact, the only radio cast members who appeared regularly on the television program as well were Don Wilson and Eddie Anderson. Singer Dennis Day appeared sporadically, and Harris had left the radio program in 1952, although he did make a guest appearance on the television show (Bob Crosby, Phil's "replacement", frequently appeared on television through 1956). A frequent guest was the Canadian-born singer-violinist Gisele Mackenzie.
As a gag, Benny made a 1957 appearance on the then-wildly popular $64,000 Question. His category of choice was "Violins", but after answering the first question correctly Benny opted out of continuing, leaving the show with just $64; host Hal March gave Benny the prize money out of his own pocket. March made an appearance on Benny's show the same year.
Benny was able to attract guests who rarely, if ever, appeared on television. In 1953, both Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart made their television debuts on Benny's program.
Another guest star on the Jack Benny show was Rod Serling, who starred in a spoof of The Twilight Zone in which Benny goes to his own house and finds that no one knows who he is; Jack runs away screaming in panic; Serling breaks the fourth wall and remarks not to worry about Benny on the grounds that anyone who has been 39 years old as long as he has is a citizen of the "Twilo Zone."
Canadian singer Gisele MacKenzie, who toured with Benny in the early 1950s, guest starred seven times on The Jack Benny Program. Benny was so impressed with MacKenzie's talents that he served as co-executive producer and guest starred on her 1957–1958 NBC variety show, The Gisele MacKenzie Show.
In 1964, Walt Disney was a guest, primarily to promote his production of Mary Poppins. Benny persuaded Disney to give him over 110 free admission tickets to Disneyland for his friends and one for his wife, but later in the show Disney apparently sent his pet tiger after Benny as revenge, at which point Benny opened his umbrella and soared above the stage like Mary Poppins.
In due course the ratings game finally got to Benny, too. CBS dropped the show in 1964, citing Benny's lack of appeal to the younger demographic the network began courting, and he went to NBC, his original network, in the fall, only to be out-rated by CBS's Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. The network dropped Benny at the end of the season. He continued to make occasional specials into the 1970s, the last one airing in January 1974. Benny also appeared on The Lucy Show twice: Once as a plumber who resembles Jack Benny and in 1967 "Lucy Gets Jack Benny's account" where Lucy takes Jack on a tour of his new money vault. In the late 1960s, Benny did a series of commercials for Texaco Sky Chief gasoline, using his "stingy" television persona, always telling the attendant after being implored, "Jack Benny, won't you please fill up?", "I'll take a gallon."
In his unpublished autobiography, I Always Had Shoes (portions of which were later incorporated by Jack's daughter, Joan Benny, into her memoir of her parents, Sunday Nights at Seven), Benny said that he, not NBC, made the decision to end his TV series in 1965. He said that while the ratings were still very good (he cited a figure of some 18 million viewers per week, although he qualified that figure by saying he never believed the ratings services were doing anything more than guessing, no matter what they promised), advertisers were complaining that commercial time on his show was costing nearly twice as much as what they paid for most other shows, and he had grown tired of what was called the "rate race." Thus, after some three decades on radio and television in a weekly program, Jack Benny went out on top. In fairness, Benny himself shared Fred Allen's ambivalence about television, though not quite to Allen's extent. "By my second year in television, I saw that the camera was a man-eating monster ... It gave a performer close-up exposure that, week after week, threatened his existence as an interesting entertainer."
In a joint appearance with Phil Silvers on Dick Cavett's show, Benny recalled that he had advised Silvers not to appear on television. However, Silvers ignored Benny's advice and proceeded to win several Emmy awards as Sergeant Bilko on the popular series The Phil Silvers Show.
Films
Benny also acted in films, including the Academy Award-winning The Hollywood Revue of 1929, Broadway Melody of 1936 (as a benign nemesis for Eleanor Powell and Robert Taylor), George Washington Slept Here (1942), and notably, Charley's Aunt (1941) and To Be or Not to Be (1942). He and Livingstone also appeared in Ed Sullivan's Mr. Broadway (1933) as themselves. Benny often parodied contemporary films and genres on the radio program, and the 1940 film Buck Benny Rides Again features all the main radio characters in a funny Western parody adapted from program skits. The failure of one cinematic Benny vehicle, The Horn Blows at Midnight, became a running gag on his radio and television programs, although contemporary viewers may not find the film as disappointing as the jokes suggest.
Benny may have had an uncredited cameo role in Casablanca, claimed by a contemporary newspaper article and advertisement and reportedly in the Casablanca press book. When asked in his column "Movie Answer Man", film critic Roger Ebert first replied, "It looks something like him. That's all I can say." He wrote in a later column, "I think you're right."
Benny also was caricatured in several Warner Brothers cartoons including Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur (1939, as Casper the Caveman), I Love to Singa, Slap Happy Pappy, and Goofy Groceries (1936, 1940, and 1941 respectively, as Jack Bunny), Malibu Beach Party (1940, as himself), and The Mouse that Jack Built (1959). The last of these is probably the most memorable: Robert McKimson engaged Benny and his actual cast (Mary Livingstone, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, and Don Wilson) to do the voices for the mouse versions of their characters, with Mel Blanc—the usual Warner Brothers cartoon voicemeister—reprising his old vocal turn as the always-aging Maxwell, always a phat-phat-bang! away from collapse. In the cartoon, Benny and Livingstone agree to spend their anniversary at the Kit-Kat Club, which they discover the hard way is inside the mouth of a live cat. Before the cat can devour the mice, Benny himself awakens from his dream, then shakes his head, smiles wryly, and mutters, "Imagine, me and Mary as little mice." Then, he glances toward the cat lying on a throw rug in a corner and sees his and Livingstone's cartoon alter egos scampering out of the cat's mouth. The cartoon ends with a classic Benny look of befuddlement. It was rumored that Benny requested that, in lieu of monetary compensation, he receive a copy of the finished film.
Benny made a cameo appearance in It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
Final years
After his broadcasting career ended, Benny performed live as a standup comedian.
In the 1960s Benny was the headlining act at Harrah's Lake Tahoe with performer Harry James, and Vocalist Ray Vasquez.
Benny made one of his final television appearances on January 23, 1974, as a guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, the day before his final television special aired. Benny was preparing to star in the film version of Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys when his health failed later the same year. He prevailed upon his longtime best friend, George Burns, to take his place on a nightclub tour while preparing for the film. Burns ultimately had to replace Benny in the film as well, going on to win an Academy Award for his performance.
Despite his failing health, Benny would go on to make one last appearance on The Tonight Show on August 21, 1974 with Rich Little as guest host. Benny also made several appearances on The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast in his final 18 months, roasting Ronald Reagan, Johnny Carson, Bob Hope and Lucille Ball, in addition to himself being roasted in February 1974. The Lucille Ball roast, his last public performance, aired on February 7, 1975, several weeks after his death.
Death
In October 1974, Benny cancelled a performance in Dallas after suffering a dizzy spell, coupled with numbness in his arms. Despite a battery of tests, Benny's ailment could not be determined. When he complained of stomach pains in early December, a first test showed nothing, but a subsequent examination showed that he had inoperable pancreatic cancer. Benny went into a coma at home on December 22, 1974. While in a coma, he was visited by close friends including George Burns, Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Carson, John Rowles and then Governor Ronald Reagan. He died on December 26, 1974, at age 80. At the funeral, Burns, Benny's best friend for more than fifty years, attempted to deliver a eulogy but broke down shortly after he began and was unable to continue. Hope also delivered a eulogy in which he stated, "For a man who was the undisputed master of comedic timing, you would have to say this is the only time when Jack Benny's timing was all wrong. He left us much too soon." Benny was interred in a crypt at Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California. His will arranged for a single long-stemmed red rose to be delivered to his widow, Mary Livingstone, every day for the rest of her life. Livingstone died eight and a half years later on June 30, 1983, at the age of 78.
In trying to explain his successful life, Benny summed it up by stating: "Everything good that happened to me happened by accident. I was not filled with ambition nor fired by a drive toward a clear-cut goal. I never knew exactly where I was going."
Upon his death, Benny's family donated his personal, professional and business papers, as well as a collection of his television shows, to UCLA. The university established the Jack Benny Award for Comedy in his honor in 1977 to recognize outstanding people in the field of comedy. Johnny Carson was the first award recipient. Benny also donated a Stradivarius violin (purchased in 1957) to the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. Benny had quipped, "If it isn't a $30,000 Strad, I'm out $120."
Honors and tributes
In 1960, Benny was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame with three stars. His stars for television and motion pictures are located at 6370 and 6650 Hollywood Boulevard, respectively, and at 1505 Vine Street for radio. He was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1988 and the National Radio Hall of Fame in 1989. He was also inducted into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame.
Benny was inducted as a laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the Order of Lincoln (the state's highest honor) by the governor of Illinois in 1972 in the area of the performing arts.
When the price of a standard first-class U.S. postal stamp was increased to 39 cents in 2006, fans petitioned for a Jack Benny stamp to honor his stage persona's perpetual age. The U.S. Postal Service had issued a stamp depicting Benny in 1991 as part of a booklet of stamps honoring comedians; however, the stamp was issued at the then-current rate of 29 cents.
Jack Benny Middle School in Waukegan is named after Benny. Its motto matches his famous statement as "Home of the '39ers." A statue of Benny with his violin stands in downtown Waukegan.
The British comedian Benny Hill, whose original name was Alfred Hawthorne Hill, changed his name as a tribute to Jack Benny.
He was mentioned by Doc Brown in Back to the Future in which he guesses who would be Secretary of the Treasury by 1985, not believing Ronald Reagan was President of the United States of America. In reality, Benny died before 1985.
Filmography
Selected radio appearances
References
Further reading
The New York Times, April 16, 1953, p. 43, "Jack Benny plans more work on TV"
The New York Times, March 16, 1960, p. 75, "Canned laughter: Comedians are crying on the inside about CBS rule that public know of its use"
Jack Benny, Mary Livingstone Benny, Hilliard Marks with Marcia Borie, Doubleday & Company, 1978, 322 p.
Sunday Nights at Seven: The Jack Benny Story, Jack Benny and Joan Benny, Warner Books, 1990, 302 p.
CBS: Reflections in a Bloodshot Eye, by Robert Metz, New American Library, 1978.
The Laugh Crafters: Comedy Writing in Radio and TV's Golden Age, by Jordan R. Young; Past Times Publishing, 1999.
Well! Reflections on the Life and Career of Jack Benny, edited by Michael Leannah, BearManor Media, 2007.
Jack Benny v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 25 T.C. 197 (1955).
Balzer, George. They'll Break Your Heart (unpublished autobiography, undated), available at jackbenny.org.
Hilmes, M. (1997). Radio voices American broadcasting, 1922–1952. Minnesota Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Josefsberg, Milt. (1977) The Jack Benny Show. New Rochelle: Arlington House.
Leannah, Michael, editor. (2007) Well! Reflections on the Life and Career of Jack Benny. BearManor Media. Contributing authors: Frank Bresee, Clair Schulz, Kay Linaker, Janine Marr, Pam Munter, Mark Higgins, B. J. Borsody, Charles A. Beckett, Jordan R. Young, Philip G. Harwood, Noell Wolfgram Evans, Jack Benny, Michael Leannah, Steve Newvine, Ron Sayles, Kathryn Fuller-Seeley, Marc Reed, Derek Tague, Michael J. Hayde, Steve Thompson, Michael Mildredson
Wise, James. Stars in Blue: Movie Actors in America's Sea Services. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997.
Zolotow, Maurice. "Jack Benny: the fine art of self-disparagement" in Zolotow, No People Like Show People, Random House (New York: 1951); rpt Bantam Books (New York: 1952).
External links
Jack Benny at the National Radio Hall of Fame
Jack Benny Fred Allen Feud
International Jack Benny Fan Club
Jack Benny on grubstreet.ca
Copies of Jack Benny's Radio and TV scripts, with handwritten edits
Jack Benny Center for the Arts (archived)
Jack Benny papers at the University of Wyoming—American Heritage Center
FBI file on Jack Benny
Audio
All available Jack Benny radio programs in mp3
Jack Benny Show – OTR Podcast
Video
1894 births
1974 deaths
20th-century American comedians
20th-century American male actors
20th-century American male musicians
20th-century American musicians
20th-century violinists
Actors from Waukegan, Illinois
American male comedy actors
American male film actors
American male radio actors
American male television actors
American male violinists
American people of Lithuanian-Jewish descent
American people of Polish-Jewish descent
American radio personalities
American stand-up comedians
Television personalities from Los Angeles
American violinists
Burials at Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery
Comedians from California
Comedians from Illinois
Deaths from cancer in California
Deaths from pancreatic cancer
Golden Globe Award winners
Jewish American comedians
Jewish American male actors
Male actors from Chicago
Military personnel from Illinois
Outstanding Performance by a Lead Actor in a Comedy Series Primetime Emmy Award winners
Peabody Award winners
People from Bel Air, Los Angeles
United States Navy personnel of World War I
Vaudeville performers
20th-century American Jews | false | [
"Snug is a minor character from William Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream. He is a joiner who comes from Athens who is hired by Peter Quince to play the part of the lion in Pyramus and Thisbe. When he is first assigned the part, he is afraid it may take him a while to finally remember his lines (even though the lion's role was nothing but roaring originally). Bottom offers to play the part of the lion (as he offers to play all other parts), but he is rejected by Quince, who worries (as do the other characters) that his loud and ferocious roar in the play will frighten the ladies of power in the audience and get Quince and all his actors hanged. In the end, the lion's part is revised to explain that he is in fact not a lion and means the audience no harm.\n\nSnug is often played as a stupid man, a manner describing almost all of the Mechanicals.\n\nSnug is the only Mechanical to whom the playwright did not assign a first name.\n\nIn Jean-Louis and Jules Supervielle's French adaptation, Le Songe d'une nuit d'été (1959), Snug is renamed Asène to , where Georges Neveux's 1945 adaptation used the English names.\n\nOn the Elizabethan stage, the role of Snug and the other Mechanicals was intended to be doubled with Titania's four fairy escorts: Moth, Mustardseed, Cobweb, and Peaseblossom.\n\nReferences\n\nSources\n\nSee also\n Mechanical (character)\n\nMale Shakespearean characters\nCharacters in A Midsummer Night's Dream\nFictional artisans\nFictional actors\nLiterary characters introduced in 1596\nFictional Greek people",
"It's Only the End of the World () is a 1990 French play by Jean-Luc Lagarce. It is about a character named Louis who returns to his family to announce his terminal illness. Lagarce wrote the play in 1990, when he was considering his own death. In 2008, the Comédie-Française added the play to its repertoire. It won the 2008 Molière Award for Best Show in a National Theatre. In 2016, it was adapted into a film of the same name by Xavier Dolan.\n\nAnalysis\nLouis returns home surprisingly, and suddenly leaves, after family members give monologues of varying lengths, sometimes repeating themselves or violating proper grammar. The characters' struggle to communicate, sometimes attempting to restate what they meant, is a theme in the play, illustrated by a scene where Suzanne criticizes two family members for shaking hands like strangers. Contradictory stage directions state the play is set on \"a Sunday\", but also covers almost one year.\n\nFilm adaptation\n\nCanadian director Xavier Dolan said that when he originally read the play, he felt lost, citing its style and the aggressive nature of the characters. He later re-read it, saying \"One day, I don't know what it was, I pulled it off my shelf and suddenly understood and appreciated this weird and verbose writing style.\"\n\nDolan described the extensive work required to adapt the stage play for film: \n\nDolan's film won the Grand Prix at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival and other honours.\n\nReferences\n\n1990 plays\nFrench plays adapted into films"
] |
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"At some point he developed a miserly persona.",
"what other characters did he play",
"Benny set himself up as comedic foil,"
] | C_ba2f4e4587194625aaaea4afd0fcb333_0 | where did he perform | 3 | where did Jack Benny perform? | Jack Benny | Benny's comic persona changed over the course of his career. At some point he developed a miserly persona. This stage character was everything that Jack Benny was not: cheap, petty, vain and self-congratulatory. His comic rendering of these traits was the linchpin to the success of his show. Benny set himself up as comedic foil, allowing his supporting characters to draw laughs at the expense of his own flaws. With his humanism and vulnerability in an era where few male characters were allowed such character traits, Benny made what could have been unlikable into an everyman character. Benny said: "I don't care who gets the laughs on my show, as long as the show is funny." Benny felt he got the credit or blame either way, not the actor saying the lines, so there was emphasis on the comedic bottom line. This attitude reached its apogee in a broadcast structured as a Hollywood bus tour of the stars' homes. Each "stop" on the tour was at a house belonging to one of the show's supporting cast, who would then have a scene which included jokes about the absent Benny. Not until the final moments of the program did the bus arrive at Jack Benny's house, at which point the listening audience heard Benny's only line of the episode: "Driver, here's where I get off." Few stars possessed the combination of daring, humility and comic timing to commit to such an extended payoff. Mary Livingstone, his wife, was a supporting character, as his wisecracking and not especially deferential female friend. She was not quite his girlfriend, since Benny would often try to date movie stars like Barbara Stanwyck, and occasionally had stage girlfriends, such as "Gladys Zybisco". Don Wilson, the rotund announcer, also appeared on the show. He also announced for Fanny Brice's hit Baby Snooks. Bandleader Phil Harris appeared as a jive talking, alcoholic philanderer whose repartee was profoundly risque for its time. Boy tenor Dennis Day appeared as a sheltered, naive youth who often got the better of his boss. This character was originated by Kenny Baker whom Day replaced. Singer Larry Stevens replaced Dennis Day from November 5, 1944 to March 10, 1946, while the latter served in the Navy. CANNOTANSWER | his show. | Benjamin Kubelsky (February 14, 1894 – December 26, 1974), known professionally as Jack Benny, was an American entertainer, who evolved from a modest success playing violin on the vaudeville circuit to one of the leading entertainers of the twentieth century with a highly popular comedic career in radio, television, and film. He was known for his comic timing and the ability to cause laughter with a pregnant pause or a single expression, such as his signature exasperated "Well!"
His radio and television programs, popular from 1932 until his death in 1974, were a major influence on the sitcom genre. Benny often portrayed his character as a miser who obliviously played his violin badly and ridiculously claimed to be 39 years of age, regardless of his actual age.
Early life
Benny was born Benjamin Kubelsky in Chicago on February 14, 1894, and grew up in nearby Waukegan. He was the son of Jewish immigrants Meyer Kubelsky (1864–1946) and Emma Sachs Kubelsky (1869–1917), sometimes called "Naomi." Meyer was a saloon owner and later a haberdasher who had emigrated to America from Poland. Emma had emigrated from Lithuania. At the age of 6, Benny began studying violin, an instrument that became his trademark; his parents hoped for him to become a professional violinist. He loved the instrument but hated to practice. His music teacher was Otto Graham Sr., a neighbor and father of football player Otto Graham. At 14, Benny was playing in dance bands and his high school orchestra. He was a dreamer and poor at his studies, ultimately getting expelled from high school. He later did poorly in business school and in attempts to join his father's business. In 1911, he began playing the violin in local vaudeville theaters for $7.50 a week (about $ in 2020 dollars). He was joined on the circuit by Ned Miller, a young composer and singer.
That same year, Benny was playing in the same theater as the young Marx Brothers. Minnie, their mother, enjoyed Benny's violin playing and invited him to accompany her boys in their act. Benny's parents refused to let their son go on the road at 17, but it was the beginning of his long friendship with the Marx Brothers, especially Zeppo Marx.
The next year, Benny formed a vaudeville musical duo with pianist Cora Folsom Salisbury, a buxom 45-year-old divorcée who needed a partner for her act. This angered famous violinist Jan Kubelik, who feared that the young vaudevillian with a similar name would damage his reputation. Under legal pressure, Benjamin Kubelsky agreed to change his name to Ben K. Benny, sometimes spelled Bennie. When Salisbury left the act, Benny found a new pianist, Lyman Woods, and renamed the act "From Grand Opera to Ragtime." They worked together for five years and slowly integrated comedy elements into the show. They reached the Palace Theater, the "Mecca of Vaudeville," and did not do well. Benny left show business briefly in 1917 to join the United States Navy during World War I, often entertaining fellow sailors with his violin playing. One evening, his violin performance was booed by the sailors, so with prompting from fellow sailor and actor Pat O'Brien, he ad-libbed his way out of the jam and left them laughing. He received more comedy spots in the revues and did well, earning a reputation as a comedian and musician. Despite stories to the contrary, no reliable evidence indicates Jack Benny was aboard during the 1915 Eastland disaster or scheduled to be on the excursion; possibly the basis for this report was that Eastland was a training vessel during World War I and Benny received his training in the Great Lakes naval base where Eastland was stationed.
Shortly after the war, Benny developed a one-man act, "Ben K. Benny: Fiddle Funology." He then received legal pressure from Ben Bernie, a "patter-and-fiddle" performer, regarding his name, so he adopted the sailor's nickname of Jack. By 1921, the fiddle was more of a prop, and the low-key comedy took over.
Benny had some romantic encounters, including one with dancer Mary Kelly, whose devoutly Catholic family forced her to turn down his proposal because he was Jewish. Benny was introduced to Kelly by Gracie Allen.
In 1922, Benny accompanied Zeppo Marx to a Passover Seder in Vancouver at the residence where he met 17-year-old Sadie Marks (whose family was friends with, but not related to, the Marx family). Their first meeting did not go well when he tried to leave during Sadie's violin performance. They met again in 1926. Jack had not remembered their earlier meeting and instantly fell for her. They married the following year. She was working in the hosiery section of the Hollywood Boulevard branch of the May Company, where Benny courted her. Called on to fill in for the "dumb girl" part in a Benny routine, Sadie proved to be a natural comedienne. Adopting the stage name Mary Livingstone, Sadie collaborated with Benny throughout most of his career. They later adopted a daughter, Joan (1934-2021). Sadie's older sister Babe would often be the target of jokes about unattractive or masculine women, while her younger brother Hilliard would later produce Benny's radio and TV work.
In 1929, Benny's agent, Sam Lyons, convinced Irving Thalberg, American film producer at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, to watch Benny at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles. Benny signed a five-year contract with MGM, where his first role was in The Hollywood Revue of 1929. The next film, Chasing Rainbows, did not do well, and after several months Benny was released from his contract and returned to Broadway in Earl Carroll's Vanities. At first dubious about the viability of radio, Benny grew eager to break into the new medium. In 1932, after a four-week nightclub run, he was invited onto Ed Sullivan's radio program, uttering his first radio spiel "This is Jack Benny talking. There will be a slight pause while you say, 'Who cares?
Radio
Benny had been a minor vaudeville performer before becoming a national figure with The Jack Benny Program, a weekly radio show that ran from 1932 to 1948 on NBC and from 1949 to 1955 on CBS. It was among the most highly rated programs during its run.
Benny's long radio career began on April 6, 1932, when the NBC Commercial Program Department auditioned him for the N. W. Ayer & Son agency and their client, Canada Dry, after which Bertha Brainard, head of the division, said, "We think Mr. Benny is excellent for radio and, while the audition was unassisted as far as orchestra was concerned, we believe he would make a great bet for an air program." Recalling the experience in 1956, Benny said Ed Sullivan had invited him to guest on his program (1932), and "the agency for Canada Dry ginger ale heard me and offered me a job."
With Canada Dry ginger ale as a sponsor, Benny came to radio on The Canada Dry Program, on May 2, 1932, broadcast on Mondays and Wednesdays on the NBC Blue Network, featuring George Olsen and his orchestra. After a few shows, Benny hired Harry Conn as writer. The show continued on Blue for six months until October 26, moving to CBS on October 30, now airing Thursdays and Sundays. With Ted Weems leading the band, Benny stayed on CBS until January 26, 1933, when Canada Dry opted not to renew Benny's contract after it attempted to replace Conn with Sid Silvers, who would have also gotten a co-starring role. Unlike later incarnations of the Benny show, The Canada Dry Program was primarily a musical program.
Benny then appeared on The Chevrolet Program, airing on the NBC Red Network between March 17, 1933 until April 1, 1934, initially airing on Fridays (replacing Al Jolson), moving to Sunday nights in the fall. The show, which featured Benny and Livingstone alongside Frank Black's orchestra and vocalists James Melton and (later) Frank Parker, ended after General Motors' president insisted on a musical program. He continued with sponsor General Tire on Fridays through the end of September.
The show switched networks to CBS on January 2, 1949, as part of CBS president William S. Paley's notorious "raid" on NBC talent in 1948–1949. It stayed there for the remainder of its radio run, ending on May 22, 1955. CBS aired repeat episodes from 1956 to 1958 as The Best of Benny.
Television
After making his television debut in 1949 on local Los Angeles station KTTV, then a CBS affiliate, the network television version of The Jack Benny Program ran from October 28, 1950, to 1965, all but the last season on CBS. Initially scheduled as a series of five "specials" during the 1950–1951 season, the show appeared every six weeks for the 1951–1952 season, every four weeks for the 1952–1953 season and every three weeks in 1953–1954. For the 1953–1954 season, half the episodes were live and half were filmed during the summer, to allow Benny to continue doing his radio show. From the fall of 1954 to 1960, it appeared every other week, and from 1960 to 1965 it was seen weekly.
On March 28, 1954, Benny co-hosted General Foods 25th Anniversary Show: A Salute to Rodgers and Hammerstein with Groucho Marx and Mary Martin. In September 1954, CBS premiered Chrysler's Shower of Stars co-hosted by Jack Benny and William Lundigan. It enjoyed a successful run from 1954 until 1958. Both television shows often overlapped the radio show. In fact, the radio show alluded frequently to its television counterparts. Often as not, Benny would sign off the radio show in such circumstances with the line "Well, good night, folks. I'll see you on television."
When Benny moved to television, audiences learned that his verbal talent was matched by his controlled repertory of dead-pan facial expressions and gesture. The program was similar to the radio show (several of the radio scripts were recycled for television, as was somewhat common with other radio shows that moved to television), but with the addition of visual gags. Lucky Strike was the sponsor. Benny did his opening and closing monologues before a live audience, which he regarded as essential to timing of the material. As in other TV comedy shows, a laugh track was added to "sweeten" the soundtrack, as when the studio audience missed some close-up comedy because of cameras or microphones obstructing their view. Television viewers became accustomed to live without Mary Livingstone, who was afflicted by a striking case of stage fright that didn't lessen even after performing with Benny for 20 years. Hence, Livingstone appeared rarely if at all on the television show. In fact, for the last few years of the radio show, she pre-recorded her lines and Jack and Mary's daughter, Joan, stood in for the live taping, with Mary's lines later edited into the tape replacing Joan's before broadcast. Mary Livingstone finally retired from show business permanently in 1958, as her friend Gracie Allen had done.
Benny's television program relied more on guest stars and less on his regulars than his radio program. In fact, the only radio cast members who appeared regularly on the television program as well were Don Wilson and Eddie Anderson. Singer Dennis Day appeared sporadically, and Harris had left the radio program in 1952, although he did make a guest appearance on the television show (Bob Crosby, Phil's "replacement", frequently appeared on television through 1956). A frequent guest was the Canadian-born singer-violinist Gisele Mackenzie.
As a gag, Benny made a 1957 appearance on the then-wildly popular $64,000 Question. His category of choice was "Violins", but after answering the first question correctly Benny opted out of continuing, leaving the show with just $64; host Hal March gave Benny the prize money out of his own pocket. March made an appearance on Benny's show the same year.
Benny was able to attract guests who rarely, if ever, appeared on television. In 1953, both Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart made their television debuts on Benny's program.
Another guest star on the Jack Benny show was Rod Serling, who starred in a spoof of The Twilight Zone in which Benny goes to his own house and finds that no one knows who he is; Jack runs away screaming in panic; Serling breaks the fourth wall and remarks not to worry about Benny on the grounds that anyone who has been 39 years old as long as he has is a citizen of the "Twilo Zone."
Canadian singer Gisele MacKenzie, who toured with Benny in the early 1950s, guest starred seven times on The Jack Benny Program. Benny was so impressed with MacKenzie's talents that he served as co-executive producer and guest starred on her 1957–1958 NBC variety show, The Gisele MacKenzie Show.
In 1964, Walt Disney was a guest, primarily to promote his production of Mary Poppins. Benny persuaded Disney to give him over 110 free admission tickets to Disneyland for his friends and one for his wife, but later in the show Disney apparently sent his pet tiger after Benny as revenge, at which point Benny opened his umbrella and soared above the stage like Mary Poppins.
In due course the ratings game finally got to Benny, too. CBS dropped the show in 1964, citing Benny's lack of appeal to the younger demographic the network began courting, and he went to NBC, his original network, in the fall, only to be out-rated by CBS's Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. The network dropped Benny at the end of the season. He continued to make occasional specials into the 1970s, the last one airing in January 1974. Benny also appeared on The Lucy Show twice: Once as a plumber who resembles Jack Benny and in 1967 "Lucy Gets Jack Benny's account" where Lucy takes Jack on a tour of his new money vault. In the late 1960s, Benny did a series of commercials for Texaco Sky Chief gasoline, using his "stingy" television persona, always telling the attendant after being implored, "Jack Benny, won't you please fill up?", "I'll take a gallon."
In his unpublished autobiography, I Always Had Shoes (portions of which were later incorporated by Jack's daughter, Joan Benny, into her memoir of her parents, Sunday Nights at Seven), Benny said that he, not NBC, made the decision to end his TV series in 1965. He said that while the ratings were still very good (he cited a figure of some 18 million viewers per week, although he qualified that figure by saying he never believed the ratings services were doing anything more than guessing, no matter what they promised), advertisers were complaining that commercial time on his show was costing nearly twice as much as what they paid for most other shows, and he had grown tired of what was called the "rate race." Thus, after some three decades on radio and television in a weekly program, Jack Benny went out on top. In fairness, Benny himself shared Fred Allen's ambivalence about television, though not quite to Allen's extent. "By my second year in television, I saw that the camera was a man-eating monster ... It gave a performer close-up exposure that, week after week, threatened his existence as an interesting entertainer."
In a joint appearance with Phil Silvers on Dick Cavett's show, Benny recalled that he had advised Silvers not to appear on television. However, Silvers ignored Benny's advice and proceeded to win several Emmy awards as Sergeant Bilko on the popular series The Phil Silvers Show.
Films
Benny also acted in films, including the Academy Award-winning The Hollywood Revue of 1929, Broadway Melody of 1936 (as a benign nemesis for Eleanor Powell and Robert Taylor), George Washington Slept Here (1942), and notably, Charley's Aunt (1941) and To Be or Not to Be (1942). He and Livingstone also appeared in Ed Sullivan's Mr. Broadway (1933) as themselves. Benny often parodied contemporary films and genres on the radio program, and the 1940 film Buck Benny Rides Again features all the main radio characters in a funny Western parody adapted from program skits. The failure of one cinematic Benny vehicle, The Horn Blows at Midnight, became a running gag on his radio and television programs, although contemporary viewers may not find the film as disappointing as the jokes suggest.
Benny may have had an uncredited cameo role in Casablanca, claimed by a contemporary newspaper article and advertisement and reportedly in the Casablanca press book. When asked in his column "Movie Answer Man", film critic Roger Ebert first replied, "It looks something like him. That's all I can say." He wrote in a later column, "I think you're right."
Benny also was caricatured in several Warner Brothers cartoons including Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur (1939, as Casper the Caveman), I Love to Singa, Slap Happy Pappy, and Goofy Groceries (1936, 1940, and 1941 respectively, as Jack Bunny), Malibu Beach Party (1940, as himself), and The Mouse that Jack Built (1959). The last of these is probably the most memorable: Robert McKimson engaged Benny and his actual cast (Mary Livingstone, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, and Don Wilson) to do the voices for the mouse versions of their characters, with Mel Blanc—the usual Warner Brothers cartoon voicemeister—reprising his old vocal turn as the always-aging Maxwell, always a phat-phat-bang! away from collapse. In the cartoon, Benny and Livingstone agree to spend their anniversary at the Kit-Kat Club, which they discover the hard way is inside the mouth of a live cat. Before the cat can devour the mice, Benny himself awakens from his dream, then shakes his head, smiles wryly, and mutters, "Imagine, me and Mary as little mice." Then, he glances toward the cat lying on a throw rug in a corner and sees his and Livingstone's cartoon alter egos scampering out of the cat's mouth. The cartoon ends with a classic Benny look of befuddlement. It was rumored that Benny requested that, in lieu of monetary compensation, he receive a copy of the finished film.
Benny made a cameo appearance in It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
Final years
After his broadcasting career ended, Benny performed live as a standup comedian.
In the 1960s Benny was the headlining act at Harrah's Lake Tahoe with performer Harry James, and Vocalist Ray Vasquez.
Benny made one of his final television appearances on January 23, 1974, as a guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, the day before his final television special aired. Benny was preparing to star in the film version of Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys when his health failed later the same year. He prevailed upon his longtime best friend, George Burns, to take his place on a nightclub tour while preparing for the film. Burns ultimately had to replace Benny in the film as well, going on to win an Academy Award for his performance.
Despite his failing health, Benny would go on to make one last appearance on The Tonight Show on August 21, 1974 with Rich Little as guest host. Benny also made several appearances on The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast in his final 18 months, roasting Ronald Reagan, Johnny Carson, Bob Hope and Lucille Ball, in addition to himself being roasted in February 1974. The Lucille Ball roast, his last public performance, aired on February 7, 1975, several weeks after his death.
Death
In October 1974, Benny cancelled a performance in Dallas after suffering a dizzy spell, coupled with numbness in his arms. Despite a battery of tests, Benny's ailment could not be determined. When he complained of stomach pains in early December, a first test showed nothing, but a subsequent examination showed that he had inoperable pancreatic cancer. Benny went into a coma at home on December 22, 1974. While in a coma, he was visited by close friends including George Burns, Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Carson, John Rowles and then Governor Ronald Reagan. He died on December 26, 1974, at age 80. At the funeral, Burns, Benny's best friend for more than fifty years, attempted to deliver a eulogy but broke down shortly after he began and was unable to continue. Hope also delivered a eulogy in which he stated, "For a man who was the undisputed master of comedic timing, you would have to say this is the only time when Jack Benny's timing was all wrong. He left us much too soon." Benny was interred in a crypt at Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California. His will arranged for a single long-stemmed red rose to be delivered to his widow, Mary Livingstone, every day for the rest of her life. Livingstone died eight and a half years later on June 30, 1983, at the age of 78.
In trying to explain his successful life, Benny summed it up by stating: "Everything good that happened to me happened by accident. I was not filled with ambition nor fired by a drive toward a clear-cut goal. I never knew exactly where I was going."
Upon his death, Benny's family donated his personal, professional and business papers, as well as a collection of his television shows, to UCLA. The university established the Jack Benny Award for Comedy in his honor in 1977 to recognize outstanding people in the field of comedy. Johnny Carson was the first award recipient. Benny also donated a Stradivarius violin (purchased in 1957) to the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. Benny had quipped, "If it isn't a $30,000 Strad, I'm out $120."
Honors and tributes
In 1960, Benny was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame with three stars. His stars for television and motion pictures are located at 6370 and 6650 Hollywood Boulevard, respectively, and at 1505 Vine Street for radio. He was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1988 and the National Radio Hall of Fame in 1989. He was also inducted into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame.
Benny was inducted as a laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the Order of Lincoln (the state's highest honor) by the governor of Illinois in 1972 in the area of the performing arts.
When the price of a standard first-class U.S. postal stamp was increased to 39 cents in 2006, fans petitioned for a Jack Benny stamp to honor his stage persona's perpetual age. The U.S. Postal Service had issued a stamp depicting Benny in 1991 as part of a booklet of stamps honoring comedians; however, the stamp was issued at the then-current rate of 29 cents.
Jack Benny Middle School in Waukegan is named after Benny. Its motto matches his famous statement as "Home of the '39ers." A statue of Benny with his violin stands in downtown Waukegan.
The British comedian Benny Hill, whose original name was Alfred Hawthorne Hill, changed his name as a tribute to Jack Benny.
He was mentioned by Doc Brown in Back to the Future in which he guesses who would be Secretary of the Treasury by 1985, not believing Ronald Reagan was President of the United States of America. In reality, Benny died before 1985.
Filmography
Selected radio appearances
References
Further reading
The New York Times, April 16, 1953, p. 43, "Jack Benny plans more work on TV"
The New York Times, March 16, 1960, p. 75, "Canned laughter: Comedians are crying on the inside about CBS rule that public know of its use"
Jack Benny, Mary Livingstone Benny, Hilliard Marks with Marcia Borie, Doubleday & Company, 1978, 322 p.
Sunday Nights at Seven: The Jack Benny Story, Jack Benny and Joan Benny, Warner Books, 1990, 302 p.
CBS: Reflections in a Bloodshot Eye, by Robert Metz, New American Library, 1978.
The Laugh Crafters: Comedy Writing in Radio and TV's Golden Age, by Jordan R. Young; Past Times Publishing, 1999.
Well! Reflections on the Life and Career of Jack Benny, edited by Michael Leannah, BearManor Media, 2007.
Jack Benny v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 25 T.C. 197 (1955).
Balzer, George. They'll Break Your Heart (unpublished autobiography, undated), available at jackbenny.org.
Hilmes, M. (1997). Radio voices American broadcasting, 1922–1952. Minnesota Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Josefsberg, Milt. (1977) The Jack Benny Show. New Rochelle: Arlington House.
Leannah, Michael, editor. (2007) Well! Reflections on the Life and Career of Jack Benny. BearManor Media. Contributing authors: Frank Bresee, Clair Schulz, Kay Linaker, Janine Marr, Pam Munter, Mark Higgins, B. J. Borsody, Charles A. Beckett, Jordan R. Young, Philip G. Harwood, Noell Wolfgram Evans, Jack Benny, Michael Leannah, Steve Newvine, Ron Sayles, Kathryn Fuller-Seeley, Marc Reed, Derek Tague, Michael J. Hayde, Steve Thompson, Michael Mildredson
Wise, James. Stars in Blue: Movie Actors in America's Sea Services. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997.
Zolotow, Maurice. "Jack Benny: the fine art of self-disparagement" in Zolotow, No People Like Show People, Random House (New York: 1951); rpt Bantam Books (New York: 1952).
External links
Jack Benny at the National Radio Hall of Fame
Jack Benny Fred Allen Feud
International Jack Benny Fan Club
Jack Benny on grubstreet.ca
Copies of Jack Benny's Radio and TV scripts, with handwritten edits
Jack Benny Center for the Arts (archived)
Jack Benny papers at the University of Wyoming—American Heritage Center
FBI file on Jack Benny
Audio
All available Jack Benny radio programs in mp3
Jack Benny Show – OTR Podcast
Video
1894 births
1974 deaths
20th-century American comedians
20th-century American male actors
20th-century American male musicians
20th-century American musicians
20th-century violinists
Actors from Waukegan, Illinois
American male comedy actors
American male film actors
American male radio actors
American male television actors
American male violinists
American people of Lithuanian-Jewish descent
American people of Polish-Jewish descent
American radio personalities
American stand-up comedians
Television personalities from Los Angeles
American violinists
Burials at Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery
Comedians from California
Comedians from Illinois
Deaths from cancer in California
Deaths from pancreatic cancer
Golden Globe Award winners
Jewish American comedians
Jewish American male actors
Male actors from Chicago
Military personnel from Illinois
Outstanding Performance by a Lead Actor in a Comedy Series Primetime Emmy Award winners
Peabody Award winners
People from Bel Air, Los Angeles
United States Navy personnel of World War I
Vaudeville performers
20th-century American Jews | false | [
"Sonic Temple Art & Music Festival is a rock festival currently held in Columbus, Ohio, United States and is produced by Danny Wimmer Presents.\n\nHistory\n\nIn 2018 it was announced that Rock on the Range would be replaced by Danny Wimmer Presents as the Sonic Temple Art & Music Festival. The inaugural festival was held in May 2019 with sold-out crowds of 120,000.\n\nIn December 2019, the full lineup for Sonic Temple 2020 was revealed. Metallica were to headline both Friday and Saturday night, with Slipknot headlining on Saturday. Other performers were to include Deftones, Bring Me the Horizon, Evanescence, Sublime with Rome, Rancid, Dropkick Murphys, Cypress Hill, Pennywise, Royal Blood, The Pretty Reckless, Alter Bridge, Anthrax, Flatbush Zombies, Pop Evil, Hellyeah, Ghostemane, Suicidal Tendencies, Testament, Dance Gavin Dance, Ice Nine Kills, Sleeping with Sirens, The Darkness, Knocked Loose, Code Orange, Power Trip, Saint Asonia, Dirty Honey, Jinjer, City Morgue, Bones UK, Airbourne, Fire from the Gods, Dinosaur Pile-Up, Des Rocs, Counterfeit, Crobot, Cherry Bomb, DED, Goodbye June, Brutus, 3Teeth, BRKN Love, Killstation, Brass Against, Crown Lands, Ego Kill Talent, Dregg, Bloodywood, and Zero 9:36, with more to have been announced.\n\nIn February 2020, it was announced that Metallica would be replaced as headliners by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Tool, following frontman James Hetfield's entrance into a rehabilitation program for substance abuse. The following month, the festival was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In February 2021, it was announced it would once again be cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with plans to return in 2022.\n\nEvents\n\n2019 \n\nMonster Energy Stadium Stage:\n System of a Down\n Ghost\n Halestorm\n Parkway Drive\n Beartooth\n Avatar\n Badflower\n\nEcho Stage:\n Meshuggah\n Black Label Society\n Bad Wolves\n Zeal & Ardor\n Wage War\n SHVPES\n The Jacks\n\nWave Stage:\n Tom Morello\n Pussy Riot\n Ho99o99\n Cleopatrick\n Hands Like Houses\n Radattack\n\nSiriusXM Comedy & Spoken Word Tent:\n Henry Rollins\n Tom Morello\n Shapel Lacy\n Nadya\n\nMonster Energy Stadium Stage:\n Disturbed\n Papa Roach\n Lamb of God\n In This Moment\n Gojira\n Fever 333\n Black Coffee\n\nEcho Stage:\n The Cult\n Killswitch Engage\n Architects\n The Black Dahlia Murder\n While She Sleeps\n Evan Konrad\n The Plot in You\n\nWave Stage:\n Action Bronson (did not perform due to an \"unforeseen knee injury\")\n Mark Lanegan Band\n Don Broco\n Movements\n Boston Manor\n No1Cares\n\nSiriusXM Comedy & Spoken Word Tent:\n Andrew Dice Clay\n Eleanor Kerrigan\n Mark Normand\n Craig Grass\n\nMonster Energy Stadium Stage:\n Foo Fighters\n Bring Me the Horizon (did not perform due to high winds)\n Chevelle (did not perform due to high winds)\n The Distillers (did not perform due to high winds)\n The Struts\n The Glorious Sons\n Amigo the Devil\n\nEcho Stage:\n Joan Jett and the Blackhearts\n The Hives (performance ended early due to high winds)\n The Interrupters\n Yungblud\n Palaye Royale\n Dirty Honey\n Teenage Wrist\n\nWave Stage:\n Scars on Broadway (did not perform due to high winds)\n Refused (did not perform due to high winds)\n Black Pistol Fire (did not perform due to high winds)\n Basement (did not perform due to high winds)\n Scarlxrd (did not perform due to high winds)\n Demob Happy (did not perform due to high winds)\n\nSiriusXM Comedy & Spoken Word Tent:\n Pauly Shore (did not perform due to high winds)\n Carmen Lynch (did not perform due to high winds)\n Joe Deuce (did not perform due to high winds)\n Bill Squire (did not perform due to high winds)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n\nHeavy metal festivals in the United States\nMusic festivals established in 2019\nMusic festivals in Ohio\nRock festivals in the United States",
"The No Sound Without Silence Tour is the third arena tour by Irish pop rock band The Script. Launched in support of their fourth studio album No Sound Without Silence (2014), the tour began in Tokyo on 16 January 2015 and visited Europe, North America, Asia, Africa and Oceania. The opening acts were American singer Phillip Phillips for the South African dates, and English singer Tinie Tempah for the European dates. Pharrell Williams served as a co-headliner for the Croke Park concert on 20 June 2015.\n\nOpening acts\nColton Avery (Europe, North America, Australia, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia)\nMary Lambert (North America)\nPhillip Phillips (South Africa)\nSilent Sanctuary (Philippines)\nTinie Tempah (Europe)\nPharrell Williams (Dublin)\nThe Wailers (Dublin)\nThe Sam Willows (Singapore)\nKensington (Band) (Europe)\n\nSetlist\nThis setlist is based on previous performances of the tour.\n\n \"Paint the Town Green\"\n \"Hail Rain or Sunshine\"\n \"Breakeven\"\n \"Before the Worst\"\n \"Superheroes\"\n \"We Cry\"\n \"If You Could See Me Now\"\n \"Man on a Wire\"\n \"Nothing\"\n \"Good Ol' Days\"\n \"Never Seen Anything (Quite Like You)\"\n \"The Man Who Can't Be Moved\"\n \"You Won't Feel A Thing\"\n \"It's Not Right For You\"\n \"Six Degrees of Separation\"\n \"The Energy Never Dies\"\n \"For the First Time\"\n \"No Good in Goodbye\"\n \"Hall of Fame\"\n\nAdditional information\nDuring the performance in Sheffield, The Script didn't perform \"We Cry\" due to a fan collapsing. Danny called for Paramedic to check on her, she was fine and they carried on.\n\nDuring the performance in Barcelona, The Script didn't perform \"The End Where I Begin\" or \"Nothing\". They also did not perform \"Six Degrees Of Separation\" and \"It's Not Right For You\".\n\nDuring the performance in Oakland, The Script didn't perform \"The End Where I Begin\", \"We Cry\", or \"Six Degrees of Separation\".\n\nDuring the performance in Toronto, The Script did not perform \"The End Where I Begin\" and \"Six Degrees of Separation\".\n\nDuring the performance im Hamburg, The Script did not perform \"Nothing\" and \"Never Seen Anything (Quite Like You)\".\n\nTour dates\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n\n2015 concert tours\nThe Script concert tours"
] |
[
"Jack Benny",
"Characters",
"what characters did jack benny play",
"At some point he developed a miserly persona.",
"what other characters did he play",
"Benny set himself up as comedic foil,",
"where did he perform",
"his show."
] | C_ba2f4e4587194625aaaea4afd0fcb333_0 | what country | 4 | what country did Jack Benny perform in? | Jack Benny | Benny's comic persona changed over the course of his career. At some point he developed a miserly persona. This stage character was everything that Jack Benny was not: cheap, petty, vain and self-congratulatory. His comic rendering of these traits was the linchpin to the success of his show. Benny set himself up as comedic foil, allowing his supporting characters to draw laughs at the expense of his own flaws. With his humanism and vulnerability in an era where few male characters were allowed such character traits, Benny made what could have been unlikable into an everyman character. Benny said: "I don't care who gets the laughs on my show, as long as the show is funny." Benny felt he got the credit or blame either way, not the actor saying the lines, so there was emphasis on the comedic bottom line. This attitude reached its apogee in a broadcast structured as a Hollywood bus tour of the stars' homes. Each "stop" on the tour was at a house belonging to one of the show's supporting cast, who would then have a scene which included jokes about the absent Benny. Not until the final moments of the program did the bus arrive at Jack Benny's house, at which point the listening audience heard Benny's only line of the episode: "Driver, here's where I get off." Few stars possessed the combination of daring, humility and comic timing to commit to such an extended payoff. Mary Livingstone, his wife, was a supporting character, as his wisecracking and not especially deferential female friend. She was not quite his girlfriend, since Benny would often try to date movie stars like Barbara Stanwyck, and occasionally had stage girlfriends, such as "Gladys Zybisco". Don Wilson, the rotund announcer, also appeared on the show. He also announced for Fanny Brice's hit Baby Snooks. Bandleader Phil Harris appeared as a jive talking, alcoholic philanderer whose repartee was profoundly risque for its time. Boy tenor Dennis Day appeared as a sheltered, naive youth who often got the better of his boss. This character was originated by Kenny Baker whom Day replaced. Singer Larry Stevens replaced Dennis Day from November 5, 1944 to March 10, 1946, while the latter served in the Navy. CANNOTANSWER | Hollywood | Benjamin Kubelsky (February 14, 1894 – December 26, 1974), known professionally as Jack Benny, was an American entertainer, who evolved from a modest success playing violin on the vaudeville circuit to one of the leading entertainers of the twentieth century with a highly popular comedic career in radio, television, and film. He was known for his comic timing and the ability to cause laughter with a pregnant pause or a single expression, such as his signature exasperated "Well!"
His radio and television programs, popular from 1932 until his death in 1974, were a major influence on the sitcom genre. Benny often portrayed his character as a miser who obliviously played his violin badly and ridiculously claimed to be 39 years of age, regardless of his actual age.
Early life
Benny was born Benjamin Kubelsky in Chicago on February 14, 1894, and grew up in nearby Waukegan. He was the son of Jewish immigrants Meyer Kubelsky (1864–1946) and Emma Sachs Kubelsky (1869–1917), sometimes called "Naomi." Meyer was a saloon owner and later a haberdasher who had emigrated to America from Poland. Emma had emigrated from Lithuania. At the age of 6, Benny began studying violin, an instrument that became his trademark; his parents hoped for him to become a professional violinist. He loved the instrument but hated to practice. His music teacher was Otto Graham Sr., a neighbor and father of football player Otto Graham. At 14, Benny was playing in dance bands and his high school orchestra. He was a dreamer and poor at his studies, ultimately getting expelled from high school. He later did poorly in business school and in attempts to join his father's business. In 1911, he began playing the violin in local vaudeville theaters for $7.50 a week (about $ in 2020 dollars). He was joined on the circuit by Ned Miller, a young composer and singer.
That same year, Benny was playing in the same theater as the young Marx Brothers. Minnie, their mother, enjoyed Benny's violin playing and invited him to accompany her boys in their act. Benny's parents refused to let their son go on the road at 17, but it was the beginning of his long friendship with the Marx Brothers, especially Zeppo Marx.
The next year, Benny formed a vaudeville musical duo with pianist Cora Folsom Salisbury, a buxom 45-year-old divorcée who needed a partner for her act. This angered famous violinist Jan Kubelik, who feared that the young vaudevillian with a similar name would damage his reputation. Under legal pressure, Benjamin Kubelsky agreed to change his name to Ben K. Benny, sometimes spelled Bennie. When Salisbury left the act, Benny found a new pianist, Lyman Woods, and renamed the act "From Grand Opera to Ragtime." They worked together for five years and slowly integrated comedy elements into the show. They reached the Palace Theater, the "Mecca of Vaudeville," and did not do well. Benny left show business briefly in 1917 to join the United States Navy during World War I, often entertaining fellow sailors with his violin playing. One evening, his violin performance was booed by the sailors, so with prompting from fellow sailor and actor Pat O'Brien, he ad-libbed his way out of the jam and left them laughing. He received more comedy spots in the revues and did well, earning a reputation as a comedian and musician. Despite stories to the contrary, no reliable evidence indicates Jack Benny was aboard during the 1915 Eastland disaster or scheduled to be on the excursion; possibly the basis for this report was that Eastland was a training vessel during World War I and Benny received his training in the Great Lakes naval base where Eastland was stationed.
Shortly after the war, Benny developed a one-man act, "Ben K. Benny: Fiddle Funology." He then received legal pressure from Ben Bernie, a "patter-and-fiddle" performer, regarding his name, so he adopted the sailor's nickname of Jack. By 1921, the fiddle was more of a prop, and the low-key comedy took over.
Benny had some romantic encounters, including one with dancer Mary Kelly, whose devoutly Catholic family forced her to turn down his proposal because he was Jewish. Benny was introduced to Kelly by Gracie Allen.
In 1922, Benny accompanied Zeppo Marx to a Passover Seder in Vancouver at the residence where he met 17-year-old Sadie Marks (whose family was friends with, but not related to, the Marx family). Their first meeting did not go well when he tried to leave during Sadie's violin performance. They met again in 1926. Jack had not remembered their earlier meeting and instantly fell for her. They married the following year. She was working in the hosiery section of the Hollywood Boulevard branch of the May Company, where Benny courted her. Called on to fill in for the "dumb girl" part in a Benny routine, Sadie proved to be a natural comedienne. Adopting the stage name Mary Livingstone, Sadie collaborated with Benny throughout most of his career. They later adopted a daughter, Joan (1934-2021). Sadie's older sister Babe would often be the target of jokes about unattractive or masculine women, while her younger brother Hilliard would later produce Benny's radio and TV work.
In 1929, Benny's agent, Sam Lyons, convinced Irving Thalberg, American film producer at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, to watch Benny at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles. Benny signed a five-year contract with MGM, where his first role was in The Hollywood Revue of 1929. The next film, Chasing Rainbows, did not do well, and after several months Benny was released from his contract and returned to Broadway in Earl Carroll's Vanities. At first dubious about the viability of radio, Benny grew eager to break into the new medium. In 1932, after a four-week nightclub run, he was invited onto Ed Sullivan's radio program, uttering his first radio spiel "This is Jack Benny talking. There will be a slight pause while you say, 'Who cares?
Radio
Benny had been a minor vaudeville performer before becoming a national figure with The Jack Benny Program, a weekly radio show that ran from 1932 to 1948 on NBC and from 1949 to 1955 on CBS. It was among the most highly rated programs during its run.
Benny's long radio career began on April 6, 1932, when the NBC Commercial Program Department auditioned him for the N. W. Ayer & Son agency and their client, Canada Dry, after which Bertha Brainard, head of the division, said, "We think Mr. Benny is excellent for radio and, while the audition was unassisted as far as orchestra was concerned, we believe he would make a great bet for an air program." Recalling the experience in 1956, Benny said Ed Sullivan had invited him to guest on his program (1932), and "the agency for Canada Dry ginger ale heard me and offered me a job."
With Canada Dry ginger ale as a sponsor, Benny came to radio on The Canada Dry Program, on May 2, 1932, broadcast on Mondays and Wednesdays on the NBC Blue Network, featuring George Olsen and his orchestra. After a few shows, Benny hired Harry Conn as writer. The show continued on Blue for six months until October 26, moving to CBS on October 30, now airing Thursdays and Sundays. With Ted Weems leading the band, Benny stayed on CBS until January 26, 1933, when Canada Dry opted not to renew Benny's contract after it attempted to replace Conn with Sid Silvers, who would have also gotten a co-starring role. Unlike later incarnations of the Benny show, The Canada Dry Program was primarily a musical program.
Benny then appeared on The Chevrolet Program, airing on the NBC Red Network between March 17, 1933 until April 1, 1934, initially airing on Fridays (replacing Al Jolson), moving to Sunday nights in the fall. The show, which featured Benny and Livingstone alongside Frank Black's orchestra and vocalists James Melton and (later) Frank Parker, ended after General Motors' president insisted on a musical program. He continued with sponsor General Tire on Fridays through the end of September.
The show switched networks to CBS on January 2, 1949, as part of CBS president William S. Paley's notorious "raid" on NBC talent in 1948–1949. It stayed there for the remainder of its radio run, ending on May 22, 1955. CBS aired repeat episodes from 1956 to 1958 as The Best of Benny.
Television
After making his television debut in 1949 on local Los Angeles station KTTV, then a CBS affiliate, the network television version of The Jack Benny Program ran from October 28, 1950, to 1965, all but the last season on CBS. Initially scheduled as a series of five "specials" during the 1950–1951 season, the show appeared every six weeks for the 1951–1952 season, every four weeks for the 1952–1953 season and every three weeks in 1953–1954. For the 1953–1954 season, half the episodes were live and half were filmed during the summer, to allow Benny to continue doing his radio show. From the fall of 1954 to 1960, it appeared every other week, and from 1960 to 1965 it was seen weekly.
On March 28, 1954, Benny co-hosted General Foods 25th Anniversary Show: A Salute to Rodgers and Hammerstein with Groucho Marx and Mary Martin. In September 1954, CBS premiered Chrysler's Shower of Stars co-hosted by Jack Benny and William Lundigan. It enjoyed a successful run from 1954 until 1958. Both television shows often overlapped the radio show. In fact, the radio show alluded frequently to its television counterparts. Often as not, Benny would sign off the radio show in such circumstances with the line "Well, good night, folks. I'll see you on television."
When Benny moved to television, audiences learned that his verbal talent was matched by his controlled repertory of dead-pan facial expressions and gesture. The program was similar to the radio show (several of the radio scripts were recycled for television, as was somewhat common with other radio shows that moved to television), but with the addition of visual gags. Lucky Strike was the sponsor. Benny did his opening and closing monologues before a live audience, which he regarded as essential to timing of the material. As in other TV comedy shows, a laugh track was added to "sweeten" the soundtrack, as when the studio audience missed some close-up comedy because of cameras or microphones obstructing their view. Television viewers became accustomed to live without Mary Livingstone, who was afflicted by a striking case of stage fright that didn't lessen even after performing with Benny for 20 years. Hence, Livingstone appeared rarely if at all on the television show. In fact, for the last few years of the radio show, she pre-recorded her lines and Jack and Mary's daughter, Joan, stood in for the live taping, with Mary's lines later edited into the tape replacing Joan's before broadcast. Mary Livingstone finally retired from show business permanently in 1958, as her friend Gracie Allen had done.
Benny's television program relied more on guest stars and less on his regulars than his radio program. In fact, the only radio cast members who appeared regularly on the television program as well were Don Wilson and Eddie Anderson. Singer Dennis Day appeared sporadically, and Harris had left the radio program in 1952, although he did make a guest appearance on the television show (Bob Crosby, Phil's "replacement", frequently appeared on television through 1956). A frequent guest was the Canadian-born singer-violinist Gisele Mackenzie.
As a gag, Benny made a 1957 appearance on the then-wildly popular $64,000 Question. His category of choice was "Violins", but after answering the first question correctly Benny opted out of continuing, leaving the show with just $64; host Hal March gave Benny the prize money out of his own pocket. March made an appearance on Benny's show the same year.
Benny was able to attract guests who rarely, if ever, appeared on television. In 1953, both Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart made their television debuts on Benny's program.
Another guest star on the Jack Benny show was Rod Serling, who starred in a spoof of The Twilight Zone in which Benny goes to his own house and finds that no one knows who he is; Jack runs away screaming in panic; Serling breaks the fourth wall and remarks not to worry about Benny on the grounds that anyone who has been 39 years old as long as he has is a citizen of the "Twilo Zone."
Canadian singer Gisele MacKenzie, who toured with Benny in the early 1950s, guest starred seven times on The Jack Benny Program. Benny was so impressed with MacKenzie's talents that he served as co-executive producer and guest starred on her 1957–1958 NBC variety show, The Gisele MacKenzie Show.
In 1964, Walt Disney was a guest, primarily to promote his production of Mary Poppins. Benny persuaded Disney to give him over 110 free admission tickets to Disneyland for his friends and one for his wife, but later in the show Disney apparently sent his pet tiger after Benny as revenge, at which point Benny opened his umbrella and soared above the stage like Mary Poppins.
In due course the ratings game finally got to Benny, too. CBS dropped the show in 1964, citing Benny's lack of appeal to the younger demographic the network began courting, and he went to NBC, his original network, in the fall, only to be out-rated by CBS's Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. The network dropped Benny at the end of the season. He continued to make occasional specials into the 1970s, the last one airing in January 1974. Benny also appeared on The Lucy Show twice: Once as a plumber who resembles Jack Benny and in 1967 "Lucy Gets Jack Benny's account" where Lucy takes Jack on a tour of his new money vault. In the late 1960s, Benny did a series of commercials for Texaco Sky Chief gasoline, using his "stingy" television persona, always telling the attendant after being implored, "Jack Benny, won't you please fill up?", "I'll take a gallon."
In his unpublished autobiography, I Always Had Shoes (portions of which were later incorporated by Jack's daughter, Joan Benny, into her memoir of her parents, Sunday Nights at Seven), Benny said that he, not NBC, made the decision to end his TV series in 1965. He said that while the ratings were still very good (he cited a figure of some 18 million viewers per week, although he qualified that figure by saying he never believed the ratings services were doing anything more than guessing, no matter what they promised), advertisers were complaining that commercial time on his show was costing nearly twice as much as what they paid for most other shows, and he had grown tired of what was called the "rate race." Thus, after some three decades on radio and television in a weekly program, Jack Benny went out on top. In fairness, Benny himself shared Fred Allen's ambivalence about television, though not quite to Allen's extent. "By my second year in television, I saw that the camera was a man-eating monster ... It gave a performer close-up exposure that, week after week, threatened his existence as an interesting entertainer."
In a joint appearance with Phil Silvers on Dick Cavett's show, Benny recalled that he had advised Silvers not to appear on television. However, Silvers ignored Benny's advice and proceeded to win several Emmy awards as Sergeant Bilko on the popular series The Phil Silvers Show.
Films
Benny also acted in films, including the Academy Award-winning The Hollywood Revue of 1929, Broadway Melody of 1936 (as a benign nemesis for Eleanor Powell and Robert Taylor), George Washington Slept Here (1942), and notably, Charley's Aunt (1941) and To Be or Not to Be (1942). He and Livingstone also appeared in Ed Sullivan's Mr. Broadway (1933) as themselves. Benny often parodied contemporary films and genres on the radio program, and the 1940 film Buck Benny Rides Again features all the main radio characters in a funny Western parody adapted from program skits. The failure of one cinematic Benny vehicle, The Horn Blows at Midnight, became a running gag on his radio and television programs, although contemporary viewers may not find the film as disappointing as the jokes suggest.
Benny may have had an uncredited cameo role in Casablanca, claimed by a contemporary newspaper article and advertisement and reportedly in the Casablanca press book. When asked in his column "Movie Answer Man", film critic Roger Ebert first replied, "It looks something like him. That's all I can say." He wrote in a later column, "I think you're right."
Benny also was caricatured in several Warner Brothers cartoons including Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur (1939, as Casper the Caveman), I Love to Singa, Slap Happy Pappy, and Goofy Groceries (1936, 1940, and 1941 respectively, as Jack Bunny), Malibu Beach Party (1940, as himself), and The Mouse that Jack Built (1959). The last of these is probably the most memorable: Robert McKimson engaged Benny and his actual cast (Mary Livingstone, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, and Don Wilson) to do the voices for the mouse versions of their characters, with Mel Blanc—the usual Warner Brothers cartoon voicemeister—reprising his old vocal turn as the always-aging Maxwell, always a phat-phat-bang! away from collapse. In the cartoon, Benny and Livingstone agree to spend their anniversary at the Kit-Kat Club, which they discover the hard way is inside the mouth of a live cat. Before the cat can devour the mice, Benny himself awakens from his dream, then shakes his head, smiles wryly, and mutters, "Imagine, me and Mary as little mice." Then, he glances toward the cat lying on a throw rug in a corner and sees his and Livingstone's cartoon alter egos scampering out of the cat's mouth. The cartoon ends with a classic Benny look of befuddlement. It was rumored that Benny requested that, in lieu of monetary compensation, he receive a copy of the finished film.
Benny made a cameo appearance in It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
Final years
After his broadcasting career ended, Benny performed live as a standup comedian.
In the 1960s Benny was the headlining act at Harrah's Lake Tahoe with performer Harry James, and Vocalist Ray Vasquez.
Benny made one of his final television appearances on January 23, 1974, as a guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, the day before his final television special aired. Benny was preparing to star in the film version of Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys when his health failed later the same year. He prevailed upon his longtime best friend, George Burns, to take his place on a nightclub tour while preparing for the film. Burns ultimately had to replace Benny in the film as well, going on to win an Academy Award for his performance.
Despite his failing health, Benny would go on to make one last appearance on The Tonight Show on August 21, 1974 with Rich Little as guest host. Benny also made several appearances on The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast in his final 18 months, roasting Ronald Reagan, Johnny Carson, Bob Hope and Lucille Ball, in addition to himself being roasted in February 1974. The Lucille Ball roast, his last public performance, aired on February 7, 1975, several weeks after his death.
Death
In October 1974, Benny cancelled a performance in Dallas after suffering a dizzy spell, coupled with numbness in his arms. Despite a battery of tests, Benny's ailment could not be determined. When he complained of stomach pains in early December, a first test showed nothing, but a subsequent examination showed that he had inoperable pancreatic cancer. Benny went into a coma at home on December 22, 1974. While in a coma, he was visited by close friends including George Burns, Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Carson, John Rowles and then Governor Ronald Reagan. He died on December 26, 1974, at age 80. At the funeral, Burns, Benny's best friend for more than fifty years, attempted to deliver a eulogy but broke down shortly after he began and was unable to continue. Hope also delivered a eulogy in which he stated, "For a man who was the undisputed master of comedic timing, you would have to say this is the only time when Jack Benny's timing was all wrong. He left us much too soon." Benny was interred in a crypt at Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California. His will arranged for a single long-stemmed red rose to be delivered to his widow, Mary Livingstone, every day for the rest of her life. Livingstone died eight and a half years later on June 30, 1983, at the age of 78.
In trying to explain his successful life, Benny summed it up by stating: "Everything good that happened to me happened by accident. I was not filled with ambition nor fired by a drive toward a clear-cut goal. I never knew exactly where I was going."
Upon his death, Benny's family donated his personal, professional and business papers, as well as a collection of his television shows, to UCLA. The university established the Jack Benny Award for Comedy in his honor in 1977 to recognize outstanding people in the field of comedy. Johnny Carson was the first award recipient. Benny also donated a Stradivarius violin (purchased in 1957) to the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. Benny had quipped, "If it isn't a $30,000 Strad, I'm out $120."
Honors and tributes
In 1960, Benny was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame with three stars. His stars for television and motion pictures are located at 6370 and 6650 Hollywood Boulevard, respectively, and at 1505 Vine Street for radio. He was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1988 and the National Radio Hall of Fame in 1989. He was also inducted into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame.
Benny was inducted as a laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the Order of Lincoln (the state's highest honor) by the governor of Illinois in 1972 in the area of the performing arts.
When the price of a standard first-class U.S. postal stamp was increased to 39 cents in 2006, fans petitioned for a Jack Benny stamp to honor his stage persona's perpetual age. The U.S. Postal Service had issued a stamp depicting Benny in 1991 as part of a booklet of stamps honoring comedians; however, the stamp was issued at the then-current rate of 29 cents.
Jack Benny Middle School in Waukegan is named after Benny. Its motto matches his famous statement as "Home of the '39ers." A statue of Benny with his violin stands in downtown Waukegan.
The British comedian Benny Hill, whose original name was Alfred Hawthorne Hill, changed his name as a tribute to Jack Benny.
He was mentioned by Doc Brown in Back to the Future in which he guesses who would be Secretary of the Treasury by 1985, not believing Ronald Reagan was President of the United States of America. In reality, Benny died before 1985.
Filmography
Selected radio appearances
References
Further reading
The New York Times, April 16, 1953, p. 43, "Jack Benny plans more work on TV"
The New York Times, March 16, 1960, p. 75, "Canned laughter: Comedians are crying on the inside about CBS rule that public know of its use"
Jack Benny, Mary Livingstone Benny, Hilliard Marks with Marcia Borie, Doubleday & Company, 1978, 322 p.
Sunday Nights at Seven: The Jack Benny Story, Jack Benny and Joan Benny, Warner Books, 1990, 302 p.
CBS: Reflections in a Bloodshot Eye, by Robert Metz, New American Library, 1978.
The Laugh Crafters: Comedy Writing in Radio and TV's Golden Age, by Jordan R. Young; Past Times Publishing, 1999.
Well! Reflections on the Life and Career of Jack Benny, edited by Michael Leannah, BearManor Media, 2007.
Jack Benny v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 25 T.C. 197 (1955).
Balzer, George. They'll Break Your Heart (unpublished autobiography, undated), available at jackbenny.org.
Hilmes, M. (1997). Radio voices American broadcasting, 1922–1952. Minnesota Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Josefsberg, Milt. (1977) The Jack Benny Show. New Rochelle: Arlington House.
Leannah, Michael, editor. (2007) Well! Reflections on the Life and Career of Jack Benny. BearManor Media. Contributing authors: Frank Bresee, Clair Schulz, Kay Linaker, Janine Marr, Pam Munter, Mark Higgins, B. J. Borsody, Charles A. Beckett, Jordan R. Young, Philip G. Harwood, Noell Wolfgram Evans, Jack Benny, Michael Leannah, Steve Newvine, Ron Sayles, Kathryn Fuller-Seeley, Marc Reed, Derek Tague, Michael J. Hayde, Steve Thompson, Michael Mildredson
Wise, James. Stars in Blue: Movie Actors in America's Sea Services. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997.
Zolotow, Maurice. "Jack Benny: the fine art of self-disparagement" in Zolotow, No People Like Show People, Random House (New York: 1951); rpt Bantam Books (New York: 1952).
External links
Jack Benny at the National Radio Hall of Fame
Jack Benny Fred Allen Feud
International Jack Benny Fan Club
Jack Benny on grubstreet.ca
Copies of Jack Benny's Radio and TV scripts, with handwritten edits
Jack Benny Center for the Arts (archived)
Jack Benny papers at the University of Wyoming—American Heritage Center
FBI file on Jack Benny
Audio
All available Jack Benny radio programs in mp3
Jack Benny Show – OTR Podcast
Video
1894 births
1974 deaths
20th-century American comedians
20th-century American male actors
20th-century American male musicians
20th-century American musicians
20th-century violinists
Actors from Waukegan, Illinois
American male comedy actors
American male film actors
American male radio actors
American male television actors
American male violinists
American people of Lithuanian-Jewish descent
American people of Polish-Jewish descent
American radio personalities
American stand-up comedians
Television personalities from Los Angeles
American violinists
Burials at Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery
Comedians from California
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Deaths from cancer in California
Deaths from pancreatic cancer
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Military personnel from Illinois
Outstanding Performance by a Lead Actor in a Comedy Series Primetime Emmy Award winners
Peabody Award winners
People from Bel Air, Los Angeles
United States Navy personnel of World War I
Vaudeville performers
20th-century American Jews | true | [
"Ndyakira Ntamuhiira Amooti ( – 25 August 1999) was a Ugandan children's writer, journalist and environmentalist, awarded the Global 500 Roll of Honour and winner of the Goldman Environment Prize.\n\nLife and career\nAmooti worked as a journalist for the Kampala newspaper The New Vision from 1986. He lived in a village in the Ibanda District. He reported on various environmental issues, such as endangered mountain gorillas, the forests of Bwindi, and illegal mining and poaching. He also called attention to the business of smuggling of rare animals for the purpose of exposition or laboratory experiments, in particular endangered chimpanzees and parrots. In 1993, he was awarded the Global 500 Roll of Honour of the United Nations Environment Programme. He was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize in 1996. He later focused on forest protection and on the environment of Lake Victoria.\n\nHe published the children's book What a Country Without Animals! in 1998, and has also published the books What a Country Without Birds, What a Country Without Grasslands, and What a Country Without Wetlands. The books are about environmental issues, written for children from nine to twelve years old, and the story's principal character is the young man \"Kazoora\".\n\nAmooti died from leukemia in 1999, 43 years old. In accordance with his wishes, he was buried without a coffin, with his body being wrapped in a palm-leaf mat.\n\nHe is regarded as a pioneer in the awareness of environmental issues in Uganda. At the World Wetlands Day in 2008, Amooti was honored with a memorial lecture.\n\nSelected works\nChildren's books\n What a Country Without Animals\n What a Country Without Birds\n What a Country Without Grasslands\n What a Country Without Wetlands\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n \n\n\"\n\nYear of birth missing\n1950s births\n1999 deaths\nPeople from Ibanda District\nUgandan journalists\nEnvironmental journalists\nNon-fiction environmental writers\nUgandan children's writers\nDeaths from leukemia\nDeaths from cancer in Uganda\n20th-century journalists\nGoldman Environmental Prize awardees",
"Now That's What I Call Country Volume 5 is an album from the Now! series released in the United States on June 12, 2012.\n\nCritical reception\n\nSteve Leggett of Allmusic says the fifth installment in the Now That's What I Call Country series \"provides a pretty accurate template of contemporary country music on the airwaves a decade and some change into the 21st century.\"\n\nTrack listing\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nReferences\n\nCountry 05\nCountry music compilation albums\n2012 compilation albums"
] |
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"At some point he developed a miserly persona.",
"what other characters did he play",
"Benny set himself up as comedic foil,",
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"his show.",
"what country",
"Hollywood"
] | C_ba2f4e4587194625aaaea4afd0fcb333_0 | what awards did he receive | 5 | what awards did Jack Benny receive? | Jack Benny | Benny's comic persona changed over the course of his career. At some point he developed a miserly persona. This stage character was everything that Jack Benny was not: cheap, petty, vain and self-congratulatory. His comic rendering of these traits was the linchpin to the success of his show. Benny set himself up as comedic foil, allowing his supporting characters to draw laughs at the expense of his own flaws. With his humanism and vulnerability in an era where few male characters were allowed such character traits, Benny made what could have been unlikable into an everyman character. Benny said: "I don't care who gets the laughs on my show, as long as the show is funny." Benny felt he got the credit or blame either way, not the actor saying the lines, so there was emphasis on the comedic bottom line. This attitude reached its apogee in a broadcast structured as a Hollywood bus tour of the stars' homes. Each "stop" on the tour was at a house belonging to one of the show's supporting cast, who would then have a scene which included jokes about the absent Benny. Not until the final moments of the program did the bus arrive at Jack Benny's house, at which point the listening audience heard Benny's only line of the episode: "Driver, here's where I get off." Few stars possessed the combination of daring, humility and comic timing to commit to such an extended payoff. Mary Livingstone, his wife, was a supporting character, as his wisecracking and not especially deferential female friend. She was not quite his girlfriend, since Benny would often try to date movie stars like Barbara Stanwyck, and occasionally had stage girlfriends, such as "Gladys Zybisco". Don Wilson, the rotund announcer, also appeared on the show. He also announced for Fanny Brice's hit Baby Snooks. Bandleader Phil Harris appeared as a jive talking, alcoholic philanderer whose repartee was profoundly risque for its time. Boy tenor Dennis Day appeared as a sheltered, naive youth who often got the better of his boss. This character was originated by Kenny Baker whom Day replaced. Singer Larry Stevens replaced Dennis Day from November 5, 1944 to March 10, 1946, while the latter served in the Navy. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Benjamin Kubelsky (February 14, 1894 – December 26, 1974), known professionally as Jack Benny, was an American entertainer, who evolved from a modest success playing violin on the vaudeville circuit to one of the leading entertainers of the twentieth century with a highly popular comedic career in radio, television, and film. He was known for his comic timing and the ability to cause laughter with a pregnant pause or a single expression, such as his signature exasperated "Well!"
His radio and television programs, popular from 1932 until his death in 1974, were a major influence on the sitcom genre. Benny often portrayed his character as a miser who obliviously played his violin badly and ridiculously claimed to be 39 years of age, regardless of his actual age.
Early life
Benny was born Benjamin Kubelsky in Chicago on February 14, 1894, and grew up in nearby Waukegan. He was the son of Jewish immigrants Meyer Kubelsky (1864–1946) and Emma Sachs Kubelsky (1869–1917), sometimes called "Naomi." Meyer was a saloon owner and later a haberdasher who had emigrated to America from Poland. Emma had emigrated from Lithuania. At the age of 6, Benny began studying violin, an instrument that became his trademark; his parents hoped for him to become a professional violinist. He loved the instrument but hated to practice. His music teacher was Otto Graham Sr., a neighbor and father of football player Otto Graham. At 14, Benny was playing in dance bands and his high school orchestra. He was a dreamer and poor at his studies, ultimately getting expelled from high school. He later did poorly in business school and in attempts to join his father's business. In 1911, he began playing the violin in local vaudeville theaters for $7.50 a week (about $ in 2020 dollars). He was joined on the circuit by Ned Miller, a young composer and singer.
That same year, Benny was playing in the same theater as the young Marx Brothers. Minnie, their mother, enjoyed Benny's violin playing and invited him to accompany her boys in their act. Benny's parents refused to let their son go on the road at 17, but it was the beginning of his long friendship with the Marx Brothers, especially Zeppo Marx.
The next year, Benny formed a vaudeville musical duo with pianist Cora Folsom Salisbury, a buxom 45-year-old divorcée who needed a partner for her act. This angered famous violinist Jan Kubelik, who feared that the young vaudevillian with a similar name would damage his reputation. Under legal pressure, Benjamin Kubelsky agreed to change his name to Ben K. Benny, sometimes spelled Bennie. When Salisbury left the act, Benny found a new pianist, Lyman Woods, and renamed the act "From Grand Opera to Ragtime." They worked together for five years and slowly integrated comedy elements into the show. They reached the Palace Theater, the "Mecca of Vaudeville," and did not do well. Benny left show business briefly in 1917 to join the United States Navy during World War I, often entertaining fellow sailors with his violin playing. One evening, his violin performance was booed by the sailors, so with prompting from fellow sailor and actor Pat O'Brien, he ad-libbed his way out of the jam and left them laughing. He received more comedy spots in the revues and did well, earning a reputation as a comedian and musician. Despite stories to the contrary, no reliable evidence indicates Jack Benny was aboard during the 1915 Eastland disaster or scheduled to be on the excursion; possibly the basis for this report was that Eastland was a training vessel during World War I and Benny received his training in the Great Lakes naval base where Eastland was stationed.
Shortly after the war, Benny developed a one-man act, "Ben K. Benny: Fiddle Funology." He then received legal pressure from Ben Bernie, a "patter-and-fiddle" performer, regarding his name, so he adopted the sailor's nickname of Jack. By 1921, the fiddle was more of a prop, and the low-key comedy took over.
Benny had some romantic encounters, including one with dancer Mary Kelly, whose devoutly Catholic family forced her to turn down his proposal because he was Jewish. Benny was introduced to Kelly by Gracie Allen.
In 1922, Benny accompanied Zeppo Marx to a Passover Seder in Vancouver at the residence where he met 17-year-old Sadie Marks (whose family was friends with, but not related to, the Marx family). Their first meeting did not go well when he tried to leave during Sadie's violin performance. They met again in 1926. Jack had not remembered their earlier meeting and instantly fell for her. They married the following year. She was working in the hosiery section of the Hollywood Boulevard branch of the May Company, where Benny courted her. Called on to fill in for the "dumb girl" part in a Benny routine, Sadie proved to be a natural comedienne. Adopting the stage name Mary Livingstone, Sadie collaborated with Benny throughout most of his career. They later adopted a daughter, Joan (1934-2021). Sadie's older sister Babe would often be the target of jokes about unattractive or masculine women, while her younger brother Hilliard would later produce Benny's radio and TV work.
In 1929, Benny's agent, Sam Lyons, convinced Irving Thalberg, American film producer at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, to watch Benny at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles. Benny signed a five-year contract with MGM, where his first role was in The Hollywood Revue of 1929. The next film, Chasing Rainbows, did not do well, and after several months Benny was released from his contract and returned to Broadway in Earl Carroll's Vanities. At first dubious about the viability of radio, Benny grew eager to break into the new medium. In 1932, after a four-week nightclub run, he was invited onto Ed Sullivan's radio program, uttering his first radio spiel "This is Jack Benny talking. There will be a slight pause while you say, 'Who cares?
Radio
Benny had been a minor vaudeville performer before becoming a national figure with The Jack Benny Program, a weekly radio show that ran from 1932 to 1948 on NBC and from 1949 to 1955 on CBS. It was among the most highly rated programs during its run.
Benny's long radio career began on April 6, 1932, when the NBC Commercial Program Department auditioned him for the N. W. Ayer & Son agency and their client, Canada Dry, after which Bertha Brainard, head of the division, said, "We think Mr. Benny is excellent for radio and, while the audition was unassisted as far as orchestra was concerned, we believe he would make a great bet for an air program." Recalling the experience in 1956, Benny said Ed Sullivan had invited him to guest on his program (1932), and "the agency for Canada Dry ginger ale heard me and offered me a job."
With Canada Dry ginger ale as a sponsor, Benny came to radio on The Canada Dry Program, on May 2, 1932, broadcast on Mondays and Wednesdays on the NBC Blue Network, featuring George Olsen and his orchestra. After a few shows, Benny hired Harry Conn as writer. The show continued on Blue for six months until October 26, moving to CBS on October 30, now airing Thursdays and Sundays. With Ted Weems leading the band, Benny stayed on CBS until January 26, 1933, when Canada Dry opted not to renew Benny's contract after it attempted to replace Conn with Sid Silvers, who would have also gotten a co-starring role. Unlike later incarnations of the Benny show, The Canada Dry Program was primarily a musical program.
Benny then appeared on The Chevrolet Program, airing on the NBC Red Network between March 17, 1933 until April 1, 1934, initially airing on Fridays (replacing Al Jolson), moving to Sunday nights in the fall. The show, which featured Benny and Livingstone alongside Frank Black's orchestra and vocalists James Melton and (later) Frank Parker, ended after General Motors' president insisted on a musical program. He continued with sponsor General Tire on Fridays through the end of September.
The show switched networks to CBS on January 2, 1949, as part of CBS president William S. Paley's notorious "raid" on NBC talent in 1948–1949. It stayed there for the remainder of its radio run, ending on May 22, 1955. CBS aired repeat episodes from 1956 to 1958 as The Best of Benny.
Television
After making his television debut in 1949 on local Los Angeles station KTTV, then a CBS affiliate, the network television version of The Jack Benny Program ran from October 28, 1950, to 1965, all but the last season on CBS. Initially scheduled as a series of five "specials" during the 1950–1951 season, the show appeared every six weeks for the 1951–1952 season, every four weeks for the 1952–1953 season and every three weeks in 1953–1954. For the 1953–1954 season, half the episodes were live and half were filmed during the summer, to allow Benny to continue doing his radio show. From the fall of 1954 to 1960, it appeared every other week, and from 1960 to 1965 it was seen weekly.
On March 28, 1954, Benny co-hosted General Foods 25th Anniversary Show: A Salute to Rodgers and Hammerstein with Groucho Marx and Mary Martin. In September 1954, CBS premiered Chrysler's Shower of Stars co-hosted by Jack Benny and William Lundigan. It enjoyed a successful run from 1954 until 1958. Both television shows often overlapped the radio show. In fact, the radio show alluded frequently to its television counterparts. Often as not, Benny would sign off the radio show in such circumstances with the line "Well, good night, folks. I'll see you on television."
When Benny moved to television, audiences learned that his verbal talent was matched by his controlled repertory of dead-pan facial expressions and gesture. The program was similar to the radio show (several of the radio scripts were recycled for television, as was somewhat common with other radio shows that moved to television), but with the addition of visual gags. Lucky Strike was the sponsor. Benny did his opening and closing monologues before a live audience, which he regarded as essential to timing of the material. As in other TV comedy shows, a laugh track was added to "sweeten" the soundtrack, as when the studio audience missed some close-up comedy because of cameras or microphones obstructing their view. Television viewers became accustomed to live without Mary Livingstone, who was afflicted by a striking case of stage fright that didn't lessen even after performing with Benny for 20 years. Hence, Livingstone appeared rarely if at all on the television show. In fact, for the last few years of the radio show, she pre-recorded her lines and Jack and Mary's daughter, Joan, stood in for the live taping, with Mary's lines later edited into the tape replacing Joan's before broadcast. Mary Livingstone finally retired from show business permanently in 1958, as her friend Gracie Allen had done.
Benny's television program relied more on guest stars and less on his regulars than his radio program. In fact, the only radio cast members who appeared regularly on the television program as well were Don Wilson and Eddie Anderson. Singer Dennis Day appeared sporadically, and Harris had left the radio program in 1952, although he did make a guest appearance on the television show (Bob Crosby, Phil's "replacement", frequently appeared on television through 1956). A frequent guest was the Canadian-born singer-violinist Gisele Mackenzie.
As a gag, Benny made a 1957 appearance on the then-wildly popular $64,000 Question. His category of choice was "Violins", but after answering the first question correctly Benny opted out of continuing, leaving the show with just $64; host Hal March gave Benny the prize money out of his own pocket. March made an appearance on Benny's show the same year.
Benny was able to attract guests who rarely, if ever, appeared on television. In 1953, both Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart made their television debuts on Benny's program.
Another guest star on the Jack Benny show was Rod Serling, who starred in a spoof of The Twilight Zone in which Benny goes to his own house and finds that no one knows who he is; Jack runs away screaming in panic; Serling breaks the fourth wall and remarks not to worry about Benny on the grounds that anyone who has been 39 years old as long as he has is a citizen of the "Twilo Zone."
Canadian singer Gisele MacKenzie, who toured with Benny in the early 1950s, guest starred seven times on The Jack Benny Program. Benny was so impressed with MacKenzie's talents that he served as co-executive producer and guest starred on her 1957–1958 NBC variety show, The Gisele MacKenzie Show.
In 1964, Walt Disney was a guest, primarily to promote his production of Mary Poppins. Benny persuaded Disney to give him over 110 free admission tickets to Disneyland for his friends and one for his wife, but later in the show Disney apparently sent his pet tiger after Benny as revenge, at which point Benny opened his umbrella and soared above the stage like Mary Poppins.
In due course the ratings game finally got to Benny, too. CBS dropped the show in 1964, citing Benny's lack of appeal to the younger demographic the network began courting, and he went to NBC, his original network, in the fall, only to be out-rated by CBS's Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. The network dropped Benny at the end of the season. He continued to make occasional specials into the 1970s, the last one airing in January 1974. Benny also appeared on The Lucy Show twice: Once as a plumber who resembles Jack Benny and in 1967 "Lucy Gets Jack Benny's account" where Lucy takes Jack on a tour of his new money vault. In the late 1960s, Benny did a series of commercials for Texaco Sky Chief gasoline, using his "stingy" television persona, always telling the attendant after being implored, "Jack Benny, won't you please fill up?", "I'll take a gallon."
In his unpublished autobiography, I Always Had Shoes (portions of which were later incorporated by Jack's daughter, Joan Benny, into her memoir of her parents, Sunday Nights at Seven), Benny said that he, not NBC, made the decision to end his TV series in 1965. He said that while the ratings were still very good (he cited a figure of some 18 million viewers per week, although he qualified that figure by saying he never believed the ratings services were doing anything more than guessing, no matter what they promised), advertisers were complaining that commercial time on his show was costing nearly twice as much as what they paid for most other shows, and he had grown tired of what was called the "rate race." Thus, after some three decades on radio and television in a weekly program, Jack Benny went out on top. In fairness, Benny himself shared Fred Allen's ambivalence about television, though not quite to Allen's extent. "By my second year in television, I saw that the camera was a man-eating monster ... It gave a performer close-up exposure that, week after week, threatened his existence as an interesting entertainer."
In a joint appearance with Phil Silvers on Dick Cavett's show, Benny recalled that he had advised Silvers not to appear on television. However, Silvers ignored Benny's advice and proceeded to win several Emmy awards as Sergeant Bilko on the popular series The Phil Silvers Show.
Films
Benny also acted in films, including the Academy Award-winning The Hollywood Revue of 1929, Broadway Melody of 1936 (as a benign nemesis for Eleanor Powell and Robert Taylor), George Washington Slept Here (1942), and notably, Charley's Aunt (1941) and To Be or Not to Be (1942). He and Livingstone also appeared in Ed Sullivan's Mr. Broadway (1933) as themselves. Benny often parodied contemporary films and genres on the radio program, and the 1940 film Buck Benny Rides Again features all the main radio characters in a funny Western parody adapted from program skits. The failure of one cinematic Benny vehicle, The Horn Blows at Midnight, became a running gag on his radio and television programs, although contemporary viewers may not find the film as disappointing as the jokes suggest.
Benny may have had an uncredited cameo role in Casablanca, claimed by a contemporary newspaper article and advertisement and reportedly in the Casablanca press book. When asked in his column "Movie Answer Man", film critic Roger Ebert first replied, "It looks something like him. That's all I can say." He wrote in a later column, "I think you're right."
Benny also was caricatured in several Warner Brothers cartoons including Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur (1939, as Casper the Caveman), I Love to Singa, Slap Happy Pappy, and Goofy Groceries (1936, 1940, and 1941 respectively, as Jack Bunny), Malibu Beach Party (1940, as himself), and The Mouse that Jack Built (1959). The last of these is probably the most memorable: Robert McKimson engaged Benny and his actual cast (Mary Livingstone, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, and Don Wilson) to do the voices for the mouse versions of their characters, with Mel Blanc—the usual Warner Brothers cartoon voicemeister—reprising his old vocal turn as the always-aging Maxwell, always a phat-phat-bang! away from collapse. In the cartoon, Benny and Livingstone agree to spend their anniversary at the Kit-Kat Club, which they discover the hard way is inside the mouth of a live cat. Before the cat can devour the mice, Benny himself awakens from his dream, then shakes his head, smiles wryly, and mutters, "Imagine, me and Mary as little mice." Then, he glances toward the cat lying on a throw rug in a corner and sees his and Livingstone's cartoon alter egos scampering out of the cat's mouth. The cartoon ends with a classic Benny look of befuddlement. It was rumored that Benny requested that, in lieu of monetary compensation, he receive a copy of the finished film.
Benny made a cameo appearance in It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
Final years
After his broadcasting career ended, Benny performed live as a standup comedian.
In the 1960s Benny was the headlining act at Harrah's Lake Tahoe with performer Harry James, and Vocalist Ray Vasquez.
Benny made one of his final television appearances on January 23, 1974, as a guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, the day before his final television special aired. Benny was preparing to star in the film version of Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys when his health failed later the same year. He prevailed upon his longtime best friend, George Burns, to take his place on a nightclub tour while preparing for the film. Burns ultimately had to replace Benny in the film as well, going on to win an Academy Award for his performance.
Despite his failing health, Benny would go on to make one last appearance on The Tonight Show on August 21, 1974 with Rich Little as guest host. Benny also made several appearances on The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast in his final 18 months, roasting Ronald Reagan, Johnny Carson, Bob Hope and Lucille Ball, in addition to himself being roasted in February 1974. The Lucille Ball roast, his last public performance, aired on February 7, 1975, several weeks after his death.
Death
In October 1974, Benny cancelled a performance in Dallas after suffering a dizzy spell, coupled with numbness in his arms. Despite a battery of tests, Benny's ailment could not be determined. When he complained of stomach pains in early December, a first test showed nothing, but a subsequent examination showed that he had inoperable pancreatic cancer. Benny went into a coma at home on December 22, 1974. While in a coma, he was visited by close friends including George Burns, Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Carson, John Rowles and then Governor Ronald Reagan. He died on December 26, 1974, at age 80. At the funeral, Burns, Benny's best friend for more than fifty years, attempted to deliver a eulogy but broke down shortly after he began and was unable to continue. Hope also delivered a eulogy in which he stated, "For a man who was the undisputed master of comedic timing, you would have to say this is the only time when Jack Benny's timing was all wrong. He left us much too soon." Benny was interred in a crypt at Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California. His will arranged for a single long-stemmed red rose to be delivered to his widow, Mary Livingstone, every day for the rest of her life. Livingstone died eight and a half years later on June 30, 1983, at the age of 78.
In trying to explain his successful life, Benny summed it up by stating: "Everything good that happened to me happened by accident. I was not filled with ambition nor fired by a drive toward a clear-cut goal. I never knew exactly where I was going."
Upon his death, Benny's family donated his personal, professional and business papers, as well as a collection of his television shows, to UCLA. The university established the Jack Benny Award for Comedy in his honor in 1977 to recognize outstanding people in the field of comedy. Johnny Carson was the first award recipient. Benny also donated a Stradivarius violin (purchased in 1957) to the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. Benny had quipped, "If it isn't a $30,000 Strad, I'm out $120."
Honors and tributes
In 1960, Benny was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame with three stars. His stars for television and motion pictures are located at 6370 and 6650 Hollywood Boulevard, respectively, and at 1505 Vine Street for radio. He was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1988 and the National Radio Hall of Fame in 1989. He was also inducted into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame.
Benny was inducted as a laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the Order of Lincoln (the state's highest honor) by the governor of Illinois in 1972 in the area of the performing arts.
When the price of a standard first-class U.S. postal stamp was increased to 39 cents in 2006, fans petitioned for a Jack Benny stamp to honor his stage persona's perpetual age. The U.S. Postal Service had issued a stamp depicting Benny in 1991 as part of a booklet of stamps honoring comedians; however, the stamp was issued at the then-current rate of 29 cents.
Jack Benny Middle School in Waukegan is named after Benny. Its motto matches his famous statement as "Home of the '39ers." A statue of Benny with his violin stands in downtown Waukegan.
The British comedian Benny Hill, whose original name was Alfred Hawthorne Hill, changed his name as a tribute to Jack Benny.
He was mentioned by Doc Brown in Back to the Future in which he guesses who would be Secretary of the Treasury by 1985, not believing Ronald Reagan was President of the United States of America. In reality, Benny died before 1985.
Filmography
Selected radio appearances
References
Further reading
The New York Times, April 16, 1953, p. 43, "Jack Benny plans more work on TV"
The New York Times, March 16, 1960, p. 75, "Canned laughter: Comedians are crying on the inside about CBS rule that public know of its use"
Jack Benny, Mary Livingstone Benny, Hilliard Marks with Marcia Borie, Doubleday & Company, 1978, 322 p.
Sunday Nights at Seven: The Jack Benny Story, Jack Benny and Joan Benny, Warner Books, 1990, 302 p.
CBS: Reflections in a Bloodshot Eye, by Robert Metz, New American Library, 1978.
The Laugh Crafters: Comedy Writing in Radio and TV's Golden Age, by Jordan R. Young; Past Times Publishing, 1999.
Well! Reflections on the Life and Career of Jack Benny, edited by Michael Leannah, BearManor Media, 2007.
Jack Benny v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 25 T.C. 197 (1955).
Balzer, George. They'll Break Your Heart (unpublished autobiography, undated), available at jackbenny.org.
Hilmes, M. (1997). Radio voices American broadcasting, 1922–1952. Minnesota Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Josefsberg, Milt. (1977) The Jack Benny Show. New Rochelle: Arlington House.
Leannah, Michael, editor. (2007) Well! Reflections on the Life and Career of Jack Benny. BearManor Media. Contributing authors: Frank Bresee, Clair Schulz, Kay Linaker, Janine Marr, Pam Munter, Mark Higgins, B. J. Borsody, Charles A. Beckett, Jordan R. Young, Philip G. Harwood, Noell Wolfgram Evans, Jack Benny, Michael Leannah, Steve Newvine, Ron Sayles, Kathryn Fuller-Seeley, Marc Reed, Derek Tague, Michael J. Hayde, Steve Thompson, Michael Mildredson
Wise, James. Stars in Blue: Movie Actors in America's Sea Services. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997.
Zolotow, Maurice. "Jack Benny: the fine art of self-disparagement" in Zolotow, No People Like Show People, Random House (New York: 1951); rpt Bantam Books (New York: 1952).
External links
Jack Benny at the National Radio Hall of Fame
Jack Benny Fred Allen Feud
International Jack Benny Fan Club
Jack Benny on grubstreet.ca
Copies of Jack Benny's Radio and TV scripts, with handwritten edits
Jack Benny Center for the Arts (archived)
Jack Benny papers at the University of Wyoming—American Heritage Center
FBI file on Jack Benny
Audio
All available Jack Benny radio programs in mp3
Jack Benny Show – OTR Podcast
Video
1894 births
1974 deaths
20th-century American comedians
20th-century American male actors
20th-century American male musicians
20th-century American musicians
20th-century violinists
Actors from Waukegan, Illinois
American male comedy actors
American male film actors
American male radio actors
American male television actors
American male violinists
American people of Lithuanian-Jewish descent
American people of Polish-Jewish descent
American radio personalities
American stand-up comedians
Television personalities from Los Angeles
American violinists
Burials at Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery
Comedians from California
Comedians from Illinois
Deaths from cancer in California
Deaths from pancreatic cancer
Golden Globe Award winners
Jewish American comedians
Jewish American male actors
Male actors from Chicago
Military personnel from Illinois
Outstanding Performance by a Lead Actor in a Comedy Series Primetime Emmy Award winners
Peabody Award winners
People from Bel Air, Los Angeles
United States Navy personnel of World War I
Vaudeville performers
20th-century American Jews | false | [
"The 1990 Brit Awards were the 10th edition of the biggest annual pop music awards in the United Kingdom. They are run by the British Phonographic Industry and took place on 18 February 1990. The ceremony was held at the Dominion Theatre in London for the first time, having previously been held at the Royal Albert Hall, and was hosted by Cathy McGowan.\n\nPerformances\nLisa Stansfield – \"All Around the World\"\nNeneh Cherry – \"Manchild\"\nNigel Kennedy – Vivaldi's Four Seasons\nVarious Artists with appearance by The Cookie Crew – \"The Brits 1990 (Dance Medley)\"\nPhil Collins – \"Another Day in Paradise\"\nSoul II Soul – What Is Soul II Soul\n\nWinners and nominees\n\nMultiple nominations and awards\nThe following artists received multiple awards and/or nominations. don't counting Outstanding Contribution to Music.\n\nNotable moments\n\nFreddie Mercury\nThe 1990 Brit Awards saw the final public appearance of Queen frontman Freddie Mercury. Queen appeared at the ceremony to receive the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music. Mercury – who had been suffering from AIDS since 1987 but had not yet disclosed it to the public – did not make a speech, as Brian May did the talking on behalf of the other members, but his gaunt appearance was noticeable. He briefly thanked the public and wished them goodnight before Queen left the stage. Mercury died in November 1991 from complications resulting from AIDS.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n1990 Brit Awards at Brits.co.uk\n\nBrit Awards\n1990 in British music\nBrit Awards\nBrit Awards\nBrit",
"The following is a list of awards and nominations received by Sasha, a Welsh DJ and record producer.\n\nDJ Awards\nThe DJ Awards organises the annual electronic music DJ awards event it is the only international ceremony for DJs and also the oldest, the awards are held once a year at Pacha club in Ibiza Spain it is one of the most important accolades an artist can win or be honoured by.\n\nSasha has won the Best Progressive House DJ Award 3 times, Best Tech House/Progressive DJ Award1 time and received 11 nominations overall.\n\nDJ Magazine Awards\nArtists are nominated to the DJ Magazine Top 100 DJ's list each year the public votes to decide who they rank as the World's No 1 DJ at the end of the poll.\n\nSasha achieved the World's No 1 ranking DJ in 2000 and he stayed in the top 5 for 8 consecutive years, the top 10 for 11 consecutive years.\n\nElectronic Music Awards\nSasha has won one award at the Electronic Music Awards.\n\nGrammy Awards\nIn 2005, the Grammy committee debated whether Sasha's mix compilation album, Involver, was eligible for nomination as Best Electronic/Dance Album. The Recording Academy decided that the album was eligible, but Involver did not receive a nomination. Sasha did receive a Grammy nomination for his remix of Felix da Housecat's \"Watching Cars Go By\", which was featured on Involver.\n\nInternational Dance Music Awards\nAt the annual Winter Music Conference, Sasha has won the \"Best Techno/Trance 12\" award (1999) for the Xpander EP, and \"Best CD Compilation\" awards for Global Underground: Ibiza (1999, 2000) and Involver (2004). He was also nominated in the categories \"Best European DJ\" (2004) and \"Best Remixer\".\n\nSasha has achieved 4 wins from 10 nominations overall.\n\nMuzik Awards\nAt the 1999 Ericsson Muzik Awards, he received an award for \"Outstanding Contributions to Dance Music\".\n\nReferences\n\nBritish music-related lists\nSasha"
] |
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] | C_ba2f4e4587194625aaaea4afd0fcb333_0 | did he have any failures | 6 | did Jack Benny have any failures? | Jack Benny | Benny's comic persona changed over the course of his career. At some point he developed a miserly persona. This stage character was everything that Jack Benny was not: cheap, petty, vain and self-congratulatory. His comic rendering of these traits was the linchpin to the success of his show. Benny set himself up as comedic foil, allowing his supporting characters to draw laughs at the expense of his own flaws. With his humanism and vulnerability in an era where few male characters were allowed such character traits, Benny made what could have been unlikable into an everyman character. Benny said: "I don't care who gets the laughs on my show, as long as the show is funny." Benny felt he got the credit or blame either way, not the actor saying the lines, so there was emphasis on the comedic bottom line. This attitude reached its apogee in a broadcast structured as a Hollywood bus tour of the stars' homes. Each "stop" on the tour was at a house belonging to one of the show's supporting cast, who would then have a scene which included jokes about the absent Benny. Not until the final moments of the program did the bus arrive at Jack Benny's house, at which point the listening audience heard Benny's only line of the episode: "Driver, here's where I get off." Few stars possessed the combination of daring, humility and comic timing to commit to such an extended payoff. Mary Livingstone, his wife, was a supporting character, as his wisecracking and not especially deferential female friend. She was not quite his girlfriend, since Benny would often try to date movie stars like Barbara Stanwyck, and occasionally had stage girlfriends, such as "Gladys Zybisco". Don Wilson, the rotund announcer, also appeared on the show. He also announced for Fanny Brice's hit Baby Snooks. Bandleader Phil Harris appeared as a jive talking, alcoholic philanderer whose repartee was profoundly risque for its time. Boy tenor Dennis Day appeared as a sheltered, naive youth who often got the better of his boss. This character was originated by Kenny Baker whom Day replaced. Singer Larry Stevens replaced Dennis Day from November 5, 1944 to March 10, 1946, while the latter served in the Navy. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Benjamin Kubelsky (February 14, 1894 – December 26, 1974), known professionally as Jack Benny, was an American entertainer, who evolved from a modest success playing violin on the vaudeville circuit to one of the leading entertainers of the twentieth century with a highly popular comedic career in radio, television, and film. He was known for his comic timing and the ability to cause laughter with a pregnant pause or a single expression, such as his signature exasperated "Well!"
His radio and television programs, popular from 1932 until his death in 1974, were a major influence on the sitcom genre. Benny often portrayed his character as a miser who obliviously played his violin badly and ridiculously claimed to be 39 years of age, regardless of his actual age.
Early life
Benny was born Benjamin Kubelsky in Chicago on February 14, 1894, and grew up in nearby Waukegan. He was the son of Jewish immigrants Meyer Kubelsky (1864–1946) and Emma Sachs Kubelsky (1869–1917), sometimes called "Naomi." Meyer was a saloon owner and later a haberdasher who had emigrated to America from Poland. Emma had emigrated from Lithuania. At the age of 6, Benny began studying violin, an instrument that became his trademark; his parents hoped for him to become a professional violinist. He loved the instrument but hated to practice. His music teacher was Otto Graham Sr., a neighbor and father of football player Otto Graham. At 14, Benny was playing in dance bands and his high school orchestra. He was a dreamer and poor at his studies, ultimately getting expelled from high school. He later did poorly in business school and in attempts to join his father's business. In 1911, he began playing the violin in local vaudeville theaters for $7.50 a week (about $ in 2020 dollars). He was joined on the circuit by Ned Miller, a young composer and singer.
That same year, Benny was playing in the same theater as the young Marx Brothers. Minnie, their mother, enjoyed Benny's violin playing and invited him to accompany her boys in their act. Benny's parents refused to let their son go on the road at 17, but it was the beginning of his long friendship with the Marx Brothers, especially Zeppo Marx.
The next year, Benny formed a vaudeville musical duo with pianist Cora Folsom Salisbury, a buxom 45-year-old divorcée who needed a partner for her act. This angered famous violinist Jan Kubelik, who feared that the young vaudevillian with a similar name would damage his reputation. Under legal pressure, Benjamin Kubelsky agreed to change his name to Ben K. Benny, sometimes spelled Bennie. When Salisbury left the act, Benny found a new pianist, Lyman Woods, and renamed the act "From Grand Opera to Ragtime." They worked together for five years and slowly integrated comedy elements into the show. They reached the Palace Theater, the "Mecca of Vaudeville," and did not do well. Benny left show business briefly in 1917 to join the United States Navy during World War I, often entertaining fellow sailors with his violin playing. One evening, his violin performance was booed by the sailors, so with prompting from fellow sailor and actor Pat O'Brien, he ad-libbed his way out of the jam and left them laughing. He received more comedy spots in the revues and did well, earning a reputation as a comedian and musician. Despite stories to the contrary, no reliable evidence indicates Jack Benny was aboard during the 1915 Eastland disaster or scheduled to be on the excursion; possibly the basis for this report was that Eastland was a training vessel during World War I and Benny received his training in the Great Lakes naval base where Eastland was stationed.
Shortly after the war, Benny developed a one-man act, "Ben K. Benny: Fiddle Funology." He then received legal pressure from Ben Bernie, a "patter-and-fiddle" performer, regarding his name, so he adopted the sailor's nickname of Jack. By 1921, the fiddle was more of a prop, and the low-key comedy took over.
Benny had some romantic encounters, including one with dancer Mary Kelly, whose devoutly Catholic family forced her to turn down his proposal because he was Jewish. Benny was introduced to Kelly by Gracie Allen.
In 1922, Benny accompanied Zeppo Marx to a Passover Seder in Vancouver at the residence where he met 17-year-old Sadie Marks (whose family was friends with, but not related to, the Marx family). Their first meeting did not go well when he tried to leave during Sadie's violin performance. They met again in 1926. Jack had not remembered their earlier meeting and instantly fell for her. They married the following year. She was working in the hosiery section of the Hollywood Boulevard branch of the May Company, where Benny courted her. Called on to fill in for the "dumb girl" part in a Benny routine, Sadie proved to be a natural comedienne. Adopting the stage name Mary Livingstone, Sadie collaborated with Benny throughout most of his career. They later adopted a daughter, Joan (1934-2021). Sadie's older sister Babe would often be the target of jokes about unattractive or masculine women, while her younger brother Hilliard would later produce Benny's radio and TV work.
In 1929, Benny's agent, Sam Lyons, convinced Irving Thalberg, American film producer at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, to watch Benny at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles. Benny signed a five-year contract with MGM, where his first role was in The Hollywood Revue of 1929. The next film, Chasing Rainbows, did not do well, and after several months Benny was released from his contract and returned to Broadway in Earl Carroll's Vanities. At first dubious about the viability of radio, Benny grew eager to break into the new medium. In 1932, after a four-week nightclub run, he was invited onto Ed Sullivan's radio program, uttering his first radio spiel "This is Jack Benny talking. There will be a slight pause while you say, 'Who cares?
Radio
Benny had been a minor vaudeville performer before becoming a national figure with The Jack Benny Program, a weekly radio show that ran from 1932 to 1948 on NBC and from 1949 to 1955 on CBS. It was among the most highly rated programs during its run.
Benny's long radio career began on April 6, 1932, when the NBC Commercial Program Department auditioned him for the N. W. Ayer & Son agency and their client, Canada Dry, after which Bertha Brainard, head of the division, said, "We think Mr. Benny is excellent for radio and, while the audition was unassisted as far as orchestra was concerned, we believe he would make a great bet for an air program." Recalling the experience in 1956, Benny said Ed Sullivan had invited him to guest on his program (1932), and "the agency for Canada Dry ginger ale heard me and offered me a job."
With Canada Dry ginger ale as a sponsor, Benny came to radio on The Canada Dry Program, on May 2, 1932, broadcast on Mondays and Wednesdays on the NBC Blue Network, featuring George Olsen and his orchestra. After a few shows, Benny hired Harry Conn as writer. The show continued on Blue for six months until October 26, moving to CBS on October 30, now airing Thursdays and Sundays. With Ted Weems leading the band, Benny stayed on CBS until January 26, 1933, when Canada Dry opted not to renew Benny's contract after it attempted to replace Conn with Sid Silvers, who would have also gotten a co-starring role. Unlike later incarnations of the Benny show, The Canada Dry Program was primarily a musical program.
Benny then appeared on The Chevrolet Program, airing on the NBC Red Network between March 17, 1933 until April 1, 1934, initially airing on Fridays (replacing Al Jolson), moving to Sunday nights in the fall. The show, which featured Benny and Livingstone alongside Frank Black's orchestra and vocalists James Melton and (later) Frank Parker, ended after General Motors' president insisted on a musical program. He continued with sponsor General Tire on Fridays through the end of September.
The show switched networks to CBS on January 2, 1949, as part of CBS president William S. Paley's notorious "raid" on NBC talent in 1948–1949. It stayed there for the remainder of its radio run, ending on May 22, 1955. CBS aired repeat episodes from 1956 to 1958 as The Best of Benny.
Television
After making his television debut in 1949 on local Los Angeles station KTTV, then a CBS affiliate, the network television version of The Jack Benny Program ran from October 28, 1950, to 1965, all but the last season on CBS. Initially scheduled as a series of five "specials" during the 1950–1951 season, the show appeared every six weeks for the 1951–1952 season, every four weeks for the 1952–1953 season and every three weeks in 1953–1954. For the 1953–1954 season, half the episodes were live and half were filmed during the summer, to allow Benny to continue doing his radio show. From the fall of 1954 to 1960, it appeared every other week, and from 1960 to 1965 it was seen weekly.
On March 28, 1954, Benny co-hosted General Foods 25th Anniversary Show: A Salute to Rodgers and Hammerstein with Groucho Marx and Mary Martin. In September 1954, CBS premiered Chrysler's Shower of Stars co-hosted by Jack Benny and William Lundigan. It enjoyed a successful run from 1954 until 1958. Both television shows often overlapped the radio show. In fact, the radio show alluded frequently to its television counterparts. Often as not, Benny would sign off the radio show in such circumstances with the line "Well, good night, folks. I'll see you on television."
When Benny moved to television, audiences learned that his verbal talent was matched by his controlled repertory of dead-pan facial expressions and gesture. The program was similar to the radio show (several of the radio scripts were recycled for television, as was somewhat common with other radio shows that moved to television), but with the addition of visual gags. Lucky Strike was the sponsor. Benny did his opening and closing monologues before a live audience, which he regarded as essential to timing of the material. As in other TV comedy shows, a laugh track was added to "sweeten" the soundtrack, as when the studio audience missed some close-up comedy because of cameras or microphones obstructing their view. Television viewers became accustomed to live without Mary Livingstone, who was afflicted by a striking case of stage fright that didn't lessen even after performing with Benny for 20 years. Hence, Livingstone appeared rarely if at all on the television show. In fact, for the last few years of the radio show, she pre-recorded her lines and Jack and Mary's daughter, Joan, stood in for the live taping, with Mary's lines later edited into the tape replacing Joan's before broadcast. Mary Livingstone finally retired from show business permanently in 1958, as her friend Gracie Allen had done.
Benny's television program relied more on guest stars and less on his regulars than his radio program. In fact, the only radio cast members who appeared regularly on the television program as well were Don Wilson and Eddie Anderson. Singer Dennis Day appeared sporadically, and Harris had left the radio program in 1952, although he did make a guest appearance on the television show (Bob Crosby, Phil's "replacement", frequently appeared on television through 1956). A frequent guest was the Canadian-born singer-violinist Gisele Mackenzie.
As a gag, Benny made a 1957 appearance on the then-wildly popular $64,000 Question. His category of choice was "Violins", but after answering the first question correctly Benny opted out of continuing, leaving the show with just $64; host Hal March gave Benny the prize money out of his own pocket. March made an appearance on Benny's show the same year.
Benny was able to attract guests who rarely, if ever, appeared on television. In 1953, both Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart made their television debuts on Benny's program.
Another guest star on the Jack Benny show was Rod Serling, who starred in a spoof of The Twilight Zone in which Benny goes to his own house and finds that no one knows who he is; Jack runs away screaming in panic; Serling breaks the fourth wall and remarks not to worry about Benny on the grounds that anyone who has been 39 years old as long as he has is a citizen of the "Twilo Zone."
Canadian singer Gisele MacKenzie, who toured with Benny in the early 1950s, guest starred seven times on The Jack Benny Program. Benny was so impressed with MacKenzie's talents that he served as co-executive producer and guest starred on her 1957–1958 NBC variety show, The Gisele MacKenzie Show.
In 1964, Walt Disney was a guest, primarily to promote his production of Mary Poppins. Benny persuaded Disney to give him over 110 free admission tickets to Disneyland for his friends and one for his wife, but later in the show Disney apparently sent his pet tiger after Benny as revenge, at which point Benny opened his umbrella and soared above the stage like Mary Poppins.
In due course the ratings game finally got to Benny, too. CBS dropped the show in 1964, citing Benny's lack of appeal to the younger demographic the network began courting, and he went to NBC, his original network, in the fall, only to be out-rated by CBS's Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. The network dropped Benny at the end of the season. He continued to make occasional specials into the 1970s, the last one airing in January 1974. Benny also appeared on The Lucy Show twice: Once as a plumber who resembles Jack Benny and in 1967 "Lucy Gets Jack Benny's account" where Lucy takes Jack on a tour of his new money vault. In the late 1960s, Benny did a series of commercials for Texaco Sky Chief gasoline, using his "stingy" television persona, always telling the attendant after being implored, "Jack Benny, won't you please fill up?", "I'll take a gallon."
In his unpublished autobiography, I Always Had Shoes (portions of which were later incorporated by Jack's daughter, Joan Benny, into her memoir of her parents, Sunday Nights at Seven), Benny said that he, not NBC, made the decision to end his TV series in 1965. He said that while the ratings were still very good (he cited a figure of some 18 million viewers per week, although he qualified that figure by saying he never believed the ratings services were doing anything more than guessing, no matter what they promised), advertisers were complaining that commercial time on his show was costing nearly twice as much as what they paid for most other shows, and he had grown tired of what was called the "rate race." Thus, after some three decades on radio and television in a weekly program, Jack Benny went out on top. In fairness, Benny himself shared Fred Allen's ambivalence about television, though not quite to Allen's extent. "By my second year in television, I saw that the camera was a man-eating monster ... It gave a performer close-up exposure that, week after week, threatened his existence as an interesting entertainer."
In a joint appearance with Phil Silvers on Dick Cavett's show, Benny recalled that he had advised Silvers not to appear on television. However, Silvers ignored Benny's advice and proceeded to win several Emmy awards as Sergeant Bilko on the popular series The Phil Silvers Show.
Films
Benny also acted in films, including the Academy Award-winning The Hollywood Revue of 1929, Broadway Melody of 1936 (as a benign nemesis for Eleanor Powell and Robert Taylor), George Washington Slept Here (1942), and notably, Charley's Aunt (1941) and To Be or Not to Be (1942). He and Livingstone also appeared in Ed Sullivan's Mr. Broadway (1933) as themselves. Benny often parodied contemporary films and genres on the radio program, and the 1940 film Buck Benny Rides Again features all the main radio characters in a funny Western parody adapted from program skits. The failure of one cinematic Benny vehicle, The Horn Blows at Midnight, became a running gag on his radio and television programs, although contemporary viewers may not find the film as disappointing as the jokes suggest.
Benny may have had an uncredited cameo role in Casablanca, claimed by a contemporary newspaper article and advertisement and reportedly in the Casablanca press book. When asked in his column "Movie Answer Man", film critic Roger Ebert first replied, "It looks something like him. That's all I can say." He wrote in a later column, "I think you're right."
Benny also was caricatured in several Warner Brothers cartoons including Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur (1939, as Casper the Caveman), I Love to Singa, Slap Happy Pappy, and Goofy Groceries (1936, 1940, and 1941 respectively, as Jack Bunny), Malibu Beach Party (1940, as himself), and The Mouse that Jack Built (1959). The last of these is probably the most memorable: Robert McKimson engaged Benny and his actual cast (Mary Livingstone, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, and Don Wilson) to do the voices for the mouse versions of their characters, with Mel Blanc—the usual Warner Brothers cartoon voicemeister—reprising his old vocal turn as the always-aging Maxwell, always a phat-phat-bang! away from collapse. In the cartoon, Benny and Livingstone agree to spend their anniversary at the Kit-Kat Club, which they discover the hard way is inside the mouth of a live cat. Before the cat can devour the mice, Benny himself awakens from his dream, then shakes his head, smiles wryly, and mutters, "Imagine, me and Mary as little mice." Then, he glances toward the cat lying on a throw rug in a corner and sees his and Livingstone's cartoon alter egos scampering out of the cat's mouth. The cartoon ends with a classic Benny look of befuddlement. It was rumored that Benny requested that, in lieu of monetary compensation, he receive a copy of the finished film.
Benny made a cameo appearance in It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
Final years
After his broadcasting career ended, Benny performed live as a standup comedian.
In the 1960s Benny was the headlining act at Harrah's Lake Tahoe with performer Harry James, and Vocalist Ray Vasquez.
Benny made one of his final television appearances on January 23, 1974, as a guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, the day before his final television special aired. Benny was preparing to star in the film version of Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys when his health failed later the same year. He prevailed upon his longtime best friend, George Burns, to take his place on a nightclub tour while preparing for the film. Burns ultimately had to replace Benny in the film as well, going on to win an Academy Award for his performance.
Despite his failing health, Benny would go on to make one last appearance on The Tonight Show on August 21, 1974 with Rich Little as guest host. Benny also made several appearances on The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast in his final 18 months, roasting Ronald Reagan, Johnny Carson, Bob Hope and Lucille Ball, in addition to himself being roasted in February 1974. The Lucille Ball roast, his last public performance, aired on February 7, 1975, several weeks after his death.
Death
In October 1974, Benny cancelled a performance in Dallas after suffering a dizzy spell, coupled with numbness in his arms. Despite a battery of tests, Benny's ailment could not be determined. When he complained of stomach pains in early December, a first test showed nothing, but a subsequent examination showed that he had inoperable pancreatic cancer. Benny went into a coma at home on December 22, 1974. While in a coma, he was visited by close friends including George Burns, Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Carson, John Rowles and then Governor Ronald Reagan. He died on December 26, 1974, at age 80. At the funeral, Burns, Benny's best friend for more than fifty years, attempted to deliver a eulogy but broke down shortly after he began and was unable to continue. Hope also delivered a eulogy in which he stated, "For a man who was the undisputed master of comedic timing, you would have to say this is the only time when Jack Benny's timing was all wrong. He left us much too soon." Benny was interred in a crypt at Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California. His will arranged for a single long-stemmed red rose to be delivered to his widow, Mary Livingstone, every day for the rest of her life. Livingstone died eight and a half years later on June 30, 1983, at the age of 78.
In trying to explain his successful life, Benny summed it up by stating: "Everything good that happened to me happened by accident. I was not filled with ambition nor fired by a drive toward a clear-cut goal. I never knew exactly where I was going."
Upon his death, Benny's family donated his personal, professional and business papers, as well as a collection of his television shows, to UCLA. The university established the Jack Benny Award for Comedy in his honor in 1977 to recognize outstanding people in the field of comedy. Johnny Carson was the first award recipient. Benny also donated a Stradivarius violin (purchased in 1957) to the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. Benny had quipped, "If it isn't a $30,000 Strad, I'm out $120."
Honors and tributes
In 1960, Benny was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame with three stars. His stars for television and motion pictures are located at 6370 and 6650 Hollywood Boulevard, respectively, and at 1505 Vine Street for radio. He was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1988 and the National Radio Hall of Fame in 1989. He was also inducted into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame.
Benny was inducted as a laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the Order of Lincoln (the state's highest honor) by the governor of Illinois in 1972 in the area of the performing arts.
When the price of a standard first-class U.S. postal stamp was increased to 39 cents in 2006, fans petitioned for a Jack Benny stamp to honor his stage persona's perpetual age. The U.S. Postal Service had issued a stamp depicting Benny in 1991 as part of a booklet of stamps honoring comedians; however, the stamp was issued at the then-current rate of 29 cents.
Jack Benny Middle School in Waukegan is named after Benny. Its motto matches his famous statement as "Home of the '39ers." A statue of Benny with his violin stands in downtown Waukegan.
The British comedian Benny Hill, whose original name was Alfred Hawthorne Hill, changed his name as a tribute to Jack Benny.
He was mentioned by Doc Brown in Back to the Future in which he guesses who would be Secretary of the Treasury by 1985, not believing Ronald Reagan was President of the United States of America. In reality, Benny died before 1985.
Filmography
Selected radio appearances
References
Further reading
The New York Times, April 16, 1953, p. 43, "Jack Benny plans more work on TV"
The New York Times, March 16, 1960, p. 75, "Canned laughter: Comedians are crying on the inside about CBS rule that public know of its use"
Jack Benny, Mary Livingstone Benny, Hilliard Marks with Marcia Borie, Doubleday & Company, 1978, 322 p.
Sunday Nights at Seven: The Jack Benny Story, Jack Benny and Joan Benny, Warner Books, 1990, 302 p.
CBS: Reflections in a Bloodshot Eye, by Robert Metz, New American Library, 1978.
The Laugh Crafters: Comedy Writing in Radio and TV's Golden Age, by Jordan R. Young; Past Times Publishing, 1999.
Well! Reflections on the Life and Career of Jack Benny, edited by Michael Leannah, BearManor Media, 2007.
Jack Benny v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 25 T.C. 197 (1955).
Balzer, George. They'll Break Your Heart (unpublished autobiography, undated), available at jackbenny.org.
Hilmes, M. (1997). Radio voices American broadcasting, 1922–1952. Minnesota Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Josefsberg, Milt. (1977) The Jack Benny Show. New Rochelle: Arlington House.
Leannah, Michael, editor. (2007) Well! Reflections on the Life and Career of Jack Benny. BearManor Media. Contributing authors: Frank Bresee, Clair Schulz, Kay Linaker, Janine Marr, Pam Munter, Mark Higgins, B. J. Borsody, Charles A. Beckett, Jordan R. Young, Philip G. Harwood, Noell Wolfgram Evans, Jack Benny, Michael Leannah, Steve Newvine, Ron Sayles, Kathryn Fuller-Seeley, Marc Reed, Derek Tague, Michael J. Hayde, Steve Thompson, Michael Mildredson
Wise, James. Stars in Blue: Movie Actors in America's Sea Services. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997.
Zolotow, Maurice. "Jack Benny: the fine art of self-disparagement" in Zolotow, No People Like Show People, Random House (New York: 1951); rpt Bantam Books (New York: 1952).
External links
Jack Benny at the National Radio Hall of Fame
Jack Benny Fred Allen Feud
International Jack Benny Fan Club
Jack Benny on grubstreet.ca
Copies of Jack Benny's Radio and TV scripts, with handwritten edits
Jack Benny Center for the Arts (archived)
Jack Benny papers at the University of Wyoming—American Heritage Center
FBI file on Jack Benny
Audio
All available Jack Benny radio programs in mp3
Jack Benny Show – OTR Podcast
Video
1894 births
1974 deaths
20th-century American comedians
20th-century American male actors
20th-century American male musicians
20th-century American musicians
20th-century violinists
Actors from Waukegan, Illinois
American male comedy actors
American male film actors
American male radio actors
American male television actors
American male violinists
American people of Lithuanian-Jewish descent
American people of Polish-Jewish descent
American radio personalities
American stand-up comedians
Television personalities from Los Angeles
American violinists
Burials at Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery
Comedians from California
Comedians from Illinois
Deaths from cancer in California
Deaths from pancreatic cancer
Golden Globe Award winners
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Outstanding Performance by a Lead Actor in a Comedy Series Primetime Emmy Award winners
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People from Bel Air, Los Angeles
United States Navy personnel of World War I
Vaudeville performers
20th-century American Jews | false | [
"This list is concerned with severe and abnormal power outages which caused major power failures due to damage to a single thermal power station itself or its connections which take a significant amount of time - months or years to repair.\n\nWhilst any electric grid is vulnerable to instability after the loss of a large generating source or transmission line, this can generally be dealt with without serious inconvenience to customers. However some power stations can be exceptionally large in respect to connected grid capacity so that any failure for these proportionally large stations can be more problematic than the failure of a typically sized station.\n\nList of failures\n\nSee also\n Dam failure\n List of power outages\n Hydroelectricity\n List of hydroelectric power station failures\n Thermal power station\n\nReferences\n\nThermal power station failures",
"\n\nAbout the failures \nSince March 2006, SpaceX has had 5 complete failures, 4 partial failures, and 1 partial success, for a total of 10 failed launches. Since they have had 157 launches, that gives them a success rate of 93.6%. This make SpaceX rockets some of the most reliable rockets, despite these failures.\n\nLaunch attempts\n\nFalcon 9\n\nStarship\n\nVideos\n\nNotes\n\nReferences \n\nLists of rocket launches"
] |
[
"Eliot Spitzer",
"Tenure overview"
] | C_7dca1559f97f47a59da66b540a08f0ac_0 | what was the tenure overview? | 1 | what is the overview of Eliot Spitzer's tenure? | Eliot Spitzer | As Attorney General, Spitzer stepped up the profile of the office. Traditionally, state attorneys general have pursued consumer rights cases, concentrating on local fraud while deferring national issues to the federal government. Breaking with this traditional deference, Spitzer took up civil actions and criminal prosecutions relating to corporate white-collar crime, securities fraud, Internet fraud, and environmental protection. The New York Attorney General's office has Wall Street (and thus many leading corporate and financial institutions) within its jurisdiction. Also, the New York Attorney General wields greater than usual powers of investigation and prosecution of corporations under New York State's General Business Law. In particular, under the Martin Act of 1921, the New York Attorney General has the power to subpoena witnesses and company documents pertaining to investigations of fraud or illegal activity by a corporation. Spitzer used this statute to allow his office to prosecute cases which have been described as within federal jurisdiction. Spitzer used this authority in his civil actions against corporations and criminal prosecutions against their officers. It proved useful in the wake of several U.S. corporate scandals that began with the collapse of Enron in 2001. Several of these corporations, as well as the brokerage houses that sold their stock, were accused of having inflated stock values by unethical means throughout the 1990s. When inquiries into these allegations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Congress failed, Spitzer's office used its subpoena power to obtain corporate documents, building cases against the firms both in courtrooms and in public opinion. Under his watch, Spitzer also commissioned a 1999 study of the NYPD's stop-and-frisk practices. In 2004, The Nation endorsed Spitzer as a possible Democratic candidate for vice president, stating that he was "the single most effective battler against corporate abuses in either political party". He was, however, not chosen. In January 2005, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce described Spitzer's approach as "the most egregious and unacceptable form of intimidation we've seen in this country in modern times". CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Eliot Laurence Spitzer (born June 10, 1959) is an American politician, attorney, educator and real estate developer. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 54th Governor of New York from 2007 until his resignation in 2008.
Born in New York City, Spitzer attended Princeton University and earned his law degree from Harvard. He began his career as an attorney in private practice with New York law firms and as a prosecutor with the office of the New York County (Manhattan) District Attorney. From 1999 to 2006, he served two four-year terms as the Attorney General of New York, earning a reputation as the "Sheriff of Wall Street" for his efforts to curb corruption in the financial services industry. Spitzer was elected Governor of New York in 2006 by the largest margin of any candidate, but his tenure would last less than two years after it was uncovered that he patronized a prostitution ring. He resigned immediately following the scandal, with the remainder of his term served by David Paterson, his lieutenant governor.
Since leaving the governorship, Spitzer has worked as a television host and an adjunct instructor at City College of New York, along with engaging in real estate activity and making private investments in a start-up company. He also ran for New York City Comptroller in 2013, losing the Democratic nomination to the eventual winner, Scott Stringer.
Early life and education
Eliot Laurence Spitzer was born in 1959 in the Bronx, New York City, the son of Anne (née Goldhaber), an English literature professor, and Bernard Spitzer, a real estate mogul. His paternal grandparents were Galician Jews, born in Tluste, Poland, now Ukraine. His maternal grandparents, born in the 1890s, were Jewish emigrants from Ottoman-era Palestine (now Israel). Spitzer is the youngest of three children. He was raised in the affluent Riverdale section of the Bronx. His family was not religious, and Spitzer did not have a bar mitzvah.
He is a 1977 graduate of Horace Mann School. After scoring 1590 out of 1600 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), he attended Princeton University and graduated with an A.B. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1981 after completing a 151-page-long senior thesis titled "Revolutions in Post-Stalin Eastern Europe: A Study of Soviet Reactions". He then received his Juris Doctor at Harvard Law School. At Princeton, he was elected chairman of the undergraduate student government and graduated in 1981. He has said he received a perfect score on the Law School Admission Test (LSAT), and went on to attend Harvard Law School, where he met and married Silda Wall. Spitzer was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.
Legal career
Upon receiving his Juris Doctor, Spitzer clerked for Judge Robert W. Sweet of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, then joined the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. He stayed there for less than two years before leaving to join the New York County District Attorney's office.
Spitzer joined the staff of Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, where he became chief of the labor-racketeering unit and spent six years (1986–1992) pursuing organized crime. Spitzer's biggest case came in 1992, when he led the investigation that ended the Gambino crime family's organized crime control of Manhattan's trucking and garment industries. Spitzer devised a plan to set up his own sweatshop in the city's garment district, where he turned out shirts, pants and sweaters, and hired 30 laborers. The shop manager eventually got close to the Gambinos, and officials were able to plant a bug in their office. The Gambinos, rather than being charged with extortion—which was hard to prove—were charged with antitrust violations. Joseph and Thomas Gambino, the latter being an extremely high-ranking member, and two other defendants took the deal and avoided jail by pleading guilty, paying $12 million in fines and agreeing to stay out of the business.
Spitzer left the District Attorney's office in 1992 to work at the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. From 1994 to 1998 he worked at the law firm Constantine and Partners on a number of consumer rights and antitrust cases.
New York State Attorney General
Campaigns
1994 campaign
In February 1991 Robert Abrams, a Democrat and the longstanding New York State Attorney General, announced his intention to run for the U.S. Senate seat for New York then occupied by incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Al D'Amato. When he announced his intention the Senate election was almost two years in the future. Abrams won the nomination in the Democratic primary but narrowly lost to D'Amato in the general election in November 1992. Ten months later, in September 1993, Abrams announced that he would resign his position as Attorney General as of December 31, 1993, although he still had one year remaining in his term. To fill this vacancy the New York State Legislature elected Assemblyman G. Oliver Koppell to serve out the remainder of the Attorney General's term during 1993.
Thirty-four-year-old Spitzer decided to run as a Democratic candidate in the 1994 election for Attorney General, as did Koppell, Brooklyn Family Court Judge Karen Burstein, and Kings County DA Charles J. Hynes. At the time, Spitzer was a young and relatively unknown defense attorney representing white-collar criminals. When he announced his campaign Spitzer suggested that, if elected, he would use the state's antitrust laws to pursue corporate polluters. Spitzer was the only candidate to support the death penalty. In a televised debate among the candidates, Spitzer was criticized for financing his campaign using $3 million of his own and family money. Despite heavy funding from his own family, he placed last among the four Democratic candidates for the nomination, receiving just 19% of the vote. Burstein, the only woman and gay candidate, won the primary with 31% of vote. Burstein subsequently lost in the general election to Republican Dennis Vacco, part of a nationwide Republican sweep, that included the election of Republican George Pataki as the new Governor of New York displacing the Democratic incumbent, Governor Mario Cuomo.
1998 campaign
Four years later, Spitzer again wanted to run for Attorney General and on May 6, 1998, he announced he would run for the office for a second time. On May 28, he emerged as the front-runner among the Democratic candidates, ranking first at the Democratic convention with 36% of the vote. He also had the most amount of money, with over $2 million. In September, he won the Democratic primary election with 42% of the vote. He defeated State Senator Catherine Abate (27%), Koppell (22%), and former Governor's Counsel Evan Davis (9%). In the general election Spitzer would face the incumbent, Dennis Vacco, a Republican.
In late October 1998, Spitzer conceded that his father had lent him most of the campaign money he raised. According to The New York Times, after "repeatedly contending that he alone paid his campaign bills this year and in 1994, [Spitzer] acknowledged [that] his father, a wealthy real estate developer, [played] an extensive role in helping to finance his campaigns." He financed the campaigns from two sets of loans—both from J.P. Morgan & Company—that amounted to $4.3 million in 1994 and $4.8 million in 1998. Spitzer said, "I have worked long, long hours for my dad and for various businesses. Look, I'm not saying that I am underpaid. But any effort to challenge the propriety of that fee is way off base."
On October 28, The New York Times endorsed Spitzer, opining that both candidates were flawed but adding that "Vacco's performance and his key policy positions make him an even worse choice [than Spitzer]". In November, Spitzer went on to defeat Republican incumbent Dennis Vacco by a small margin of victory of 0.6%. Spitzer did not win a single county in Upstate New York and won a total of six counties statewide (New York (81%), Bronx (80%), Kings (75%), Queens (67%), Westchester (52%), and Rockland (48%)).
2002 reelection campaign
In 2002 Spitzer ran for re-election and a second term as New York's Attorney General. Spitzer defeated Republican Judge Dora Irizarry 66–30%.
Tenure overview
As Attorney General, Spitzer stepped up the profile of the office. Traditionally, state attorneys general have pursued consumer rights cases, concentrating on local fraud while deferring national issues to the federal government. Breaking with this traditional deference, Spitzer took up civil actions and criminal prosecutions relating to corporate white-collar crime, securities fraud, Internet fraud, and environmental protection. The New York Attorney General's office has Wall Street (and thus many leading corporate and financial institutions) within its jurisdiction. Also, the New York Attorney General wields greater than usual powers of investigation and prosecution of corporations under New York State's General Business Law. In particular, under the Martin Act of 1921, the New York Attorney General has the power to subpoena witnesses and company documents pertaining to investigations of fraud or illegal activity by a corporation. Spitzer used this statute to allow his office to prosecute cases which have been described as within federal jurisdiction. Spitzer used this authority in his civil actions against corporations and criminal prosecutions against their officers. It proved useful in the wake of several U.S. corporate scandals that began with the collapse of Enron in 2001. Several of these corporations, as well as the brokerage houses that sold their stock, were accused of having inflated stock values by unethical means throughout the 1990s. When inquiries into these allegations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Congress failed, Spitzer's office used its subpoena power to obtain corporate documents, building cases against the firms both in courtrooms and in public opinion.
During his term in office, Spitzer also commissioned a 1999 study of the NYPD's stop-and-frisk practices.
In 2004, The Nation endorsed Spitzer as a possible Democratic candidate for vice president, stating that he was "the single most effective battler against corporate abuses in either political party". He was, however, not chosen.
Loan investigation controversy
The New York State Senate Investigations committee considered investigating a controversial multi-million-dollar loan the governor's father Bernard Spitzer gave him when he ran for attorney general in 1998, a loan the younger Spitzer paid back. Senate Investigations Committee chairman George Winner told the New York Post that subpoenas should be used to find out about the loans. Winner wrote to Senate Elections Committee chairman Senator Joseph Griffo that an article profiling Spitzer in New York magazine "outlined what may have been a willful effort by Eliot Spitzer and his father to circumvent campaign-contribution limits in New York state law and then conceal their actions." In 1998, Spitzer claimed that he secured the $5 million loan by mortgaging apartments his father had given him, but later revealed that his father was paying off the loans and, therefore, financing his campaign.
2006 gubernatorial campaign
On December 8, 2004, Spitzer announced his intention to seek the Democratic nomination for governor of New York. While long rumored, Spitzer's announcement was unusually early—nearly two years before the election. As a result of Spitzer's relative speed in bringing state Democrats to his side, he gained the respect of Democratic leaders nationwide. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson dubbed Spitzer the "future of the Democratic Party" at a fund raiser held in June 2005 for Spitzer's gubernatorial campaign.
In January 2006, Spitzer selected New York State Senate minority leader David Paterson as his choice for lieutenant governor and running mate. After announcing his candidacy, Spitzer was endorsed by numerous New Yorkers, including state Comptroller Alan Hevesi and two former New York City mayors, David Dinkins and Ed Koch. On May 30, 2006, Spitzer and Paterson won the endorsement of the New York State Democratic party. A June 2006 Quinnipiac University Polling Institute poll showed him leading Nassau county executive Thomas Suozzi 76–13 percent. On July 25, 2006, he faced Suozzi in a gubernatorial debate held at Pace University in Manhattan, discussing issues such as public authorities and Medicaid. When asked about marijuana, Spitzer stated that he disagrees with medicinal use of the drug, claiming that other medicines were more effective. In the Democratic primary held on September 12, 2006, Spitzer handily defeated Suozzi, securing his party's nomination with 81 percent of the vote.
On October 5, Spitzer addressed the Empire State Pride Agenda and declared that he would work as governor to legalize gay marriage in New York.
Spitzer was elected governor on November 7, 2006, when he defeated Republican John Faso and Libertarian John Clifton, among others, with 69 percent of the vote. He won with the largest margin of victory ever in a New York gubernatorial race.
Governor of New York
During the traditional midnight ceremony on January 1, 2007, Spitzer was sworn in as Governor of New York. A public ceremony was held at 1 p.m. on the same day that featured brass and percussion players from the Empire State Youth Orchestra. Bucking tradition, the ceremony was held outdoors—the first outdoor inauguration ceremony in New York for over a century. After taking the oath of office, he attended a concert at the Times Union Center in his honor, headlined by James Taylor and Natalie Merchant.
Legislative measures supported
Jonathan's Law. In May 2007, Governor Spitzer signed this legislation concerning parental and guardian access to files and records concerning their children and child abuse investigations.
The Reproductive Health and Privacy Protection Act, an abortion rights measure introduced by Spitzer in 2007.
Roadblocks to reform
Spitzer's reform-based platform, and his pledge "to change the ethics of Albany", hit an early roadblock when his ideas on how to fill vacancies in the executive department were defeated by the state legislature. According to the New York State Constitution, it is the duty of the state legislature to fill executive vacancies. The governor was criticized as unreasonable for admonishing the legislature when it took constitutional actions. The appointment of state assemblyman Thomas DiNapoli to succeed the disgraced Alan Hevesi as New York State Comptroller was a serious blow to the new governor. Spitzer had backed an outside panel to draft a list of qualified candidates; the legislature resisted Spitzer's desires when these included no legislators. Some Assembly Democrats were alienated over the incident, and questioned Spitzer's refusal of extending patronage to party members seeking local political appointments. Spitzer's choice was New York City Finance Commissioner Martha Stark, who was selected by a panel that consisted of former State Comptroller Edward Regan, former State Comptroller Carl McCall and former New York City Comptroller Harrison J. Goldin. On February 7, 2007, when the Legislature voted, Stark was one of two names put into nomination, along with Assemblyman Thomas DiNapoli of Long Island, Assembly Leader Sheldon Silver's choice. The final vote was 150 for DiNapoli and 56 for Stark. Stark's main support came from Democrats in the Senate, along with Republicans in both chambers.
Spitzer traveled to the home districts of Democratic assemblymen William B. Magnarelli and George S. Latimer (in Syracuse and Westchester County respectively), and publicly criticized them for their votes on DiNapoli; he had plans to exert similar pressure on other of his party's legislators.
One of Spitzer's key campaign pledges was to reform the state budget process. While the state did pass a budget on schedule in 2007, the ultimate results fell short of what many reformers hoped Spitzer would achieve. The New York Post opined, "Spitzer promised reform, and delivered something completely different" and termed the budget itself "bitterly disappointing."
Spitzer's budget quickly turned into a deficit, as by the end of October it was projected the state would run a deficit exceeding $4 billion for the year. During Spitzer's first year the state payroll increased, aggravating the budget problem. Despite increasing the public sector payroll, in late 2007 New York State started leading the nation in lost jobs. The 2008–09 budget included measures to counter the Great Recession.
Spitzer was criticized by members of the New York State Legislature for failing to compromise on issues during his first few months as governor. In one exchange, according to the New York Post, Spitzer told New York State Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco: "Listen, I'm a f---king steamroller and I'll roll over you and anybody else". Spitzer's reputation as a "steamroller" was shared by a plurality of New Yorkers in a Quinnipiac University poll, but by a 3-to-1 margin they believed the tactic had been unsuccessful and had only added to political gridlock.
Tedisco later accused Spitzer of cutting $300,000 of state funding for health care and education grants in the Schenectady area as retaliation for Tedisco's opposition to the Spitzer plan to allow illegal immigrants New York State driver's licenses. Tedisco accused the Governor of "dirty tricks" and "bullying".
In the wake of the political surveillance controversy involving Bruno, Spitzer was accused of pandering to special interest groups to solidify his base of support. "The governor who took office vowing to clean up Albany has lost so much public support that he is reduced to feathering the nest of the unions and other liberals," wrote Michael Goodwin of the Daily News.
In February 2008, The Washington Post published an op-ed written by Spitzer in which he criticized the Bush Administration for inhibiting states from pursuing predatory lenders.
Proposal to legalize same-sex marriage
In April 2007, Spitzer proposed a bill that would legalize same-sex marriage in New York. State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno announced his opposition to the proposal. This legislation passed in the State Assembly on June 19, 2007, but was denied in the State Senate and was returned to the Assembly.
Use of State Police for surveillance / "Troopergate"
On July 23, 2007, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office admonished the Spitzer administration for ordering the State Police to keep special records of Senate majority leader Joseph Bruno's whereabouts when he traveled with police escorts in New York City.
A 57-page report issued by the Attorney General's office concluded that Spitzer engaged in creating media coverage concerning Senator Bruno's travel. The investigation looked into both Bruno's travel and the Senate leader's allegation that Spitzer used State Police to spy on him. Cuomo concluded that "These e-mails show that persons in the governor's office did not merely produce records under a FOIL request, but were instead engaged in planning and producing media coverage concerning Senator Bruno's travel on state aircraft before any FOIL request was made." It also suggests that the governor's staff lied when they tried to explain what they had done and forced the State Police to go far beyond their normal procedures in documenting Bruno's whereabouts.
The report cleared Bruno of any misuse of the state's air fleet, which had been alleged. The report criticized Spitzer's office for using State Police resources to gather information about Bruno's travel and releasing the information to the media. The findings of the report were endorsed by Spitzer's own Inspector General, Kristine Hamann.
Spitzer responded at a July 23 press conference that "As governor, I am accountable for what goes on in the executive branch and I accept responsibility for the actions of my office" and that his administration had "grossly mishandled" the situation. Spitzer subsequently announced that he would indefinitely suspend his communications director, Darren Dopp, and reassign another top official. When questioned about his promise to bring ethical responsibility to state politics, Spitzer responded by saying "I will not tolerate this behavior", "ethics and accountability must and will remain rigorous in my administration," and that "I have always stated that I want ethics and integrity to be the hallmarks of my administration. That is why I requested that the State Inspector General review the allegations with respect to my office, and that is why we have fully cooperated with both inquiries."
The investigations of the event, dubbed "Troopergate" by media outlets, were not affected by Spitzer's resignation. As of March 2008, four probes by the state Attorney General's office, the State Senate Investigations Committee, the Albany County District Attorney's Office, and the New York Commission on Public Integrity were ongoing.
Driver's licenses for illegal immigrants
On September 21, 2007, Spitzer issued an executive order directing that state offices allow illegal immigrants to be issued driver's licenses effective December 2007. Applicants for driver's licenses would not be required to prove legal immigration status and would be allowed to present a foreign passport as identification. In October 2007, after meeting with the Department of Homeland Security, Spitzer altered the plan so that licenses issued to migrant workers would look different from other licenses and that the new licenses would not allow access to airplanes and federal buildings.
On October 22, 2007, the State Senate passed legislation that would have overturned Spitzer's plan to allow driver licenses to be obtained by undocumented immigrants. The bill passed by a margin of 39 to 19, receiving bipartisan support. Eight Democrats from moderate districts broke with Spitzer on the vote. After the vote, The New York Times called this issue "Mr. Spitzer's single most unpopular decision since he took office".
Following the State Senate's vote, Spitzer revised his plan again, proposing the issuance of a third type of driver's license. This driver's license would be available only to United States citizens who are New York State residents, and would be valid for crossing the Canada–US border. Spitzer also announced that the expiration dates of temporary visas would be printed on the driver's licenses of individuals living in the country with them.
On November 14, the day following the release of a poll showing the proposal as extremely unpopular with voters, Spitzer announced he would withdraw the plan, acknowledging that it would never be implemented. The decision drew derision from the press, as the Associated Press termed this reversal a "surrender." WCBS-TV labeled him "Governor Flip-Flop." State Senator Rubén Díaz of the Bronx said he was "betrayed" by Spitzer's abandonment of the plan.
Approval rating as governor
As of November 13, 2007, Spitzer's approval rating as governor was 33 percent, a further decline from his 44% approval rating of October 24, 2007. A later poll showed that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg would defeat Spitzer were he to seek reelection. Two polls in December 2007 showed further erosion in Spitzer's public standing.
Prostitution scandal
On March 10, 2008, The New York Times reported that Spitzer had patronized a high-priced escort service called Emperors Club VIP and met for two hours with a $1,000-an-hour call girl. This information originally came to the attention of authorities from a federal wiretap. During a six month span, Spitzer had at least seven or eight liaisons with women from the agency and paid more than $15,000. According to published reports, investigators alleged that Spitzer paid up to $80,000 for prostitutes over a period of several years while he was attorney general, and later as governor. Spitzer first drew the attention of federal investigators when his bank reported suspicious money transfers under the anti-money laundering provisions of the Bank Secrecy Act and the Patriot Act. The resulting investigation was triggered by the belief that Spitzer might have been hiding bribe proceeds and led to the discovery of the prostitution ring.
Later on March 10, Spitzer held a press conference apologizing to his family and to the public. He added, "'I must now dedicate some time to regain the trust of my family'".
Following Spitzer's March 10 press conference, New York State Assembly Republican Minority Leader James Tedisco and Republican New York Representative Peter King separately called for his resignation. Tedisco later announced that he would initiate impeachment proceedings in the State Assembly if Spitzer did not resign.
The prostitution scandal became international news.
Resignation
In the wake of the revelations and amid threats of impeachment, Spitzer announced on March 12, 2008, that he would resign his post as governor at noon on March 17, 2008. Spitzer said at a news conference in Manhattan:
Lieutenant Governor David Paterson succeeded Spitzer as governor of New York. Paterson became the first African American Governor of New York State.
Post-resignation life and career
In 2011, The Guardian summarized Spitzer's history as follows:Long before there was Barack Obama there was Spitzer. While Obama toiled unknown in Illinois, the Bronx-born Spitzer won himself a national reputation as the "Sheriff of Wall Street". He was New York's tough-talking attorney-general, who fought banking corruption, enforced environment law and won rights for low-paid workers. He used that fame to enter politics and in 2006 became governor of New York: a perfect springboard for the White House. Before America fell in love with its first black president, people wondered if it was willing to embrace its first Jewish one. Spitzer could have made history.Instead he left office in disgrace three years ago amid a flood of tabloid headlines that recounted salacious details from his repeated use of a high-end escort service. Spitzer was dubbed the "Luv Guv" and forced into a political wilderness. Rarely in American politics was a fall from grace so spectacular, so complete and so clearly down to a self-inflicted human flaw.
Prostitution scandal developments
On July 16, 2008, The New York Times published an article that explained how Spitzer used campaign funds to pay for two Mayflower Hotel bookings, $411.06 apiece, where he was alleged to have met with prostitutes. While it remains unclear if Spitzer stayed in the hotel on the nights he booked, the Times has stated that Spitzer met with prostitutes in early 2008. Spitzer declined to comment on the issue.
In November 2008, prosecutors who were in charge of the case announced that Spitzer would not face criminal charges for his involvement in the sex ring. They cited that no evidence of misuse of public funds was found and therefore it would not serve the public interest to press charges against Spitzer. Spitzer offered an apology, saying, "I appreciate the impartiality and thoroughness of the investigation by the U.S. Attorney's Office, and I acknowledge and accept responsibility for the conduct it disclosed."
Teaching
In September 2009, Spitzer joined the faculty of the City College of New York as an adjunct instructor of political science and taught an undergraduate course called "Law and Public Policy".
Media appearances
Spitzer continued to make public appearances and engage in media commitments following his resignation. The Washington Post published a Spitzer opinion piece in November 2008 conveying his analysis of the financial crisis of 2007–2008 and suggested remedies. Spitzer concluded the piece by saying that he hoped the Obama Administration would make the right policy choices, "although mistakes I made in my private life now prevent me from participating in these issues as I have in the past."
Spitzer became a regular columnist for Slate magazine and in December 2008 Slate published the first of a new series of columns by Spitzer dedicated to the economy. Spitzer was sued by two former Marsh & McLennan executives over an August 2010 Slate column about the Wall Street firm, who alleged the column was libelous. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit the following year.
Spitzer took on various public speaking arrangements, beginning with a discussion with the New York chapter of the Entrepreneurs' Organization on June 17, 2009.
He also made a number of television appearances in 2009 and 2010, including Real Time with Bill Maher and Campbell Brown (CNN program), as well as appearing as a substitute anchor on MSNBC. On June 24, 2010, CNN announced that Spitzer would be joining the network to host a "round-table" discussion program alongside center-right commentator Kathleen Parker. Parker Spitzer, compared by some media outlets to the defunct Crossfire, replaced Campbell Brown in the 8:00 p.m. ET timeslot on weeknights starting in October. In February 2011, CNN announced that Parker was leaving the show, which was renamed In the Arena on February 28, 2011. On July 6, 2011, CNN announced it was canceling In the Arena and shifting Anderson Cooper 360° to the 8 p.m. time slot.
In March 2012, Spitzer joined Al Gore's cable television network, Current TV, in the wake of the sudden firing of Keith Olbermann from the network, and immediately began hosting his own program Viewpoint with Eliot Spitzer. In January 2013, Spitzer announced that he had left both Viewpoint and Current TV, and that he would not be joining Current TV in its latest venture with Al Jazeera, citing differences of approach.
Investing
In 2012, Spitzer became an investor in TipRanks, an Israeli financial technology start-up company that ranks Wall Street analysts. He became a member of the company's board of directors.
2013 campaign for NYC Comptroller
On July 7, 2013, Spitzer announced he was running for New York City Comptroller, and would start a petition the following day. 3,750 valid signatures from registered voters from his party were required by July 11 to register for the race but Spitzer was able to submit over 27,000 signatures to the city Board of Elections before the deadline. Spitzer commented that he was asking for forgiveness, and hopeful that voters could forgive him. Spitzer lost the primary on September 10, 2013, to Scott Stringer.
Real estate career
Following his father's illness and death in 2014 and with politics behind him, Spitzer came to lead his family's real estate business, Spitzer Enterprises, despite having avoided the role for much of his life. Spitzer sold his company's apartments in The Corinthian and the Crown Building for a large profit, which he used to fund a $700 million project of three waterfront buildings in South Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Extortion victim
According to prosecutors, Spitzer was the victim of a long-running extortion scheme by Svetlana Travis-Zakharova, a Russian woman who was arrested in October 2016 and charged with forgery and grand larceny. Prosecutors said that Travis-Zakharova extracted $400,000 from Spitzer and also attempted to extort $5,000 from a different man, a toy store owner, and forged his signature on an apartment lease. Travis-Zakharova accused Spitzer of assault in 2016, then later recanted the allegation and returned to Russia. Spitzer subsequently filed a civil suit against Travis-Zakharova, alleging that she had threatened to "ruin his life" unless he agreed to pay her large sums of money. She was arrested after returning to the U.S. for a visit and charged with forgery and grand larceny; in a plea agreement in 2017, she pleaded guilty to attempted petty larceny, a misdemeanor.
Personal life
Silda Wall and Eliot Spitzer married on October 17, 1987. Together, they have three daughters: Elyssa (b. 1990), Sarabeth (b. 1993), and Jenna (b. 1995). Silda Wall Spitzer stood beside her husband when he announced his resignation as New York governor following his prostitution scandal. On May 31, 2013, Spitzer and his wife were reported to be living apart. At the close of 2013, Spitzer and his wife announced the end of their marriage.
Spitzer reportedly had a romantic relationship with Lis Smith, a 31-year-old spokeswoman for then-New York City Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio. She had been Spitzer's spokeswoman during his 2013 run for comptroller. The relationship ended in 2015.
In 2019, Spitzer announced his engagement to Roxana Girand, founder and president of real estate agency Sebastian Capital. The couple planned an April 4, 2020 wedding, and even obtained a marriage license in March 2020, but postponed the nuptials because of COVID-19 concerns.
See also
Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer – film about Spitzer
Inside Job – documentary on the financial crisis of 2007–2008
The Good Wife – fictional television drama partly inspired by events associated with Spitzer and his wife
Zipper – 2015 film, a political thriller that thinly dramatizes the Eliot Spitzer scandal.
References
Further reading
Paterson, David (2020). Black, Blind, & In Charge: A Story of Visionary Leadership and Overcoming Adversity. New York.
External links
Biographies and profiles:
"TIME Crusader of the Year 2002: Eliot Spitzer", by Adi Ignatius, December 21, 2002, issue of Time
"Corruption probe hits US insurers" – BBC News Online, October 15, 2004.
"Spoiling for a Fight: The Rise of Eliot Spitzer" by Brooke A. Masters (Times Books, July 2006)
"The Small Laws: Eliot Spitzer and the Way to Insurance Market Reform," by Sean M. Fitzpatrick, 74 Fordham L. Rev. 3041 (2006)
Interviews:
Eliot Spitzer on "Politicking with Larry King"
Frontline: The Wall Street Fix – from the PBS-series Frontline, dated April 16, 2003.
NOW with Bill Moyers: New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer – Streaming video and transcripts of Spitzer's multiple interviews on the PBS series NOW with Bill Moyers.
"The Pollution Buster" – Interview with Elizabeth Kolbert in Fall 2004 issue of OnEarth Magazine, publication of the Natural Resources Defense Council
Eliot Spitzer: Geithner, Bernanke "Complicit" in Financial Crisis and Should Go – video report by Democracy Now!
Big Think Interview With Eliot Spitzer – video interview with BigThink.com, dated January 28, 2010.
"The Sheriff of Wall Street" 2004 video interview with Eliot Spitzer, on "The Open Mind"
Media coverage:
Breaking Legal News – Eliot L. Spitzer Collection of News of Eliot Spitzer
"Corruption probe hits US insurers" – BBC coverage of Spitzer's probe of insurance industry practices, October 15, 2004.
"Spitzer targets music companies" – BBC coverage of Spitzer's prosecution of payola, October 22, 2004
Greg Palast, Eliot's Mess
Greg Palast interview on Spitzer scandal timing
Critics:
Attorney General Watch – blog of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, critical of Eliot Spitzer and other state attorneys general.
"Not Spitzer's Job" – article by Alan Reynolds, senior fellow of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank. Reprinted from The Wall Street Journal
The Passion of Eliot Spitzer: Is he telling the truth as he tries to "take people out"? by Kimberley A. Strassel, The Wall Street Journal, May 2006
Eliot Spitzer's Real Agenda... is Eliot Spitzer By Kimberley A. Strassel, The Wall Street Journal, May 2006
"Power Corrupts: Elliot [sic] Spitzer's Record as N.Y. Attorney General" By Alan Reynolds, Cato-at-liberty, March 8, 2008.
Reports:
FBI affidavit regarding the Emperor's Club VIP scandal
"Predatory Lenders' Partner in Crime". Spitzer, Eliot, The Washington Post, February 14, 2008.
companies:
Eliot Spitzer serves as TipRanks board member. TipRanks provides online investing tools allowing private investors to see the measured performance of financial analysts.
|-
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|-
1959 births
Antitrust lawyers
American people of Austrian-Jewish descent
American television talk show hosts
CNN people
David Paterson
Democratic Party state governors of the United States
Governors of New York (state)
Harvard Law School alumni
Horace Mann School alumni
Jewish American attorneys
Jewish American state governors of the United States
Living people
New York (state) Democrats
New York State Attorneys General
New York County Assistant District Attorneys
Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison people
Politicians from the Bronx
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom alumni
Slate (magazine) people
2000 United States presidential electors
2004 United States presidential electors
Princeton School of Public and International Affairs alumni | false | [
"Academic ranks in Israel are the titles, relative importance and power of professors, researchers, and administrative personnel held in academia.\n\nOverview\nTenured and tenure-track positions are as follows:\n\n Professor emeritus/emerita (full professor who has retired)\n Full professor [Hebrew: \"Professor Min HaMinyan\"]\n Associate professor [Hebrew: \"Professor Khaver\"]\n Senior lecturer [Hebrew: \"Martze Bakhir\"]\n Lecturer [Hebrew: \"Martze\"]\n\nProfessorship\nThe ranking system combines the British system and the German one. There are four faculty ranks rather than three: lecturer (martsé), senior lecturer (martsé bakhír), associate professor (profésor khavér), and full professor (profésor min ha-minyán). The two lower ranks are similar to their counterparts in the British system. The two higher ranks originally had German rather than American equivalents: professor khavér was comparable to professor extraordinarius, while professor min ha-minyan was the equivalent, and Hebrew translation of, professor ordinarius. Traditionally, lecturer is equivalent to the American assistant professor rank, senior lecturer with tenure is equivalent to the American associate professor rank. Promotion from lecturer to senior lecturer rank usually entails tenure, but not always. Tenure (not guaranteed) is granted after 4–7 years (depending on institution and academic achievements). A professor khavér is comparable to the American advanced associate professor; some academics never become a \"profésor min ha-minyan.\" Israeli universities do not, as a rule, grant tenure to new hires, regardless of previous position, rank, or eminence. A candidate is typically considered for tenure together with promotion to the next highest rank. Candidates who were recruited at a higher rank may also be considered for tenure following a trial period (varying across institutes).\n\nIn 2012, the Technion began granting senior lecturers the title of assistant professor (profésor mishné), in alignment with the standard American terminology. This was done after faculty members at the rank of senior lecturers had complained that they felt belittled at international conferences when compared to their American peers bearing the title assistant professor, because \"lecturer\" sounds less impressive than \"professor\". This move was considered controversial at other Israeli universities, which retain the senior lecturer ranking, because it was conducted unilaterally by the Technion without coordination with the other universities.\n\nReferences\n\nAcademic ranks\nRanks",
"Lefties is a three-part 2006 BBC documentary series investigating some aspects of the left of British politics in the 1970s. Lefties was produced and directed by Vanessa Engle. Lefties was produced as a companion series to Tory! Tory! Tory! an overview of the New Right and Thatcherism. It was commissioned by Janice Hadlow as part of her tenure at BBC Four under the belief that 'serious television' was vital in driving ideas.\n\nNotable interviewees \nThe first episode includes interviews with Piers Corbyn and Michael Reid.\n\nEpisodes \nThe series consisted of three episodes.\n\nSee also \n Left-wing politics\n Tory! Tory! Tory!\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n \n\n2006 British television series debuts\n2006 British television series endings\n2000s British documentary television series\n2000s British political television series\nSquatting in the United Kingdom\nSquatting in film\nAnarchism in the United Kingdom\nBBC television documentaries about history during the 20th Century"
] |
[
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"Tenure overview",
"what was the tenure overview?",
"I don't know."
] | C_7dca1559f97f47a59da66b540a08f0ac_0 | whats the most interesting aspect? | 2 | whats the most interesting aspect of Eliot Spitzer's tenure? | Eliot Spitzer | As Attorney General, Spitzer stepped up the profile of the office. Traditionally, state attorneys general have pursued consumer rights cases, concentrating on local fraud while deferring national issues to the federal government. Breaking with this traditional deference, Spitzer took up civil actions and criminal prosecutions relating to corporate white-collar crime, securities fraud, Internet fraud, and environmental protection. The New York Attorney General's office has Wall Street (and thus many leading corporate and financial institutions) within its jurisdiction. Also, the New York Attorney General wields greater than usual powers of investigation and prosecution of corporations under New York State's General Business Law. In particular, under the Martin Act of 1921, the New York Attorney General has the power to subpoena witnesses and company documents pertaining to investigations of fraud or illegal activity by a corporation. Spitzer used this statute to allow his office to prosecute cases which have been described as within federal jurisdiction. Spitzer used this authority in his civil actions against corporations and criminal prosecutions against their officers. It proved useful in the wake of several U.S. corporate scandals that began with the collapse of Enron in 2001. Several of these corporations, as well as the brokerage houses that sold their stock, were accused of having inflated stock values by unethical means throughout the 1990s. When inquiries into these allegations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Congress failed, Spitzer's office used its subpoena power to obtain corporate documents, building cases against the firms both in courtrooms and in public opinion. Under his watch, Spitzer also commissioned a 1999 study of the NYPD's stop-and-frisk practices. In 2004, The Nation endorsed Spitzer as a possible Democratic candidate for vice president, stating that he was "the single most effective battler against corporate abuses in either political party". He was, however, not chosen. In January 2005, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce described Spitzer's approach as "the most egregious and unacceptable form of intimidation we've seen in this country in modern times". CANNOTANSWER | As Attorney General, Spitzer stepped up the profile of the office. | Eliot Laurence Spitzer (born June 10, 1959) is an American politician, attorney, educator and real estate developer. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 54th Governor of New York from 2007 until his resignation in 2008.
Born in New York City, Spitzer attended Princeton University and earned his law degree from Harvard. He began his career as an attorney in private practice with New York law firms and as a prosecutor with the office of the New York County (Manhattan) District Attorney. From 1999 to 2006, he served two four-year terms as the Attorney General of New York, earning a reputation as the "Sheriff of Wall Street" for his efforts to curb corruption in the financial services industry. Spitzer was elected Governor of New York in 2006 by the largest margin of any candidate, but his tenure would last less than two years after it was uncovered that he patronized a prostitution ring. He resigned immediately following the scandal, with the remainder of his term served by David Paterson, his lieutenant governor.
Since leaving the governorship, Spitzer has worked as a television host and an adjunct instructor at City College of New York, along with engaging in real estate activity and making private investments in a start-up company. He also ran for New York City Comptroller in 2013, losing the Democratic nomination to the eventual winner, Scott Stringer.
Early life and education
Eliot Laurence Spitzer was born in 1959 in the Bronx, New York City, the son of Anne (née Goldhaber), an English literature professor, and Bernard Spitzer, a real estate mogul. His paternal grandparents were Galician Jews, born in Tluste, Poland, now Ukraine. His maternal grandparents, born in the 1890s, were Jewish emigrants from Ottoman-era Palestine (now Israel). Spitzer is the youngest of three children. He was raised in the affluent Riverdale section of the Bronx. His family was not religious, and Spitzer did not have a bar mitzvah.
He is a 1977 graduate of Horace Mann School. After scoring 1590 out of 1600 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), he attended Princeton University and graduated with an A.B. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1981 after completing a 151-page-long senior thesis titled "Revolutions in Post-Stalin Eastern Europe: A Study of Soviet Reactions". He then received his Juris Doctor at Harvard Law School. At Princeton, he was elected chairman of the undergraduate student government and graduated in 1981. He has said he received a perfect score on the Law School Admission Test (LSAT), and went on to attend Harvard Law School, where he met and married Silda Wall. Spitzer was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.
Legal career
Upon receiving his Juris Doctor, Spitzer clerked for Judge Robert W. Sweet of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, then joined the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. He stayed there for less than two years before leaving to join the New York County District Attorney's office.
Spitzer joined the staff of Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, where he became chief of the labor-racketeering unit and spent six years (1986–1992) pursuing organized crime. Spitzer's biggest case came in 1992, when he led the investigation that ended the Gambino crime family's organized crime control of Manhattan's trucking and garment industries. Spitzer devised a plan to set up his own sweatshop in the city's garment district, where he turned out shirts, pants and sweaters, and hired 30 laborers. The shop manager eventually got close to the Gambinos, and officials were able to plant a bug in their office. The Gambinos, rather than being charged with extortion—which was hard to prove—were charged with antitrust violations. Joseph and Thomas Gambino, the latter being an extremely high-ranking member, and two other defendants took the deal and avoided jail by pleading guilty, paying $12 million in fines and agreeing to stay out of the business.
Spitzer left the District Attorney's office in 1992 to work at the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. From 1994 to 1998 he worked at the law firm Constantine and Partners on a number of consumer rights and antitrust cases.
New York State Attorney General
Campaigns
1994 campaign
In February 1991 Robert Abrams, a Democrat and the longstanding New York State Attorney General, announced his intention to run for the U.S. Senate seat for New York then occupied by incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Al D'Amato. When he announced his intention the Senate election was almost two years in the future. Abrams won the nomination in the Democratic primary but narrowly lost to D'Amato in the general election in November 1992. Ten months later, in September 1993, Abrams announced that he would resign his position as Attorney General as of December 31, 1993, although he still had one year remaining in his term. To fill this vacancy the New York State Legislature elected Assemblyman G. Oliver Koppell to serve out the remainder of the Attorney General's term during 1993.
Thirty-four-year-old Spitzer decided to run as a Democratic candidate in the 1994 election for Attorney General, as did Koppell, Brooklyn Family Court Judge Karen Burstein, and Kings County DA Charles J. Hynes. At the time, Spitzer was a young and relatively unknown defense attorney representing white-collar criminals. When he announced his campaign Spitzer suggested that, if elected, he would use the state's antitrust laws to pursue corporate polluters. Spitzer was the only candidate to support the death penalty. In a televised debate among the candidates, Spitzer was criticized for financing his campaign using $3 million of his own and family money. Despite heavy funding from his own family, he placed last among the four Democratic candidates for the nomination, receiving just 19% of the vote. Burstein, the only woman and gay candidate, won the primary with 31% of vote. Burstein subsequently lost in the general election to Republican Dennis Vacco, part of a nationwide Republican sweep, that included the election of Republican George Pataki as the new Governor of New York displacing the Democratic incumbent, Governor Mario Cuomo.
1998 campaign
Four years later, Spitzer again wanted to run for Attorney General and on May 6, 1998, he announced he would run for the office for a second time. On May 28, he emerged as the front-runner among the Democratic candidates, ranking first at the Democratic convention with 36% of the vote. He also had the most amount of money, with over $2 million. In September, he won the Democratic primary election with 42% of the vote. He defeated State Senator Catherine Abate (27%), Koppell (22%), and former Governor's Counsel Evan Davis (9%). In the general election Spitzer would face the incumbent, Dennis Vacco, a Republican.
In late October 1998, Spitzer conceded that his father had lent him most of the campaign money he raised. According to The New York Times, after "repeatedly contending that he alone paid his campaign bills this year and in 1994, [Spitzer] acknowledged [that] his father, a wealthy real estate developer, [played] an extensive role in helping to finance his campaigns." He financed the campaigns from two sets of loans—both from J.P. Morgan & Company—that amounted to $4.3 million in 1994 and $4.8 million in 1998. Spitzer said, "I have worked long, long hours for my dad and for various businesses. Look, I'm not saying that I am underpaid. But any effort to challenge the propriety of that fee is way off base."
On October 28, The New York Times endorsed Spitzer, opining that both candidates were flawed but adding that "Vacco's performance and his key policy positions make him an even worse choice [than Spitzer]". In November, Spitzer went on to defeat Republican incumbent Dennis Vacco by a small margin of victory of 0.6%. Spitzer did not win a single county in Upstate New York and won a total of six counties statewide (New York (81%), Bronx (80%), Kings (75%), Queens (67%), Westchester (52%), and Rockland (48%)).
2002 reelection campaign
In 2002 Spitzer ran for re-election and a second term as New York's Attorney General. Spitzer defeated Republican Judge Dora Irizarry 66–30%.
Tenure overview
As Attorney General, Spitzer stepped up the profile of the office. Traditionally, state attorneys general have pursued consumer rights cases, concentrating on local fraud while deferring national issues to the federal government. Breaking with this traditional deference, Spitzer took up civil actions and criminal prosecutions relating to corporate white-collar crime, securities fraud, Internet fraud, and environmental protection. The New York Attorney General's office has Wall Street (and thus many leading corporate and financial institutions) within its jurisdiction. Also, the New York Attorney General wields greater than usual powers of investigation and prosecution of corporations under New York State's General Business Law. In particular, under the Martin Act of 1921, the New York Attorney General has the power to subpoena witnesses and company documents pertaining to investigations of fraud or illegal activity by a corporation. Spitzer used this statute to allow his office to prosecute cases which have been described as within federal jurisdiction. Spitzer used this authority in his civil actions against corporations and criminal prosecutions against their officers. It proved useful in the wake of several U.S. corporate scandals that began with the collapse of Enron in 2001. Several of these corporations, as well as the brokerage houses that sold their stock, were accused of having inflated stock values by unethical means throughout the 1990s. When inquiries into these allegations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Congress failed, Spitzer's office used its subpoena power to obtain corporate documents, building cases against the firms both in courtrooms and in public opinion.
During his term in office, Spitzer also commissioned a 1999 study of the NYPD's stop-and-frisk practices.
In 2004, The Nation endorsed Spitzer as a possible Democratic candidate for vice president, stating that he was "the single most effective battler against corporate abuses in either political party". He was, however, not chosen.
Loan investigation controversy
The New York State Senate Investigations committee considered investigating a controversial multi-million-dollar loan the governor's father Bernard Spitzer gave him when he ran for attorney general in 1998, a loan the younger Spitzer paid back. Senate Investigations Committee chairman George Winner told the New York Post that subpoenas should be used to find out about the loans. Winner wrote to Senate Elections Committee chairman Senator Joseph Griffo that an article profiling Spitzer in New York magazine "outlined what may have been a willful effort by Eliot Spitzer and his father to circumvent campaign-contribution limits in New York state law and then conceal their actions." In 1998, Spitzer claimed that he secured the $5 million loan by mortgaging apartments his father had given him, but later revealed that his father was paying off the loans and, therefore, financing his campaign.
2006 gubernatorial campaign
On December 8, 2004, Spitzer announced his intention to seek the Democratic nomination for governor of New York. While long rumored, Spitzer's announcement was unusually early—nearly two years before the election. As a result of Spitzer's relative speed in bringing state Democrats to his side, he gained the respect of Democratic leaders nationwide. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson dubbed Spitzer the "future of the Democratic Party" at a fund raiser held in June 2005 for Spitzer's gubernatorial campaign.
In January 2006, Spitzer selected New York State Senate minority leader David Paterson as his choice for lieutenant governor and running mate. After announcing his candidacy, Spitzer was endorsed by numerous New Yorkers, including state Comptroller Alan Hevesi and two former New York City mayors, David Dinkins and Ed Koch. On May 30, 2006, Spitzer and Paterson won the endorsement of the New York State Democratic party. A June 2006 Quinnipiac University Polling Institute poll showed him leading Nassau county executive Thomas Suozzi 76–13 percent. On July 25, 2006, he faced Suozzi in a gubernatorial debate held at Pace University in Manhattan, discussing issues such as public authorities and Medicaid. When asked about marijuana, Spitzer stated that he disagrees with medicinal use of the drug, claiming that other medicines were more effective. In the Democratic primary held on September 12, 2006, Spitzer handily defeated Suozzi, securing his party's nomination with 81 percent of the vote.
On October 5, Spitzer addressed the Empire State Pride Agenda and declared that he would work as governor to legalize gay marriage in New York.
Spitzer was elected governor on November 7, 2006, when he defeated Republican John Faso and Libertarian John Clifton, among others, with 69 percent of the vote. He won with the largest margin of victory ever in a New York gubernatorial race.
Governor of New York
During the traditional midnight ceremony on January 1, 2007, Spitzer was sworn in as Governor of New York. A public ceremony was held at 1 p.m. on the same day that featured brass and percussion players from the Empire State Youth Orchestra. Bucking tradition, the ceremony was held outdoors—the first outdoor inauguration ceremony in New York for over a century. After taking the oath of office, he attended a concert at the Times Union Center in his honor, headlined by James Taylor and Natalie Merchant.
Legislative measures supported
Jonathan's Law. In May 2007, Governor Spitzer signed this legislation concerning parental and guardian access to files and records concerning their children and child abuse investigations.
The Reproductive Health and Privacy Protection Act, an abortion rights measure introduced by Spitzer in 2007.
Roadblocks to reform
Spitzer's reform-based platform, and his pledge "to change the ethics of Albany", hit an early roadblock when his ideas on how to fill vacancies in the executive department were defeated by the state legislature. According to the New York State Constitution, it is the duty of the state legislature to fill executive vacancies. The governor was criticized as unreasonable for admonishing the legislature when it took constitutional actions. The appointment of state assemblyman Thomas DiNapoli to succeed the disgraced Alan Hevesi as New York State Comptroller was a serious blow to the new governor. Spitzer had backed an outside panel to draft a list of qualified candidates; the legislature resisted Spitzer's desires when these included no legislators. Some Assembly Democrats were alienated over the incident, and questioned Spitzer's refusal of extending patronage to party members seeking local political appointments. Spitzer's choice was New York City Finance Commissioner Martha Stark, who was selected by a panel that consisted of former State Comptroller Edward Regan, former State Comptroller Carl McCall and former New York City Comptroller Harrison J. Goldin. On February 7, 2007, when the Legislature voted, Stark was one of two names put into nomination, along with Assemblyman Thomas DiNapoli of Long Island, Assembly Leader Sheldon Silver's choice. The final vote was 150 for DiNapoli and 56 for Stark. Stark's main support came from Democrats in the Senate, along with Republicans in both chambers.
Spitzer traveled to the home districts of Democratic assemblymen William B. Magnarelli and George S. Latimer (in Syracuse and Westchester County respectively), and publicly criticized them for their votes on DiNapoli; he had plans to exert similar pressure on other of his party's legislators.
One of Spitzer's key campaign pledges was to reform the state budget process. While the state did pass a budget on schedule in 2007, the ultimate results fell short of what many reformers hoped Spitzer would achieve. The New York Post opined, "Spitzer promised reform, and delivered something completely different" and termed the budget itself "bitterly disappointing."
Spitzer's budget quickly turned into a deficit, as by the end of October it was projected the state would run a deficit exceeding $4 billion for the year. During Spitzer's first year the state payroll increased, aggravating the budget problem. Despite increasing the public sector payroll, in late 2007 New York State started leading the nation in lost jobs. The 2008–09 budget included measures to counter the Great Recession.
Spitzer was criticized by members of the New York State Legislature for failing to compromise on issues during his first few months as governor. In one exchange, according to the New York Post, Spitzer told New York State Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco: "Listen, I'm a f---king steamroller and I'll roll over you and anybody else". Spitzer's reputation as a "steamroller" was shared by a plurality of New Yorkers in a Quinnipiac University poll, but by a 3-to-1 margin they believed the tactic had been unsuccessful and had only added to political gridlock.
Tedisco later accused Spitzer of cutting $300,000 of state funding for health care and education grants in the Schenectady area as retaliation for Tedisco's opposition to the Spitzer plan to allow illegal immigrants New York State driver's licenses. Tedisco accused the Governor of "dirty tricks" and "bullying".
In the wake of the political surveillance controversy involving Bruno, Spitzer was accused of pandering to special interest groups to solidify his base of support. "The governor who took office vowing to clean up Albany has lost so much public support that he is reduced to feathering the nest of the unions and other liberals," wrote Michael Goodwin of the Daily News.
In February 2008, The Washington Post published an op-ed written by Spitzer in which he criticized the Bush Administration for inhibiting states from pursuing predatory lenders.
Proposal to legalize same-sex marriage
In April 2007, Spitzer proposed a bill that would legalize same-sex marriage in New York. State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno announced his opposition to the proposal. This legislation passed in the State Assembly on June 19, 2007, but was denied in the State Senate and was returned to the Assembly.
Use of State Police for surveillance / "Troopergate"
On July 23, 2007, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office admonished the Spitzer administration for ordering the State Police to keep special records of Senate majority leader Joseph Bruno's whereabouts when he traveled with police escorts in New York City.
A 57-page report issued by the Attorney General's office concluded that Spitzer engaged in creating media coverage concerning Senator Bruno's travel. The investigation looked into both Bruno's travel and the Senate leader's allegation that Spitzer used State Police to spy on him. Cuomo concluded that "These e-mails show that persons in the governor's office did not merely produce records under a FOIL request, but were instead engaged in planning and producing media coverage concerning Senator Bruno's travel on state aircraft before any FOIL request was made." It also suggests that the governor's staff lied when they tried to explain what they had done and forced the State Police to go far beyond their normal procedures in documenting Bruno's whereabouts.
The report cleared Bruno of any misuse of the state's air fleet, which had been alleged. The report criticized Spitzer's office for using State Police resources to gather information about Bruno's travel and releasing the information to the media. The findings of the report were endorsed by Spitzer's own Inspector General, Kristine Hamann.
Spitzer responded at a July 23 press conference that "As governor, I am accountable for what goes on in the executive branch and I accept responsibility for the actions of my office" and that his administration had "grossly mishandled" the situation. Spitzer subsequently announced that he would indefinitely suspend his communications director, Darren Dopp, and reassign another top official. When questioned about his promise to bring ethical responsibility to state politics, Spitzer responded by saying "I will not tolerate this behavior", "ethics and accountability must and will remain rigorous in my administration," and that "I have always stated that I want ethics and integrity to be the hallmarks of my administration. That is why I requested that the State Inspector General review the allegations with respect to my office, and that is why we have fully cooperated with both inquiries."
The investigations of the event, dubbed "Troopergate" by media outlets, were not affected by Spitzer's resignation. As of March 2008, four probes by the state Attorney General's office, the State Senate Investigations Committee, the Albany County District Attorney's Office, and the New York Commission on Public Integrity were ongoing.
Driver's licenses for illegal immigrants
On September 21, 2007, Spitzer issued an executive order directing that state offices allow illegal immigrants to be issued driver's licenses effective December 2007. Applicants for driver's licenses would not be required to prove legal immigration status and would be allowed to present a foreign passport as identification. In October 2007, after meeting with the Department of Homeland Security, Spitzer altered the plan so that licenses issued to migrant workers would look different from other licenses and that the new licenses would not allow access to airplanes and federal buildings.
On October 22, 2007, the State Senate passed legislation that would have overturned Spitzer's plan to allow driver licenses to be obtained by undocumented immigrants. The bill passed by a margin of 39 to 19, receiving bipartisan support. Eight Democrats from moderate districts broke with Spitzer on the vote. After the vote, The New York Times called this issue "Mr. Spitzer's single most unpopular decision since he took office".
Following the State Senate's vote, Spitzer revised his plan again, proposing the issuance of a third type of driver's license. This driver's license would be available only to United States citizens who are New York State residents, and would be valid for crossing the Canada–US border. Spitzer also announced that the expiration dates of temporary visas would be printed on the driver's licenses of individuals living in the country with them.
On November 14, the day following the release of a poll showing the proposal as extremely unpopular with voters, Spitzer announced he would withdraw the plan, acknowledging that it would never be implemented. The decision drew derision from the press, as the Associated Press termed this reversal a "surrender." WCBS-TV labeled him "Governor Flip-Flop." State Senator Rubén Díaz of the Bronx said he was "betrayed" by Spitzer's abandonment of the plan.
Approval rating as governor
As of November 13, 2007, Spitzer's approval rating as governor was 33 percent, a further decline from his 44% approval rating of October 24, 2007. A later poll showed that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg would defeat Spitzer were he to seek reelection. Two polls in December 2007 showed further erosion in Spitzer's public standing.
Prostitution scandal
On March 10, 2008, The New York Times reported that Spitzer had patronized a high-priced escort service called Emperors Club VIP and met for two hours with a $1,000-an-hour call girl. This information originally came to the attention of authorities from a federal wiretap. During a six month span, Spitzer had at least seven or eight liaisons with women from the agency and paid more than $15,000. According to published reports, investigators alleged that Spitzer paid up to $80,000 for prostitutes over a period of several years while he was attorney general, and later as governor. Spitzer first drew the attention of federal investigators when his bank reported suspicious money transfers under the anti-money laundering provisions of the Bank Secrecy Act and the Patriot Act. The resulting investigation was triggered by the belief that Spitzer might have been hiding bribe proceeds and led to the discovery of the prostitution ring.
Later on March 10, Spitzer held a press conference apologizing to his family and to the public. He added, "'I must now dedicate some time to regain the trust of my family'".
Following Spitzer's March 10 press conference, New York State Assembly Republican Minority Leader James Tedisco and Republican New York Representative Peter King separately called for his resignation. Tedisco later announced that he would initiate impeachment proceedings in the State Assembly if Spitzer did not resign.
The prostitution scandal became international news.
Resignation
In the wake of the revelations and amid threats of impeachment, Spitzer announced on March 12, 2008, that he would resign his post as governor at noon on March 17, 2008. Spitzer said at a news conference in Manhattan:
Lieutenant Governor David Paterson succeeded Spitzer as governor of New York. Paterson became the first African American Governor of New York State.
Post-resignation life and career
In 2011, The Guardian summarized Spitzer's history as follows:Long before there was Barack Obama there was Spitzer. While Obama toiled unknown in Illinois, the Bronx-born Spitzer won himself a national reputation as the "Sheriff of Wall Street". He was New York's tough-talking attorney-general, who fought banking corruption, enforced environment law and won rights for low-paid workers. He used that fame to enter politics and in 2006 became governor of New York: a perfect springboard for the White House. Before America fell in love with its first black president, people wondered if it was willing to embrace its first Jewish one. Spitzer could have made history.Instead he left office in disgrace three years ago amid a flood of tabloid headlines that recounted salacious details from his repeated use of a high-end escort service. Spitzer was dubbed the "Luv Guv" and forced into a political wilderness. Rarely in American politics was a fall from grace so spectacular, so complete and so clearly down to a self-inflicted human flaw.
Prostitution scandal developments
On July 16, 2008, The New York Times published an article that explained how Spitzer used campaign funds to pay for two Mayflower Hotel bookings, $411.06 apiece, where he was alleged to have met with prostitutes. While it remains unclear if Spitzer stayed in the hotel on the nights he booked, the Times has stated that Spitzer met with prostitutes in early 2008. Spitzer declined to comment on the issue.
In November 2008, prosecutors who were in charge of the case announced that Spitzer would not face criminal charges for his involvement in the sex ring. They cited that no evidence of misuse of public funds was found and therefore it would not serve the public interest to press charges against Spitzer. Spitzer offered an apology, saying, "I appreciate the impartiality and thoroughness of the investigation by the U.S. Attorney's Office, and I acknowledge and accept responsibility for the conduct it disclosed."
Teaching
In September 2009, Spitzer joined the faculty of the City College of New York as an adjunct instructor of political science and taught an undergraduate course called "Law and Public Policy".
Media appearances
Spitzer continued to make public appearances and engage in media commitments following his resignation. The Washington Post published a Spitzer opinion piece in November 2008 conveying his analysis of the financial crisis of 2007–2008 and suggested remedies. Spitzer concluded the piece by saying that he hoped the Obama Administration would make the right policy choices, "although mistakes I made in my private life now prevent me from participating in these issues as I have in the past."
Spitzer became a regular columnist for Slate magazine and in December 2008 Slate published the first of a new series of columns by Spitzer dedicated to the economy. Spitzer was sued by two former Marsh & McLennan executives over an August 2010 Slate column about the Wall Street firm, who alleged the column was libelous. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit the following year.
Spitzer took on various public speaking arrangements, beginning with a discussion with the New York chapter of the Entrepreneurs' Organization on June 17, 2009.
He also made a number of television appearances in 2009 and 2010, including Real Time with Bill Maher and Campbell Brown (CNN program), as well as appearing as a substitute anchor on MSNBC. On June 24, 2010, CNN announced that Spitzer would be joining the network to host a "round-table" discussion program alongside center-right commentator Kathleen Parker. Parker Spitzer, compared by some media outlets to the defunct Crossfire, replaced Campbell Brown in the 8:00 p.m. ET timeslot on weeknights starting in October. In February 2011, CNN announced that Parker was leaving the show, which was renamed In the Arena on February 28, 2011. On July 6, 2011, CNN announced it was canceling In the Arena and shifting Anderson Cooper 360° to the 8 p.m. time slot.
In March 2012, Spitzer joined Al Gore's cable television network, Current TV, in the wake of the sudden firing of Keith Olbermann from the network, and immediately began hosting his own program Viewpoint with Eliot Spitzer. In January 2013, Spitzer announced that he had left both Viewpoint and Current TV, and that he would not be joining Current TV in its latest venture with Al Jazeera, citing differences of approach.
Investing
In 2012, Spitzer became an investor in TipRanks, an Israeli financial technology start-up company that ranks Wall Street analysts. He became a member of the company's board of directors.
2013 campaign for NYC Comptroller
On July 7, 2013, Spitzer announced he was running for New York City Comptroller, and would start a petition the following day. 3,750 valid signatures from registered voters from his party were required by July 11 to register for the race but Spitzer was able to submit over 27,000 signatures to the city Board of Elections before the deadline. Spitzer commented that he was asking for forgiveness, and hopeful that voters could forgive him. Spitzer lost the primary on September 10, 2013, to Scott Stringer.
Real estate career
Following his father's illness and death in 2014 and with politics behind him, Spitzer came to lead his family's real estate business, Spitzer Enterprises, despite having avoided the role for much of his life. Spitzer sold his company's apartments in The Corinthian and the Crown Building for a large profit, which he used to fund a $700 million project of three waterfront buildings in South Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Extortion victim
According to prosecutors, Spitzer was the victim of a long-running extortion scheme by Svetlana Travis-Zakharova, a Russian woman who was arrested in October 2016 and charged with forgery and grand larceny. Prosecutors said that Travis-Zakharova extracted $400,000 from Spitzer and also attempted to extort $5,000 from a different man, a toy store owner, and forged his signature on an apartment lease. Travis-Zakharova accused Spitzer of assault in 2016, then later recanted the allegation and returned to Russia. Spitzer subsequently filed a civil suit against Travis-Zakharova, alleging that she had threatened to "ruin his life" unless he agreed to pay her large sums of money. She was arrested after returning to the U.S. for a visit and charged with forgery and grand larceny; in a plea agreement in 2017, she pleaded guilty to attempted petty larceny, a misdemeanor.
Personal life
Silda Wall and Eliot Spitzer married on October 17, 1987. Together, they have three daughters: Elyssa (b. 1990), Sarabeth (b. 1993), and Jenna (b. 1995). Silda Wall Spitzer stood beside her husband when he announced his resignation as New York governor following his prostitution scandal. On May 31, 2013, Spitzer and his wife were reported to be living apart. At the close of 2013, Spitzer and his wife announced the end of their marriage.
Spitzer reportedly had a romantic relationship with Lis Smith, a 31-year-old spokeswoman for then-New York City Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio. She had been Spitzer's spokeswoman during his 2013 run for comptroller. The relationship ended in 2015.
In 2019, Spitzer announced his engagement to Roxana Girand, founder and president of real estate agency Sebastian Capital. The couple planned an April 4, 2020 wedding, and even obtained a marriage license in March 2020, but postponed the nuptials because of COVID-19 concerns.
See also
Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer – film about Spitzer
Inside Job – documentary on the financial crisis of 2007–2008
The Good Wife – fictional television drama partly inspired by events associated with Spitzer and his wife
Zipper – 2015 film, a political thriller that thinly dramatizes the Eliot Spitzer scandal.
References
Further reading
Paterson, David (2020). Black, Blind, & In Charge: A Story of Visionary Leadership and Overcoming Adversity. New York.
External links
Biographies and profiles:
"TIME Crusader of the Year 2002: Eliot Spitzer", by Adi Ignatius, December 21, 2002, issue of Time
"Corruption probe hits US insurers" – BBC News Online, October 15, 2004.
"Spoiling for a Fight: The Rise of Eliot Spitzer" by Brooke A. Masters (Times Books, July 2006)
"The Small Laws: Eliot Spitzer and the Way to Insurance Market Reform," by Sean M. Fitzpatrick, 74 Fordham L. Rev. 3041 (2006)
Interviews:
Eliot Spitzer on "Politicking with Larry King"
Frontline: The Wall Street Fix – from the PBS-series Frontline, dated April 16, 2003.
NOW with Bill Moyers: New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer – Streaming video and transcripts of Spitzer's multiple interviews on the PBS series NOW with Bill Moyers.
"The Pollution Buster" – Interview with Elizabeth Kolbert in Fall 2004 issue of OnEarth Magazine, publication of the Natural Resources Defense Council
Eliot Spitzer: Geithner, Bernanke "Complicit" in Financial Crisis and Should Go – video report by Democracy Now!
Big Think Interview With Eliot Spitzer – video interview with BigThink.com, dated January 28, 2010.
"The Sheriff of Wall Street" 2004 video interview with Eliot Spitzer, on "The Open Mind"
Media coverage:
Breaking Legal News – Eliot L. Spitzer Collection of News of Eliot Spitzer
"Corruption probe hits US insurers" – BBC coverage of Spitzer's probe of insurance industry practices, October 15, 2004.
"Spitzer targets music companies" – BBC coverage of Spitzer's prosecution of payola, October 22, 2004
Greg Palast, Eliot's Mess
Greg Palast interview on Spitzer scandal timing
Critics:
Attorney General Watch – blog of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, critical of Eliot Spitzer and other state attorneys general.
"Not Spitzer's Job" – article by Alan Reynolds, senior fellow of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank. Reprinted from The Wall Street Journal
The Passion of Eliot Spitzer: Is he telling the truth as he tries to "take people out"? by Kimberley A. Strassel, The Wall Street Journal, May 2006
Eliot Spitzer's Real Agenda... is Eliot Spitzer By Kimberley A. Strassel, The Wall Street Journal, May 2006
"Power Corrupts: Elliot [sic] Spitzer's Record as N.Y. Attorney General" By Alan Reynolds, Cato-at-liberty, March 8, 2008.
Reports:
FBI affidavit regarding the Emperor's Club VIP scandal
"Predatory Lenders' Partner in Crime". Spitzer, Eliot, The Washington Post, February 14, 2008.
companies:
Eliot Spitzer serves as TipRanks board member. TipRanks provides online investing tools allowing private investors to see the measured performance of financial analysts.
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1959 births
Antitrust lawyers
American people of Austrian-Jewish descent
American television talk show hosts
CNN people
David Paterson
Democratic Party state governors of the United States
Governors of New York (state)
Harvard Law School alumni
Horace Mann School alumni
Jewish American attorneys
Jewish American state governors of the United States
Living people
New York (state) Democrats
New York State Attorneys General
New York County Assistant District Attorneys
Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison people
Politicians from the Bronx
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom alumni
Slate (magazine) people
2000 United States presidential electors
2004 United States presidential electors
Princeton School of Public and International Affairs alumni | true | [
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"Eliot Spitzer",
"Tenure overview",
"what was the tenure overview?",
"I don't know.",
"whats the most interesting aspect?",
"As Attorney General, Spitzer stepped up the profile of the office."
] | C_7dca1559f97f47a59da66b540a08f0ac_0 | Are there any other interesting aspects about this article? | 3 | Are there any other interesting aspects about this article besides Spitzer's affect on the profile of the office? | Eliot Spitzer | As Attorney General, Spitzer stepped up the profile of the office. Traditionally, state attorneys general have pursued consumer rights cases, concentrating on local fraud while deferring national issues to the federal government. Breaking with this traditional deference, Spitzer took up civil actions and criminal prosecutions relating to corporate white-collar crime, securities fraud, Internet fraud, and environmental protection. The New York Attorney General's office has Wall Street (and thus many leading corporate and financial institutions) within its jurisdiction. Also, the New York Attorney General wields greater than usual powers of investigation and prosecution of corporations under New York State's General Business Law. In particular, under the Martin Act of 1921, the New York Attorney General has the power to subpoena witnesses and company documents pertaining to investigations of fraud or illegal activity by a corporation. Spitzer used this statute to allow his office to prosecute cases which have been described as within federal jurisdiction. Spitzer used this authority in his civil actions against corporations and criminal prosecutions against their officers. It proved useful in the wake of several U.S. corporate scandals that began with the collapse of Enron in 2001. Several of these corporations, as well as the brokerage houses that sold their stock, were accused of having inflated stock values by unethical means throughout the 1990s. When inquiries into these allegations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Congress failed, Spitzer's office used its subpoena power to obtain corporate documents, building cases against the firms both in courtrooms and in public opinion. Under his watch, Spitzer also commissioned a 1999 study of the NYPD's stop-and-frisk practices. In 2004, The Nation endorsed Spitzer as a possible Democratic candidate for vice president, stating that he was "the single most effective battler against corporate abuses in either political party". He was, however, not chosen. In January 2005, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce described Spitzer's approach as "the most egregious and unacceptable form of intimidation we've seen in this country in modern times". CANNOTANSWER | Spitzer took up civil actions and criminal prosecutions relating to corporate white-collar crime, securities fraud, Internet fraud, and environmental protection. | Eliot Laurence Spitzer (born June 10, 1959) is an American politician, attorney, educator and real estate developer. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 54th Governor of New York from 2007 until his resignation in 2008.
Born in New York City, Spitzer attended Princeton University and earned his law degree from Harvard. He began his career as an attorney in private practice with New York law firms and as a prosecutor with the office of the New York County (Manhattan) District Attorney. From 1999 to 2006, he served two four-year terms as the Attorney General of New York, earning a reputation as the "Sheriff of Wall Street" for his efforts to curb corruption in the financial services industry. Spitzer was elected Governor of New York in 2006 by the largest margin of any candidate, but his tenure would last less than two years after it was uncovered that he patronized a prostitution ring. He resigned immediately following the scandal, with the remainder of his term served by David Paterson, his lieutenant governor.
Since leaving the governorship, Spitzer has worked as a television host and an adjunct instructor at City College of New York, along with engaging in real estate activity and making private investments in a start-up company. He also ran for New York City Comptroller in 2013, losing the Democratic nomination to the eventual winner, Scott Stringer.
Early life and education
Eliot Laurence Spitzer was born in 1959 in the Bronx, New York City, the son of Anne (née Goldhaber), an English literature professor, and Bernard Spitzer, a real estate mogul. His paternal grandparents were Galician Jews, born in Tluste, Poland, now Ukraine. His maternal grandparents, born in the 1890s, were Jewish emigrants from Ottoman-era Palestine (now Israel). Spitzer is the youngest of three children. He was raised in the affluent Riverdale section of the Bronx. His family was not religious, and Spitzer did not have a bar mitzvah.
He is a 1977 graduate of Horace Mann School. After scoring 1590 out of 1600 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), he attended Princeton University and graduated with an A.B. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1981 after completing a 151-page-long senior thesis titled "Revolutions in Post-Stalin Eastern Europe: A Study of Soviet Reactions". He then received his Juris Doctor at Harvard Law School. At Princeton, he was elected chairman of the undergraduate student government and graduated in 1981. He has said he received a perfect score on the Law School Admission Test (LSAT), and went on to attend Harvard Law School, where he met and married Silda Wall. Spitzer was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.
Legal career
Upon receiving his Juris Doctor, Spitzer clerked for Judge Robert W. Sweet of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, then joined the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. He stayed there for less than two years before leaving to join the New York County District Attorney's office.
Spitzer joined the staff of Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, where he became chief of the labor-racketeering unit and spent six years (1986–1992) pursuing organized crime. Spitzer's biggest case came in 1992, when he led the investigation that ended the Gambino crime family's organized crime control of Manhattan's trucking and garment industries. Spitzer devised a plan to set up his own sweatshop in the city's garment district, where he turned out shirts, pants and sweaters, and hired 30 laborers. The shop manager eventually got close to the Gambinos, and officials were able to plant a bug in their office. The Gambinos, rather than being charged with extortion—which was hard to prove—were charged with antitrust violations. Joseph and Thomas Gambino, the latter being an extremely high-ranking member, and two other defendants took the deal and avoided jail by pleading guilty, paying $12 million in fines and agreeing to stay out of the business.
Spitzer left the District Attorney's office in 1992 to work at the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. From 1994 to 1998 he worked at the law firm Constantine and Partners on a number of consumer rights and antitrust cases.
New York State Attorney General
Campaigns
1994 campaign
In February 1991 Robert Abrams, a Democrat and the longstanding New York State Attorney General, announced his intention to run for the U.S. Senate seat for New York then occupied by incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Al D'Amato. When he announced his intention the Senate election was almost two years in the future. Abrams won the nomination in the Democratic primary but narrowly lost to D'Amato in the general election in November 1992. Ten months later, in September 1993, Abrams announced that he would resign his position as Attorney General as of December 31, 1993, although he still had one year remaining in his term. To fill this vacancy the New York State Legislature elected Assemblyman G. Oliver Koppell to serve out the remainder of the Attorney General's term during 1993.
Thirty-four-year-old Spitzer decided to run as a Democratic candidate in the 1994 election for Attorney General, as did Koppell, Brooklyn Family Court Judge Karen Burstein, and Kings County DA Charles J. Hynes. At the time, Spitzer was a young and relatively unknown defense attorney representing white-collar criminals. When he announced his campaign Spitzer suggested that, if elected, he would use the state's antitrust laws to pursue corporate polluters. Spitzer was the only candidate to support the death penalty. In a televised debate among the candidates, Spitzer was criticized for financing his campaign using $3 million of his own and family money. Despite heavy funding from his own family, he placed last among the four Democratic candidates for the nomination, receiving just 19% of the vote. Burstein, the only woman and gay candidate, won the primary with 31% of vote. Burstein subsequently lost in the general election to Republican Dennis Vacco, part of a nationwide Republican sweep, that included the election of Republican George Pataki as the new Governor of New York displacing the Democratic incumbent, Governor Mario Cuomo.
1998 campaign
Four years later, Spitzer again wanted to run for Attorney General and on May 6, 1998, he announced he would run for the office for a second time. On May 28, he emerged as the front-runner among the Democratic candidates, ranking first at the Democratic convention with 36% of the vote. He also had the most amount of money, with over $2 million. In September, he won the Democratic primary election with 42% of the vote. He defeated State Senator Catherine Abate (27%), Koppell (22%), and former Governor's Counsel Evan Davis (9%). In the general election Spitzer would face the incumbent, Dennis Vacco, a Republican.
In late October 1998, Spitzer conceded that his father had lent him most of the campaign money he raised. According to The New York Times, after "repeatedly contending that he alone paid his campaign bills this year and in 1994, [Spitzer] acknowledged [that] his father, a wealthy real estate developer, [played] an extensive role in helping to finance his campaigns." He financed the campaigns from two sets of loans—both from J.P. Morgan & Company—that amounted to $4.3 million in 1994 and $4.8 million in 1998. Spitzer said, "I have worked long, long hours for my dad and for various businesses. Look, I'm not saying that I am underpaid. But any effort to challenge the propriety of that fee is way off base."
On October 28, The New York Times endorsed Spitzer, opining that both candidates were flawed but adding that "Vacco's performance and his key policy positions make him an even worse choice [than Spitzer]". In November, Spitzer went on to defeat Republican incumbent Dennis Vacco by a small margin of victory of 0.6%. Spitzer did not win a single county in Upstate New York and won a total of six counties statewide (New York (81%), Bronx (80%), Kings (75%), Queens (67%), Westchester (52%), and Rockland (48%)).
2002 reelection campaign
In 2002 Spitzer ran for re-election and a second term as New York's Attorney General. Spitzer defeated Republican Judge Dora Irizarry 66–30%.
Tenure overview
As Attorney General, Spitzer stepped up the profile of the office. Traditionally, state attorneys general have pursued consumer rights cases, concentrating on local fraud while deferring national issues to the federal government. Breaking with this traditional deference, Spitzer took up civil actions and criminal prosecutions relating to corporate white-collar crime, securities fraud, Internet fraud, and environmental protection. The New York Attorney General's office has Wall Street (and thus many leading corporate and financial institutions) within its jurisdiction. Also, the New York Attorney General wields greater than usual powers of investigation and prosecution of corporations under New York State's General Business Law. In particular, under the Martin Act of 1921, the New York Attorney General has the power to subpoena witnesses and company documents pertaining to investigations of fraud or illegal activity by a corporation. Spitzer used this statute to allow his office to prosecute cases which have been described as within federal jurisdiction. Spitzer used this authority in his civil actions against corporations and criminal prosecutions against their officers. It proved useful in the wake of several U.S. corporate scandals that began with the collapse of Enron in 2001. Several of these corporations, as well as the brokerage houses that sold their stock, were accused of having inflated stock values by unethical means throughout the 1990s. When inquiries into these allegations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Congress failed, Spitzer's office used its subpoena power to obtain corporate documents, building cases against the firms both in courtrooms and in public opinion.
During his term in office, Spitzer also commissioned a 1999 study of the NYPD's stop-and-frisk practices.
In 2004, The Nation endorsed Spitzer as a possible Democratic candidate for vice president, stating that he was "the single most effective battler against corporate abuses in either political party". He was, however, not chosen.
Loan investigation controversy
The New York State Senate Investigations committee considered investigating a controversial multi-million-dollar loan the governor's father Bernard Spitzer gave him when he ran for attorney general in 1998, a loan the younger Spitzer paid back. Senate Investigations Committee chairman George Winner told the New York Post that subpoenas should be used to find out about the loans. Winner wrote to Senate Elections Committee chairman Senator Joseph Griffo that an article profiling Spitzer in New York magazine "outlined what may have been a willful effort by Eliot Spitzer and his father to circumvent campaign-contribution limits in New York state law and then conceal their actions." In 1998, Spitzer claimed that he secured the $5 million loan by mortgaging apartments his father had given him, but later revealed that his father was paying off the loans and, therefore, financing his campaign.
2006 gubernatorial campaign
On December 8, 2004, Spitzer announced his intention to seek the Democratic nomination for governor of New York. While long rumored, Spitzer's announcement was unusually early—nearly two years before the election. As a result of Spitzer's relative speed in bringing state Democrats to his side, he gained the respect of Democratic leaders nationwide. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson dubbed Spitzer the "future of the Democratic Party" at a fund raiser held in June 2005 for Spitzer's gubernatorial campaign.
In January 2006, Spitzer selected New York State Senate minority leader David Paterson as his choice for lieutenant governor and running mate. After announcing his candidacy, Spitzer was endorsed by numerous New Yorkers, including state Comptroller Alan Hevesi and two former New York City mayors, David Dinkins and Ed Koch. On May 30, 2006, Spitzer and Paterson won the endorsement of the New York State Democratic party. A June 2006 Quinnipiac University Polling Institute poll showed him leading Nassau county executive Thomas Suozzi 76–13 percent. On July 25, 2006, he faced Suozzi in a gubernatorial debate held at Pace University in Manhattan, discussing issues such as public authorities and Medicaid. When asked about marijuana, Spitzer stated that he disagrees with medicinal use of the drug, claiming that other medicines were more effective. In the Democratic primary held on September 12, 2006, Spitzer handily defeated Suozzi, securing his party's nomination with 81 percent of the vote.
On October 5, Spitzer addressed the Empire State Pride Agenda and declared that he would work as governor to legalize gay marriage in New York.
Spitzer was elected governor on November 7, 2006, when he defeated Republican John Faso and Libertarian John Clifton, among others, with 69 percent of the vote. He won with the largest margin of victory ever in a New York gubernatorial race.
Governor of New York
During the traditional midnight ceremony on January 1, 2007, Spitzer was sworn in as Governor of New York. A public ceremony was held at 1 p.m. on the same day that featured brass and percussion players from the Empire State Youth Orchestra. Bucking tradition, the ceremony was held outdoors—the first outdoor inauguration ceremony in New York for over a century. After taking the oath of office, he attended a concert at the Times Union Center in his honor, headlined by James Taylor and Natalie Merchant.
Legislative measures supported
Jonathan's Law. In May 2007, Governor Spitzer signed this legislation concerning parental and guardian access to files and records concerning their children and child abuse investigations.
The Reproductive Health and Privacy Protection Act, an abortion rights measure introduced by Spitzer in 2007.
Roadblocks to reform
Spitzer's reform-based platform, and his pledge "to change the ethics of Albany", hit an early roadblock when his ideas on how to fill vacancies in the executive department were defeated by the state legislature. According to the New York State Constitution, it is the duty of the state legislature to fill executive vacancies. The governor was criticized as unreasonable for admonishing the legislature when it took constitutional actions. The appointment of state assemblyman Thomas DiNapoli to succeed the disgraced Alan Hevesi as New York State Comptroller was a serious blow to the new governor. Spitzer had backed an outside panel to draft a list of qualified candidates; the legislature resisted Spitzer's desires when these included no legislators. Some Assembly Democrats were alienated over the incident, and questioned Spitzer's refusal of extending patronage to party members seeking local political appointments. Spitzer's choice was New York City Finance Commissioner Martha Stark, who was selected by a panel that consisted of former State Comptroller Edward Regan, former State Comptroller Carl McCall and former New York City Comptroller Harrison J. Goldin. On February 7, 2007, when the Legislature voted, Stark was one of two names put into nomination, along with Assemblyman Thomas DiNapoli of Long Island, Assembly Leader Sheldon Silver's choice. The final vote was 150 for DiNapoli and 56 for Stark. Stark's main support came from Democrats in the Senate, along with Republicans in both chambers.
Spitzer traveled to the home districts of Democratic assemblymen William B. Magnarelli and George S. Latimer (in Syracuse and Westchester County respectively), and publicly criticized them for their votes on DiNapoli; he had plans to exert similar pressure on other of his party's legislators.
One of Spitzer's key campaign pledges was to reform the state budget process. While the state did pass a budget on schedule in 2007, the ultimate results fell short of what many reformers hoped Spitzer would achieve. The New York Post opined, "Spitzer promised reform, and delivered something completely different" and termed the budget itself "bitterly disappointing."
Spitzer's budget quickly turned into a deficit, as by the end of October it was projected the state would run a deficit exceeding $4 billion for the year. During Spitzer's first year the state payroll increased, aggravating the budget problem. Despite increasing the public sector payroll, in late 2007 New York State started leading the nation in lost jobs. The 2008–09 budget included measures to counter the Great Recession.
Spitzer was criticized by members of the New York State Legislature for failing to compromise on issues during his first few months as governor. In one exchange, according to the New York Post, Spitzer told New York State Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco: "Listen, I'm a f---king steamroller and I'll roll over you and anybody else". Spitzer's reputation as a "steamroller" was shared by a plurality of New Yorkers in a Quinnipiac University poll, but by a 3-to-1 margin they believed the tactic had been unsuccessful and had only added to political gridlock.
Tedisco later accused Spitzer of cutting $300,000 of state funding for health care and education grants in the Schenectady area as retaliation for Tedisco's opposition to the Spitzer plan to allow illegal immigrants New York State driver's licenses. Tedisco accused the Governor of "dirty tricks" and "bullying".
In the wake of the political surveillance controversy involving Bruno, Spitzer was accused of pandering to special interest groups to solidify his base of support. "The governor who took office vowing to clean up Albany has lost so much public support that he is reduced to feathering the nest of the unions and other liberals," wrote Michael Goodwin of the Daily News.
In February 2008, The Washington Post published an op-ed written by Spitzer in which he criticized the Bush Administration for inhibiting states from pursuing predatory lenders.
Proposal to legalize same-sex marriage
In April 2007, Spitzer proposed a bill that would legalize same-sex marriage in New York. State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno announced his opposition to the proposal. This legislation passed in the State Assembly on June 19, 2007, but was denied in the State Senate and was returned to the Assembly.
Use of State Police for surveillance / "Troopergate"
On July 23, 2007, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office admonished the Spitzer administration for ordering the State Police to keep special records of Senate majority leader Joseph Bruno's whereabouts when he traveled with police escorts in New York City.
A 57-page report issued by the Attorney General's office concluded that Spitzer engaged in creating media coverage concerning Senator Bruno's travel. The investigation looked into both Bruno's travel and the Senate leader's allegation that Spitzer used State Police to spy on him. Cuomo concluded that "These e-mails show that persons in the governor's office did not merely produce records under a FOIL request, but were instead engaged in planning and producing media coverage concerning Senator Bruno's travel on state aircraft before any FOIL request was made." It also suggests that the governor's staff lied when they tried to explain what they had done and forced the State Police to go far beyond their normal procedures in documenting Bruno's whereabouts.
The report cleared Bruno of any misuse of the state's air fleet, which had been alleged. The report criticized Spitzer's office for using State Police resources to gather information about Bruno's travel and releasing the information to the media. The findings of the report were endorsed by Spitzer's own Inspector General, Kristine Hamann.
Spitzer responded at a July 23 press conference that "As governor, I am accountable for what goes on in the executive branch and I accept responsibility for the actions of my office" and that his administration had "grossly mishandled" the situation. Spitzer subsequently announced that he would indefinitely suspend his communications director, Darren Dopp, and reassign another top official. When questioned about his promise to bring ethical responsibility to state politics, Spitzer responded by saying "I will not tolerate this behavior", "ethics and accountability must and will remain rigorous in my administration," and that "I have always stated that I want ethics and integrity to be the hallmarks of my administration. That is why I requested that the State Inspector General review the allegations with respect to my office, and that is why we have fully cooperated with both inquiries."
The investigations of the event, dubbed "Troopergate" by media outlets, were not affected by Spitzer's resignation. As of March 2008, four probes by the state Attorney General's office, the State Senate Investigations Committee, the Albany County District Attorney's Office, and the New York Commission on Public Integrity were ongoing.
Driver's licenses for illegal immigrants
On September 21, 2007, Spitzer issued an executive order directing that state offices allow illegal immigrants to be issued driver's licenses effective December 2007. Applicants for driver's licenses would not be required to prove legal immigration status and would be allowed to present a foreign passport as identification. In October 2007, after meeting with the Department of Homeland Security, Spitzer altered the plan so that licenses issued to migrant workers would look different from other licenses and that the new licenses would not allow access to airplanes and federal buildings.
On October 22, 2007, the State Senate passed legislation that would have overturned Spitzer's plan to allow driver licenses to be obtained by undocumented immigrants. The bill passed by a margin of 39 to 19, receiving bipartisan support. Eight Democrats from moderate districts broke with Spitzer on the vote. After the vote, The New York Times called this issue "Mr. Spitzer's single most unpopular decision since he took office".
Following the State Senate's vote, Spitzer revised his plan again, proposing the issuance of a third type of driver's license. This driver's license would be available only to United States citizens who are New York State residents, and would be valid for crossing the Canada–US border. Spitzer also announced that the expiration dates of temporary visas would be printed on the driver's licenses of individuals living in the country with them.
On November 14, the day following the release of a poll showing the proposal as extremely unpopular with voters, Spitzer announced he would withdraw the plan, acknowledging that it would never be implemented. The decision drew derision from the press, as the Associated Press termed this reversal a "surrender." WCBS-TV labeled him "Governor Flip-Flop." State Senator Rubén Díaz of the Bronx said he was "betrayed" by Spitzer's abandonment of the plan.
Approval rating as governor
As of November 13, 2007, Spitzer's approval rating as governor was 33 percent, a further decline from his 44% approval rating of October 24, 2007. A later poll showed that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg would defeat Spitzer were he to seek reelection. Two polls in December 2007 showed further erosion in Spitzer's public standing.
Prostitution scandal
On March 10, 2008, The New York Times reported that Spitzer had patronized a high-priced escort service called Emperors Club VIP and met for two hours with a $1,000-an-hour call girl. This information originally came to the attention of authorities from a federal wiretap. During a six month span, Spitzer had at least seven or eight liaisons with women from the agency and paid more than $15,000. According to published reports, investigators alleged that Spitzer paid up to $80,000 for prostitutes over a period of several years while he was attorney general, and later as governor. Spitzer first drew the attention of federal investigators when his bank reported suspicious money transfers under the anti-money laundering provisions of the Bank Secrecy Act and the Patriot Act. The resulting investigation was triggered by the belief that Spitzer might have been hiding bribe proceeds and led to the discovery of the prostitution ring.
Later on March 10, Spitzer held a press conference apologizing to his family and to the public. He added, "'I must now dedicate some time to regain the trust of my family'".
Following Spitzer's March 10 press conference, New York State Assembly Republican Minority Leader James Tedisco and Republican New York Representative Peter King separately called for his resignation. Tedisco later announced that he would initiate impeachment proceedings in the State Assembly if Spitzer did not resign.
The prostitution scandal became international news.
Resignation
In the wake of the revelations and amid threats of impeachment, Spitzer announced on March 12, 2008, that he would resign his post as governor at noon on March 17, 2008. Spitzer said at a news conference in Manhattan:
Lieutenant Governor David Paterson succeeded Spitzer as governor of New York. Paterson became the first African American Governor of New York State.
Post-resignation life and career
In 2011, The Guardian summarized Spitzer's history as follows:Long before there was Barack Obama there was Spitzer. While Obama toiled unknown in Illinois, the Bronx-born Spitzer won himself a national reputation as the "Sheriff of Wall Street". He was New York's tough-talking attorney-general, who fought banking corruption, enforced environment law and won rights for low-paid workers. He used that fame to enter politics and in 2006 became governor of New York: a perfect springboard for the White House. Before America fell in love with its first black president, people wondered if it was willing to embrace its first Jewish one. Spitzer could have made history.Instead he left office in disgrace three years ago amid a flood of tabloid headlines that recounted salacious details from his repeated use of a high-end escort service. Spitzer was dubbed the "Luv Guv" and forced into a political wilderness. Rarely in American politics was a fall from grace so spectacular, so complete and so clearly down to a self-inflicted human flaw.
Prostitution scandal developments
On July 16, 2008, The New York Times published an article that explained how Spitzer used campaign funds to pay for two Mayflower Hotel bookings, $411.06 apiece, where he was alleged to have met with prostitutes. While it remains unclear if Spitzer stayed in the hotel on the nights he booked, the Times has stated that Spitzer met with prostitutes in early 2008. Spitzer declined to comment on the issue.
In November 2008, prosecutors who were in charge of the case announced that Spitzer would not face criminal charges for his involvement in the sex ring. They cited that no evidence of misuse of public funds was found and therefore it would not serve the public interest to press charges against Spitzer. Spitzer offered an apology, saying, "I appreciate the impartiality and thoroughness of the investigation by the U.S. Attorney's Office, and I acknowledge and accept responsibility for the conduct it disclosed."
Teaching
In September 2009, Spitzer joined the faculty of the City College of New York as an adjunct instructor of political science and taught an undergraduate course called "Law and Public Policy".
Media appearances
Spitzer continued to make public appearances and engage in media commitments following his resignation. The Washington Post published a Spitzer opinion piece in November 2008 conveying his analysis of the financial crisis of 2007–2008 and suggested remedies. Spitzer concluded the piece by saying that he hoped the Obama Administration would make the right policy choices, "although mistakes I made in my private life now prevent me from participating in these issues as I have in the past."
Spitzer became a regular columnist for Slate magazine and in December 2008 Slate published the first of a new series of columns by Spitzer dedicated to the economy. Spitzer was sued by two former Marsh & McLennan executives over an August 2010 Slate column about the Wall Street firm, who alleged the column was libelous. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit the following year.
Spitzer took on various public speaking arrangements, beginning with a discussion with the New York chapter of the Entrepreneurs' Organization on June 17, 2009.
He also made a number of television appearances in 2009 and 2010, including Real Time with Bill Maher and Campbell Brown (CNN program), as well as appearing as a substitute anchor on MSNBC. On June 24, 2010, CNN announced that Spitzer would be joining the network to host a "round-table" discussion program alongside center-right commentator Kathleen Parker. Parker Spitzer, compared by some media outlets to the defunct Crossfire, replaced Campbell Brown in the 8:00 p.m. ET timeslot on weeknights starting in October. In February 2011, CNN announced that Parker was leaving the show, which was renamed In the Arena on February 28, 2011. On July 6, 2011, CNN announced it was canceling In the Arena and shifting Anderson Cooper 360° to the 8 p.m. time slot.
In March 2012, Spitzer joined Al Gore's cable television network, Current TV, in the wake of the sudden firing of Keith Olbermann from the network, and immediately began hosting his own program Viewpoint with Eliot Spitzer. In January 2013, Spitzer announced that he had left both Viewpoint and Current TV, and that he would not be joining Current TV in its latest venture with Al Jazeera, citing differences of approach.
Investing
In 2012, Spitzer became an investor in TipRanks, an Israeli financial technology start-up company that ranks Wall Street analysts. He became a member of the company's board of directors.
2013 campaign for NYC Comptroller
On July 7, 2013, Spitzer announced he was running for New York City Comptroller, and would start a petition the following day. 3,750 valid signatures from registered voters from his party were required by July 11 to register for the race but Spitzer was able to submit over 27,000 signatures to the city Board of Elections before the deadline. Spitzer commented that he was asking for forgiveness, and hopeful that voters could forgive him. Spitzer lost the primary on September 10, 2013, to Scott Stringer.
Real estate career
Following his father's illness and death in 2014 and with politics behind him, Spitzer came to lead his family's real estate business, Spitzer Enterprises, despite having avoided the role for much of his life. Spitzer sold his company's apartments in The Corinthian and the Crown Building for a large profit, which he used to fund a $700 million project of three waterfront buildings in South Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Extortion victim
According to prosecutors, Spitzer was the victim of a long-running extortion scheme by Svetlana Travis-Zakharova, a Russian woman who was arrested in October 2016 and charged with forgery and grand larceny. Prosecutors said that Travis-Zakharova extracted $400,000 from Spitzer and also attempted to extort $5,000 from a different man, a toy store owner, and forged his signature on an apartment lease. Travis-Zakharova accused Spitzer of assault in 2016, then later recanted the allegation and returned to Russia. Spitzer subsequently filed a civil suit against Travis-Zakharova, alleging that she had threatened to "ruin his life" unless he agreed to pay her large sums of money. She was arrested after returning to the U.S. for a visit and charged with forgery and grand larceny; in a plea agreement in 2017, she pleaded guilty to attempted petty larceny, a misdemeanor.
Personal life
Silda Wall and Eliot Spitzer married on October 17, 1987. Together, they have three daughters: Elyssa (b. 1990), Sarabeth (b. 1993), and Jenna (b. 1995). Silda Wall Spitzer stood beside her husband when he announced his resignation as New York governor following his prostitution scandal. On May 31, 2013, Spitzer and his wife were reported to be living apart. At the close of 2013, Spitzer and his wife announced the end of their marriage.
Spitzer reportedly had a romantic relationship with Lis Smith, a 31-year-old spokeswoman for then-New York City Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio. She had been Spitzer's spokeswoman during his 2013 run for comptroller. The relationship ended in 2015.
In 2019, Spitzer announced his engagement to Roxana Girand, founder and president of real estate agency Sebastian Capital. The couple planned an April 4, 2020 wedding, and even obtained a marriage license in March 2020, but postponed the nuptials because of COVID-19 concerns.
See also
Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer – film about Spitzer
Inside Job – documentary on the financial crisis of 2007–2008
The Good Wife – fictional television drama partly inspired by events associated with Spitzer and his wife
Zipper – 2015 film, a political thriller that thinly dramatizes the Eliot Spitzer scandal.
References
Further reading
Paterson, David (2020). Black, Blind, & In Charge: A Story of Visionary Leadership and Overcoming Adversity. New York.
External links
Biographies and profiles:
"TIME Crusader of the Year 2002: Eliot Spitzer", by Adi Ignatius, December 21, 2002, issue of Time
"Corruption probe hits US insurers" – BBC News Online, October 15, 2004.
"Spoiling for a Fight: The Rise of Eliot Spitzer" by Brooke A. Masters (Times Books, July 2006)
"The Small Laws: Eliot Spitzer and the Way to Insurance Market Reform," by Sean M. Fitzpatrick, 74 Fordham L. Rev. 3041 (2006)
Interviews:
Eliot Spitzer on "Politicking with Larry King"
Frontline: The Wall Street Fix – from the PBS-series Frontline, dated April 16, 2003.
NOW with Bill Moyers: New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer – Streaming video and transcripts of Spitzer's multiple interviews on the PBS series NOW with Bill Moyers.
"The Pollution Buster" – Interview with Elizabeth Kolbert in Fall 2004 issue of OnEarth Magazine, publication of the Natural Resources Defense Council
Eliot Spitzer: Geithner, Bernanke "Complicit" in Financial Crisis and Should Go – video report by Democracy Now!
Big Think Interview With Eliot Spitzer – video interview with BigThink.com, dated January 28, 2010.
"The Sheriff of Wall Street" 2004 video interview with Eliot Spitzer, on "The Open Mind"
Media coverage:
Breaking Legal News – Eliot L. Spitzer Collection of News of Eliot Spitzer
"Corruption probe hits US insurers" – BBC coverage of Spitzer's probe of insurance industry practices, October 15, 2004.
"Spitzer targets music companies" – BBC coverage of Spitzer's prosecution of payola, October 22, 2004
Greg Palast, Eliot's Mess
Greg Palast interview on Spitzer scandal timing
Critics:
Attorney General Watch – blog of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, critical of Eliot Spitzer and other state attorneys general.
"Not Spitzer's Job" – article by Alan Reynolds, senior fellow of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank. Reprinted from The Wall Street Journal
The Passion of Eliot Spitzer: Is he telling the truth as he tries to "take people out"? by Kimberley A. Strassel, The Wall Street Journal, May 2006
Eliot Spitzer's Real Agenda... is Eliot Spitzer By Kimberley A. Strassel, The Wall Street Journal, May 2006
"Power Corrupts: Elliot [sic] Spitzer's Record as N.Y. Attorney General" By Alan Reynolds, Cato-at-liberty, March 8, 2008.
Reports:
FBI affidavit regarding the Emperor's Club VIP scandal
"Predatory Lenders' Partner in Crime". Spitzer, Eliot, The Washington Post, February 14, 2008.
companies:
Eliot Spitzer serves as TipRanks board member. TipRanks provides online investing tools allowing private investors to see the measured performance of financial analysts.
|-
|-
|-
1959 births
Antitrust lawyers
American people of Austrian-Jewish descent
American television talk show hosts
CNN people
David Paterson
Democratic Party state governors of the United States
Governors of New York (state)
Harvard Law School alumni
Horace Mann School alumni
Jewish American attorneys
Jewish American state governors of the United States
Living people
New York (state) Democrats
New York State Attorneys General
New York County Assistant District Attorneys
Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison people
Politicians from the Bronx
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom alumni
Slate (magazine) people
2000 United States presidential electors
2004 United States presidential electors
Princeton School of Public and International Affairs alumni | 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"
] |
[
"Eliot Spitzer",
"Tenure overview",
"what was the tenure overview?",
"I don't know.",
"whats the most interesting aspect?",
"As Attorney General, Spitzer stepped up the profile of the office.",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"Spitzer took up civil actions and criminal prosecutions relating to corporate white-collar crime, securities fraud, Internet fraud, and environmental protection."
] | C_7dca1559f97f47a59da66b540a08f0ac_0 | was he married? | 4 | Was Eliot Spitzer married? | Eliot Spitzer | As Attorney General, Spitzer stepped up the profile of the office. Traditionally, state attorneys general have pursued consumer rights cases, concentrating on local fraud while deferring national issues to the federal government. Breaking with this traditional deference, Spitzer took up civil actions and criminal prosecutions relating to corporate white-collar crime, securities fraud, Internet fraud, and environmental protection. The New York Attorney General's office has Wall Street (and thus many leading corporate and financial institutions) within its jurisdiction. Also, the New York Attorney General wields greater than usual powers of investigation and prosecution of corporations under New York State's General Business Law. In particular, under the Martin Act of 1921, the New York Attorney General has the power to subpoena witnesses and company documents pertaining to investigations of fraud or illegal activity by a corporation. Spitzer used this statute to allow his office to prosecute cases which have been described as within federal jurisdiction. Spitzer used this authority in his civil actions against corporations and criminal prosecutions against their officers. It proved useful in the wake of several U.S. corporate scandals that began with the collapse of Enron in 2001. Several of these corporations, as well as the brokerage houses that sold their stock, were accused of having inflated stock values by unethical means throughout the 1990s. When inquiries into these allegations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Congress failed, Spitzer's office used its subpoena power to obtain corporate documents, building cases against the firms both in courtrooms and in public opinion. Under his watch, Spitzer also commissioned a 1999 study of the NYPD's stop-and-frisk practices. In 2004, The Nation endorsed Spitzer as a possible Democratic candidate for vice president, stating that he was "the single most effective battler against corporate abuses in either political party". He was, however, not chosen. In January 2005, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce described Spitzer's approach as "the most egregious and unacceptable form of intimidation we've seen in this country in modern times". CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Eliot Laurence Spitzer (born June 10, 1959) is an American politician, attorney, educator and real estate developer. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 54th Governor of New York from 2007 until his resignation in 2008.
Born in New York City, Spitzer attended Princeton University and earned his law degree from Harvard. He began his career as an attorney in private practice with New York law firms and as a prosecutor with the office of the New York County (Manhattan) District Attorney. From 1999 to 2006, he served two four-year terms as the Attorney General of New York, earning a reputation as the "Sheriff of Wall Street" for his efforts to curb corruption in the financial services industry. Spitzer was elected Governor of New York in 2006 by the largest margin of any candidate, but his tenure would last less than two years after it was uncovered that he patronized a prostitution ring. He resigned immediately following the scandal, with the remainder of his term served by David Paterson, his lieutenant governor.
Since leaving the governorship, Spitzer has worked as a television host and an adjunct instructor at City College of New York, along with engaging in real estate activity and making private investments in a start-up company. He also ran for New York City Comptroller in 2013, losing the Democratic nomination to the eventual winner, Scott Stringer.
Early life and education
Eliot Laurence Spitzer was born in 1959 in the Bronx, New York City, the son of Anne (née Goldhaber), an English literature professor, and Bernard Spitzer, a real estate mogul. His paternal grandparents were Galician Jews, born in Tluste, Poland, now Ukraine. His maternal grandparents, born in the 1890s, were Jewish emigrants from Ottoman-era Palestine (now Israel). Spitzer is the youngest of three children. He was raised in the affluent Riverdale section of the Bronx. His family was not religious, and Spitzer did not have a bar mitzvah.
He is a 1977 graduate of Horace Mann School. After scoring 1590 out of 1600 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), he attended Princeton University and graduated with an A.B. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1981 after completing a 151-page-long senior thesis titled "Revolutions in Post-Stalin Eastern Europe: A Study of Soviet Reactions". He then received his Juris Doctor at Harvard Law School. At Princeton, he was elected chairman of the undergraduate student government and graduated in 1981. He has said he received a perfect score on the Law School Admission Test (LSAT), and went on to attend Harvard Law School, where he met and married Silda Wall. Spitzer was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.
Legal career
Upon receiving his Juris Doctor, Spitzer clerked for Judge Robert W. Sweet of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, then joined the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. He stayed there for less than two years before leaving to join the New York County District Attorney's office.
Spitzer joined the staff of Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, where he became chief of the labor-racketeering unit and spent six years (1986–1992) pursuing organized crime. Spitzer's biggest case came in 1992, when he led the investigation that ended the Gambino crime family's organized crime control of Manhattan's trucking and garment industries. Spitzer devised a plan to set up his own sweatshop in the city's garment district, where he turned out shirts, pants and sweaters, and hired 30 laborers. The shop manager eventually got close to the Gambinos, and officials were able to plant a bug in their office. The Gambinos, rather than being charged with extortion—which was hard to prove—were charged with antitrust violations. Joseph and Thomas Gambino, the latter being an extremely high-ranking member, and two other defendants took the deal and avoided jail by pleading guilty, paying $12 million in fines and agreeing to stay out of the business.
Spitzer left the District Attorney's office in 1992 to work at the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. From 1994 to 1998 he worked at the law firm Constantine and Partners on a number of consumer rights and antitrust cases.
New York State Attorney General
Campaigns
1994 campaign
In February 1991 Robert Abrams, a Democrat and the longstanding New York State Attorney General, announced his intention to run for the U.S. Senate seat for New York then occupied by incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Al D'Amato. When he announced his intention the Senate election was almost two years in the future. Abrams won the nomination in the Democratic primary but narrowly lost to D'Amato in the general election in November 1992. Ten months later, in September 1993, Abrams announced that he would resign his position as Attorney General as of December 31, 1993, although he still had one year remaining in his term. To fill this vacancy the New York State Legislature elected Assemblyman G. Oliver Koppell to serve out the remainder of the Attorney General's term during 1993.
Thirty-four-year-old Spitzer decided to run as a Democratic candidate in the 1994 election for Attorney General, as did Koppell, Brooklyn Family Court Judge Karen Burstein, and Kings County DA Charles J. Hynes. At the time, Spitzer was a young and relatively unknown defense attorney representing white-collar criminals. When he announced his campaign Spitzer suggested that, if elected, he would use the state's antitrust laws to pursue corporate polluters. Spitzer was the only candidate to support the death penalty. In a televised debate among the candidates, Spitzer was criticized for financing his campaign using $3 million of his own and family money. Despite heavy funding from his own family, he placed last among the four Democratic candidates for the nomination, receiving just 19% of the vote. Burstein, the only woman and gay candidate, won the primary with 31% of vote. Burstein subsequently lost in the general election to Republican Dennis Vacco, part of a nationwide Republican sweep, that included the election of Republican George Pataki as the new Governor of New York displacing the Democratic incumbent, Governor Mario Cuomo.
1998 campaign
Four years later, Spitzer again wanted to run for Attorney General and on May 6, 1998, he announced he would run for the office for a second time. On May 28, he emerged as the front-runner among the Democratic candidates, ranking first at the Democratic convention with 36% of the vote. He also had the most amount of money, with over $2 million. In September, he won the Democratic primary election with 42% of the vote. He defeated State Senator Catherine Abate (27%), Koppell (22%), and former Governor's Counsel Evan Davis (9%). In the general election Spitzer would face the incumbent, Dennis Vacco, a Republican.
In late October 1998, Spitzer conceded that his father had lent him most of the campaign money he raised. According to The New York Times, after "repeatedly contending that he alone paid his campaign bills this year and in 1994, [Spitzer] acknowledged [that] his father, a wealthy real estate developer, [played] an extensive role in helping to finance his campaigns." He financed the campaigns from two sets of loans—both from J.P. Morgan & Company—that amounted to $4.3 million in 1994 and $4.8 million in 1998. Spitzer said, "I have worked long, long hours for my dad and for various businesses. Look, I'm not saying that I am underpaid. But any effort to challenge the propriety of that fee is way off base."
On October 28, The New York Times endorsed Spitzer, opining that both candidates were flawed but adding that "Vacco's performance and his key policy positions make him an even worse choice [than Spitzer]". In November, Spitzer went on to defeat Republican incumbent Dennis Vacco by a small margin of victory of 0.6%. Spitzer did not win a single county in Upstate New York and won a total of six counties statewide (New York (81%), Bronx (80%), Kings (75%), Queens (67%), Westchester (52%), and Rockland (48%)).
2002 reelection campaign
In 2002 Spitzer ran for re-election and a second term as New York's Attorney General. Spitzer defeated Republican Judge Dora Irizarry 66–30%.
Tenure overview
As Attorney General, Spitzer stepped up the profile of the office. Traditionally, state attorneys general have pursued consumer rights cases, concentrating on local fraud while deferring national issues to the federal government. Breaking with this traditional deference, Spitzer took up civil actions and criminal prosecutions relating to corporate white-collar crime, securities fraud, Internet fraud, and environmental protection. The New York Attorney General's office has Wall Street (and thus many leading corporate and financial institutions) within its jurisdiction. Also, the New York Attorney General wields greater than usual powers of investigation and prosecution of corporations under New York State's General Business Law. In particular, under the Martin Act of 1921, the New York Attorney General has the power to subpoena witnesses and company documents pertaining to investigations of fraud or illegal activity by a corporation. Spitzer used this statute to allow his office to prosecute cases which have been described as within federal jurisdiction. Spitzer used this authority in his civil actions against corporations and criminal prosecutions against their officers. It proved useful in the wake of several U.S. corporate scandals that began with the collapse of Enron in 2001. Several of these corporations, as well as the brokerage houses that sold their stock, were accused of having inflated stock values by unethical means throughout the 1990s. When inquiries into these allegations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Congress failed, Spitzer's office used its subpoena power to obtain corporate documents, building cases against the firms both in courtrooms and in public opinion.
During his term in office, Spitzer also commissioned a 1999 study of the NYPD's stop-and-frisk practices.
In 2004, The Nation endorsed Spitzer as a possible Democratic candidate for vice president, stating that he was "the single most effective battler against corporate abuses in either political party". He was, however, not chosen.
Loan investigation controversy
The New York State Senate Investigations committee considered investigating a controversial multi-million-dollar loan the governor's father Bernard Spitzer gave him when he ran for attorney general in 1998, a loan the younger Spitzer paid back. Senate Investigations Committee chairman George Winner told the New York Post that subpoenas should be used to find out about the loans. Winner wrote to Senate Elections Committee chairman Senator Joseph Griffo that an article profiling Spitzer in New York magazine "outlined what may have been a willful effort by Eliot Spitzer and his father to circumvent campaign-contribution limits in New York state law and then conceal their actions." In 1998, Spitzer claimed that he secured the $5 million loan by mortgaging apartments his father had given him, but later revealed that his father was paying off the loans and, therefore, financing his campaign.
2006 gubernatorial campaign
On December 8, 2004, Spitzer announced his intention to seek the Democratic nomination for governor of New York. While long rumored, Spitzer's announcement was unusually early—nearly two years before the election. As a result of Spitzer's relative speed in bringing state Democrats to his side, he gained the respect of Democratic leaders nationwide. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson dubbed Spitzer the "future of the Democratic Party" at a fund raiser held in June 2005 for Spitzer's gubernatorial campaign.
In January 2006, Spitzer selected New York State Senate minority leader David Paterson as his choice for lieutenant governor and running mate. After announcing his candidacy, Spitzer was endorsed by numerous New Yorkers, including state Comptroller Alan Hevesi and two former New York City mayors, David Dinkins and Ed Koch. On May 30, 2006, Spitzer and Paterson won the endorsement of the New York State Democratic party. A June 2006 Quinnipiac University Polling Institute poll showed him leading Nassau county executive Thomas Suozzi 76–13 percent. On July 25, 2006, he faced Suozzi in a gubernatorial debate held at Pace University in Manhattan, discussing issues such as public authorities and Medicaid. When asked about marijuana, Spitzer stated that he disagrees with medicinal use of the drug, claiming that other medicines were more effective. In the Democratic primary held on September 12, 2006, Spitzer handily defeated Suozzi, securing his party's nomination with 81 percent of the vote.
On October 5, Spitzer addressed the Empire State Pride Agenda and declared that he would work as governor to legalize gay marriage in New York.
Spitzer was elected governor on November 7, 2006, when he defeated Republican John Faso and Libertarian John Clifton, among others, with 69 percent of the vote. He won with the largest margin of victory ever in a New York gubernatorial race.
Governor of New York
During the traditional midnight ceremony on January 1, 2007, Spitzer was sworn in as Governor of New York. A public ceremony was held at 1 p.m. on the same day that featured brass and percussion players from the Empire State Youth Orchestra. Bucking tradition, the ceremony was held outdoors—the first outdoor inauguration ceremony in New York for over a century. After taking the oath of office, he attended a concert at the Times Union Center in his honor, headlined by James Taylor and Natalie Merchant.
Legislative measures supported
Jonathan's Law. In May 2007, Governor Spitzer signed this legislation concerning parental and guardian access to files and records concerning their children and child abuse investigations.
The Reproductive Health and Privacy Protection Act, an abortion rights measure introduced by Spitzer in 2007.
Roadblocks to reform
Spitzer's reform-based platform, and his pledge "to change the ethics of Albany", hit an early roadblock when his ideas on how to fill vacancies in the executive department were defeated by the state legislature. According to the New York State Constitution, it is the duty of the state legislature to fill executive vacancies. The governor was criticized as unreasonable for admonishing the legislature when it took constitutional actions. The appointment of state assemblyman Thomas DiNapoli to succeed the disgraced Alan Hevesi as New York State Comptroller was a serious blow to the new governor. Spitzer had backed an outside panel to draft a list of qualified candidates; the legislature resisted Spitzer's desires when these included no legislators. Some Assembly Democrats were alienated over the incident, and questioned Spitzer's refusal of extending patronage to party members seeking local political appointments. Spitzer's choice was New York City Finance Commissioner Martha Stark, who was selected by a panel that consisted of former State Comptroller Edward Regan, former State Comptroller Carl McCall and former New York City Comptroller Harrison J. Goldin. On February 7, 2007, when the Legislature voted, Stark was one of two names put into nomination, along with Assemblyman Thomas DiNapoli of Long Island, Assembly Leader Sheldon Silver's choice. The final vote was 150 for DiNapoli and 56 for Stark. Stark's main support came from Democrats in the Senate, along with Republicans in both chambers.
Spitzer traveled to the home districts of Democratic assemblymen William B. Magnarelli and George S. Latimer (in Syracuse and Westchester County respectively), and publicly criticized them for their votes on DiNapoli; he had plans to exert similar pressure on other of his party's legislators.
One of Spitzer's key campaign pledges was to reform the state budget process. While the state did pass a budget on schedule in 2007, the ultimate results fell short of what many reformers hoped Spitzer would achieve. The New York Post opined, "Spitzer promised reform, and delivered something completely different" and termed the budget itself "bitterly disappointing."
Spitzer's budget quickly turned into a deficit, as by the end of October it was projected the state would run a deficit exceeding $4 billion for the year. During Spitzer's first year the state payroll increased, aggravating the budget problem. Despite increasing the public sector payroll, in late 2007 New York State started leading the nation in lost jobs. The 2008–09 budget included measures to counter the Great Recession.
Spitzer was criticized by members of the New York State Legislature for failing to compromise on issues during his first few months as governor. In one exchange, according to the New York Post, Spitzer told New York State Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco: "Listen, I'm a f---king steamroller and I'll roll over you and anybody else". Spitzer's reputation as a "steamroller" was shared by a plurality of New Yorkers in a Quinnipiac University poll, but by a 3-to-1 margin they believed the tactic had been unsuccessful and had only added to political gridlock.
Tedisco later accused Spitzer of cutting $300,000 of state funding for health care and education grants in the Schenectady area as retaliation for Tedisco's opposition to the Spitzer plan to allow illegal immigrants New York State driver's licenses. Tedisco accused the Governor of "dirty tricks" and "bullying".
In the wake of the political surveillance controversy involving Bruno, Spitzer was accused of pandering to special interest groups to solidify his base of support. "The governor who took office vowing to clean up Albany has lost so much public support that he is reduced to feathering the nest of the unions and other liberals," wrote Michael Goodwin of the Daily News.
In February 2008, The Washington Post published an op-ed written by Spitzer in which he criticized the Bush Administration for inhibiting states from pursuing predatory lenders.
Proposal to legalize same-sex marriage
In April 2007, Spitzer proposed a bill that would legalize same-sex marriage in New York. State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno announced his opposition to the proposal. This legislation passed in the State Assembly on June 19, 2007, but was denied in the State Senate and was returned to the Assembly.
Use of State Police for surveillance / "Troopergate"
On July 23, 2007, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office admonished the Spitzer administration for ordering the State Police to keep special records of Senate majority leader Joseph Bruno's whereabouts when he traveled with police escorts in New York City.
A 57-page report issued by the Attorney General's office concluded that Spitzer engaged in creating media coverage concerning Senator Bruno's travel. The investigation looked into both Bruno's travel and the Senate leader's allegation that Spitzer used State Police to spy on him. Cuomo concluded that "These e-mails show that persons in the governor's office did not merely produce records under a FOIL request, but were instead engaged in planning and producing media coverage concerning Senator Bruno's travel on state aircraft before any FOIL request was made." It also suggests that the governor's staff lied when they tried to explain what they had done and forced the State Police to go far beyond their normal procedures in documenting Bruno's whereabouts.
The report cleared Bruno of any misuse of the state's air fleet, which had been alleged. The report criticized Spitzer's office for using State Police resources to gather information about Bruno's travel and releasing the information to the media. The findings of the report were endorsed by Spitzer's own Inspector General, Kristine Hamann.
Spitzer responded at a July 23 press conference that "As governor, I am accountable for what goes on in the executive branch and I accept responsibility for the actions of my office" and that his administration had "grossly mishandled" the situation. Spitzer subsequently announced that he would indefinitely suspend his communications director, Darren Dopp, and reassign another top official. When questioned about his promise to bring ethical responsibility to state politics, Spitzer responded by saying "I will not tolerate this behavior", "ethics and accountability must and will remain rigorous in my administration," and that "I have always stated that I want ethics and integrity to be the hallmarks of my administration. That is why I requested that the State Inspector General review the allegations with respect to my office, and that is why we have fully cooperated with both inquiries."
The investigations of the event, dubbed "Troopergate" by media outlets, were not affected by Spitzer's resignation. As of March 2008, four probes by the state Attorney General's office, the State Senate Investigations Committee, the Albany County District Attorney's Office, and the New York Commission on Public Integrity were ongoing.
Driver's licenses for illegal immigrants
On September 21, 2007, Spitzer issued an executive order directing that state offices allow illegal immigrants to be issued driver's licenses effective December 2007. Applicants for driver's licenses would not be required to prove legal immigration status and would be allowed to present a foreign passport as identification. In October 2007, after meeting with the Department of Homeland Security, Spitzer altered the plan so that licenses issued to migrant workers would look different from other licenses and that the new licenses would not allow access to airplanes and federal buildings.
On October 22, 2007, the State Senate passed legislation that would have overturned Spitzer's plan to allow driver licenses to be obtained by undocumented immigrants. The bill passed by a margin of 39 to 19, receiving bipartisan support. Eight Democrats from moderate districts broke with Spitzer on the vote. After the vote, The New York Times called this issue "Mr. Spitzer's single most unpopular decision since he took office".
Following the State Senate's vote, Spitzer revised his plan again, proposing the issuance of a third type of driver's license. This driver's license would be available only to United States citizens who are New York State residents, and would be valid for crossing the Canada–US border. Spitzer also announced that the expiration dates of temporary visas would be printed on the driver's licenses of individuals living in the country with them.
On November 14, the day following the release of a poll showing the proposal as extremely unpopular with voters, Spitzer announced he would withdraw the plan, acknowledging that it would never be implemented. The decision drew derision from the press, as the Associated Press termed this reversal a "surrender." WCBS-TV labeled him "Governor Flip-Flop." State Senator Rubén Díaz of the Bronx said he was "betrayed" by Spitzer's abandonment of the plan.
Approval rating as governor
As of November 13, 2007, Spitzer's approval rating as governor was 33 percent, a further decline from his 44% approval rating of October 24, 2007. A later poll showed that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg would defeat Spitzer were he to seek reelection. Two polls in December 2007 showed further erosion in Spitzer's public standing.
Prostitution scandal
On March 10, 2008, The New York Times reported that Spitzer had patronized a high-priced escort service called Emperors Club VIP and met for two hours with a $1,000-an-hour call girl. This information originally came to the attention of authorities from a federal wiretap. During a six month span, Spitzer had at least seven or eight liaisons with women from the agency and paid more than $15,000. According to published reports, investigators alleged that Spitzer paid up to $80,000 for prostitutes over a period of several years while he was attorney general, and later as governor. Spitzer first drew the attention of federal investigators when his bank reported suspicious money transfers under the anti-money laundering provisions of the Bank Secrecy Act and the Patriot Act. The resulting investigation was triggered by the belief that Spitzer might have been hiding bribe proceeds and led to the discovery of the prostitution ring.
Later on March 10, Spitzer held a press conference apologizing to his family and to the public. He added, "'I must now dedicate some time to regain the trust of my family'".
Following Spitzer's March 10 press conference, New York State Assembly Republican Minority Leader James Tedisco and Republican New York Representative Peter King separately called for his resignation. Tedisco later announced that he would initiate impeachment proceedings in the State Assembly if Spitzer did not resign.
The prostitution scandal became international news.
Resignation
In the wake of the revelations and amid threats of impeachment, Spitzer announced on March 12, 2008, that he would resign his post as governor at noon on March 17, 2008. Spitzer said at a news conference in Manhattan:
Lieutenant Governor David Paterson succeeded Spitzer as governor of New York. Paterson became the first African American Governor of New York State.
Post-resignation life and career
In 2011, The Guardian summarized Spitzer's history as follows:Long before there was Barack Obama there was Spitzer. While Obama toiled unknown in Illinois, the Bronx-born Spitzer won himself a national reputation as the "Sheriff of Wall Street". He was New York's tough-talking attorney-general, who fought banking corruption, enforced environment law and won rights for low-paid workers. He used that fame to enter politics and in 2006 became governor of New York: a perfect springboard for the White House. Before America fell in love with its first black president, people wondered if it was willing to embrace its first Jewish one. Spitzer could have made history.Instead he left office in disgrace three years ago amid a flood of tabloid headlines that recounted salacious details from his repeated use of a high-end escort service. Spitzer was dubbed the "Luv Guv" and forced into a political wilderness. Rarely in American politics was a fall from grace so spectacular, so complete and so clearly down to a self-inflicted human flaw.
Prostitution scandal developments
On July 16, 2008, The New York Times published an article that explained how Spitzer used campaign funds to pay for two Mayflower Hotel bookings, $411.06 apiece, where he was alleged to have met with prostitutes. While it remains unclear if Spitzer stayed in the hotel on the nights he booked, the Times has stated that Spitzer met with prostitutes in early 2008. Spitzer declined to comment on the issue.
In November 2008, prosecutors who were in charge of the case announced that Spitzer would not face criminal charges for his involvement in the sex ring. They cited that no evidence of misuse of public funds was found and therefore it would not serve the public interest to press charges against Spitzer. Spitzer offered an apology, saying, "I appreciate the impartiality and thoroughness of the investigation by the U.S. Attorney's Office, and I acknowledge and accept responsibility for the conduct it disclosed."
Teaching
In September 2009, Spitzer joined the faculty of the City College of New York as an adjunct instructor of political science and taught an undergraduate course called "Law and Public Policy".
Media appearances
Spitzer continued to make public appearances and engage in media commitments following his resignation. The Washington Post published a Spitzer opinion piece in November 2008 conveying his analysis of the financial crisis of 2007–2008 and suggested remedies. Spitzer concluded the piece by saying that he hoped the Obama Administration would make the right policy choices, "although mistakes I made in my private life now prevent me from participating in these issues as I have in the past."
Spitzer became a regular columnist for Slate magazine and in December 2008 Slate published the first of a new series of columns by Spitzer dedicated to the economy. Spitzer was sued by two former Marsh & McLennan executives over an August 2010 Slate column about the Wall Street firm, who alleged the column was libelous. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit the following year.
Spitzer took on various public speaking arrangements, beginning with a discussion with the New York chapter of the Entrepreneurs' Organization on June 17, 2009.
He also made a number of television appearances in 2009 and 2010, including Real Time with Bill Maher and Campbell Brown (CNN program), as well as appearing as a substitute anchor on MSNBC. On June 24, 2010, CNN announced that Spitzer would be joining the network to host a "round-table" discussion program alongside center-right commentator Kathleen Parker. Parker Spitzer, compared by some media outlets to the defunct Crossfire, replaced Campbell Brown in the 8:00 p.m. ET timeslot on weeknights starting in October. In February 2011, CNN announced that Parker was leaving the show, which was renamed In the Arena on February 28, 2011. On July 6, 2011, CNN announced it was canceling In the Arena and shifting Anderson Cooper 360° to the 8 p.m. time slot.
In March 2012, Spitzer joined Al Gore's cable television network, Current TV, in the wake of the sudden firing of Keith Olbermann from the network, and immediately began hosting his own program Viewpoint with Eliot Spitzer. In January 2013, Spitzer announced that he had left both Viewpoint and Current TV, and that he would not be joining Current TV in its latest venture with Al Jazeera, citing differences of approach.
Investing
In 2012, Spitzer became an investor in TipRanks, an Israeli financial technology start-up company that ranks Wall Street analysts. He became a member of the company's board of directors.
2013 campaign for NYC Comptroller
On July 7, 2013, Spitzer announced he was running for New York City Comptroller, and would start a petition the following day. 3,750 valid signatures from registered voters from his party were required by July 11 to register for the race but Spitzer was able to submit over 27,000 signatures to the city Board of Elections before the deadline. Spitzer commented that he was asking for forgiveness, and hopeful that voters could forgive him. Spitzer lost the primary on September 10, 2013, to Scott Stringer.
Real estate career
Following his father's illness and death in 2014 and with politics behind him, Spitzer came to lead his family's real estate business, Spitzer Enterprises, despite having avoided the role for much of his life. Spitzer sold his company's apartments in The Corinthian and the Crown Building for a large profit, which he used to fund a $700 million project of three waterfront buildings in South Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Extortion victim
According to prosecutors, Spitzer was the victim of a long-running extortion scheme by Svetlana Travis-Zakharova, a Russian woman who was arrested in October 2016 and charged with forgery and grand larceny. Prosecutors said that Travis-Zakharova extracted $400,000 from Spitzer and also attempted to extort $5,000 from a different man, a toy store owner, and forged his signature on an apartment lease. Travis-Zakharova accused Spitzer of assault in 2016, then later recanted the allegation and returned to Russia. Spitzer subsequently filed a civil suit against Travis-Zakharova, alleging that she had threatened to "ruin his life" unless he agreed to pay her large sums of money. She was arrested after returning to the U.S. for a visit and charged with forgery and grand larceny; in a plea agreement in 2017, she pleaded guilty to attempted petty larceny, a misdemeanor.
Personal life
Silda Wall and Eliot Spitzer married on October 17, 1987. Together, they have three daughters: Elyssa (b. 1990), Sarabeth (b. 1993), and Jenna (b. 1995). Silda Wall Spitzer stood beside her husband when he announced his resignation as New York governor following his prostitution scandal. On May 31, 2013, Spitzer and his wife were reported to be living apart. At the close of 2013, Spitzer and his wife announced the end of their marriage.
Spitzer reportedly had a romantic relationship with Lis Smith, a 31-year-old spokeswoman for then-New York City Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio. She had been Spitzer's spokeswoman during his 2013 run for comptroller. The relationship ended in 2015.
In 2019, Spitzer announced his engagement to Roxana Girand, founder and president of real estate agency Sebastian Capital. The couple planned an April 4, 2020 wedding, and even obtained a marriage license in March 2020, but postponed the nuptials because of COVID-19 concerns.
See also
Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer – film about Spitzer
Inside Job – documentary on the financial crisis of 2007–2008
The Good Wife – fictional television drama partly inspired by events associated with Spitzer and his wife
Zipper – 2015 film, a political thriller that thinly dramatizes the Eliot Spitzer scandal.
References
Further reading
Paterson, David (2020). Black, Blind, & In Charge: A Story of Visionary Leadership and Overcoming Adversity. New York.
External links
Biographies and profiles:
"TIME Crusader of the Year 2002: Eliot Spitzer", by Adi Ignatius, December 21, 2002, issue of Time
"Corruption probe hits US insurers" – BBC News Online, October 15, 2004.
"Spoiling for a Fight: The Rise of Eliot Spitzer" by Brooke A. Masters (Times Books, July 2006)
"The Small Laws: Eliot Spitzer and the Way to Insurance Market Reform," by Sean M. Fitzpatrick, 74 Fordham L. Rev. 3041 (2006)
Interviews:
Eliot Spitzer on "Politicking with Larry King"
Frontline: The Wall Street Fix – from the PBS-series Frontline, dated April 16, 2003.
NOW with Bill Moyers: New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer – Streaming video and transcripts of Spitzer's multiple interviews on the PBS series NOW with Bill Moyers.
"The Pollution Buster" – Interview with Elizabeth Kolbert in Fall 2004 issue of OnEarth Magazine, publication of the Natural Resources Defense Council
Eliot Spitzer: Geithner, Bernanke "Complicit" in Financial Crisis and Should Go – video report by Democracy Now!
Big Think Interview With Eliot Spitzer – video interview with BigThink.com, dated January 28, 2010.
"The Sheriff of Wall Street" 2004 video interview with Eliot Spitzer, on "The Open Mind"
Media coverage:
Breaking Legal News – Eliot L. Spitzer Collection of News of Eliot Spitzer
"Corruption probe hits US insurers" – BBC coverage of Spitzer's probe of insurance industry practices, October 15, 2004.
"Spitzer targets music companies" – BBC coverage of Spitzer's prosecution of payola, October 22, 2004
Greg Palast, Eliot's Mess
Greg Palast interview on Spitzer scandal timing
Critics:
Attorney General Watch – blog of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, critical of Eliot Spitzer and other state attorneys general.
"Not Spitzer's Job" – article by Alan Reynolds, senior fellow of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank. Reprinted from The Wall Street Journal
The Passion of Eliot Spitzer: Is he telling the truth as he tries to "take people out"? by Kimberley A. Strassel, The Wall Street Journal, May 2006
Eliot Spitzer's Real Agenda... is Eliot Spitzer By Kimberley A. Strassel, The Wall Street Journal, May 2006
"Power Corrupts: Elliot [sic] Spitzer's Record as N.Y. Attorney General" By Alan Reynolds, Cato-at-liberty, March 8, 2008.
Reports:
FBI affidavit regarding the Emperor's Club VIP scandal
"Predatory Lenders' Partner in Crime". Spitzer, Eliot, The Washington Post, February 14, 2008.
companies:
Eliot Spitzer serves as TipRanks board member. TipRanks provides online investing tools allowing private investors to see the measured performance of financial analysts.
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1959 births
Antitrust lawyers
American people of Austrian-Jewish descent
American television talk show hosts
CNN people
David Paterson
Democratic Party state governors of the United States
Governors of New York (state)
Harvard Law School alumni
Horace Mann School alumni
Jewish American attorneys
Jewish American state governors of the United States
Living people
New York (state) Democrats
New York State Attorneys General
New York County Assistant District Attorneys
Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison people
Politicians from the Bronx
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom alumni
Slate (magazine) people
2000 United States presidential electors
2004 United States presidential electors
Princeton School of Public and International Affairs alumni | false | [
"This article contains a list of child bridegrooms or child husbands wherein notable or historically significant examples have been singled out.\n\nList\n\nAntiquity \n Tutankhamun was married before the age of nine years to his half-sister Ankhesenamun (aged about 16).\n\n8th century \n The future Emperor Shōmu (aged about 16) was married to in Asukabe-hime (aged 16) .\n\n10th century \n The future Otto II, Holy Roman Emperor (aged 16/17), was married to Theophanu (aged about 17) in 972.\n\n The future Louis V of France (aged about 15) was married to the twice-widowed Adelaide-Blanche of Anjou (aged 40) in 982.\n\n The future Emperor Ichijō (aged 10) was married to Fujiwara no Teishi (about 12/13) in October 990.\n\n11th century \n Fujiwara no Shōshi (aged about 12) was married to the future Emperor Ichijō (aged 19/20) in 1000.\n\n The future Emperor Go-Ichijō (aged 10) married his aunt Fujiwara no Ishi (aged 19) in 1018.\n\n The future Emperor Horikawa (aged 14) was married to his paternal aunt Princess Tokushi (aged about 33) in 1093.\n\n12th century \n Pons, Count of Tripoli (aged 13/14), was married to Cecile of France (aged 14/15) in 1112.\n\n William Adelin (aged 15), son and heir of Henry I of England, was married to Matilda of Anjou (aged about 13) in 1119.\n\n Louis VII of France (aged 17) married Eleanor of Aquitaine (aged about 15) in 1137; their marriage was annulled in 1152.\n\n Eustace IV, Count of Boulogne (aged about 12/13), was married to Constance of France (aged about 15/16) in 1140.\n\n Philip I, Count of Flanders (aged 15/16), was married to Elisabeth of Vermandois (aged 16) in 1159.\n\n The future Emperor Nijō (aged 15) was married to his paternal aunt Princess Yoshiko (aged 17) in March 1159.\n\n Alfonso VIII of Castile (aged 14/15) married Eleanor of England in 1170, when she was about 9-years-old.\n\n Henry the Young King (aged 17) was married to Margaret of France (aged 13/14) in 1172. They had been betrothed since 1160, when Henry was 5 and Margaret was about 2.\n\n Canute VI of Denmark (aged about 13/14) was married to Gertrude of Bavaria (aged 22 or 25) in 1177. They had been engaged since 1171, since he was about 7/8 and she was about 16 or 19.\n\n Henry I, Duke of Brabant (aged about 14), was married to Matilda of Boulogne (aged 9) in 1179.\n\n Alexios II Komnenos was 10 when he is reported to have married Agnes of France (aged 9) in 1180.\n\n Philip II of France (aged 14) married Isabella of Hainault (aged 10) in 1180.\n\n Humphrey IV of Toron (aged about 17) married Isabella of Jerusalem (aged 10/11) in 1183. They had been betrothed when Humphrey was about 14/15 and Isabella was 8-years-old.\n\n Conrad II, Duke of Swabia (aged 13/14), married Berengaria of Castile in 1187, when she was about 8-years-old. The marriage was never consummated due to Berengaria's young age.\n\n William IV, Count of Ponthieu (aged 15/16), was married to Alys of France, Countess of Vexin (aged 34), in 1195.\n\n13th century \n Henry VI, Count Palatine of the Rhine (aged about 16), was married to Matilda of Brabant (aged about 12) in 1212.\n\n Henry I of Castile married his cousin Mafalda of Portugal (aged about 20) in 1215, when he was either 10- or 11-years-old. The marriage was never consummated due to Henry's young age; and the marriage was annulled by the Pope in 1216 on the grounds of consanguinity. Later that year, Henry was betrothed to his second cousin Sancha, heiress of León, but he died in 1217 at the age of 13.\n\n Baldwin II of Constantinople (aged about 17) was married to Marie of Brienne (aged about 10) in 1234.\n\n Alexander III of Scotland (aged 10) was married to Margaret of England (aged 11) in December 1251.\n\n Edward I of England (aged 15) was married to Eleanor of Castile (aged 13) in 1254.\n\n The future Philip III of France (aged 17) was married to Isabella of Aragon (aged 13/14) in May 1262. They had been betrothed since May 1258, when he was 13 and she was 9/10.\n\n John I, Duke of Brabant (17/18), was married to Margaret of France (aged 15/16) in 1270.\n\n The future Ladislaus IV of Hungary (aged 7/8) was married to Elizabeth of Sicily (aged 8/9) in 1270.\n\n Philip of Sicily (aged about 15/16) was married to Isabella of Villehardouin (aged either 8 or 11) in May 1271.\n\n The future Philip IV of France (aged 16) was married to Joan I of Navarre (aged 11) in August 1285.\n\n Wenceslaus II of Bohemia (aged 13) was married to Judith of Habsburg (aged 13) in January 1285.\n\n John II, Duke of Brabant (aged 14), was married to Margaret of England (aged 15) in 1290. John and Margaret had been betrothed since they were 2 and 3, respectively.\n\n Henry, Count of Luxembourg (aged about 13/14), was married to Margaret of Brabant (aged 15) in July 1292.\n\n John I, Count of Holland (aged 12/13), was married to Elizabeth of Rhuddlan (aged 14) in 1297.\n\n14th century \n Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March (aged 14), was married to Joan de Geneville (aged 15) in 1301.\n\n The future Gaston I, Count of Foix (aged 13/14), was married to Joan of Artois (aged 11/12) in 1301.\n\n The future Louis X of France (aged 15) was married to Margaret of Burgundy (aged about 15) in 1305.\n\n Philip V of France (aged about 13/14) was married to Joan of Burgundy (aged 14/15) in 1307.\n\n The future Charles IV of France (aged 13) was married to Blanche of Burgundy (aged about 11/12) in January 1308.\n\n John of Luxembourg (aged 14) was married to Elizabeth of Bohemia (aged 18) in September 1310.\n\n John III, Duke of Brabant (aged 10/11), was married to Marie of Évreux (aged 7/8) in 1311.\n\n Edmund Mortimer (aged about 13/14, possibly younger) was married to Elizabeth de Badlesmere (aged 3) in 1316.\n\n Thomas Beauchamp (aged about 6) was married to Katherine Mortimer (aged about 5) in 1319.\n\n Louis I, Count of Flanders (aged about 15/16), was married to Margaret of France (aged 9/10) in 1320.\n\n Guigues VIII of Viennois (aged 13/14) was married to Isabella of France (aged 10/11) in 1323.\n\n Alfonso XI of Castile (aged 13/14) was married to Constanza Manuel of Villena (aged at most 10) in 1325. He had the marriage annulled two years later, and in 1328, at the age of 16/17, married his double first cousin Maria of Portugal (aged 14/15).\n \n Edward III of England (aged 15) was married to Philippa of Hainault (between the ages of 12 and 17) in 1327.\n\n The future David II of Scotland (aged 4) was married to Joan of the Tower (aged 7) in 1328.\n\n Laurence Hastings, 1st Earl of Pembroke (aged about 9/10), was married to Agnes Mortimer (aged about 11/12) in 1328 or 1329. Laurence was a ward of Agnes's father, Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March.\n\n Charles IV, King of Bohemia (aged about 12/13; later Holy Roman Emperor), was married to Blanche of Valois (aged about 12/13) in 1329.\n\n Reginald II, Duke of Guelders (aged about 16), was married to Sophia Berthout in 1311. After Sophia's death in 1329, he married Eleanor of Woodstock (aged 13) in 1332, when he was about 37-years-old.\n\n John, Duke of Normandy (aged 13), was married to Bonne of Luxembourg (aged 17) in July 1332.\n\n Andrew of Hungary (aged 6) was married to the future Joanna I of Naples (aged about 6/7) in 1333.\n\n William IV, Count of Holland (aged 10/11), was married to Joanna of Brabant (aged 11/12) in 1334.\n\n Marie de Namur (aged about 13/14) was married to Henry II, Graf of Vianden, in 1335/36. Henry was murdered in 1337; about three years later, in 1340, Marie (now about 17/18) was married to Theobald of Bar, Seigneur de Pierrepont (aged about 25/26), her second cousin, once removed.\n\n Philip of Burgundy (aged about 14/15) was married to Joan I, Countess of Auvergne (aged about 11/12), circa 1338.\n\n William Montagu (aged 12) was married to Joan of Kent (aged 13) in either late 1340 or early 1341. In 1348, it was revealed that Joan had secretly married Thomas Holland, 1st Earl of Kent, in 1340; and, as a result, Montagu's marriage to Joan was annulled.\n\n Gaston III, Count of Foix (aged 16/17), was married to Agnes of Navarre (aged 13/14) in 1348.\n\n Charles V of France (aged 12) was married Joanna of Bourbon (aged 12) to in April 1350.\n\n Thomas de Vere, 8th Earl of Oxford (aged about 15), was married to Maud de Ufford (born 1345/46) sometime before 10 June 1350, when Maud was about 5-years-old.\n\n Lionel of Antwerp, 1st Duke of Clarence (aged 13/14), was married to Elizabeth de Burgh, 4th Countess of Ulster (aged 20), in 1352.\n\n Philip I, Duke of Burgundy (aged 10/11), was married to the future Margaret III, Countess of Flanders (aged 6/7), in 1357.\n\n Richard Fitzalan (aged 12/13) was married to Elizabeth de Bohun (aged about 9) in 1359.\n\n John Hastings, 2nd Earl of Pembroke (aged 11), was married to Margaret of England (aged 12), daughter of Henry III of England, in 1359.\n\n Gian Galeazzo Visconti (aged 8) was married to Isabella of Valois (aged 11/12) in October 1360, about a week before Gian's 9th birthday.\n\n Albert III, Duke of Austria (aged 16/17), was married to Elisabeth of Bohemia (aged 7/8) in 1366.\n\n Edmund Mortimer, 3rd Earl of March (aged 15/16), was married to Philippa of Clarence (aged 12/13) in 1368.\n\n The future Charles III of Navarre (aged 13/14) was married to Eleanor of Castile (aged about 12) in May 1375.\n\n John V, Lord of Arkel (aged 14), was married to Joanna of Jülich in October 1376.\n\n John Hastings, 3rd Earl of Pembroke (aged 8), was married to Elizabeth of Lancaster (aged 17) in 1380. The marriage remained unconsummated due to John's age, and was annulled after Elizabeth became pregnant by John Holland, 1st Duke of Exeter, whom she later married.\n\n Henry Bolingbroke (aged 13; later King Henry IV of England) was married to Mary de Bohun (aged about 10/11) in 1380.\n\n Richard II of England (aged 15) was married to Anne of Bohemia (aged 15) in January 1382.\n\n John, Count of Nevers (aged 14) was married to Margaret of Bavaria (aged 21/22) in April 1385.\n\n The future John V, Duke of Brittany (aged 6/7), was married to Joan of France (aged 4/5) in 1396.\n\n John of Perche (aged 10/11) was married to Marie of Brittany (aged 5) in July 1396.\n\n15th century \n Louis, Duke of Guyenne (aged 7), married Margaret of Nevers (aged 10) in August 1404.\nCharles, Duke of Orléans (aged 11), married his cousin Isabella of Valois (aged 16) in June 1406.\n\n Philip the Good (aged 12) was married to Michelle of Valois (aged 14) in June 1409.\n\n John, Duke of Touraine (aged 16), was married to Jacqueline of Hainaut (aged 14) in 1415.\n\n John IV, Duke of Brabant (aged 14), was married to Jacqueline of Hainaut (aged 16) in March 1418, following her first husband's death the year before.\n\n John II, Duke of Alençon (aged 15), married Joan of Valois (aged 15), daughter of Charles, Duke of Orléans, in 1424.\n\n Louis, Dauphin of France (aged 12), was married to Margaret Stewart (aged 11), daughter of James I of Scotland, in June 1436. The wedding took place a little over a week before Louis's thirteenth birthday.\n\n Henry IV of Castile (aged 14/15) was married to his cousin Blanche of Navarre (aged 15/16) in 1440.\n\n Afonso V of Portugal (aged 15) was married to Isabel of Coimbra (aged 15) in May 1447.\n\n John de la Pole (age 7) was married to Margaret Beaufort, (age 7; approximately) in 1450 by the arrangement John's father. The marriage was annulled in 1453.\n\n Ferdinand II of Aragon (aged 17) was married to his second cousin Infanta Isabella of Castile (aged 18; later Isabella I of Castile) in 1469. They became the parents of Catherine of Aragon.\n\n John, Prince of Portugal (aged 14) was married to his first cousin Eleanor of Viseu (aged 11) in January 1470.\n\n Louis, Duke of Orléans (aged 14) was married to his cousin Joan of France, Duchess of Berry (age 12), in 1476.\n\n Richard of Shrewsbury, 1st Duke of York (age 4), was married to Anne de Mowbray, 8th Countess of Norfolk (age 6), in 1477. She died at age 10 and he, as one of the Princes in the Tower, is believed to have been murdered at age 10.\n\n Afonso, Prince of Portugal (aged about 15), was married by proxy to Isabella of Aragon (aged 19) in the spring of 1490.\n\n16th century \n Arthur, Prince of Wales (aged 15), was married to Catherine of Aragon (aged 15) in 1501. He died a few months later and she eventually married his younger brother, Henry VIII of England.\n\n Charles, Count of Montpensier (aged 15), was married to Suzanne, Duchess of Bourbon (aged 14), in 1505.\n\n Henry VIII of England (aged 17), married Catherine of Aragon (aged 23) in June 1509, a couple of weeks before his 18th birthday.\n\n Claude, Duke of Guise (aged 16), was married to Antoinette de Bourbon (aged 18) in 1513.\n\n Henry, Duke of Orléans (aged 14), was married to Catherine de' Medici (aged 14) in 1533.\n\n Henry Grey, Marquess of Dorset (aged 15/16), was married to Lady Frances Brandon (aged 15/16) in 1533.\n\n Henry Clifford (aged 17/18) was married to Lady Eleanor Brandon (aged 15/16) in 1535.\n\n Ottavio Farnese, Duke of Parma (aged 14), grandson of Pope Paul III, was married to Margaret of Parma (aged 15), illegitimate daughter of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, in November 1538.\n\n Philip, Prince of Asturias (aged 16; later Philip II of Spain), was married to Maria Manuela, Princess of Portugal (aged 16), in 1543.\n\n João Manuel, Prince of Portugal (aged 14), was married to his double first cousin Joanna of Austria (aged 16) in 1552.\n\n Lord Guildford Dudley (aged about 17/18) was married to Lady Jane Grey (aged about 16/17) in 1553.\n\n Henry, Lord Herbert, was at most 15-years-old, was married to Lady Katherine Grey (aged 12), younger sister of Lady Jane Grey, in 1553. The marriage was annulled in 1554.\n\n Francis, Dauphin of France (aged 13/14), was married to Mary, Queen of Scots (aged 15/16), in 1558. The pair had been betrothed since Mary was five and Francis was three.\n\n Charles III, Duke of Lorraine (aged 15), was married to Claude of France (aged 11), daughter of Henry II of France, in 1559.\n\n17th century \n Alfonso, Hereditary Prince of Modena (aged 16/17), was married to Isabella of Savoy (aged 16) in 1608.\n\n César, Duke of Vendôme (aged 14), was married to Françoise de Lorraine (aged 15/16) in July 1608.\n\n Frederick V, Elector Palatine (aged 16), married Elizabeth Stuart (aged 16), eldest daughter of James VI and I and Anne of Denmark, in 1613.\n\n Louis XIII of France (aged 14) was married to his second cousin Anne of Austria (aged 14) in November 1615.\n\n The future Ferdinand Maria, Elector of Bavaria (aged 14), was married to Princess Henriette Adelaide of Savoy (aged 14) in December 1650.\n\n The future William II, Prince of Orange (aged 15), married Mary, Princess Royal (aged 9), in 1641. The marriage was reported to not have been consummated for a number of years due to the bride's age.\n\n Walter Scott of Highchester (aged 14) was married to Mary Scott, 3rd Countess of Buccleuch (aged 11), in 1659.\n\n James Crofts, 1st Duke of Monmouth (aged 14), illegitimate son of Charles II of England and his mistress Lucy Walter, was married to Anne Scott, 1st Duchess of Buccleuch (aged 12), in April 1663.\n\n Sir Edward Lee (aged 14) was married to Lady Charlotte FitzRoy (aged 13) in 1677. They had been betrothed since 1674, before Charlotte's tenth birthday.\n\n Ivan V of Russia (aged 17) was married to Praskovia Saltykova (aged 18/19) in either late 1683 or early 1684.\n\n Louis, Prince of Condé (aged 16), was married to his distant cousin Louise Françoise de Bourbon (aged 11) in 1685.\n\n Philippe, Duke of Chartres (aged 17), married his first cousin Françoise Marie de Bourbon (aged 14), legitimated daughter of Louis XIV, in February 1692.\n\n Louis, Duke of Burgundy (aged 15), was married to Marie Adélaïde of Savoy (aged 12) in December 1697.\n\n18th century \n Philip V of Spain (aged 17) was married to Maria Luisa Gabriela of Savoy (aged 12) in September 1701, five days before Maria Luisa's 13th birthday.\n\n Louis Armand II, Prince of Conti (aged 17), was married to Louise Élisabeth de Bourbon (aged 19) in July 1713.\n\n Jules, Prince of Soubise (aged 17), was married to Anne Julie de Melun (aged 15/16) in September 1714.\n\n Louis, Prince of Asturias (aged 14), was married by proxy to Louise Élisabeth d'Orléans (aged 11) in November 1721.\n\n Louis XV of France (aged 15) was married to Marie Leszczyńska (aged 22) in 1725.\n\n José, Prince of Brazil (aged 14), was married to Infanta Mariana Victoria of Spain (aged 10) in January 1729.\n\n Louis François, Prince of Conti (aged 14), was married to Louise Diane d'Orléans (aged 15) in January 1732.\n\n Gaston, Count of Marsan (aged 17), was married to Marie Louise de Rohan (aged 16) in June 1736.\n\n Ercole Rinaldo d'Este (aged 13/14) was married to Maria Teresa Cybo-Malaspina, Duchess of Massa (aged 15/16) in 1741.\n\n Louis, Dauphin of France (aged 15), was married to Infanta Maria Teresa Rafaela of Spain (aged 18) in 1744. After Maria Teresa's death in early 1746, Louis was required to remarry quickly in order to secure the succession to the French crown. Thus, he married again in February 1747, at the age of 17, to Duchess Maria Josepha of Saxony (aged 15).\n\n Peter of Holstein-Gottorp (later Peter III of Russia) was 17-years-old when he married his 16-year-old second cousin Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst (later known as Catherine the Great) in 1745.\n\n Louis Joseph, Prince of Condé (aged 16), was married to Charlotte de Rohan (aged 15) in 1753.\n\n Christian VII of Denmark (aged 17) was married to Princess Caroline Matilda of Great Britain (aged 15) in 1766.\n\n Ferdinand IV & III of Naples and Sicily (aged 17) was married by proxy to Maria Carolina of Austria (aged 15) in April 1768.\n\n Louis Henri, Duke of Enghien (aged 14), was married to Bathilde d'Orléans (aged 19) in 1770.\n\n Louis-Auguste, Dauphin of France (aged 15), was married to Archduchess Maria Antonia of Austria (aged 14; later known as Marie Antoinette) in April 1770.\n\n Louis Stanislas, Count of Provence (aged 15; the future King Louis XVIII of France), was married to Marie Joséphine of Savoy (aged 17) in 1771.\n\n Charles Philippe, Duke of Artois (aged 16; later Charles X of France), was married to Princess Maria Theresa of Savoy (aged 17) in 1773.\n\n The future Alexander I of Russia (aged 15) married Princess Louise of Baden (aged 14) in 1793.\n\n19th century\n Ferdinand, Prince of Asturias (aged 17; later Ferdinand VII of Spain), was married to his first cousin Princess Maria Antonia of Naples and Sicily (aged 17) in October 1802, about a week before his 18th birthday.\n\n Tokugawa Iemochi (aged 15) was married to Chikako, Princess Kazu (aged 15), daughter of Emperor Ninkō, in February 1862.\n\nCeremonial marriages\n\nSanele Masilela, a nine year old South African boy married 62-year-old Helen Shabangu.\nJose Griggs, at the age of seven, married nine-year-old Jayla Cooper\n\nSee also\nList of child brides\nTeen marriage\n\nReferences\n\nLists of men\nHusbands",
"Lachlan Og MacLean, 1st Laird of Torloisk was the second son of Sir Lachlan Mor Maclean and the first Laird of Torloisk.\n\nBiography\nHe was the second son of Sir Lachlan Mor Maclean, and he received from his father a charter of the lands of Lehire-Torloisk, forfeited by the son of Ailean nan Sop, which was afterward confirmed by royal grant. He was present at the Battle of Gruinnart, and was severely wounded. He was a witness to a charter given by his father to Martin MacGillivray of Pennyghael, and subscribed himself in the Irish characters, Mise Lachin Mhac Gilleoin. He was an important man in his day, and was so influential that he was compelled to make his appearance before the privy council.\n\nHe was first married to Marian, daughter of Sir Duncan Campbell of Achnabreck and had:\nHector MacLean, 2nd Laird of Torloisk\nHe was a second time married to Margaret, daughter of Captain Stewart of Dumbarton, but had no children. \nHe was a third time married to Marian, daughter of Donald MacDonald of Clanranald, and had:\nHector Maclean\nLachlan Og Maclean, who died unmarried but had a son Donald Maclean\nLachlan Catanach Maclean was killed at Inverkeithing\nEwen Maclean\nJohn Diuriach Maclean married the daughter of John Maclean, Laird of Ardgour and had Allan and several daughters\nOther children include: \nAllan Maclean who died unmarried at Harris\nNeil Maclean who married a daughter of Lochbuie, by whom he had a daughter\nLachlan, who died a lieutenant-colonel in the British service\nJannet Maclean, married Hector, first MacLean of Kinlochaline \nMary Maclean, married John Garbh, eldest son of John Dubh of Morvern \nCatherine Maclean, married John, brother to MacNeil of Barra\nJulian Maclean, married Allan MacLean, brother of Lochbuie\nIsabella Maclean, married Martin MacGillivray of Pennyghael\n\nLachlan Og lived to an advanced age, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Hector MacLean, 2nd Laird of Torloisk.\n\nReferences\n\nYear of birth missing\nYear of death missing\nLachlan Og MacLean, 1st Laird of Torloisk\nLachlan"
] |
[
"Eliot Spitzer",
"Tenure overview",
"what was the tenure overview?",
"I don't know.",
"whats the most interesting aspect?",
"As Attorney General, Spitzer stepped up the profile of the office.",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"Spitzer took up civil actions and criminal prosecutions relating to corporate white-collar crime, securities fraud, Internet fraud, and environmental protection.",
"was he married?",
"I don't know."
] | C_7dca1559f97f47a59da66b540a08f0ac_0 | did he have children? | 5 | did Eliot Spitzer have children? | Eliot Spitzer | As Attorney General, Spitzer stepped up the profile of the office. Traditionally, state attorneys general have pursued consumer rights cases, concentrating on local fraud while deferring national issues to the federal government. Breaking with this traditional deference, Spitzer took up civil actions and criminal prosecutions relating to corporate white-collar crime, securities fraud, Internet fraud, and environmental protection. The New York Attorney General's office has Wall Street (and thus many leading corporate and financial institutions) within its jurisdiction. Also, the New York Attorney General wields greater than usual powers of investigation and prosecution of corporations under New York State's General Business Law. In particular, under the Martin Act of 1921, the New York Attorney General has the power to subpoena witnesses and company documents pertaining to investigations of fraud or illegal activity by a corporation. Spitzer used this statute to allow his office to prosecute cases which have been described as within federal jurisdiction. Spitzer used this authority in his civil actions against corporations and criminal prosecutions against their officers. It proved useful in the wake of several U.S. corporate scandals that began with the collapse of Enron in 2001. Several of these corporations, as well as the brokerage houses that sold their stock, were accused of having inflated stock values by unethical means throughout the 1990s. When inquiries into these allegations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Congress failed, Spitzer's office used its subpoena power to obtain corporate documents, building cases against the firms both in courtrooms and in public opinion. Under his watch, Spitzer also commissioned a 1999 study of the NYPD's stop-and-frisk practices. In 2004, The Nation endorsed Spitzer as a possible Democratic candidate for vice president, stating that he was "the single most effective battler against corporate abuses in either political party". He was, however, not chosen. In January 2005, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce described Spitzer's approach as "the most egregious and unacceptable form of intimidation we've seen in this country in modern times". CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Eliot Laurence Spitzer (born June 10, 1959) is an American politician, attorney, educator and real estate developer. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 54th Governor of New York from 2007 until his resignation in 2008.
Born in New York City, Spitzer attended Princeton University and earned his law degree from Harvard. He began his career as an attorney in private practice with New York law firms and as a prosecutor with the office of the New York County (Manhattan) District Attorney. From 1999 to 2006, he served two four-year terms as the Attorney General of New York, earning a reputation as the "Sheriff of Wall Street" for his efforts to curb corruption in the financial services industry. Spitzer was elected Governor of New York in 2006 by the largest margin of any candidate, but his tenure would last less than two years after it was uncovered that he patronized a prostitution ring. He resigned immediately following the scandal, with the remainder of his term served by David Paterson, his lieutenant governor.
Since leaving the governorship, Spitzer has worked as a television host and an adjunct instructor at City College of New York, along with engaging in real estate activity and making private investments in a start-up company. He also ran for New York City Comptroller in 2013, losing the Democratic nomination to the eventual winner, Scott Stringer.
Early life and education
Eliot Laurence Spitzer was born in 1959 in the Bronx, New York City, the son of Anne (née Goldhaber), an English literature professor, and Bernard Spitzer, a real estate mogul. His paternal grandparents were Galician Jews, born in Tluste, Poland, now Ukraine. His maternal grandparents, born in the 1890s, were Jewish emigrants from Ottoman-era Palestine (now Israel). Spitzer is the youngest of three children. He was raised in the affluent Riverdale section of the Bronx. His family was not religious, and Spitzer did not have a bar mitzvah.
He is a 1977 graduate of Horace Mann School. After scoring 1590 out of 1600 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), he attended Princeton University and graduated with an A.B. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1981 after completing a 151-page-long senior thesis titled "Revolutions in Post-Stalin Eastern Europe: A Study of Soviet Reactions". He then received his Juris Doctor at Harvard Law School. At Princeton, he was elected chairman of the undergraduate student government and graduated in 1981. He has said he received a perfect score on the Law School Admission Test (LSAT), and went on to attend Harvard Law School, where he met and married Silda Wall. Spitzer was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.
Legal career
Upon receiving his Juris Doctor, Spitzer clerked for Judge Robert W. Sweet of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, then joined the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. He stayed there for less than two years before leaving to join the New York County District Attorney's office.
Spitzer joined the staff of Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, where he became chief of the labor-racketeering unit and spent six years (1986–1992) pursuing organized crime. Spitzer's biggest case came in 1992, when he led the investigation that ended the Gambino crime family's organized crime control of Manhattan's trucking and garment industries. Spitzer devised a plan to set up his own sweatshop in the city's garment district, where he turned out shirts, pants and sweaters, and hired 30 laborers. The shop manager eventually got close to the Gambinos, and officials were able to plant a bug in their office. The Gambinos, rather than being charged with extortion—which was hard to prove—were charged with antitrust violations. Joseph and Thomas Gambino, the latter being an extremely high-ranking member, and two other defendants took the deal and avoided jail by pleading guilty, paying $12 million in fines and agreeing to stay out of the business.
Spitzer left the District Attorney's office in 1992 to work at the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. From 1994 to 1998 he worked at the law firm Constantine and Partners on a number of consumer rights and antitrust cases.
New York State Attorney General
Campaigns
1994 campaign
In February 1991 Robert Abrams, a Democrat and the longstanding New York State Attorney General, announced his intention to run for the U.S. Senate seat for New York then occupied by incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Al D'Amato. When he announced his intention the Senate election was almost two years in the future. Abrams won the nomination in the Democratic primary but narrowly lost to D'Amato in the general election in November 1992. Ten months later, in September 1993, Abrams announced that he would resign his position as Attorney General as of December 31, 1993, although he still had one year remaining in his term. To fill this vacancy the New York State Legislature elected Assemblyman G. Oliver Koppell to serve out the remainder of the Attorney General's term during 1993.
Thirty-four-year-old Spitzer decided to run as a Democratic candidate in the 1994 election for Attorney General, as did Koppell, Brooklyn Family Court Judge Karen Burstein, and Kings County DA Charles J. Hynes. At the time, Spitzer was a young and relatively unknown defense attorney representing white-collar criminals. When he announced his campaign Spitzer suggested that, if elected, he would use the state's antitrust laws to pursue corporate polluters. Spitzer was the only candidate to support the death penalty. In a televised debate among the candidates, Spitzer was criticized for financing his campaign using $3 million of his own and family money. Despite heavy funding from his own family, he placed last among the four Democratic candidates for the nomination, receiving just 19% of the vote. Burstein, the only woman and gay candidate, won the primary with 31% of vote. Burstein subsequently lost in the general election to Republican Dennis Vacco, part of a nationwide Republican sweep, that included the election of Republican George Pataki as the new Governor of New York displacing the Democratic incumbent, Governor Mario Cuomo.
1998 campaign
Four years later, Spitzer again wanted to run for Attorney General and on May 6, 1998, he announced he would run for the office for a second time. On May 28, he emerged as the front-runner among the Democratic candidates, ranking first at the Democratic convention with 36% of the vote. He also had the most amount of money, with over $2 million. In September, he won the Democratic primary election with 42% of the vote. He defeated State Senator Catherine Abate (27%), Koppell (22%), and former Governor's Counsel Evan Davis (9%). In the general election Spitzer would face the incumbent, Dennis Vacco, a Republican.
In late October 1998, Spitzer conceded that his father had lent him most of the campaign money he raised. According to The New York Times, after "repeatedly contending that he alone paid his campaign bills this year and in 1994, [Spitzer] acknowledged [that] his father, a wealthy real estate developer, [played] an extensive role in helping to finance his campaigns." He financed the campaigns from two sets of loans—both from J.P. Morgan & Company—that amounted to $4.3 million in 1994 and $4.8 million in 1998. Spitzer said, "I have worked long, long hours for my dad and for various businesses. Look, I'm not saying that I am underpaid. But any effort to challenge the propriety of that fee is way off base."
On October 28, The New York Times endorsed Spitzer, opining that both candidates were flawed but adding that "Vacco's performance and his key policy positions make him an even worse choice [than Spitzer]". In November, Spitzer went on to defeat Republican incumbent Dennis Vacco by a small margin of victory of 0.6%. Spitzer did not win a single county in Upstate New York and won a total of six counties statewide (New York (81%), Bronx (80%), Kings (75%), Queens (67%), Westchester (52%), and Rockland (48%)).
2002 reelection campaign
In 2002 Spitzer ran for re-election and a second term as New York's Attorney General. Spitzer defeated Republican Judge Dora Irizarry 66–30%.
Tenure overview
As Attorney General, Spitzer stepped up the profile of the office. Traditionally, state attorneys general have pursued consumer rights cases, concentrating on local fraud while deferring national issues to the federal government. Breaking with this traditional deference, Spitzer took up civil actions and criminal prosecutions relating to corporate white-collar crime, securities fraud, Internet fraud, and environmental protection. The New York Attorney General's office has Wall Street (and thus many leading corporate and financial institutions) within its jurisdiction. Also, the New York Attorney General wields greater than usual powers of investigation and prosecution of corporations under New York State's General Business Law. In particular, under the Martin Act of 1921, the New York Attorney General has the power to subpoena witnesses and company documents pertaining to investigations of fraud or illegal activity by a corporation. Spitzer used this statute to allow his office to prosecute cases which have been described as within federal jurisdiction. Spitzer used this authority in his civil actions against corporations and criminal prosecutions against their officers. It proved useful in the wake of several U.S. corporate scandals that began with the collapse of Enron in 2001. Several of these corporations, as well as the brokerage houses that sold their stock, were accused of having inflated stock values by unethical means throughout the 1990s. When inquiries into these allegations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Congress failed, Spitzer's office used its subpoena power to obtain corporate documents, building cases against the firms both in courtrooms and in public opinion.
During his term in office, Spitzer also commissioned a 1999 study of the NYPD's stop-and-frisk practices.
In 2004, The Nation endorsed Spitzer as a possible Democratic candidate for vice president, stating that he was "the single most effective battler against corporate abuses in either political party". He was, however, not chosen.
Loan investigation controversy
The New York State Senate Investigations committee considered investigating a controversial multi-million-dollar loan the governor's father Bernard Spitzer gave him when he ran for attorney general in 1998, a loan the younger Spitzer paid back. Senate Investigations Committee chairman George Winner told the New York Post that subpoenas should be used to find out about the loans. Winner wrote to Senate Elections Committee chairman Senator Joseph Griffo that an article profiling Spitzer in New York magazine "outlined what may have been a willful effort by Eliot Spitzer and his father to circumvent campaign-contribution limits in New York state law and then conceal their actions." In 1998, Spitzer claimed that he secured the $5 million loan by mortgaging apartments his father had given him, but later revealed that his father was paying off the loans and, therefore, financing his campaign.
2006 gubernatorial campaign
On December 8, 2004, Spitzer announced his intention to seek the Democratic nomination for governor of New York. While long rumored, Spitzer's announcement was unusually early—nearly two years before the election. As a result of Spitzer's relative speed in bringing state Democrats to his side, he gained the respect of Democratic leaders nationwide. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson dubbed Spitzer the "future of the Democratic Party" at a fund raiser held in June 2005 for Spitzer's gubernatorial campaign.
In January 2006, Spitzer selected New York State Senate minority leader David Paterson as his choice for lieutenant governor and running mate. After announcing his candidacy, Spitzer was endorsed by numerous New Yorkers, including state Comptroller Alan Hevesi and two former New York City mayors, David Dinkins and Ed Koch. On May 30, 2006, Spitzer and Paterson won the endorsement of the New York State Democratic party. A June 2006 Quinnipiac University Polling Institute poll showed him leading Nassau county executive Thomas Suozzi 76–13 percent. On July 25, 2006, he faced Suozzi in a gubernatorial debate held at Pace University in Manhattan, discussing issues such as public authorities and Medicaid. When asked about marijuana, Spitzer stated that he disagrees with medicinal use of the drug, claiming that other medicines were more effective. In the Democratic primary held on September 12, 2006, Spitzer handily defeated Suozzi, securing his party's nomination with 81 percent of the vote.
On October 5, Spitzer addressed the Empire State Pride Agenda and declared that he would work as governor to legalize gay marriage in New York.
Spitzer was elected governor on November 7, 2006, when he defeated Republican John Faso and Libertarian John Clifton, among others, with 69 percent of the vote. He won with the largest margin of victory ever in a New York gubernatorial race.
Governor of New York
During the traditional midnight ceremony on January 1, 2007, Spitzer was sworn in as Governor of New York. A public ceremony was held at 1 p.m. on the same day that featured brass and percussion players from the Empire State Youth Orchestra. Bucking tradition, the ceremony was held outdoors—the first outdoor inauguration ceremony in New York for over a century. After taking the oath of office, he attended a concert at the Times Union Center in his honor, headlined by James Taylor and Natalie Merchant.
Legislative measures supported
Jonathan's Law. In May 2007, Governor Spitzer signed this legislation concerning parental and guardian access to files and records concerning their children and child abuse investigations.
The Reproductive Health and Privacy Protection Act, an abortion rights measure introduced by Spitzer in 2007.
Roadblocks to reform
Spitzer's reform-based platform, and his pledge "to change the ethics of Albany", hit an early roadblock when his ideas on how to fill vacancies in the executive department were defeated by the state legislature. According to the New York State Constitution, it is the duty of the state legislature to fill executive vacancies. The governor was criticized as unreasonable for admonishing the legislature when it took constitutional actions. The appointment of state assemblyman Thomas DiNapoli to succeed the disgraced Alan Hevesi as New York State Comptroller was a serious blow to the new governor. Spitzer had backed an outside panel to draft a list of qualified candidates; the legislature resisted Spitzer's desires when these included no legislators. Some Assembly Democrats were alienated over the incident, and questioned Spitzer's refusal of extending patronage to party members seeking local political appointments. Spitzer's choice was New York City Finance Commissioner Martha Stark, who was selected by a panel that consisted of former State Comptroller Edward Regan, former State Comptroller Carl McCall and former New York City Comptroller Harrison J. Goldin. On February 7, 2007, when the Legislature voted, Stark was one of two names put into nomination, along with Assemblyman Thomas DiNapoli of Long Island, Assembly Leader Sheldon Silver's choice. The final vote was 150 for DiNapoli and 56 for Stark. Stark's main support came from Democrats in the Senate, along with Republicans in both chambers.
Spitzer traveled to the home districts of Democratic assemblymen William B. Magnarelli and George S. Latimer (in Syracuse and Westchester County respectively), and publicly criticized them for their votes on DiNapoli; he had plans to exert similar pressure on other of his party's legislators.
One of Spitzer's key campaign pledges was to reform the state budget process. While the state did pass a budget on schedule in 2007, the ultimate results fell short of what many reformers hoped Spitzer would achieve. The New York Post opined, "Spitzer promised reform, and delivered something completely different" and termed the budget itself "bitterly disappointing."
Spitzer's budget quickly turned into a deficit, as by the end of October it was projected the state would run a deficit exceeding $4 billion for the year. During Spitzer's first year the state payroll increased, aggravating the budget problem. Despite increasing the public sector payroll, in late 2007 New York State started leading the nation in lost jobs. The 2008–09 budget included measures to counter the Great Recession.
Spitzer was criticized by members of the New York State Legislature for failing to compromise on issues during his first few months as governor. In one exchange, according to the New York Post, Spitzer told New York State Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco: "Listen, I'm a f---king steamroller and I'll roll over you and anybody else". Spitzer's reputation as a "steamroller" was shared by a plurality of New Yorkers in a Quinnipiac University poll, but by a 3-to-1 margin they believed the tactic had been unsuccessful and had only added to political gridlock.
Tedisco later accused Spitzer of cutting $300,000 of state funding for health care and education grants in the Schenectady area as retaliation for Tedisco's opposition to the Spitzer plan to allow illegal immigrants New York State driver's licenses. Tedisco accused the Governor of "dirty tricks" and "bullying".
In the wake of the political surveillance controversy involving Bruno, Spitzer was accused of pandering to special interest groups to solidify his base of support. "The governor who took office vowing to clean up Albany has lost so much public support that he is reduced to feathering the nest of the unions and other liberals," wrote Michael Goodwin of the Daily News.
In February 2008, The Washington Post published an op-ed written by Spitzer in which he criticized the Bush Administration for inhibiting states from pursuing predatory lenders.
Proposal to legalize same-sex marriage
In April 2007, Spitzer proposed a bill that would legalize same-sex marriage in New York. State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno announced his opposition to the proposal. This legislation passed in the State Assembly on June 19, 2007, but was denied in the State Senate and was returned to the Assembly.
Use of State Police for surveillance / "Troopergate"
On July 23, 2007, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office admonished the Spitzer administration for ordering the State Police to keep special records of Senate majority leader Joseph Bruno's whereabouts when he traveled with police escorts in New York City.
A 57-page report issued by the Attorney General's office concluded that Spitzer engaged in creating media coverage concerning Senator Bruno's travel. The investigation looked into both Bruno's travel and the Senate leader's allegation that Spitzer used State Police to spy on him. Cuomo concluded that "These e-mails show that persons in the governor's office did not merely produce records under a FOIL request, but were instead engaged in planning and producing media coverage concerning Senator Bruno's travel on state aircraft before any FOIL request was made." It also suggests that the governor's staff lied when they tried to explain what they had done and forced the State Police to go far beyond their normal procedures in documenting Bruno's whereabouts.
The report cleared Bruno of any misuse of the state's air fleet, which had been alleged. The report criticized Spitzer's office for using State Police resources to gather information about Bruno's travel and releasing the information to the media. The findings of the report were endorsed by Spitzer's own Inspector General, Kristine Hamann.
Spitzer responded at a July 23 press conference that "As governor, I am accountable for what goes on in the executive branch and I accept responsibility for the actions of my office" and that his administration had "grossly mishandled" the situation. Spitzer subsequently announced that he would indefinitely suspend his communications director, Darren Dopp, and reassign another top official. When questioned about his promise to bring ethical responsibility to state politics, Spitzer responded by saying "I will not tolerate this behavior", "ethics and accountability must and will remain rigorous in my administration," and that "I have always stated that I want ethics and integrity to be the hallmarks of my administration. That is why I requested that the State Inspector General review the allegations with respect to my office, and that is why we have fully cooperated with both inquiries."
The investigations of the event, dubbed "Troopergate" by media outlets, were not affected by Spitzer's resignation. As of March 2008, four probes by the state Attorney General's office, the State Senate Investigations Committee, the Albany County District Attorney's Office, and the New York Commission on Public Integrity were ongoing.
Driver's licenses for illegal immigrants
On September 21, 2007, Spitzer issued an executive order directing that state offices allow illegal immigrants to be issued driver's licenses effective December 2007. Applicants for driver's licenses would not be required to prove legal immigration status and would be allowed to present a foreign passport as identification. In October 2007, after meeting with the Department of Homeland Security, Spitzer altered the plan so that licenses issued to migrant workers would look different from other licenses and that the new licenses would not allow access to airplanes and federal buildings.
On October 22, 2007, the State Senate passed legislation that would have overturned Spitzer's plan to allow driver licenses to be obtained by undocumented immigrants. The bill passed by a margin of 39 to 19, receiving bipartisan support. Eight Democrats from moderate districts broke with Spitzer on the vote. After the vote, The New York Times called this issue "Mr. Spitzer's single most unpopular decision since he took office".
Following the State Senate's vote, Spitzer revised his plan again, proposing the issuance of a third type of driver's license. This driver's license would be available only to United States citizens who are New York State residents, and would be valid for crossing the Canada–US border. Spitzer also announced that the expiration dates of temporary visas would be printed on the driver's licenses of individuals living in the country with them.
On November 14, the day following the release of a poll showing the proposal as extremely unpopular with voters, Spitzer announced he would withdraw the plan, acknowledging that it would never be implemented. The decision drew derision from the press, as the Associated Press termed this reversal a "surrender." WCBS-TV labeled him "Governor Flip-Flop." State Senator Rubén Díaz of the Bronx said he was "betrayed" by Spitzer's abandonment of the plan.
Approval rating as governor
As of November 13, 2007, Spitzer's approval rating as governor was 33 percent, a further decline from his 44% approval rating of October 24, 2007. A later poll showed that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg would defeat Spitzer were he to seek reelection. Two polls in December 2007 showed further erosion in Spitzer's public standing.
Prostitution scandal
On March 10, 2008, The New York Times reported that Spitzer had patronized a high-priced escort service called Emperors Club VIP and met for two hours with a $1,000-an-hour call girl. This information originally came to the attention of authorities from a federal wiretap. During a six month span, Spitzer had at least seven or eight liaisons with women from the agency and paid more than $15,000. According to published reports, investigators alleged that Spitzer paid up to $80,000 for prostitutes over a period of several years while he was attorney general, and later as governor. Spitzer first drew the attention of federal investigators when his bank reported suspicious money transfers under the anti-money laundering provisions of the Bank Secrecy Act and the Patriot Act. The resulting investigation was triggered by the belief that Spitzer might have been hiding bribe proceeds and led to the discovery of the prostitution ring.
Later on March 10, Spitzer held a press conference apologizing to his family and to the public. He added, "'I must now dedicate some time to regain the trust of my family'".
Following Spitzer's March 10 press conference, New York State Assembly Republican Minority Leader James Tedisco and Republican New York Representative Peter King separately called for his resignation. Tedisco later announced that he would initiate impeachment proceedings in the State Assembly if Spitzer did not resign.
The prostitution scandal became international news.
Resignation
In the wake of the revelations and amid threats of impeachment, Spitzer announced on March 12, 2008, that he would resign his post as governor at noon on March 17, 2008. Spitzer said at a news conference in Manhattan:
Lieutenant Governor David Paterson succeeded Spitzer as governor of New York. Paterson became the first African American Governor of New York State.
Post-resignation life and career
In 2011, The Guardian summarized Spitzer's history as follows:Long before there was Barack Obama there was Spitzer. While Obama toiled unknown in Illinois, the Bronx-born Spitzer won himself a national reputation as the "Sheriff of Wall Street". He was New York's tough-talking attorney-general, who fought banking corruption, enforced environment law and won rights for low-paid workers. He used that fame to enter politics and in 2006 became governor of New York: a perfect springboard for the White House. Before America fell in love with its first black president, people wondered if it was willing to embrace its first Jewish one. Spitzer could have made history.Instead he left office in disgrace three years ago amid a flood of tabloid headlines that recounted salacious details from his repeated use of a high-end escort service. Spitzer was dubbed the "Luv Guv" and forced into a political wilderness. Rarely in American politics was a fall from grace so spectacular, so complete and so clearly down to a self-inflicted human flaw.
Prostitution scandal developments
On July 16, 2008, The New York Times published an article that explained how Spitzer used campaign funds to pay for two Mayflower Hotel bookings, $411.06 apiece, where he was alleged to have met with prostitutes. While it remains unclear if Spitzer stayed in the hotel on the nights he booked, the Times has stated that Spitzer met with prostitutes in early 2008. Spitzer declined to comment on the issue.
In November 2008, prosecutors who were in charge of the case announced that Spitzer would not face criminal charges for his involvement in the sex ring. They cited that no evidence of misuse of public funds was found and therefore it would not serve the public interest to press charges against Spitzer. Spitzer offered an apology, saying, "I appreciate the impartiality and thoroughness of the investigation by the U.S. Attorney's Office, and I acknowledge and accept responsibility for the conduct it disclosed."
Teaching
In September 2009, Spitzer joined the faculty of the City College of New York as an adjunct instructor of political science and taught an undergraduate course called "Law and Public Policy".
Media appearances
Spitzer continued to make public appearances and engage in media commitments following his resignation. The Washington Post published a Spitzer opinion piece in November 2008 conveying his analysis of the financial crisis of 2007–2008 and suggested remedies. Spitzer concluded the piece by saying that he hoped the Obama Administration would make the right policy choices, "although mistakes I made in my private life now prevent me from participating in these issues as I have in the past."
Spitzer became a regular columnist for Slate magazine and in December 2008 Slate published the first of a new series of columns by Spitzer dedicated to the economy. Spitzer was sued by two former Marsh & McLennan executives over an August 2010 Slate column about the Wall Street firm, who alleged the column was libelous. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit the following year.
Spitzer took on various public speaking arrangements, beginning with a discussion with the New York chapter of the Entrepreneurs' Organization on June 17, 2009.
He also made a number of television appearances in 2009 and 2010, including Real Time with Bill Maher and Campbell Brown (CNN program), as well as appearing as a substitute anchor on MSNBC. On June 24, 2010, CNN announced that Spitzer would be joining the network to host a "round-table" discussion program alongside center-right commentator Kathleen Parker. Parker Spitzer, compared by some media outlets to the defunct Crossfire, replaced Campbell Brown in the 8:00 p.m. ET timeslot on weeknights starting in October. In February 2011, CNN announced that Parker was leaving the show, which was renamed In the Arena on February 28, 2011. On July 6, 2011, CNN announced it was canceling In the Arena and shifting Anderson Cooper 360° to the 8 p.m. time slot.
In March 2012, Spitzer joined Al Gore's cable television network, Current TV, in the wake of the sudden firing of Keith Olbermann from the network, and immediately began hosting his own program Viewpoint with Eliot Spitzer. In January 2013, Spitzer announced that he had left both Viewpoint and Current TV, and that he would not be joining Current TV in its latest venture with Al Jazeera, citing differences of approach.
Investing
In 2012, Spitzer became an investor in TipRanks, an Israeli financial technology start-up company that ranks Wall Street analysts. He became a member of the company's board of directors.
2013 campaign for NYC Comptroller
On July 7, 2013, Spitzer announced he was running for New York City Comptroller, and would start a petition the following day. 3,750 valid signatures from registered voters from his party were required by July 11 to register for the race but Spitzer was able to submit over 27,000 signatures to the city Board of Elections before the deadline. Spitzer commented that he was asking for forgiveness, and hopeful that voters could forgive him. Spitzer lost the primary on September 10, 2013, to Scott Stringer.
Real estate career
Following his father's illness and death in 2014 and with politics behind him, Spitzer came to lead his family's real estate business, Spitzer Enterprises, despite having avoided the role for much of his life. Spitzer sold his company's apartments in The Corinthian and the Crown Building for a large profit, which he used to fund a $700 million project of three waterfront buildings in South Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Extortion victim
According to prosecutors, Spitzer was the victim of a long-running extortion scheme by Svetlana Travis-Zakharova, a Russian woman who was arrested in October 2016 and charged with forgery and grand larceny. Prosecutors said that Travis-Zakharova extracted $400,000 from Spitzer and also attempted to extort $5,000 from a different man, a toy store owner, and forged his signature on an apartment lease. Travis-Zakharova accused Spitzer of assault in 2016, then later recanted the allegation and returned to Russia. Spitzer subsequently filed a civil suit against Travis-Zakharova, alleging that she had threatened to "ruin his life" unless he agreed to pay her large sums of money. She was arrested after returning to the U.S. for a visit and charged with forgery and grand larceny; in a plea agreement in 2017, she pleaded guilty to attempted petty larceny, a misdemeanor.
Personal life
Silda Wall and Eliot Spitzer married on October 17, 1987. Together, they have three daughters: Elyssa (b. 1990), Sarabeth (b. 1993), and Jenna (b. 1995). Silda Wall Spitzer stood beside her husband when he announced his resignation as New York governor following his prostitution scandal. On May 31, 2013, Spitzer and his wife were reported to be living apart. At the close of 2013, Spitzer and his wife announced the end of their marriage.
Spitzer reportedly had a romantic relationship with Lis Smith, a 31-year-old spokeswoman for then-New York City Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio. She had been Spitzer's spokeswoman during his 2013 run for comptroller. The relationship ended in 2015.
In 2019, Spitzer announced his engagement to Roxana Girand, founder and president of real estate agency Sebastian Capital. The couple planned an April 4, 2020 wedding, and even obtained a marriage license in March 2020, but postponed the nuptials because of COVID-19 concerns.
See also
Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer – film about Spitzer
Inside Job – documentary on the financial crisis of 2007–2008
The Good Wife – fictional television drama partly inspired by events associated with Spitzer and his wife
Zipper – 2015 film, a political thriller that thinly dramatizes the Eliot Spitzer scandal.
References
Further reading
Paterson, David (2020). Black, Blind, & In Charge: A Story of Visionary Leadership and Overcoming Adversity. New York.
External links
Biographies and profiles:
"TIME Crusader of the Year 2002: Eliot Spitzer", by Adi Ignatius, December 21, 2002, issue of Time
"Corruption probe hits US insurers" – BBC News Online, October 15, 2004.
"Spoiling for a Fight: The Rise of Eliot Spitzer" by Brooke A. Masters (Times Books, July 2006)
"The Small Laws: Eliot Spitzer and the Way to Insurance Market Reform," by Sean M. Fitzpatrick, 74 Fordham L. Rev. 3041 (2006)
Interviews:
Eliot Spitzer on "Politicking with Larry King"
Frontline: The Wall Street Fix – from the PBS-series Frontline, dated April 16, 2003.
NOW with Bill Moyers: New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer – Streaming video and transcripts of Spitzer's multiple interviews on the PBS series NOW with Bill Moyers.
"The Pollution Buster" – Interview with Elizabeth Kolbert in Fall 2004 issue of OnEarth Magazine, publication of the Natural Resources Defense Council
Eliot Spitzer: Geithner, Bernanke "Complicit" in Financial Crisis and Should Go – video report by Democracy Now!
Big Think Interview With Eliot Spitzer – video interview with BigThink.com, dated January 28, 2010.
"The Sheriff of Wall Street" 2004 video interview with Eliot Spitzer, on "The Open Mind"
Media coverage:
Breaking Legal News – Eliot L. Spitzer Collection of News of Eliot Spitzer
"Corruption probe hits US insurers" – BBC coverage of Spitzer's probe of insurance industry practices, October 15, 2004.
"Spitzer targets music companies" – BBC coverage of Spitzer's prosecution of payola, October 22, 2004
Greg Palast, Eliot's Mess
Greg Palast interview on Spitzer scandal timing
Critics:
Attorney General Watch – blog of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, critical of Eliot Spitzer and other state attorneys general.
"Not Spitzer's Job" – article by Alan Reynolds, senior fellow of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank. Reprinted from The Wall Street Journal
The Passion of Eliot Spitzer: Is he telling the truth as he tries to "take people out"? by Kimberley A. Strassel, The Wall Street Journal, May 2006
Eliot Spitzer's Real Agenda... is Eliot Spitzer By Kimberley A. Strassel, The Wall Street Journal, May 2006
"Power Corrupts: Elliot [sic] Spitzer's Record as N.Y. Attorney General" By Alan Reynolds, Cato-at-liberty, March 8, 2008.
Reports:
FBI affidavit regarding the Emperor's Club VIP scandal
"Predatory Lenders' Partner in Crime". Spitzer, Eliot, The Washington Post, February 14, 2008.
companies:
Eliot Spitzer serves as TipRanks board member. TipRanks provides online investing tools allowing private investors to see the measured performance of financial analysts.
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1959 births
Antitrust lawyers
American people of Austrian-Jewish descent
American television talk show hosts
CNN people
David Paterson
Democratic Party state governors of the United States
Governors of New York (state)
Harvard Law School alumni
Horace Mann School alumni
Jewish American attorneys
Jewish American state governors of the United States
Living people
New York (state) Democrats
New York State Attorneys General
New York County Assistant District Attorneys
Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison people
Politicians from the Bronx
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom alumni
Slate (magazine) people
2000 United States presidential electors
2004 United States presidential electors
Princeton School of Public and International Affairs alumni | 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"
] |
[
"Mike Gravel",
"Nuclear issues and the Cold War"
] | C_672c6c49d0d948738552b25aaebe1fb2_0 | Did Mike Gravel have problem with Nuclear bomb ? | 1 | Did Mike Gravel have problems with the Nuclear bomb ? | Mike Gravel | In the late 1960s and early 1970s the U.S. Department of Defense was in the process of performing tests for the nuclear warhead for the Spartan anti-ballistic missile. Two tests, the "Milrow" and "Cannikin" tests, were planned, involving the detonation of nuclear bombs under Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Milrow test would be a one megaton calibration exercise for the second, and larger five megaton, Cannikin test, which would measure the effectiveness of the warhead. Gravel opposed the tests in Congress. Before the Milrow test took place in October 1969, he wrote that there were significant risks of earthquakes and other adverse consequences, and called for an independent national commission on nuclear and seismic safety to be created; he then made a personal appeal to President Nixon to stop the test. After Milrow was conducted, there was continued pressure on the part of environmental groups against going forward with the larger Cannikin test, while the Federation of American Scientists claimed that the warhead being tested was already obsolete. In May 1971, Gravel sent a letter to U.S. Atomic Energy Commission hearings held in Anchorage, in which he said the risk of the test was not worth taking. Eventually a group not involving Gravel took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to issue an injunction against it, and the Cannikin test took place as scheduled in November 1971. Gravel had failed to stop the tests (notwithstanding his later claims during his 2008 presidential campaign). Nuclear power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for the commercial generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gravel publicly opposed this policy; besides the dangers of nuclear testing, he was a vocal critic of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw American nuclear efforts, and of the powerful United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had a stranglehold on nuclear policy and which Gravel tried to circumvent. In 1971, Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction and to make power utilities liable for any nuclear accidents; in 1975, he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974, Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power. Six months before U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's secret mission to the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.) in July 1971, Gravel introduced legislation to recognize and normalize relations with China, including a proposal for unity talks between the P.R.C. and the Republic of China (Taiwan) regarding the Chinese seat on the U.N. Security Council. Gravel reiterated his position in favor of recognition, with four other senators in agreement, during Senate hearings in June 1971. CANNOTANSWER | he then made a personal appeal to President Nixon to stop the test. | Maurice Robert Gravel ( ; May 13, 1930 – June 26, 2021) was an American politician who served as a United States Senator from Alaska from 1969 to 1981 as a member of the Democratic Party, and who, in later life, twice ran for the presidential nomination of that party.
Born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, by French-Canadian immigrant parents, Gravel moved to Alaska in the late 1950s, becoming a real estate developer and entering politics. He served in the Alaska House of Representatives from 1963 to 1967, and also became Speaker of the Alaska House. Gravel was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1968.
As a senator, Gravel became nationally known for his forceful, but unsuccessful, attempts to end the draft during the War in Vietnam, and for putting the Pentagon Papers into the public record in 1971. He conducted a campaign for the Democratic nomination in 1972 for Vice President of the United States, and then played a crucial role in obtaining Congressional approval for the Trans-Alaska pipeline in 1973. He was re-elected to the Senate in 1974, but was defeated in his bid for a third term in the primary election in 1980.
An advocate of direct democracy and the National Initiative, Gravel staged a run for the 2008 Democratic nomination for President of the United States. His campaign failed to gain support, and in March 2008, he left the Democratic Party and joined the Libertarian Party to compete unsuccessfully for its presidential nomination and the inclusion of the National Initiative into the Libertarian Platform. He ran for president as a Democrat again in the 2020 election, in a campaign that ended four months after it began. Two years before his death, Gravel and his campaign staff founded the progressive think tank The Gravel Institute.
Early life, military service, education
Gravel was born on May 13, 1930, in Springfield, Massachusetts, one of five children of French-Canadian immigrant parents, Alphonse and Marie (née Bourassa) Gravel. His parents were part of the Quebec diaspora, and he was raised in a working-class neighborhood during the Great Depression, speaking only French until he was seven years old. Calling him "Mike" from an early age, his father valued work above all else, while his mother stressed the importance of education.
Gravel was educated in parochial schools as a Roman Catholic. There he struggled, due to what he later said was undiagnosed dyslexia, and was left back in third grade. He completed elementary school in 1945 and his class voted him "most charming personality". A summer job as a soda jerk led to Gravel handing out campaign fliers for local candidates on his boss's behalf; Gravel was immediately impressed with "the awesomeness of political office".
Gravel then boarded at Assumption Preparatory School in Worcester, Massachusetts, where his performance was initially mediocre. By Gravel's telling, in the summer of 1948 he intended to volunteer for the Israel Defense Forces during the 1947–1949 Palestine war, but Alexandra Tolstaya told him to return to school. There an English teacher, the Assumptionist Edgar Bourque, gave him personal attention, improving Gravel's language skills and instructing him in public speaking. Gravel's grades improved measurably in his final year and he graduated in 1949. His sister, Marguerite, became a Holy Cross nun, but Gravel himself struggled with the Catholic faith. He studied for one year at Assumption College, a Catholic school in Worcester, then transferred for his sophomore year to American International College in Springfield. Journalist I. F. Stone and philosopher Bertrand Russell strongly influenced Gravel in their willingness to challenge assumptions and oppose social convention and political authority.
Around May 1951, Gravel saw that he was about to be drafted and instead enlisted in the U.S. Army for a three-year term so that he could get into the Counterintelligence Corps. After basic training and counterintelligence school at Fort Holabird in Maryland and in South Carolina, he went to Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia. While he expected to be sent off to the Korean War when he graduated as a second lieutenant in early 1952, he was instead assigned to Stuttgart, West Germany, as a Special Adjutant in the Army's Communications Intelligence Service. In Germany, Gravel conducted surveillance operations on civilians and paid off spies. After about a year, he transferred to Orléans, France, where his French language abilities (if not his French-Canadian accent) allowed him to infiltrate French communist rallies. He worked as a Special Agent in the Counterintelligence Corps until 1954, eventually becoming a first lieutenant.
Following his discharge, Gravel entered the Columbia University School of General Studies in New York City, where he studied economics and received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1956. He moved to New York "flat broke" and supported himself by working as a bar boy in a hotel, driving a taxicab, and working in the investment bond department at Bankers Trust. During this time he left the Roman Catholic faith.
Move to Alaska
Gravel "decided to become a pioneer in a faraway place," and moved to pre-statehood Alaska in August 1956, without funds or a job, looking for a place where someone without social or political connections could be a viable candidate for public office. Alaska's voting age of 19, less than most other states' 21, played a role in his decision, as did its newness and cooler climate. Broke when he arrived, he immediately found work in real estate sales until winter arrived. Gravel then was employed as a brakeman for the Alaska Railroad, working the snow-clearing train on the Anchorage-to-Fairbanks run. Subsequently, he opened a small real estate brokerage in Anchorage (the Territory of Alaska not requiring a license) and saved enough so as not to have to work the railroad again. The firm was named the M. R. Gravel Real Estate Company. Gravel joined the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, and continued a sporadic relationship with the movement throughout his life.
Seeing Alaska as a wide-open place with no political establishment or entrenched interests, Gravel quickly became part of the civic scene there. By October 1957 he was a Division Chairman for Anchorage for the Democratic Central Committee in the territory, and by June 1958 he was president of the Alaska Young Democrats organization. He also became active in the United States Junior Chamber (Jaycees), and by early 1958 his duties included handing out awards for farmer of the year.
By early 1958, Gravel was running as Democratic Party primary candidate for a Third Division seat in House of Representative of the territorial legislature. (This was one of the four judicial divisions into which Alaska was sectioned at the time.) Using the slogan "Gravel, the Roadbed to Prosperity", he ran but lost. At the same time, he was also an advocate for Alaskan statehood.
Gravel went on a 44-state national speaking tour concerning tax reform in 1959, sponsored by the Jaycees, often dressing for events as Paul Revere. Gravel was selected from some two thousand applications for this position. The tour received a good amount of local newspaper coverage at its various stops, with Gravel's first name sometimes given as Mike and other times as Maurice. The tour's general message was an urging of "lower taxes, more efficiency in government and a system of taxation moderate at all levels of income". At several stops Gravel stated that the "tide of socialism" had to be stopped. He elaborated at another stop, "It is part of our Jaycee creed that economic justice can best be won by free men through free enterprise. We really want to see that free enterprise become our inheritance." The tour was scheduled to conclude in Washington D.C., on Tax Day, April 15, with petition signatures accumulated for reform to be presented to U.S. lawmakers: dressed as Revere, Gravel rode with the petition to the steps of the U.S. Capitol.
The tour over, Gravel married Rita Jeannette Martin at the First Methodist Church of Anchorage on April 29, 1959. She was a native of Montana who had attended Billings Business College before moving to Alaska two years prior and becoming a secretary in the office of the Anchorage city manager. She had also been named Anchorage's "Miss Fur Rendezvous" of 1958. They had two children, Martin Anthony Gravel and Lynne Denise Gravel, born c. 1960 and 1962 respectively.
Gravel ran without avail for the City Council in Anchorage in 1960. During this time, he had become a successful real estate agent; after the 1960 election, he became a property developer in a mobile home park on the outskirts of Anchorage. After a partner ran into financial difficulty, however, the project went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and Gravel was forced out in 1962.
State legislator
With the support of Alaska wholesale grocer Barney Gottstein and supermarket builder Larry Carr, Gravel ran for the Alaska House of Representatives representing Anchorage in 1962, initially assigned the 10th and then 8th districts. Alaska had very crowded primaries that year: Gravel was one of 33 Democrats, along with 21 Republicans, who were running for the chance to compete for the 14 House seats allocated to the 8th district. Gravel made it through the primary, and in November eight Republicans and six Democrats were elected to the House from the district, with Gravel finishing eighth overall and third among with Democrats, with 8,174 votes. Gottstein became Gravel's main financial backer during most of his subsequent campaigns.
Gravel served in the Alaska House of Representatives from January 28, 1963 to January 22, 1967, winning reelection in 1964. In his first term, he served as a minority member on two House committees: Commerce, and Labor and Management. He co-authored and sponsored the act that created the Alaska State Commission for Human Rights. Gravel was the chief architect of the law that created a regional high school system for rural Alaska; this allowed Alaska Natives to attend schools near where they lived instead of having to go to schools run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the lower 48 states.
During the half-years that the legislature was not in session, Gravel resumed his real estate work. With Gottstein and Carr's backing, he became quite successful as a property developer on the Kenai Peninsula.
During 1965 and 1966, he served as the Speaker of the House, surprising observers by winning that post. Gravel convinced former Speaker Warren A. Taylor to not try for the position against him by promising Taylor chairmanship of the Rules Committee, then reneged on the promise. Gravel denied later press charges that he had promised but not delivered on other committee chairmanships. As Speaker he antagonized fellow lawmakers by imposing his will on the legislature's committees and feuded with Alaska State Senate president Robert J. McNealy.
Gravel did not run for reelection in 1966, instead choosing to run for Alaska's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, losing the primary to four-term incumbent Democrat Ralph Rivers by 1,300 votes and splitting the Democratic Party in the process. Rivers lost the general election that year to Republican state Senator Howard Pollock. Following this defeat, Gravel returned to the real estate business in Anchorage.
U.S. Senator
Election to Senate in 1968
In 1968, Gravel ran against 81-year-old incumbent Democratic United States Senator Ernest Gruening, a popular former governor of the Alaska Territory who was considered one of the fathers of Alaska's statehood, for his party's nomination to the U.S. Senate. Gravel's campaign was primarily based on his youth and telegenic appearance rather than issue differences. He hired Joseph Napolitan, the first self-described political consultant, in late 1966. They spent over a year and a half planning a short, nine-day primary election campaign that featured the slogans "Alaska first" and "Let's do something about the state we're in", the distribution of a collection of essays titled Jobs and More Jobs, and the creation of a half-hour, well-produced, glamorized biographical film of Gravel, Man for Alaska. The film was shown twice a day on every television station in Alaska, and carried by plane and shown on home projectors in hundreds of Alaska Native villages. The heavy showings quickly reversed a 2–to–1 Gruening lead in polls into a Gravel lead. Gravel visited many remote villages by seaplane and showed a thorough understanding of the needs of the bush country and the fishing and oil industries. Gravel also benefited from maintaining a deliberately ambiguous posture about Vietnam policy. Gruening had been one of only two Senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and his opposition to President Lyndon B. Johnson's war policies was harming him among the Democratic electorate; according to Gravel, "all I had to do was stand up and not deal with the subject, and people would assume that I was to the right of Ernest Gruening, when in point of fact I was to the left of him". In Man for Alaska, Gravel argued that "the liberals" would come to West Germany's defense if it was attacked, and that the same standard should apply to the United States' allies in Asia. During the campaign he also claimed that he was "more in the mainstream of American thought on Vietnam" than Gruening, despite the fact that he had written to Gruening to praise his antiwar stance four years earlier. Decades later, Gravel conceded that "I said what I said [about Vietnam] to advance my career."
Gravel beat Gruening in the primary by about 2,000 votes. Gruening found "the unexpected defeat hard to take" and thought that some aspects of his opponent's biographical film had misled viewers. In the general election, Gravel faced Republican Elmer E. Rasmuson, a banker and former mayor of Anchorage. College students in the state implored Gruening to run a write-in campaign as an Independent, but legal battles prevented him from getting approval for it until only two weeks were left. A late appearance by anti-war presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy did not offset Gruening's lack of funds and endorsements; meanwhile, Gravel and Rasmuson both saturated local media with their filmed biographies. On November 5, 1968, Gravel won the general election with 45 percent of the vote to Rasmuson's 37 percent and Gruening's 18 percent.
Senate assignments and style
When Gravel joined the U.S.Senate in January 1969, he requested and received a seat on the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, which had direct relevance to Alaskan issues. He also got a spot on the Public Works Committee, which he held throughout his time in the Senate. Finally, he was a member of the Select Committee on Small Business. In 1971 he became chair of the Public Works Committee's Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds, and by 1973 he was chair of its Subcommittee on Water Resources, then later its Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution. Gravel was also initially named to the Joint Committee on Congressional Operations. By 1973 Gravel was off the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee and the Select Small Business Committee and instead a member of the Finance Committee, and by 1977 was chair of that body's Subcommittee on Energy and Foundations. By 1973 he had also been on the ad hoc Special Committee to Study Secret and Confidential Government Documents.
By his own admission, Gravel was too new and "too abrasive" to be effective in the Senate by the usual means of seniority-based committee assignments or negotiating deals with other senators, and was sometimes seen as arrogant or a nuisance by the more senior and tradition-oriented members. Gravel relied on attention-getting gestures to achieve what he wanted, hoping national exposure would force other senators to listen to him. But even senators who agreed with him on issues considered his methods to be showboating.
As part of this approach, Gravel voted with Southern Democrats to keep the Senate filibuster rule in place, and accordingly supported Russell Long and Robert Byrd but opposed Ted Kennedy in Senate leadership battles. In retrospective assessment, University of Alaska Anchorage history professor Stephen Haycox said, "Loose cannon is a good description of Gravel's Senate career. He was an off-the-wall guy, and you weren't really ever sure what he would do."
Nuclear issues and the Cold War
In the late 1960s and early 1970s the U.S. Department of Defense was in the process of performing tests for the nuclear warhead for the Spartan anti-ballistic missile. Two tests, the "Milrow" and "Cannikin" tests, were planned, involving the detonation of nuclear bombs under Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Milrow test would be a one-megaton calibration exercise for the second and larger five-megaton Cannikin test, which would measure the effectiveness of the warhead. Gravel opposed the tests. Before the Milrow test took place in October 1969, he wrote that there were significant risks of earthquakes and other adverse consequences and called for an independent national commission on nuclear and seismic safety; he then made a personal appeal to President Richard Nixon to stop the test.
After Milrow was conducted, there was continued pressure on the part of environmental groups against going forward with the Cannikin test, while the Federation of American Scientists claimed that the warhead being tested was already obsolete. In May 1971 Gravel sent a letter to U.S. Atomic Energy Commission hearings held in Anchorage in which he said the risk of the test was not worth taking. Eventually a group not involving Gravel took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to issue an injunction against it, and the Cannikin test took place as scheduled in November 1971. Gravel had failed to stop the tests (notwithstanding his later claims during his 2008 presidential campaign).
In 1971 Gravel voted against the Nixon administration's proposed anti-ballistic missile system, the Safeguard Program, having previously vacillated over the issue, suggesting that he might be willing to support it in exchange for federal lands in Alaska being opened up for private oil drilling. His vote alienated Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, who had raised funds for Gravel's primary campaign.
Nuclear power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for commercial generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gravel publicly opposed this policy; besides the dangers of nuclear testing, he was a vocal critic of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw American nuclear efforts, and of the powerful United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had a stranglehold on nuclear policy and which Gravel tried to circumvent. In 1971 Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction and to make power utilities liable for any nuclear accidents; in 1975 he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974 Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power.
Six months before U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's July 1971 secret mission to the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.), Gravel introduced legislation to recognize and normalize relations with the P.R.C., including a proposal for unity talks between the P.R.C. and the Republic of China (Taiwan) regarding the Chinese seat on the U.N. Security Council. He reiterated his position in favor of recognition, with four other senators in agreement, during Senate hearings in June 1971.
Vietnam War, the draft, and the Pentagon Papers
Although he did not campaign against the Vietnam War during his first Senate campaign, by the end of 1970 Gravel was speaking out against United States policy in southeast Asia: in December of that year he persuaded William Fulbright to join him in a spontaneous two-day filibuster against a $155 million military aid package to Cambodia's Khmer Republic government in the Cambodian Civil War.
President Richard Nixon had campaigned in 1968 on a promise to end the U.S. military draft, a decision endorsed by the February 1970 report of the Gates Commission.
The existing draft law was scheduled to conclude at the end of June 1971, and the Senate faced a contentious debate about whether to extend it as the Vietnam War continued. The Nixon administration announced in February 1971 that it wanted a two-year extension to June 1973, after which the draft would end; Army planners had already been operating under the assumption of a two-year extension, after which an all-volunteer force would be in place. Skeptics such as Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John Stennis thought this unrealistic and wanted a four-year extension, but the two-year proposal is what went forward in Congress. By early May 1971, Gravel had indicated his intention to filibuster the draft renewal legislation, halting conscription and thereby bringing U.S. involvement in the war to a rapid end. During this period he also supported efforts to mobilize and influence public opinion against the war, endorsing the "Vietnam War Out Now" rallies in Washington D.C. and San Francisco on April 24, 1971, and financing a broadcast campaign by the antiwar group War No More with a personal loan. In June 1972 he escorted a group of over 100 antiwar protesters, including psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, actress Candice Bergen, theater producer and director Joseph Papp, and peditrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, into the United States Capitol Building; the group was arrested after blocking a hallway outside the Senate chamber.
By June 1971, some Democratic senators opposed to the war wanted to limit the renewal to a one-year extension, while others wanted to end it immediately; Gravel reiterated that he was one of the latter, saying, "It's a senseless war, and one way to do away with it is to do away with the draft." A Senate vote on June 4 indicated majority support for the two-year extension. On June 18 Gravel announced again his intention to counteract that by filibustering the renewal legislation, defending the practice against those who associated it only with blocking civil rights legislation. The first filibuster attempt failed on June 23 when, by three votes, the Senate voted cloture for only the fifth time since 1927.
Protracted negotiations took place over House conference negotiations on the bill, revolving in large part around Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield's eventually unsuccessful amendment to tie renewal to a troop withdrawal timetable from Vietnam; during this time the draft law expired and no more were conscripted. On August 5, the Nixon administration pleaded for a renewal before the Senate went on recess, but Gravel blocked Stennis's attempt to limit debate, and no vote was held. Finally on September 21, 1971, the Senate invoked cloture over Gravel's second filibuster attempt by one vote, and then passed the two-year draft extension. Gravel's attempts to stop the draft had failed (notwithstanding Gravel's later claims that he had stopped or shortened the draft, taken at face value in some media reports, during his 2008 presidential campaign).
Meanwhile, on June 13, 1971, The New York Times began printing large portions of the Pentagon Papers. The papers were a large collection of secret government documents and studies pertaining to the Vietnam War, of which former Defense Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg had made unauthorized copies and was determined to make public. Ellsberg had for a year and a half approached members of Congress – such as William Fulbright, George McGovern, Charles Mathias, and Pete McCloskey – about publishing the documents, on the grounds that the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution would give congressional members immunity from prosecution, but all had refused. Instead, Ellsberg gave the documents to the Times.
The U.S. Justice Department immediately tried to halt publication, on the grounds that the information revealed within the papers harmed the national interest. Within the next two weeks, a federal court injunction halted publication in the Times; The Washington Post and several other newspapers began publishing parts of the documents, with some of them also being halted by injunctions; and the whole matter went to the U.S. Supreme Court for arguments. Looking for an alternate publication mechanism, Ellsberg returned to his idea of having a member of Congress read them, and chose Gravel based on the latter's efforts against the draft; Gravel agreed where previously others had not. Ellsberg arranged for the papers to be given to Gravel on June 26 via an intermediary, Post editor Ben Bagdikian. Gravel used his counter-intelligence experience to choose a midnight transfer in front of the Mayflower Hotel in the center of Washington, D.C.
On the night of June 29, 1971, Gravel attempted to read the papers on the floor of the Senate as part of his filibuster against the draft, but was thwarted when no quorum could be formed. Gravel instead convened a session of the Buildings and Grounds subcommittee that he chaired. He got New York Congressman John G. Dow to testify that the war had soaked up funding for public buildings, thus making discussion of the war relevant to the committee. He began reading from the papers with the press in attendance, omitting supporting documents that he felt might compromise national security, and declaring, "It is my constitutional obligation to protect the security of the people by fostering the free flow of information absolutely essential to their democratic decision-making."
He read until 1 a.m., culminating by saying "Arms are being severed. Metal is clashing through human bodies because of the public policy this government and all its branches continue to support." Then with tears and sobs he said that he could no longer physically continue, the previous three nights of sleeplessness and fear about the future having taken their toll. Gravel ended the session by, with no other senators present, establishing unanimous consent to insert 4,100 pages of the Papers into the Congressional Record of his subcommittee. The following day, the Supreme Court's New York Times Co. v. United States decision ruled in favor of the newspapers and publication in the Times and others resumed. In July 1971 Bantam Books published an inexpensive paperback edition of the papers containing the material the Times had published.
Gravel, too, wanted to privately publish the portion of the papers he had read into the record, believing that "immediate disclosure of the contents of these papers will change the policy that supports the war". After being turned down by many commercial publishers, on August 4 he reached agreement with Beacon Press, the publishing arm of the Unitarian Universalist Association, of which Gravel was a member. Announced on August 17 and published on October 22, 1971, this four-volume, relatively expensive set became the "Senator Gravel Edition", which studies from Cornell University and the Annenberg Center for Communication have labeled as the most complete edition of the Pentagon Papers to be published. The "Gravel Edition" was edited and annotated by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, and included an additional volume of analytical articles on the origins and progress of the war, also edited by Chomsky and Zinn. Beacon Press then was subjected to a FBI investigation; an outgrowth of this was the Gravel v. United States court case, which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled upon in June 1972; it held that the Speech or Debate Clause did grant immunity to Gravel for his reading the papers in his subcommittee, did grant some immunity to Gravel's congressional aide, but granted no immunity to Beacon Press in relation to their publishing the same papers. The U.S. Senate Democratic Caucus backed Gravel in the case, but due to Republican opposition it did not pay Gravel's legal fees, leaving him owing $25,000 (the equivalent of $150,000 in 2019, adjusted for inflation).
The events of 1971 changed Gravel in the following months from an obscure freshman senator to a nationally visible political figure. He became a sought-after speaker on the college circuit as well as at political fundraisers, opportunities he welcomed as lectures were "the one honest way a Senator has to supplement his income". But his speaking tours caused him to accrue one of the worst absentee records in the Senate. The Democratic candidates for the 1972 presidential election sought his endorsement. In January 1972 Gravel endorsed Maine Senator Ed Muskie, hoping that his support would help Muskie with the party's left wing and in ethnic French-Canadian areas during the first primary contest in New Hampshire (Muskie won, but not overwhelmingly, and his campaign faltered soon after). In April 1972 Gravel appeared on all three networks' nightly newscasts to decry the Nixon administration's reliance on Vietnamization by making reference to the secret National Security Study Memorandum 1 document, which stated it would take 8–13 years for the Army of the Republic of Vietnam to defend South Vietnam. Gravel made excerpts from the study public, but senators Robert P. Griffin and William B. Saxbe blocked his attempt to read NSSM 1 into the Congressional Record.
Domestic policy
In 1970 Gravel co-sponsored legislation to establish a guaranteed minimum income, entitling poor families to up to $6,300 a year (the equivalent of $42,000 in 2019 after adjustment for inflation). He subsequently voted for a "work bonus" program, which would have entitled low-income working families with dependent children if they were paying Social Security or Railroad Retirement taxes to a non-taxable bonus of up to 10 percent of their wages. Gravel also supported extending Social Security to all federal employees and introduced a campaign finance reform bill in 1971 that would have enacted full disclosure of campaign financing, placed limits on large donations, media spending and individual candidate spending.
In 1969, Gravel was the only Democratic Senator outside of the South to vote for Nixon's Supreme Court nominee Clement Haynsworth. The following year Gravel opposed Nixon's next pick, G. Harrold Carswell.
Run for vice president in 1972
Gravel actively campaigned for the office of Vice President of the United States during the 1972 presidential election, announcing on June 2, 1972, over a month before the 1972 Democratic National Convention began, that he was interested in the nomination should the choice be opened up to convention delegates. Toward this end he began soliciting delegates for their support. He was not alone in this effort, as former Governor of Massachusetts Endicott Peabody had been running a quixotic campaign for the same post since the prior year. Likely presidential nominee George McGovern was in fact considering the unusual move of naming three or four acceptable vice-presidential candidates and letting the delegates choose.
On the convention's final day, July 14, 1972, McGovern selected and announced Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his vice-presidential choice. Eagleton was unknown to many delegates and the choice seemed to smack of traditional ticket balancing considerations. Thus there were delegates willing to look elsewhere. Gravel was nominated by Bettye Fahrenkamp, the Democratic National Committeewoman from Alaska. He then seconded his own nomination, breaking down in tears at his own words and maybe trying to withdraw his nomination. In any case he won 226 delegate votes, coming in third behind Eagleton and Frances "Sissy" Farenthold of Texas, in chaotic balloting that included several other candidates.
Gravel attracted some attention for his efforts: writer Norman Mailer said he "provided considerable excitement" and was "good-looking enough to have played leads in B-films", while Rolling Stone correspondent Hunter S. Thompson said Gravel "probably said a few things that might have been worth hearing, under different circumstances". Yet the process was doubly disastrous for the Democrats. In the time consumed by nominating and seconding and all the vice-presidential candidates' speeches, the attention of the delegates on the floor was lost and McGovern's speech was pushed to 3:30 a.m. The haste with which Eagleton was selected led to surprise when his past mental health treatments were revealed; he withdrew from the ticket soon after the convention, to be replaced by Sargent Shriver.
Reelection to Senate in 1974
Several years earlier, Alaska politicians had speculated that Gravel would have a hard time getting both renominated and elected when his first term expired, given that he was originally elected without a base party organization and tended to focus on national rather than local issues.
Nonetheless, after receiving support from national and local labor leaders, securing key earmarks, and producing another half-hour TV advertorial, in 1974 Gravel was reelected to the Senate, with 58 percent of the vote to 42 percent for Republican State Senator C. R. Lewis, who was a national officer of the John Birch Society.
Second term
Gravel's reelection campaign left him $65,000–$75,000 in debt. In 1975 The Washington Post reported on a memo by his executive assistant laying out a fundraising strategy to tackle this, including raising funds from oil companies, meeting with previous donors and "inquir[ing] into the governmental priorities of these people and their groups in the coming session", as well as obtaining further speaking fees to reduce his personal debt. This was followed by a number of stories about links between Gravel, lobbyists and fundraisers, including one that was widely publicized in Alaska about his holding a share in a Colorado resort with two Washington lobbyists he was working with on land and energy legislation. Gravel had been open about the investment and had opposing views to one of the lobbyists on nuclear power. In 1980 the Wall Street Journal published details about his fundraising activities, including writing to individuals and PACs in the oil industry, pledging to kill off proposals for a windfall profits tax on the sector, and traveling in the Middle East with the business partner of one of his donors to sell Alaskan land to businessmen. Gravel suggested that critics of his fundraising were "naive".
In 1975 Gravel introduced an amendment to cut the number of troops overseas by 200,000, but it was defeated on a voice vote.
In September 1975 Gravel was named as one of several Congressional Advisers to the Seventh Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly, which met to discuss problems related to economic development and international economic cooperation.
In June 1976 Gravel was the focus of a federal investigation into allegations that he was involved in a sex-for-vote arrangement. Congressional staff clerk Elizabeth Ray (who had already been involved in a sex scandal that led to the downfall of Representative Wayne Hays) said that in August 1972 she had sex with Gravel aboard a houseboat on the Potomac River, under the instruction of Representative Kenneth J. Gray, her boss at the time. Gray allegedly wanted to secure Gravel's support for further funding for construction of the National Visitor Center in Washington, a troubled project that was under the jurisdiction of subcommittees that both members chaired. Another Congressional staffer said she witnessed the boat encounter, but Gravel said at the time that he had never met either of the women. Gravel and Gray strongly denied that they had made any arrangement regarding legislation, and neither was ever charged with any wrongdoing. Decades later Gravel wrote that he had indeed had sex with Ray, but had not changed any votes because of it.
Gravel and his main financial backer, Gottstein, had a falling out in 1978, during the Congressional debate over whether to allow a controversial sale of U.S. F-15 fighter aircraft to Saudi Arabia. An ardent backer of Israel, Gottstein opposed the sale and asked Gravel to vote against it. But Gravel not only voted for it but made an emotional speech attacking the anti-sale campaign. Gravel wrote in 2008 that it was the only time Gottstein had ever asked him for a favor, and the rupture resulted in their never speaking to each other again.
Alaskan issues
By 1971 Gravel was urging construction of the much-argued Trans-Alaska pipeline, addressing environmental concerns by saying that the pipeline's builders and operators should have "total and absolute" responsibility for any consequent environmental damage. Two years later the debate over the pipeline came to a crux, with The New York Times describing it as "environmentalists [in] a holy war with the major oil companies". In February 1973 the U.S. Court of Appeals blocked the issuance of permits for construction; Gravel and fellow Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens reacted by urging Congress to pass legislation overturning the court's decision. Environmentalists opposed to the pipeline, such as the Environmental Defense Fund and the Sierra Club then sought to use the recently passed National Environmental Policy Act to their advantage; Gravel designed an amendment to the pipeline bill that would immunize the pipeline from any further court challenges under that law, and thus speed its construction. Passage of the amendment became the key battle regarding the pipeline. On July 17, 1973, in a dramatic roll-call vote, the Gravel amendment was approved as a 49–49 tie was broken in favor by Vice President Spiro Agnew. The actual bill enabling the pipeline then passed easily; Gravel had triumphed in what became perhaps his most lasting accomplishment as a senator.
In opposition to the Alaskan fishing industry, Gravel advocated American participation in the formation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. For two years he opposed legislation that established a Exclusive Economic Zone for marine resources. He was one of only 19 senators to vote against Senate approval for the expanded zone in 1976, saying it would undermine the U.S. position in Law of the Sea negotiations and that nations arbitrarily extending their fishing rights limits would "produce anarchy of the seas". The legislation was passed, and the United States has signed but never ratified the Law of the Sea treaty.
Gravel accumulated a complicated record on Indian affairs during his time in the Senate. During his first year in the Senate Gravel urged abolition of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, criticizing the agency for the pace of development of schools in Alaska, its paternalistic attitudes and the culturally inappropriate nature of its education, and advocating greater shared decision-making between the federal government and native communities in Alaska. Later, his views changed; in the early 1970s Gravel supported a demonstration project that established links between Alaskan villages and the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, for medical diagnostic communications. In 1971, he fended off accusations from Alaskan natives that he was not spending enough time working on their land claims. Gravel helped secure a private grant to facilitate the first Inuit Circumpolar Conference in 1977, attended by Inuit representatives from Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. These conferences now also include representatives from Russia. In 1977, Gravel helped lead an effort to have the U.S. Interior Department rename Mount McKinley to Denali; this eventually led to Denali National Park being so named. Subsequently, Gravel proposed a never-built "Denali City" development above the Tokositna River near the mountain, to consist of a giant Teflon dome enclosing hotels, golf courses, condominiums, and commercial buildings. A related idea of his to build a high-speed rail line to Denali also failed to gain traction.
A key, emotional issue in the state at the time was "locking up Alaska", making reference to allocation of its vast, mostly uninhabited land. President Jimmy Carter desired to put large portions of this land under federal protection against development, a move that some Alaskans vociferously opposed.
In 1978 Gravel blocked passage, via procedural delays such as walking out of House–Senate conference committee meetings, of a complex bill which represented a compromise on land use policy. The bill would have put some of Alaska's vast federal land holdings under state control while preserving other portions for federal parks and refuges; the blocking action earned Gravel the enmity of fellow Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who had supported the compromise. In 1980, a new lands bill came up for consideration, that was less favorable to Alaskan interests and more liked by environmentalists; it set aside of Alaska's for national parks, conservation areas, and other restricted federal uses. Gravel blocked it, as not ensuring enough future development in the state. A new compromise version of the 1980 bill came forward, which reduced the land set aside to . Representing Alaskan interests, Gravel tried to stop the bill, including by filibuster. But the Senate voted for cloture and passed the bill. Frustrated, Gravel said, "the legislation denies Alaska its rights as a state, and denies the U.S. crucial strategic resources," and opined that the Senate was "a little bit like a tank of barracudas". Nonetheless, the bill, known as the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, was signed by President Carter shortly before leaving the White House, and led to millions of acres being set aside in the state for national parks, wildlife refuges, and other kinds of areas under protection.
In 1978 Gravel authored and secured the passage into federal law of the General Stock Ownership Corporation, that became Subchapter U of the Tax Code under the Internal Revenue Code of 1954. This gave states the ability to create corporations that would invest in for-profit enterprises, with all citizens within the state owning shares in the corporation. Gravel's attempt to convince the Alaska state legislature to create such a corporation failed, as did a 1980 state ballot initiative towards the same end, but nevertheless the creation of the General Stock Ownership Corporation in federal law turned out to be significant in the development of binary economics.
Loss of Senate seat in 1980
In 1980 Gravel was challenged for the Democratic Party's nomination by State Representative Clark Gruening, the grandson of the man Gravel had defeated in a primary 12 years earlier. One of Gruening's supporters was Gravel's former backer Gottstein. Several factors made Gravel vulnerable. As an insurgent candidate in 1968 Gravel had never established a firm party base. Not liking to hunt or fish, he was also always culturally suspect in the state.
The primary campaign was bitterly fought. A group of Democrats, including future governor Steve Cowper, led the campaign against Gravel, with Gravel's actions in respect to the 1978 and 1980 Alaskan lands bills a major issue. This was especially so given that the 1980 bill's dénouement happened but a week before the primary. The sources of Gravel's campaign funds, some of which Gravel readily acknowledged came from political action committees outside the state, also became an issue in the contest. Gruening had pledged that he would not take special interest group money, but Gravel said that Gruening was "dishonest" in accepting individual contributors from Jewish donors living outside the state because to him such contributors comprised "a special interest group ... that seeks to influence the foreign policy of the U.S."
Gruening won the primary with about 55 percent of the vote to Gravel's 44 percent. Gravel later conceded that by the time of his defeat, he had alienated "almost every constituency in Alaska". Another factor may have been Alaska's blanket primary system of the time, which allowed unlimited voting across party lines and from its many independents; Republicans believed Gruening would be an easier candidate to defeat in the general election.
Gruening lost the general election to Republican Frank Murkowski. Gravel was the last Democrat to represent Alaska in Congress for 28 years, until Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich defeated Ted Stevens, by then an aged, iconic figure who had just been convicted of seven felonies for taking unreported gifts, in a very close and protracted election result in 2008. Stevens's conviction was subsequently vacated due to prosecutorial misconduct.
Career after leaving the Senate
Of his 1980 defeat, Gravel later recalled: "I had lost my career. I lost my marriage. I was in the doldrums for ten years after my defeat," and "Nobody wanted to hire me for anything important. I felt like I was worthless. I didn't know what I could do." By his own later description, Gravel was a womanizer, and had an affair while in the Senate, and in December 1980 he and his wife Rita separated. They filed for divorce in September 1981; she later received all of his Senate pension income.
During the 1980s Gravel was a real estate developer in Anchorage and Kenai, Alaska, a consultant, and a stockbroker. One of his real estate ventures, a condominium business, was forced to declare bankruptcy and a lawsuit ensued. In 1986 Gravel worked in partnership with Merrill Lynch Capital Markets to buy losses that financially troubled Alaska Native Corporations could not take as tax deductions and sell them to large national companies looking for tax writeoffs. Gravel also learned computer programming at some point but never practiced it.
In 1984 Gravel married his second wife, Whitney Stewart Gravel, a former administrative assistant for Senator Jacob Javits.
Return to politics
In 1989 Gravel reentered politics. He founded and led The Democracy Foundation, which promotes direct democracy. He established the Philadelphia II corporation, which seeks to replicate the original 1787 Constitutional Convention and have a Second Constitutional Convention to bring about direct democracy Gravel led an effort to get a United States Constitutional amendment to allow voter-initiated federal legislation similar to state ballot initiatives. He argued that Americans are able to legislate responsibly, and that the Act and Amendment in the National Initiative would allow American citizens to become "law makers". However such efforts met with little success.
In 2001, Gravel became director of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, where he admired institute co-founder Gregory Fossedal's work on direct democracy in Switzerland. By 2004, Gravel had become chair of the institute, and Fossedal (who in turn was a director of the Democracy Foundation) gave the introduction at Gravel's presidential announcement.
In 2003 Gravel gave a speech on direct democracy at a conference hosted by the American Free Press. The event was cosponsored by the Barnes Review, a journal that endorses Holocaust denial. After some controversy over his appearance, Gravel apologized, saying he did not realize the group's ties. Gravel said repeatedly that he did not share the group's views on the Holocaust, stating, "You better believe I know that six million Jews were killed. [The Barnes Review publishers] are nutty as loons if they don't think it happened". The group invited Gravel to speak again, but he declined.
Mike and Whitney Gravel lived in Arlington County, Virginia, until 2010 and then resided in Burlingame, California. They have the two grown children from his first marriage, Martin Gravel and Lynne Gravel Mosier, and four grandchildren. Whitney Gravel's income sustained the couple from 1998 on. In the 2000s, Gravel suffered poor health, requiring three surgeries in 2003 for back pain and neuropathy. Due to unreimbursed medical expenses and debts from his political causes, he declared personal bankruptcy in 2004. He began taking a salary from the non-profit organizations for which he was working; much of that income was lent to his presidential campaign. In 2007, he declared that he had "zero net worth".
2008 presidential campaign
Democratic Party primaries
At the start of 2006 Gravel decided the best way he could promote direct democracy and the National Initiative was to run for president. On April 17, 2006, Gravel became the first candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2008 election, announcing his run in a speech to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Short on campaign cash, he took public transportation to get to his announcement. (Gravel called for public financing of elections.) Other principal Gravel positions were the FairTax, as well as withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq within 120 days and a single payer national health care system.
Gravel had opposed the Iraq War, and President George W. Bush's rationale for it, from the beginning, and in 2006 said that U.S. troops in Iraq, as in Vietnam, had "died in vain". He also favored a regional peace initiative, as well as reparation payments for Iraqis. Gravel also called for a "U.S. corporate withdrawal from Iraq", with reconstruction contracts held by U.S. companies to be turned over to Iraqi firms.
Gravel campaigned almost full-time in New Hampshire, the first primary state, following his announcement. Opinion polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination showed Gravel with 1 percent or less support. By the end of March 2007, Gravel's campaign had less than $500 in cash on hand against debts of nearly $90,000.
Because of his time in the Senate, Gravel was invited to many of the early Democratic presidential debates. During the initial one at South Carolina State University on April 26, 2007, he suggested a bill requiring the president to withdraw from Iraq on pain of criminal penalties. He also advocated positions such as opposing preemptive nuclear war. He stated that the Iraq War had the effect of creating more terrorists and that the "war was lost the day that George Bush invaded Iraq on a fraudulent basis". Regarding his fellow candidates, he said, "I got to tell you, after standing up with them, some of these people frighten me – they frighten me." In one such exchange, Gravel said, "Tell me, Barack, who do you want to nuke?" to which Obama responded, "I'm not planning to nuke anybody right now, Mike, I promise."
Media stories said that Gravel was responsible for much of whatever "heat" and "flashpoints" had taken place during the Democratic debates. Gravel gained considerable publicity by shaking up the normally staid multiple-candidate format; The New York Times' media critic said that what Gravel had done was "steal a debate with outrageous, curmudgeonly statements". The Internet was a benefit: a YouTube video of his responses in the debate was viewed more than 225,892 times, ranking seventeenth in most views for week and first among news and politics clips; his name became the fifteenth most searched-for in the blogosphere; and his website garnered more traffic than those of frontrunners Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or John Edwards. Gravel appeared on the popular Colbert Report on television on May 2, and his campaign and career were profiled in national publications such as Salon. Two wordless, Warholesque campaign videos, "Rock" and "Fire", were released on YouTube in late May and became hits, and eventually gained over 760,000 and 185,000 views respectively. "Rock", in turn, was given airtime during an episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Some thirty-five years after he first achieved the national spotlight, he had found it again.
All this did not improve his performance in the polls; a May 2007 CNN poll showed him with less than 0.5 percent support among Democrats. Gravel was in the next several debates, in one case after CNN reversed a decision to exclude him. Like some of the other second-tier candidates, Gravel did not get as much time as the leaders; during the June 2, 2007, New Hampshire debate, which lasted two hours, he was asked 10 questions and allowed to speak for five minutes and 37 seconds.
During the July 23, 2007, CNN-YouTube presidential debate, Gravel responded to audience applause when he had complained of a lack of airtime and said: "Thank you. Has it been fair thus far?" Detractors began to liken him to "the cranky uncle who lives in the attic," or "the angry old guy that just seemed to want to become angrier". Berkeley political scientist David Terr found that moderator George Stephanopoulos directed roughly five percent of his questions to Gravel; in a poll asking who did the best in the debate, Gravel placed seventh among the eight candidates. National opinion polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination continued to show Gravel with one percent or zero percent numbers. By the end of the third-quarter 2007, Gravel had about $17,500 in cash on hand, had collected a total of about $380,000 during the 2008 election cycle, and was continuing to run a threadbare campaign with minimal staff.
Beginning with the October 30, 2007, Philadelphia event, Gravel was excluded from most of the debates, with the debate sponsors or the Democratic National Committee saying Gravel's campaign had not met fund-raising, polling, or local campaign organizational thresholds. For the Philadelphia exclusion, Gravel blamed corporate censorship on the part of sponsor owner and alleged military-industrial complex member General Electric for his exclusion and mounted a counter-gathering and debate against a video screen a short distance away, but he had lost his easiest publicity. In reaction, supporters organized "mass donation days" to try to help the campaign gain momentum and funds, such as on December 5, 2007, the anniversary of the Repeal of Prohibition.
Gravel did not compete in the initial 2008 vote, the Iowa caucuses, but was still subjected to a false report from MSNBC that he had pulled out of the race afterward. Gravel did focus his attention on the second 2008 vote, the New Hampshire primary. In early January, Mother Jones' investigative reporter James Ridgeway was filmed interviewing and following Gravel in New Hampshire, in which Gravel is interviewed on the phone by Neal Conan for NPR's, Talk of the Nation. He received about 400 votes out of some 280,000 cast in New Hampshire, or 0.14 percent, before taking time off to improve his health. He resumed campaigning, but fared no better in subsequent states. By the end of January 2008, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Gravel were the only remaining Democrats from the initial debates still running; Gravel vowed to stay in the presidential campaign until November. On March 11, 2008, Gravel continued to remain in the Democratic race but additionally endorsed a Green Party candidate for president, Jesse Johnson, saying he wanted to help Johnson prevail against Green Party rivals Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader. By late March, Gravel had almost no fundraising and was only on the ballot in one of the next ten Democratic primaries.
Switch to Libertarian Party
On March 25, 2008, Gravel announced that he would leave the Democrats and join the Libertarian Party, saying: "My libertarian views, as well as my strong stance against war, the military industrial complex and American imperialism, seem not to be tolerated by Democratic Party elites who are out of touch with the average American; elites that reject the empowerment of American citizens I offered to the Democratic Party at the beginning of this presidential campaign with the National Initiative for Democracy." The following day Gravel entered the race for the 2008 Libertarian presidential nomination, saying that he would have run as a third-party candidate all along except that he needed the public exposure that came from being in the earlier Democratic debates. Gravel's initial notion of running as a fusion candidate with other parties was met with skepticism.
As a Libertarian candidate, Gravel faced resistance to his past support of big government initiatives and his unorthodox positions around direct democracy. Nevertheless, he garnered more support than he had as a Democrat, placing second and third in two April 2008 straw polls. In the May 25 balloting at the 2008 Libertarian National Convention in Denver, Gravel finished fourth out of eight candidates on the initial ballot, with 71 votes out of a total 618; he trailed former Congressman and eventual winner Bob Barr, author Mary Ruwart, and businessman Wayne Allyn Root. Gravel's position did not subsequently improve and he was eliminated on the fourth ballot. Afterwards he stated that "I just ended my political career," but he vowed to continue promoting his positions as a writer and lecturer.
2008–early 2019
In June 2008 Gravel endorsed the NYC 9/11 Ballot Initiative, saying the measure would create a "citizens commission rather than a government commission" with subpoena power against top U.S. officials to "make a true investigation as to what happened" regarding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He later said, "Individuals in and out of government may certainly have participated with the obviously known perpetrators of this dastardly act. Suspicions abound over the analysis presented by government. Obviously an act that has triggered three wars, Afghan, Iraqi and the continuing War on Terror, should be extensively investigated which was not done and which the government avoids addressing."
In August 2008 Gravel was speaking to a crowd of supporters of Sami Al-Arian (who two years earlier had pleaded guilty and been sentenced to prison for a charge of conspiracy in helping Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a "specially designated terrorist" organization) when he was caught on tape saying of Al-Arian's prosecutor, "Find out where he lives, find out where his kids go to school, find out where his office is: picket him all the time. Call him a racist in signs if you see him. Call him an injustice. Call him whatever you want to call him, but in his face all the time." Gravel was criticized for potentially involving the children of the prosecutor, and Al-Arian's family disavowed the sentiments.
Gravel defended Alaska Governor Sarah Palin after she was chosen as Republican presidential nominee John McCain's running mate in September 2008. He praised Palin's record in standing up to corruption among Alaskan Republicans, thought her national inexperience was an asset not a detriment, and predicted that the "Troopergate" investigation into whether she improperly fired a state official would "come out in her favor". Gravel made clear he would not support or vote for either McCain–Palin or Obama–Biden in the general election. The following year Gravel said that Palin's politics were "terrible, but that doesn't detract from the fact that she's a very talented person". He predicted that Palin would run for president in 2012 and that "she's going to surprise a lot of people". Palin did not run, but Gravel's prediction about "TrooperGate" was accurate as Palin was found not to have violated ethics laws.
In 2013, by the invitation of Hamed Ghashghavi, the secretary for international affairs of the 3rd International Conference on Hollywoodism in Tehran, Iran, Gravel attended that event as an Iranian government-organized anti-Hollywood conference. Gravel noted that the conference was attended by "various elements of extremes" but said it was necessary to discuss how the U.S. film industry portrayed Iran in order to prevent "an insane war" between the two nations.
In May 2013 Gravel was one of several former members of Congress to accept $20,000 from the Paradigm Research Group, an advocacy group for UFO disclosure, as part of holding what they termed a Citizen Hearing on Disclosure, modeled after congressional hearings, regarding supposed U.S. government suppression of evidence concerning UFOs. Gravel said, "Something is monitoring the planet, and they are monitoring it very cautiously, because we are a very warlike planet," and, "What we're faced with here is, in areas of the media, and the government too, an effort to marginalize and ridicule people who have specific knowledge."
In December 2014 Gravel was announced as the new CEO of KUSH, a company which makes marijuana-infused products for medicinal and recreational use, and a subsidiary of Cannabis Sativa, Inc. He also became an Independent Director of Cannabis Sativa.
During the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries, Gravel praised Bernie Sanders and his campaign, saying "Bernie is one of the most gifted politicians I have ever observed. He's a person of great integrity and very clever." Gravel predicted that Sanders would be elected president but would be unable to get his key reforms through Congress, and thus that Sanders and his supporters should back some of the proposals of the National Initiative.
In 2016, Gravel said in relation to the September 11 attacks: "We killed 58,000 American servicemen in the Vietnam War and all they did was die in vain. What's so unusual about killing 3,000 more in order to develop the grist for the mill to empower into infinity the military industrial complex?" and "There's no question in my mind that 9/11 was an inside job". The remarks were later disavowed by even Gravel supporters.
By 2019 Gravel was living in Seaside, California. He was working on a book, at the time titled Human Governance, about his principal idea for direct democracy, a U.S. Constitutional Amendment to create a "Legislature of the People" that would circumvent the existing Congress. The book was self-published at the end of the year by AuthorHouse under the title The Failure of Representative Government and the Solution: A Legislature of the People.
2020 presidential campaign
On March 19, 2019, Gravel announced that he was considering running in the 2020 Democratic primaries. He said, "The goal will not be to win, but to bring a critique of American imperialism to the Democratic debate stage." An exploratory committee was formed, with filing a statement of organization with the Federal Election Commission on that same day. The filing was the idea of a group of teenagers, led by David Oks and Henry Williams, inspired by the podcast Chapo Trap House, and done with Gravel's consent (after a week spent convincing him of the idea's merits), but without his involvement. Intrigued by the group's commitment to amplifying his long-held policy goals, Gravel (who would be old on Inauguration Day in 2021) said he planned to meet with them in April, and to discuss a 2020 White House run with his wife. On April 2, 2019, Gravel filed to officially run for office. The campaign called itself the "#Gravelanche".
Gravel's initial stated goal was merely to qualify for debates by getting the required 65,000 small donors. He discouraged people from voting for him and said his preferences were Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard, both of whom favor a non-interventionist foreign policy. But on April 29, Gravel's campaign said he was running to win, not just to participate in debates. In a subsequent interview, though, Gravel emphasized the virtue of Sanders and Gabbard in some order as a presidential ticket. Statements like these caused Vox to call Gravel "2020's oddest Democratic presidential candidate". The New York Times Magazine included Gravel as an example in the rise of democratic socialism in the United States also exemplified by Sanders's 2016 race and the 2018 election of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: "[Gravel's] campaign represents the most absurd form of a legitimate movement on the left that feels little obligation to the Democratic Party."
In June 2019, Gravel touted the endorsement of Muntadher al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who, in December 2008, made headlines after he threw his shoes at President George W. Bush in protest of the U.S. war in Iraq. Al-Zaidi endorsed Gravel based on his promise to improve White House policies regarding Iraq and the Middle East.
On June 13, 2019, the Democratic Party announced the 20 major candidates who qualified for the first debate later that month. Gravel was one of the four who missed out (the others were Montana Governor Steve Bullock, U.S. Representative Seth Moulton, and Miramar, Florida, Mayor Wayne Messam). Gravel had been unable to get the requisite number of donations, or to score one percent or better in enough polls (many polls did not even include him). Nevertheless, Gravel said he would not drop out and would try to qualify for the July debate. In early July, however, Gravel's campaign said it was still 10,000 contributions short of the 65,000-donor threshold and that it was "nearing its conclusion". It solicited suggestions for where to donate $100–150,000 of leftover campaign funds. Gravel added that he had always planned on ending the campaign before the teenagers in charge of it needed to return to school. A few days later the campaign became the first to run an attack ad against Democratic front-runner Joe Biden, using the text "Is this the best our party has to offer?"
Gravel's campaign crossed the threshold of 65,000 donors on July 12, 2019, meeting the qualification mark for that month's debate. But because 20 other candidates, the maximum allowed to participate, had already met at least the polling criterion, which takes priority over the donor criterion, Gravel was not invited.
The campaign officially came to a close on August 6, 2019, with Gravel endorsing both Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard for president. Gravel's campaign later stated on Twitter that they never wanted to win but saw the campaign as an "intimately democratic" project and expressed honor at working with Gravel. Gravel said he would divide remaining campaign funds between charity and a new think tank which would espouse his ideas.
The Gravel Institute
Gravel used some of the funds remaining from his 2020 presidential campaign to found an eponymous progressive think tank called The Gravel Institute in 2019. As noted by Vice magazine, the institute aims to do battle with PragerU from a left-wing perspective. Launched in September 2020, the new entity said it would "carry on the life's work of former U.S Senator Mike Gravel in fighting for global peace and democracy. Its mission is to promote bold and forward-looking ideas about a more peaceful and egalitarian world, and to build a robust movement of young people to win it". Contributors announced include Cornel West and Slavoj Žižek, as well as Lower Brule Indian Reservation activist Nick Estes. Other presenters have included and will include H. Jon Benjamin, Briahna Joy Gray, Bernie Sanders, Chelsea Manning, Richard Wolff, Stephanie Kelton, Zephyr Teachout, David Cross, Jabari Brisport, Zohran Mamdani, and Gravel himself (though it is unknown if his appearance will be cancelled due to his death in June 2021, or if the video has already been recorded).
Death
Gravel died of multiple myeloma at his home in Seaside, California, on June 26, 2021, at age 91.
The obituary for him in The New York Times stated that Gravel was "a two-term Democratic senator from Alaska ... who was perhaps better known as an unabashed attention-getter" who later become known for "mounting long-shot presidential runs". The obituary in The Washington Post was similar, saying that Gravel was "an Alaska Democrat with a flair for the theatrical who rose from obscurity to brief renown" and later "ran quixotic campaigns for the presidency". The Anchorage Daily News quoted Gravel as saying of himself in 1989, "I'm an independent kind of guy. A rough and ready kind of guy. My glands work in a certain way that make me stand up, foolishly sometimes, and fight."
Political positions
Alan Abramowitz and Jeffrey Allan Segal described Gravel as "a maverick, if not an eccentric, in the Senate." His Americans for Democratic Action "Liberal Quotient" scores ranged from 81 out of 100 (1971) to 39 out of 100 (1980), with an average of around 61. His American Conservative Union scores ranged from 0 out of 100 (several years, including 1971 and 1972) to 38 out of 100 (1979), with an average of 14. Abramowitz and Segal note that Gravel's lowest ADA ratings coincided with his two Senate re-election bids, and for the most part his highest ACU ratings followed the same pattern.
In 1972, as a young senator, Gravel published Citizen Power: A People's Platform, a manifesto outlining what Kirkus Reviews termed a "populist reform [that] would provide 'balanced political power' between the people and government and business interests."
Civil rights issues
On drug policy, Gravel said in 2007 that he favored decriminalization and treating addiction as a public health matter. During his 2008 presidential candidacy he condemned the War on Drugs as a failure, saying that it did "nothing but savage our inner cities and put our children at risk". Gravel called for abolition of capital punishment in his book Citizen Power, and adhered to this position during his 2008 run for president. He supported abortion rights.
During the 2008 campaign Gravel was a strong supporter of LGBT rights. He supported same-sex marriage and opposed the Defense of Marriage Act and the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. He wrote in 2008 that "depriving gays and lesbians of equal rights is immoral".
Foreign policy and defense issues
Gravel was a critic of American imperialism.
Gravel firmly opposed U.S. military action against Iran and Syria. He voiced opposition to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the use of torture, indefinite detention, and what he called "flagrant ignorance" of the Geneva Convention. In 2014 Gravel called for the release of the full, unredacted Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture.
Gravel opposed the use of international sanctions as a policy tool and blamed the ones against Iraq under Saddam Hussein for the deaths of a half-million children in that country. In 2013 Gravel said that sanctions against Iran were "illegal".
During his 2008 candidacy, Gravel called for a cut in military spending, variously reported to be 15 percent or 50 percent. He called for the savings to boost public education spending. To spur international nuclear nonproliferation efforts, Gravel called for unilateral reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
In 2008 Gravel criticized the decision of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to not pursue the efforts to impeach George W. Bush and the attempted impeachment of Dick Cheney, saying also that Bush and Cheney had committed crimes and deserved "to be prosecuted" at The Hague. In 2013 he expressed disdain for President Obama, calling him "a total fraud" and saying that both Bush and Obama should be tried "for the crimes and murders they've committed" in the International Court of Justice. Gravel specifically condemned Obama for the drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere.
Economy, immigration, and environment
During his 2008 candidacy Gravel favored a FairTax scheme, which would abolish the Internal Revenue Service, eliminate the federal income tax (which Gravel called "corrupt"), and impose a national sales tax. While Gravel described FairTax as "progressive", others have criticized it as "regressive", disproportionately benefiting the wealthiest Americans. To offset the new sales taxes on essential goods, Gravel's plan called for monthly government rebate payments to individuals and families. During his 2020 campaign Gravel also voiced support for a third legislative body that would give the people direct control of the budget as well as the implementation of a land value tax.
Gravel opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) during his 2008 candidacy, calling it unfair and economically harmful and needing renegotiation. Gravel believed that NAFTA was the "root cause" of illegal migration to the U.S. He favored a guest worker program and "setting up naturalization procedures that would fairly bring immigrants into legal status". In a 2007 interview, Gravel identified himself as "very much of a globalist" who believed in open markets and open borders and condemned the scapegoating of undocumented immigrants. Gravel also said that he favored eliminating the cap on H1B visas.
As a senator from Alaska, Gravel favored drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but opposed it during his 2008 campaign. In 2008, Gravel supported a carbon tax to combat climate change.
Gravel spoke in favor of net neutrality during his presidential campaign.
Education and health care
Gravel called for the cost of college tuition to be borne by the federal government, rather than students. In his 2008 campaign, he called the No Child Left Behind Act "a failure" and called for it to be "reformed and fully funded". He expressed support for universal pre-kindergarten and the expansion of the Head Start program; and expressed an openness to charter schools and school vouchers. He also suggested extending the school day and the school year, and supported merit pay for teachers.
Gravel also called for publicly funded universal health care to replace the current employer-sponsored health insurance system. He supported "full funding" of the VA system. When asked in 2007 about naturopathy, homeopathy, and acupuncture, Gravel said that he was "very very much in favor" of holistic health care.
Awards and honors
In 2008 Gravel received the Columbia University School of General Studies' first annual Isaac Asimov Lifetime Achievement Award.
Electoral history
Writings
Gravel, Mike. Jobs and More Jobs. Mt. McKinley Publishers, 1968.
Gravel, Mike. Citizen Power: A People's Platform. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972. .
revised and reissued as Citizen Power: A Mandate for Change, AuthorHouse, 2008. .
Gravel, Mike and Lauria, Joe. A Political Odyssey: The Rise of American Militarism and One Man's Fight to Stop It. Seven Stories Press, 2008. .
Gravel, Mike and Eisenbach, David. The Kingmakers: How the Media Threatens Our Security and Our Democracy. Phoenix Books, 2008. .
Gravel, Mike. Voice of a Maverick: The Speeches and Writings of Senator Mike Gravel. Brandywine House, 2008.
Gravel, Mike. Foreword to Poisoned Power: The Case Against Nuclear Power Plants. John W. Goffman & Arthur R. Tamplin, Rodale Press, Inc., Emmaus, PA, June 1971.
Gravel, Mike. The Failure of Representative Government and the Solution: A Legislature of the People. AuthorHouse, 2020.
Explanatory notes
References
Citations
General references
The Pentagon Papers Senator Gravel Edition. Vol. Five: Critical Essays. Boston: Beacon Press, 1972. 341p. plus 72p. of Index to Vol. I–IV of the Papers; Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, editors.
External links
Mike Gravel official website
The Gravel Institute
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Writers about direct democracy
Writers from Anchorage, Alaska | false | [
"The Mark 13 nuclear bomb and its variant, the W-13 nuclear warhead, were experimental nuclear weapons developed by the United States from 1951 to 1954. The Mark 13 design was based on the earlier Mark 6 nuclear bomb design, which was in turn based on the Mark 4 nuclear bomb and the Mark 3 nuclear bomb used at the end of World War II.\n\nDescription\nThe Mark 13 bomb was nearly the same size as the Mark 6 nuclear bomb it was developed from; 61 inches in diameter and 128 inches long (150 cm by 320 cm), weighing 7,400 lb (3,300 kg). The W-13 warhead was somewhat smaller, being roughly 58 inches in diameter and 100 inches long, with a 6,000 to 6,500 lb weight (145 cm by 250 cm, 2,700 kg to 2,900 kg).\n\nThe Mark 13 design used a 92-point nuclear implosion system (see Nuclear weapon design). A similar 92-point system was used in later variants of the Mark 6 weapon.\n\nTesting\nThe Mark 13 nuclear bomb design was tested at least once, in the Operation Upshot–Knothole Harry test shot conducted on May 19, 1953. The estimated yield of this test was 32 kilotons.\n\nDeployment\nAs the Mark 13 neared production, advances in thermonuclear weapon design, particularly the Ivy Mike thermonuclear test in November 1952, made the Mark 13 obsolete. Development continued for research purposes (the Upshot-Knothole Harry test shot came months after the first thermonuclear test in Ivy Mike), and in two variant designs, but the Mark 13 proper was never deployed. The Mark 13 bomb version was cancelled in August 1953, and the W-13 warhead version was cancelled in September 1953.\n\nVariants\n\nMark 18\nThe Mark 18 nuclear bomb also known as the Super Oralloy Bomb (or its initials SOB) utilized the 92-point Mark 13 implosion system, but a different fissile core with around 60 kilograms of highly enriched uranium (Oralloy). This was the largest pure fission nuclear bomb ever tested, with a yield of more than 500 kilotons. The Mark 18 was produced in moderate quantities (90 units) and in service from 1953 to 1956.\n\nMark 20\nThe Mark 20 nuclear bomb was a planned successor to the Mark 13 incorporating some improvements in its design. Research was halted at the same time as the Mark 13.\n\nThe Mark 20 was the same size as the Mark 13, but weighed only .\n\nSee also\n List of nuclear weapons\n Mark 18 nuclear bomb\n Mark 6 nuclear bomb\n Mark 4 nuclear bomb\n Fat Man Mark 3 nuclear bomb\n\nReferences\n\nCold War aerial bombs of the United States\nNuclear bombs of the United States",
"Ivy King was the largest pure-fission nuclear bomb ever tested by the United States. The bomb was tested during the Truman administration as part of Operation Ivy. This series of tests involved the development of very powerful nuclear weapons in response to the nuclear weapons program of the Soviet Union.\n\nThe production of Ivy King was hurried to be ready in case its sister project, Ivy Mike, failed in its attempt to achieve a thermonuclear reaction. The Ivy King test actually took place two weeks after the Mike test. Unlike the Mike bomb, the Ivy King device could theoretically have been added to United States' nuclear arsenal, because it was designed to be air-deliverable.\n\nOn November 16, 1952 at 11:30 local time (23:30 GMT) a B-36H bomber dropped the bomb over a point north of Runit Island in the Enewetak atoll, resulting in a 540 kiloton explosion at . The tropopause height at the time of the detonation was about . The top of the King cloud reached about with the mushroom base at about .\n\nThe Ivy King bomb, designated as a Mk-18 bomb and named the \"Super Oralloy Bomb\", was a modified version of the Mk-6D bomb. Instead of using an implosion system similar to the Mk-6D, it used a 92-point implosion system initially developed for the Mk-13. Its uranium-plutonium core was replaced by 60 kg of highly enriched uranium (HEU) fashioned into a thin-walled sphere equivalent to approximately four critical masses. The thin-walled sphere was a commonly used design, which ensured that the fissile material remained sub-critical until imploded. The HEU sphere was then enclosed in a natural-uranium tamper. To physically prevent the HEU sphere collapsing into a critical condition if the surrounding explosives were detonated accidentally, or if the sphere was crushed following an aircraft accident, the hollow center was filled with a chain made from aluminum and boron, which was pulled out to arm the bomb. The boron-coated chain also absorbed the neutrons needed to drive the nuclear reaction.\n\nThe primary designer of the Super Oralloy Bomb, physicist Ted Taylor, later became a vocal proponent of nuclear disarmament.\n\nThe Orange Herald nuclear device, a 720-kiloton atomic bomb tested by the United Kingdom on 31 May 1957, remains the largest fission device ever tested.\n\nReferences\n\nChuck Hansen (1995) Swords of Armageddon. Published on CD-Rom only by Chukelea, Sunnyvale, CA.\n\nExternal links\n\nOperation Ivy\nVideo of the Ivy King Nuclear Test\n\nExplosions in 1952\nEnewetak Atoll nuclear explosive tests\n1952 in the United States\nArticles containing video clips\nNovember 1952 events"
] |
[
"Mike Gravel",
"Nuclear issues and the Cold War",
"Did Mike Gravel have problem with Nuclear bomb ?",
"he then made a personal appeal to President Nixon to stop the test."
] | C_672c6c49d0d948738552b25aaebe1fb2_0 | What were his reasons for opposing it ? | 2 | What were Mike Gravel's reasons for opposing the Nuclear bomb ? | Mike Gravel | In the late 1960s and early 1970s the U.S. Department of Defense was in the process of performing tests for the nuclear warhead for the Spartan anti-ballistic missile. Two tests, the "Milrow" and "Cannikin" tests, were planned, involving the detonation of nuclear bombs under Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Milrow test would be a one megaton calibration exercise for the second, and larger five megaton, Cannikin test, which would measure the effectiveness of the warhead. Gravel opposed the tests in Congress. Before the Milrow test took place in October 1969, he wrote that there were significant risks of earthquakes and other adverse consequences, and called for an independent national commission on nuclear and seismic safety to be created; he then made a personal appeal to President Nixon to stop the test. After Milrow was conducted, there was continued pressure on the part of environmental groups against going forward with the larger Cannikin test, while the Federation of American Scientists claimed that the warhead being tested was already obsolete. In May 1971, Gravel sent a letter to U.S. Atomic Energy Commission hearings held in Anchorage, in which he said the risk of the test was not worth taking. Eventually a group not involving Gravel took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to issue an injunction against it, and the Cannikin test took place as scheduled in November 1971. Gravel had failed to stop the tests (notwithstanding his later claims during his 2008 presidential campaign). Nuclear power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for the commercial generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gravel publicly opposed this policy; besides the dangers of nuclear testing, he was a vocal critic of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw American nuclear efforts, and of the powerful United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had a stranglehold on nuclear policy and which Gravel tried to circumvent. In 1971, Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction and to make power utilities liable for any nuclear accidents; in 1975, he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974, Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power. Six months before U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's secret mission to the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.) in July 1971, Gravel introduced legislation to recognize and normalize relations with China, including a proposal for unity talks between the P.R.C. and the Republic of China (Taiwan) regarding the Chinese seat on the U.N. Security Council. Gravel reiterated his position in favor of recognition, with four other senators in agreement, during Senate hearings in June 1971. CANNOTANSWER | he said the risk of the test was not worth taking. | Maurice Robert Gravel ( ; May 13, 1930 – June 26, 2021) was an American politician who served as a United States Senator from Alaska from 1969 to 1981 as a member of the Democratic Party, and who, in later life, twice ran for the presidential nomination of that party.
Born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, by French-Canadian immigrant parents, Gravel moved to Alaska in the late 1950s, becoming a real estate developer and entering politics. He served in the Alaska House of Representatives from 1963 to 1967, and also became Speaker of the Alaska House. Gravel was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1968.
As a senator, Gravel became nationally known for his forceful, but unsuccessful, attempts to end the draft during the War in Vietnam, and for putting the Pentagon Papers into the public record in 1971. He conducted a campaign for the Democratic nomination in 1972 for Vice President of the United States, and then played a crucial role in obtaining Congressional approval for the Trans-Alaska pipeline in 1973. He was re-elected to the Senate in 1974, but was defeated in his bid for a third term in the primary election in 1980.
An advocate of direct democracy and the National Initiative, Gravel staged a run for the 2008 Democratic nomination for President of the United States. His campaign failed to gain support, and in March 2008, he left the Democratic Party and joined the Libertarian Party to compete unsuccessfully for its presidential nomination and the inclusion of the National Initiative into the Libertarian Platform. He ran for president as a Democrat again in the 2020 election, in a campaign that ended four months after it began. Two years before his death, Gravel and his campaign staff founded the progressive think tank The Gravel Institute.
Early life, military service, education
Gravel was born on May 13, 1930, in Springfield, Massachusetts, one of five children of French-Canadian immigrant parents, Alphonse and Marie (née Bourassa) Gravel. His parents were part of the Quebec diaspora, and he was raised in a working-class neighborhood during the Great Depression, speaking only French until he was seven years old. Calling him "Mike" from an early age, his father valued work above all else, while his mother stressed the importance of education.
Gravel was educated in parochial schools as a Roman Catholic. There he struggled, due to what he later said was undiagnosed dyslexia, and was left back in third grade. He completed elementary school in 1945 and his class voted him "most charming personality". A summer job as a soda jerk led to Gravel handing out campaign fliers for local candidates on his boss's behalf; Gravel was immediately impressed with "the awesomeness of political office".
Gravel then boarded at Assumption Preparatory School in Worcester, Massachusetts, where his performance was initially mediocre. By Gravel's telling, in the summer of 1948 he intended to volunteer for the Israel Defense Forces during the 1947–1949 Palestine war, but Alexandra Tolstaya told him to return to school. There an English teacher, the Assumptionist Edgar Bourque, gave him personal attention, improving Gravel's language skills and instructing him in public speaking. Gravel's grades improved measurably in his final year and he graduated in 1949. His sister, Marguerite, became a Holy Cross nun, but Gravel himself struggled with the Catholic faith. He studied for one year at Assumption College, a Catholic school in Worcester, then transferred for his sophomore year to American International College in Springfield. Journalist I. F. Stone and philosopher Bertrand Russell strongly influenced Gravel in their willingness to challenge assumptions and oppose social convention and political authority.
Around May 1951, Gravel saw that he was about to be drafted and instead enlisted in the U.S. Army for a three-year term so that he could get into the Counterintelligence Corps. After basic training and counterintelligence school at Fort Holabird in Maryland and in South Carolina, he went to Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia. While he expected to be sent off to the Korean War when he graduated as a second lieutenant in early 1952, he was instead assigned to Stuttgart, West Germany, as a Special Adjutant in the Army's Communications Intelligence Service. In Germany, Gravel conducted surveillance operations on civilians and paid off spies. After about a year, he transferred to Orléans, France, where his French language abilities (if not his French-Canadian accent) allowed him to infiltrate French communist rallies. He worked as a Special Agent in the Counterintelligence Corps until 1954, eventually becoming a first lieutenant.
Following his discharge, Gravel entered the Columbia University School of General Studies in New York City, where he studied economics and received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1956. He moved to New York "flat broke" and supported himself by working as a bar boy in a hotel, driving a taxicab, and working in the investment bond department at Bankers Trust. During this time he left the Roman Catholic faith.
Move to Alaska
Gravel "decided to become a pioneer in a faraway place," and moved to pre-statehood Alaska in August 1956, without funds or a job, looking for a place where someone without social or political connections could be a viable candidate for public office. Alaska's voting age of 19, less than most other states' 21, played a role in his decision, as did its newness and cooler climate. Broke when he arrived, he immediately found work in real estate sales until winter arrived. Gravel then was employed as a brakeman for the Alaska Railroad, working the snow-clearing train on the Anchorage-to-Fairbanks run. Subsequently, he opened a small real estate brokerage in Anchorage (the Territory of Alaska not requiring a license) and saved enough so as not to have to work the railroad again. The firm was named the M. R. Gravel Real Estate Company. Gravel joined the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, and continued a sporadic relationship with the movement throughout his life.
Seeing Alaska as a wide-open place with no political establishment or entrenched interests, Gravel quickly became part of the civic scene there. By October 1957 he was a Division Chairman for Anchorage for the Democratic Central Committee in the territory, and by June 1958 he was president of the Alaska Young Democrats organization. He also became active in the United States Junior Chamber (Jaycees), and by early 1958 his duties included handing out awards for farmer of the year.
By early 1958, Gravel was running as Democratic Party primary candidate for a Third Division seat in House of Representative of the territorial legislature. (This was one of the four judicial divisions into which Alaska was sectioned at the time.) Using the slogan "Gravel, the Roadbed to Prosperity", he ran but lost. At the same time, he was also an advocate for Alaskan statehood.
Gravel went on a 44-state national speaking tour concerning tax reform in 1959, sponsored by the Jaycees, often dressing for events as Paul Revere. Gravel was selected from some two thousand applications for this position. The tour received a good amount of local newspaper coverage at its various stops, with Gravel's first name sometimes given as Mike and other times as Maurice. The tour's general message was an urging of "lower taxes, more efficiency in government and a system of taxation moderate at all levels of income". At several stops Gravel stated that the "tide of socialism" had to be stopped. He elaborated at another stop, "It is part of our Jaycee creed that economic justice can best be won by free men through free enterprise. We really want to see that free enterprise become our inheritance." The tour was scheduled to conclude in Washington D.C., on Tax Day, April 15, with petition signatures accumulated for reform to be presented to U.S. lawmakers: dressed as Revere, Gravel rode with the petition to the steps of the U.S. Capitol.
The tour over, Gravel married Rita Jeannette Martin at the First Methodist Church of Anchorage on April 29, 1959. She was a native of Montana who had attended Billings Business College before moving to Alaska two years prior and becoming a secretary in the office of the Anchorage city manager. She had also been named Anchorage's "Miss Fur Rendezvous" of 1958. They had two children, Martin Anthony Gravel and Lynne Denise Gravel, born c. 1960 and 1962 respectively.
Gravel ran without avail for the City Council in Anchorage in 1960. During this time, he had become a successful real estate agent; after the 1960 election, he became a property developer in a mobile home park on the outskirts of Anchorage. After a partner ran into financial difficulty, however, the project went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and Gravel was forced out in 1962.
State legislator
With the support of Alaska wholesale grocer Barney Gottstein and supermarket builder Larry Carr, Gravel ran for the Alaska House of Representatives representing Anchorage in 1962, initially assigned the 10th and then 8th districts. Alaska had very crowded primaries that year: Gravel was one of 33 Democrats, along with 21 Republicans, who were running for the chance to compete for the 14 House seats allocated to the 8th district. Gravel made it through the primary, and in November eight Republicans and six Democrats were elected to the House from the district, with Gravel finishing eighth overall and third among with Democrats, with 8,174 votes. Gottstein became Gravel's main financial backer during most of his subsequent campaigns.
Gravel served in the Alaska House of Representatives from January 28, 1963 to January 22, 1967, winning reelection in 1964. In his first term, he served as a minority member on two House committees: Commerce, and Labor and Management. He co-authored and sponsored the act that created the Alaska State Commission for Human Rights. Gravel was the chief architect of the law that created a regional high school system for rural Alaska; this allowed Alaska Natives to attend schools near where they lived instead of having to go to schools run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the lower 48 states.
During the half-years that the legislature was not in session, Gravel resumed his real estate work. With Gottstein and Carr's backing, he became quite successful as a property developer on the Kenai Peninsula.
During 1965 and 1966, he served as the Speaker of the House, surprising observers by winning that post. Gravel convinced former Speaker Warren A. Taylor to not try for the position against him by promising Taylor chairmanship of the Rules Committee, then reneged on the promise. Gravel denied later press charges that he had promised but not delivered on other committee chairmanships. As Speaker he antagonized fellow lawmakers by imposing his will on the legislature's committees and feuded with Alaska State Senate president Robert J. McNealy.
Gravel did not run for reelection in 1966, instead choosing to run for Alaska's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, losing the primary to four-term incumbent Democrat Ralph Rivers by 1,300 votes and splitting the Democratic Party in the process. Rivers lost the general election that year to Republican state Senator Howard Pollock. Following this defeat, Gravel returned to the real estate business in Anchorage.
U.S. Senator
Election to Senate in 1968
In 1968, Gravel ran against 81-year-old incumbent Democratic United States Senator Ernest Gruening, a popular former governor of the Alaska Territory who was considered one of the fathers of Alaska's statehood, for his party's nomination to the U.S. Senate. Gravel's campaign was primarily based on his youth and telegenic appearance rather than issue differences. He hired Joseph Napolitan, the first self-described political consultant, in late 1966. They spent over a year and a half planning a short, nine-day primary election campaign that featured the slogans "Alaska first" and "Let's do something about the state we're in", the distribution of a collection of essays titled Jobs and More Jobs, and the creation of a half-hour, well-produced, glamorized biographical film of Gravel, Man for Alaska. The film was shown twice a day on every television station in Alaska, and carried by plane and shown on home projectors in hundreds of Alaska Native villages. The heavy showings quickly reversed a 2–to–1 Gruening lead in polls into a Gravel lead. Gravel visited many remote villages by seaplane and showed a thorough understanding of the needs of the bush country and the fishing and oil industries. Gravel also benefited from maintaining a deliberately ambiguous posture about Vietnam policy. Gruening had been one of only two Senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and his opposition to President Lyndon B. Johnson's war policies was harming him among the Democratic electorate; according to Gravel, "all I had to do was stand up and not deal with the subject, and people would assume that I was to the right of Ernest Gruening, when in point of fact I was to the left of him". In Man for Alaska, Gravel argued that "the liberals" would come to West Germany's defense if it was attacked, and that the same standard should apply to the United States' allies in Asia. During the campaign he also claimed that he was "more in the mainstream of American thought on Vietnam" than Gruening, despite the fact that he had written to Gruening to praise his antiwar stance four years earlier. Decades later, Gravel conceded that "I said what I said [about Vietnam] to advance my career."
Gravel beat Gruening in the primary by about 2,000 votes. Gruening found "the unexpected defeat hard to take" and thought that some aspects of his opponent's biographical film had misled viewers. In the general election, Gravel faced Republican Elmer E. Rasmuson, a banker and former mayor of Anchorage. College students in the state implored Gruening to run a write-in campaign as an Independent, but legal battles prevented him from getting approval for it until only two weeks were left. A late appearance by anti-war presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy did not offset Gruening's lack of funds and endorsements; meanwhile, Gravel and Rasmuson both saturated local media with their filmed biographies. On November 5, 1968, Gravel won the general election with 45 percent of the vote to Rasmuson's 37 percent and Gruening's 18 percent.
Senate assignments and style
When Gravel joined the U.S.Senate in January 1969, he requested and received a seat on the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, which had direct relevance to Alaskan issues. He also got a spot on the Public Works Committee, which he held throughout his time in the Senate. Finally, he was a member of the Select Committee on Small Business. In 1971 he became chair of the Public Works Committee's Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds, and by 1973 he was chair of its Subcommittee on Water Resources, then later its Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution. Gravel was also initially named to the Joint Committee on Congressional Operations. By 1973 Gravel was off the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee and the Select Small Business Committee and instead a member of the Finance Committee, and by 1977 was chair of that body's Subcommittee on Energy and Foundations. By 1973 he had also been on the ad hoc Special Committee to Study Secret and Confidential Government Documents.
By his own admission, Gravel was too new and "too abrasive" to be effective in the Senate by the usual means of seniority-based committee assignments or negotiating deals with other senators, and was sometimes seen as arrogant or a nuisance by the more senior and tradition-oriented members. Gravel relied on attention-getting gestures to achieve what he wanted, hoping national exposure would force other senators to listen to him. But even senators who agreed with him on issues considered his methods to be showboating.
As part of this approach, Gravel voted with Southern Democrats to keep the Senate filibuster rule in place, and accordingly supported Russell Long and Robert Byrd but opposed Ted Kennedy in Senate leadership battles. In retrospective assessment, University of Alaska Anchorage history professor Stephen Haycox said, "Loose cannon is a good description of Gravel's Senate career. He was an off-the-wall guy, and you weren't really ever sure what he would do."
Nuclear issues and the Cold War
In the late 1960s and early 1970s the U.S. Department of Defense was in the process of performing tests for the nuclear warhead for the Spartan anti-ballistic missile. Two tests, the "Milrow" and "Cannikin" tests, were planned, involving the detonation of nuclear bombs under Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Milrow test would be a one-megaton calibration exercise for the second and larger five-megaton Cannikin test, which would measure the effectiveness of the warhead. Gravel opposed the tests. Before the Milrow test took place in October 1969, he wrote that there were significant risks of earthquakes and other adverse consequences and called for an independent national commission on nuclear and seismic safety; he then made a personal appeal to President Richard Nixon to stop the test.
After Milrow was conducted, there was continued pressure on the part of environmental groups against going forward with the Cannikin test, while the Federation of American Scientists claimed that the warhead being tested was already obsolete. In May 1971 Gravel sent a letter to U.S. Atomic Energy Commission hearings held in Anchorage in which he said the risk of the test was not worth taking. Eventually a group not involving Gravel took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to issue an injunction against it, and the Cannikin test took place as scheduled in November 1971. Gravel had failed to stop the tests (notwithstanding his later claims during his 2008 presidential campaign).
In 1971 Gravel voted against the Nixon administration's proposed anti-ballistic missile system, the Safeguard Program, having previously vacillated over the issue, suggesting that he might be willing to support it in exchange for federal lands in Alaska being opened up for private oil drilling. His vote alienated Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, who had raised funds for Gravel's primary campaign.
Nuclear power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for commercial generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gravel publicly opposed this policy; besides the dangers of nuclear testing, he was a vocal critic of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw American nuclear efforts, and of the powerful United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had a stranglehold on nuclear policy and which Gravel tried to circumvent. In 1971 Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction and to make power utilities liable for any nuclear accidents; in 1975 he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974 Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power.
Six months before U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's July 1971 secret mission to the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.), Gravel introduced legislation to recognize and normalize relations with the P.R.C., including a proposal for unity talks between the P.R.C. and the Republic of China (Taiwan) regarding the Chinese seat on the U.N. Security Council. He reiterated his position in favor of recognition, with four other senators in agreement, during Senate hearings in June 1971.
Vietnam War, the draft, and the Pentagon Papers
Although he did not campaign against the Vietnam War during his first Senate campaign, by the end of 1970 Gravel was speaking out against United States policy in southeast Asia: in December of that year he persuaded William Fulbright to join him in a spontaneous two-day filibuster against a $155 million military aid package to Cambodia's Khmer Republic government in the Cambodian Civil War.
President Richard Nixon had campaigned in 1968 on a promise to end the U.S. military draft, a decision endorsed by the February 1970 report of the Gates Commission.
The existing draft law was scheduled to conclude at the end of June 1971, and the Senate faced a contentious debate about whether to extend it as the Vietnam War continued. The Nixon administration announced in February 1971 that it wanted a two-year extension to June 1973, after which the draft would end; Army planners had already been operating under the assumption of a two-year extension, after which an all-volunteer force would be in place. Skeptics such as Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John Stennis thought this unrealistic and wanted a four-year extension, but the two-year proposal is what went forward in Congress. By early May 1971, Gravel had indicated his intention to filibuster the draft renewal legislation, halting conscription and thereby bringing U.S. involvement in the war to a rapid end. During this period he also supported efforts to mobilize and influence public opinion against the war, endorsing the "Vietnam War Out Now" rallies in Washington D.C. and San Francisco on April 24, 1971, and financing a broadcast campaign by the antiwar group War No More with a personal loan. In June 1972 he escorted a group of over 100 antiwar protesters, including psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, actress Candice Bergen, theater producer and director Joseph Papp, and peditrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, into the United States Capitol Building; the group was arrested after blocking a hallway outside the Senate chamber.
By June 1971, some Democratic senators opposed to the war wanted to limit the renewal to a one-year extension, while others wanted to end it immediately; Gravel reiterated that he was one of the latter, saying, "It's a senseless war, and one way to do away with it is to do away with the draft." A Senate vote on June 4 indicated majority support for the two-year extension. On June 18 Gravel announced again his intention to counteract that by filibustering the renewal legislation, defending the practice against those who associated it only with blocking civil rights legislation. The first filibuster attempt failed on June 23 when, by three votes, the Senate voted cloture for only the fifth time since 1927.
Protracted negotiations took place over House conference negotiations on the bill, revolving in large part around Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield's eventually unsuccessful amendment to tie renewal to a troop withdrawal timetable from Vietnam; during this time the draft law expired and no more were conscripted. On August 5, the Nixon administration pleaded for a renewal before the Senate went on recess, but Gravel blocked Stennis's attempt to limit debate, and no vote was held. Finally on September 21, 1971, the Senate invoked cloture over Gravel's second filibuster attempt by one vote, and then passed the two-year draft extension. Gravel's attempts to stop the draft had failed (notwithstanding Gravel's later claims that he had stopped or shortened the draft, taken at face value in some media reports, during his 2008 presidential campaign).
Meanwhile, on June 13, 1971, The New York Times began printing large portions of the Pentagon Papers. The papers were a large collection of secret government documents and studies pertaining to the Vietnam War, of which former Defense Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg had made unauthorized copies and was determined to make public. Ellsberg had for a year and a half approached members of Congress – such as William Fulbright, George McGovern, Charles Mathias, and Pete McCloskey – about publishing the documents, on the grounds that the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution would give congressional members immunity from prosecution, but all had refused. Instead, Ellsberg gave the documents to the Times.
The U.S. Justice Department immediately tried to halt publication, on the grounds that the information revealed within the papers harmed the national interest. Within the next two weeks, a federal court injunction halted publication in the Times; The Washington Post and several other newspapers began publishing parts of the documents, with some of them also being halted by injunctions; and the whole matter went to the U.S. Supreme Court for arguments. Looking for an alternate publication mechanism, Ellsberg returned to his idea of having a member of Congress read them, and chose Gravel based on the latter's efforts against the draft; Gravel agreed where previously others had not. Ellsberg arranged for the papers to be given to Gravel on June 26 via an intermediary, Post editor Ben Bagdikian. Gravel used his counter-intelligence experience to choose a midnight transfer in front of the Mayflower Hotel in the center of Washington, D.C.
On the night of June 29, 1971, Gravel attempted to read the papers on the floor of the Senate as part of his filibuster against the draft, but was thwarted when no quorum could be formed. Gravel instead convened a session of the Buildings and Grounds subcommittee that he chaired. He got New York Congressman John G. Dow to testify that the war had soaked up funding for public buildings, thus making discussion of the war relevant to the committee. He began reading from the papers with the press in attendance, omitting supporting documents that he felt might compromise national security, and declaring, "It is my constitutional obligation to protect the security of the people by fostering the free flow of information absolutely essential to their democratic decision-making."
He read until 1 a.m., culminating by saying "Arms are being severed. Metal is clashing through human bodies because of the public policy this government and all its branches continue to support." Then with tears and sobs he said that he could no longer physically continue, the previous three nights of sleeplessness and fear about the future having taken their toll. Gravel ended the session by, with no other senators present, establishing unanimous consent to insert 4,100 pages of the Papers into the Congressional Record of his subcommittee. The following day, the Supreme Court's New York Times Co. v. United States decision ruled in favor of the newspapers and publication in the Times and others resumed. In July 1971 Bantam Books published an inexpensive paperback edition of the papers containing the material the Times had published.
Gravel, too, wanted to privately publish the portion of the papers he had read into the record, believing that "immediate disclosure of the contents of these papers will change the policy that supports the war". After being turned down by many commercial publishers, on August 4 he reached agreement with Beacon Press, the publishing arm of the Unitarian Universalist Association, of which Gravel was a member. Announced on August 17 and published on October 22, 1971, this four-volume, relatively expensive set became the "Senator Gravel Edition", which studies from Cornell University and the Annenberg Center for Communication have labeled as the most complete edition of the Pentagon Papers to be published. The "Gravel Edition" was edited and annotated by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, and included an additional volume of analytical articles on the origins and progress of the war, also edited by Chomsky and Zinn. Beacon Press then was subjected to a FBI investigation; an outgrowth of this was the Gravel v. United States court case, which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled upon in June 1972; it held that the Speech or Debate Clause did grant immunity to Gravel for his reading the papers in his subcommittee, did grant some immunity to Gravel's congressional aide, but granted no immunity to Beacon Press in relation to their publishing the same papers. The U.S. Senate Democratic Caucus backed Gravel in the case, but due to Republican opposition it did not pay Gravel's legal fees, leaving him owing $25,000 (the equivalent of $150,000 in 2019, adjusted for inflation).
The events of 1971 changed Gravel in the following months from an obscure freshman senator to a nationally visible political figure. He became a sought-after speaker on the college circuit as well as at political fundraisers, opportunities he welcomed as lectures were "the one honest way a Senator has to supplement his income". But his speaking tours caused him to accrue one of the worst absentee records in the Senate. The Democratic candidates for the 1972 presidential election sought his endorsement. In January 1972 Gravel endorsed Maine Senator Ed Muskie, hoping that his support would help Muskie with the party's left wing and in ethnic French-Canadian areas during the first primary contest in New Hampshire (Muskie won, but not overwhelmingly, and his campaign faltered soon after). In April 1972 Gravel appeared on all three networks' nightly newscasts to decry the Nixon administration's reliance on Vietnamization by making reference to the secret National Security Study Memorandum 1 document, which stated it would take 8–13 years for the Army of the Republic of Vietnam to defend South Vietnam. Gravel made excerpts from the study public, but senators Robert P. Griffin and William B. Saxbe blocked his attempt to read NSSM 1 into the Congressional Record.
Domestic policy
In 1970 Gravel co-sponsored legislation to establish a guaranteed minimum income, entitling poor families to up to $6,300 a year (the equivalent of $42,000 in 2019 after adjustment for inflation). He subsequently voted for a "work bonus" program, which would have entitled low-income working families with dependent children if they were paying Social Security or Railroad Retirement taxes to a non-taxable bonus of up to 10 percent of their wages. Gravel also supported extending Social Security to all federal employees and introduced a campaign finance reform bill in 1971 that would have enacted full disclosure of campaign financing, placed limits on large donations, media spending and individual candidate spending.
In 1969, Gravel was the only Democratic Senator outside of the South to vote for Nixon's Supreme Court nominee Clement Haynsworth. The following year Gravel opposed Nixon's next pick, G. Harrold Carswell.
Run for vice president in 1972
Gravel actively campaigned for the office of Vice President of the United States during the 1972 presidential election, announcing on June 2, 1972, over a month before the 1972 Democratic National Convention began, that he was interested in the nomination should the choice be opened up to convention delegates. Toward this end he began soliciting delegates for their support. He was not alone in this effort, as former Governor of Massachusetts Endicott Peabody had been running a quixotic campaign for the same post since the prior year. Likely presidential nominee George McGovern was in fact considering the unusual move of naming three or four acceptable vice-presidential candidates and letting the delegates choose.
On the convention's final day, July 14, 1972, McGovern selected and announced Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his vice-presidential choice. Eagleton was unknown to many delegates and the choice seemed to smack of traditional ticket balancing considerations. Thus there were delegates willing to look elsewhere. Gravel was nominated by Bettye Fahrenkamp, the Democratic National Committeewoman from Alaska. He then seconded his own nomination, breaking down in tears at his own words and maybe trying to withdraw his nomination. In any case he won 226 delegate votes, coming in third behind Eagleton and Frances "Sissy" Farenthold of Texas, in chaotic balloting that included several other candidates.
Gravel attracted some attention for his efforts: writer Norman Mailer said he "provided considerable excitement" and was "good-looking enough to have played leads in B-films", while Rolling Stone correspondent Hunter S. Thompson said Gravel "probably said a few things that might have been worth hearing, under different circumstances". Yet the process was doubly disastrous for the Democrats. In the time consumed by nominating and seconding and all the vice-presidential candidates' speeches, the attention of the delegates on the floor was lost and McGovern's speech was pushed to 3:30 a.m. The haste with which Eagleton was selected led to surprise when his past mental health treatments were revealed; he withdrew from the ticket soon after the convention, to be replaced by Sargent Shriver.
Reelection to Senate in 1974
Several years earlier, Alaska politicians had speculated that Gravel would have a hard time getting both renominated and elected when his first term expired, given that he was originally elected without a base party organization and tended to focus on national rather than local issues.
Nonetheless, after receiving support from national and local labor leaders, securing key earmarks, and producing another half-hour TV advertorial, in 1974 Gravel was reelected to the Senate, with 58 percent of the vote to 42 percent for Republican State Senator C. R. Lewis, who was a national officer of the John Birch Society.
Second term
Gravel's reelection campaign left him $65,000–$75,000 in debt. In 1975 The Washington Post reported on a memo by his executive assistant laying out a fundraising strategy to tackle this, including raising funds from oil companies, meeting with previous donors and "inquir[ing] into the governmental priorities of these people and their groups in the coming session", as well as obtaining further speaking fees to reduce his personal debt. This was followed by a number of stories about links between Gravel, lobbyists and fundraisers, including one that was widely publicized in Alaska about his holding a share in a Colorado resort with two Washington lobbyists he was working with on land and energy legislation. Gravel had been open about the investment and had opposing views to one of the lobbyists on nuclear power. In 1980 the Wall Street Journal published details about his fundraising activities, including writing to individuals and PACs in the oil industry, pledging to kill off proposals for a windfall profits tax on the sector, and traveling in the Middle East with the business partner of one of his donors to sell Alaskan land to businessmen. Gravel suggested that critics of his fundraising were "naive".
In 1975 Gravel introduced an amendment to cut the number of troops overseas by 200,000, but it was defeated on a voice vote.
In September 1975 Gravel was named as one of several Congressional Advisers to the Seventh Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly, which met to discuss problems related to economic development and international economic cooperation.
In June 1976 Gravel was the focus of a federal investigation into allegations that he was involved in a sex-for-vote arrangement. Congressional staff clerk Elizabeth Ray (who had already been involved in a sex scandal that led to the downfall of Representative Wayne Hays) said that in August 1972 she had sex with Gravel aboard a houseboat on the Potomac River, under the instruction of Representative Kenneth J. Gray, her boss at the time. Gray allegedly wanted to secure Gravel's support for further funding for construction of the National Visitor Center in Washington, a troubled project that was under the jurisdiction of subcommittees that both members chaired. Another Congressional staffer said she witnessed the boat encounter, but Gravel said at the time that he had never met either of the women. Gravel and Gray strongly denied that they had made any arrangement regarding legislation, and neither was ever charged with any wrongdoing. Decades later Gravel wrote that he had indeed had sex with Ray, but had not changed any votes because of it.
Gravel and his main financial backer, Gottstein, had a falling out in 1978, during the Congressional debate over whether to allow a controversial sale of U.S. F-15 fighter aircraft to Saudi Arabia. An ardent backer of Israel, Gottstein opposed the sale and asked Gravel to vote against it. But Gravel not only voted for it but made an emotional speech attacking the anti-sale campaign. Gravel wrote in 2008 that it was the only time Gottstein had ever asked him for a favor, and the rupture resulted in their never speaking to each other again.
Alaskan issues
By 1971 Gravel was urging construction of the much-argued Trans-Alaska pipeline, addressing environmental concerns by saying that the pipeline's builders and operators should have "total and absolute" responsibility for any consequent environmental damage. Two years later the debate over the pipeline came to a crux, with The New York Times describing it as "environmentalists [in] a holy war with the major oil companies". In February 1973 the U.S. Court of Appeals blocked the issuance of permits for construction; Gravel and fellow Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens reacted by urging Congress to pass legislation overturning the court's decision. Environmentalists opposed to the pipeline, such as the Environmental Defense Fund and the Sierra Club then sought to use the recently passed National Environmental Policy Act to their advantage; Gravel designed an amendment to the pipeline bill that would immunize the pipeline from any further court challenges under that law, and thus speed its construction. Passage of the amendment became the key battle regarding the pipeline. On July 17, 1973, in a dramatic roll-call vote, the Gravel amendment was approved as a 49–49 tie was broken in favor by Vice President Spiro Agnew. The actual bill enabling the pipeline then passed easily; Gravel had triumphed in what became perhaps his most lasting accomplishment as a senator.
In opposition to the Alaskan fishing industry, Gravel advocated American participation in the formation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. For two years he opposed legislation that established a Exclusive Economic Zone for marine resources. He was one of only 19 senators to vote against Senate approval for the expanded zone in 1976, saying it would undermine the U.S. position in Law of the Sea negotiations and that nations arbitrarily extending their fishing rights limits would "produce anarchy of the seas". The legislation was passed, and the United States has signed but never ratified the Law of the Sea treaty.
Gravel accumulated a complicated record on Indian affairs during his time in the Senate. During his first year in the Senate Gravel urged abolition of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, criticizing the agency for the pace of development of schools in Alaska, its paternalistic attitudes and the culturally inappropriate nature of its education, and advocating greater shared decision-making between the federal government and native communities in Alaska. Later, his views changed; in the early 1970s Gravel supported a demonstration project that established links between Alaskan villages and the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, for medical diagnostic communications. In 1971, he fended off accusations from Alaskan natives that he was not spending enough time working on their land claims. Gravel helped secure a private grant to facilitate the first Inuit Circumpolar Conference in 1977, attended by Inuit representatives from Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. These conferences now also include representatives from Russia. In 1977, Gravel helped lead an effort to have the U.S. Interior Department rename Mount McKinley to Denali; this eventually led to Denali National Park being so named. Subsequently, Gravel proposed a never-built "Denali City" development above the Tokositna River near the mountain, to consist of a giant Teflon dome enclosing hotels, golf courses, condominiums, and commercial buildings. A related idea of his to build a high-speed rail line to Denali also failed to gain traction.
A key, emotional issue in the state at the time was "locking up Alaska", making reference to allocation of its vast, mostly uninhabited land. President Jimmy Carter desired to put large portions of this land under federal protection against development, a move that some Alaskans vociferously opposed.
In 1978 Gravel blocked passage, via procedural delays such as walking out of House–Senate conference committee meetings, of a complex bill which represented a compromise on land use policy. The bill would have put some of Alaska's vast federal land holdings under state control while preserving other portions for federal parks and refuges; the blocking action earned Gravel the enmity of fellow Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who had supported the compromise. In 1980, a new lands bill came up for consideration, that was less favorable to Alaskan interests and more liked by environmentalists; it set aside of Alaska's for national parks, conservation areas, and other restricted federal uses. Gravel blocked it, as not ensuring enough future development in the state. A new compromise version of the 1980 bill came forward, which reduced the land set aside to . Representing Alaskan interests, Gravel tried to stop the bill, including by filibuster. But the Senate voted for cloture and passed the bill. Frustrated, Gravel said, "the legislation denies Alaska its rights as a state, and denies the U.S. crucial strategic resources," and opined that the Senate was "a little bit like a tank of barracudas". Nonetheless, the bill, known as the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, was signed by President Carter shortly before leaving the White House, and led to millions of acres being set aside in the state for national parks, wildlife refuges, and other kinds of areas under protection.
In 1978 Gravel authored and secured the passage into federal law of the General Stock Ownership Corporation, that became Subchapter U of the Tax Code under the Internal Revenue Code of 1954. This gave states the ability to create corporations that would invest in for-profit enterprises, with all citizens within the state owning shares in the corporation. Gravel's attempt to convince the Alaska state legislature to create such a corporation failed, as did a 1980 state ballot initiative towards the same end, but nevertheless the creation of the General Stock Ownership Corporation in federal law turned out to be significant in the development of binary economics.
Loss of Senate seat in 1980
In 1980 Gravel was challenged for the Democratic Party's nomination by State Representative Clark Gruening, the grandson of the man Gravel had defeated in a primary 12 years earlier. One of Gruening's supporters was Gravel's former backer Gottstein. Several factors made Gravel vulnerable. As an insurgent candidate in 1968 Gravel had never established a firm party base. Not liking to hunt or fish, he was also always culturally suspect in the state.
The primary campaign was bitterly fought. A group of Democrats, including future governor Steve Cowper, led the campaign against Gravel, with Gravel's actions in respect to the 1978 and 1980 Alaskan lands bills a major issue. This was especially so given that the 1980 bill's dénouement happened but a week before the primary. The sources of Gravel's campaign funds, some of which Gravel readily acknowledged came from political action committees outside the state, also became an issue in the contest. Gruening had pledged that he would not take special interest group money, but Gravel said that Gruening was "dishonest" in accepting individual contributors from Jewish donors living outside the state because to him such contributors comprised "a special interest group ... that seeks to influence the foreign policy of the U.S."
Gruening won the primary with about 55 percent of the vote to Gravel's 44 percent. Gravel later conceded that by the time of his defeat, he had alienated "almost every constituency in Alaska". Another factor may have been Alaska's blanket primary system of the time, which allowed unlimited voting across party lines and from its many independents; Republicans believed Gruening would be an easier candidate to defeat in the general election.
Gruening lost the general election to Republican Frank Murkowski. Gravel was the last Democrat to represent Alaska in Congress for 28 years, until Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich defeated Ted Stevens, by then an aged, iconic figure who had just been convicted of seven felonies for taking unreported gifts, in a very close and protracted election result in 2008. Stevens's conviction was subsequently vacated due to prosecutorial misconduct.
Career after leaving the Senate
Of his 1980 defeat, Gravel later recalled: "I had lost my career. I lost my marriage. I was in the doldrums for ten years after my defeat," and "Nobody wanted to hire me for anything important. I felt like I was worthless. I didn't know what I could do." By his own later description, Gravel was a womanizer, and had an affair while in the Senate, and in December 1980 he and his wife Rita separated. They filed for divorce in September 1981; she later received all of his Senate pension income.
During the 1980s Gravel was a real estate developer in Anchorage and Kenai, Alaska, a consultant, and a stockbroker. One of his real estate ventures, a condominium business, was forced to declare bankruptcy and a lawsuit ensued. In 1986 Gravel worked in partnership with Merrill Lynch Capital Markets to buy losses that financially troubled Alaska Native Corporations could not take as tax deductions and sell them to large national companies looking for tax writeoffs. Gravel also learned computer programming at some point but never practiced it.
In 1984 Gravel married his second wife, Whitney Stewart Gravel, a former administrative assistant for Senator Jacob Javits.
Return to politics
In 1989 Gravel reentered politics. He founded and led The Democracy Foundation, which promotes direct democracy. He established the Philadelphia II corporation, which seeks to replicate the original 1787 Constitutional Convention and have a Second Constitutional Convention to bring about direct democracy Gravel led an effort to get a United States Constitutional amendment to allow voter-initiated federal legislation similar to state ballot initiatives. He argued that Americans are able to legislate responsibly, and that the Act and Amendment in the National Initiative would allow American citizens to become "law makers". However such efforts met with little success.
In 2001, Gravel became director of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, where he admired institute co-founder Gregory Fossedal's work on direct democracy in Switzerland. By 2004, Gravel had become chair of the institute, and Fossedal (who in turn was a director of the Democracy Foundation) gave the introduction at Gravel's presidential announcement.
In 2003 Gravel gave a speech on direct democracy at a conference hosted by the American Free Press. The event was cosponsored by the Barnes Review, a journal that endorses Holocaust denial. After some controversy over his appearance, Gravel apologized, saying he did not realize the group's ties. Gravel said repeatedly that he did not share the group's views on the Holocaust, stating, "You better believe I know that six million Jews were killed. [The Barnes Review publishers] are nutty as loons if they don't think it happened". The group invited Gravel to speak again, but he declined.
Mike and Whitney Gravel lived in Arlington County, Virginia, until 2010 and then resided in Burlingame, California. They have the two grown children from his first marriage, Martin Gravel and Lynne Gravel Mosier, and four grandchildren. Whitney Gravel's income sustained the couple from 1998 on. In the 2000s, Gravel suffered poor health, requiring three surgeries in 2003 for back pain and neuropathy. Due to unreimbursed medical expenses and debts from his political causes, he declared personal bankruptcy in 2004. He began taking a salary from the non-profit organizations for which he was working; much of that income was lent to his presidential campaign. In 2007, he declared that he had "zero net worth".
2008 presidential campaign
Democratic Party primaries
At the start of 2006 Gravel decided the best way he could promote direct democracy and the National Initiative was to run for president. On April 17, 2006, Gravel became the first candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2008 election, announcing his run in a speech to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Short on campaign cash, he took public transportation to get to his announcement. (Gravel called for public financing of elections.) Other principal Gravel positions were the FairTax, as well as withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq within 120 days and a single payer national health care system.
Gravel had opposed the Iraq War, and President George W. Bush's rationale for it, from the beginning, and in 2006 said that U.S. troops in Iraq, as in Vietnam, had "died in vain". He also favored a regional peace initiative, as well as reparation payments for Iraqis. Gravel also called for a "U.S. corporate withdrawal from Iraq", with reconstruction contracts held by U.S. companies to be turned over to Iraqi firms.
Gravel campaigned almost full-time in New Hampshire, the first primary state, following his announcement. Opinion polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination showed Gravel with 1 percent or less support. By the end of March 2007, Gravel's campaign had less than $500 in cash on hand against debts of nearly $90,000.
Because of his time in the Senate, Gravel was invited to many of the early Democratic presidential debates. During the initial one at South Carolina State University on April 26, 2007, he suggested a bill requiring the president to withdraw from Iraq on pain of criminal penalties. He also advocated positions such as opposing preemptive nuclear war. He stated that the Iraq War had the effect of creating more terrorists and that the "war was lost the day that George Bush invaded Iraq on a fraudulent basis". Regarding his fellow candidates, he said, "I got to tell you, after standing up with them, some of these people frighten me – they frighten me." In one such exchange, Gravel said, "Tell me, Barack, who do you want to nuke?" to which Obama responded, "I'm not planning to nuke anybody right now, Mike, I promise."
Media stories said that Gravel was responsible for much of whatever "heat" and "flashpoints" had taken place during the Democratic debates. Gravel gained considerable publicity by shaking up the normally staid multiple-candidate format; The New York Times' media critic said that what Gravel had done was "steal a debate with outrageous, curmudgeonly statements". The Internet was a benefit: a YouTube video of his responses in the debate was viewed more than 225,892 times, ranking seventeenth in most views for week and first among news and politics clips; his name became the fifteenth most searched-for in the blogosphere; and his website garnered more traffic than those of frontrunners Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or John Edwards. Gravel appeared on the popular Colbert Report on television on May 2, and his campaign and career were profiled in national publications such as Salon. Two wordless, Warholesque campaign videos, "Rock" and "Fire", were released on YouTube in late May and became hits, and eventually gained over 760,000 and 185,000 views respectively. "Rock", in turn, was given airtime during an episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Some thirty-five years after he first achieved the national spotlight, he had found it again.
All this did not improve his performance in the polls; a May 2007 CNN poll showed him with less than 0.5 percent support among Democrats. Gravel was in the next several debates, in one case after CNN reversed a decision to exclude him. Like some of the other second-tier candidates, Gravel did not get as much time as the leaders; during the June 2, 2007, New Hampshire debate, which lasted two hours, he was asked 10 questions and allowed to speak for five minutes and 37 seconds.
During the July 23, 2007, CNN-YouTube presidential debate, Gravel responded to audience applause when he had complained of a lack of airtime and said: "Thank you. Has it been fair thus far?" Detractors began to liken him to "the cranky uncle who lives in the attic," or "the angry old guy that just seemed to want to become angrier". Berkeley political scientist David Terr found that moderator George Stephanopoulos directed roughly five percent of his questions to Gravel; in a poll asking who did the best in the debate, Gravel placed seventh among the eight candidates. National opinion polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination continued to show Gravel with one percent or zero percent numbers. By the end of the third-quarter 2007, Gravel had about $17,500 in cash on hand, had collected a total of about $380,000 during the 2008 election cycle, and was continuing to run a threadbare campaign with minimal staff.
Beginning with the October 30, 2007, Philadelphia event, Gravel was excluded from most of the debates, with the debate sponsors or the Democratic National Committee saying Gravel's campaign had not met fund-raising, polling, or local campaign organizational thresholds. For the Philadelphia exclusion, Gravel blamed corporate censorship on the part of sponsor owner and alleged military-industrial complex member General Electric for his exclusion and mounted a counter-gathering and debate against a video screen a short distance away, but he had lost his easiest publicity. In reaction, supporters organized "mass donation days" to try to help the campaign gain momentum and funds, such as on December 5, 2007, the anniversary of the Repeal of Prohibition.
Gravel did not compete in the initial 2008 vote, the Iowa caucuses, but was still subjected to a false report from MSNBC that he had pulled out of the race afterward. Gravel did focus his attention on the second 2008 vote, the New Hampshire primary. In early January, Mother Jones' investigative reporter James Ridgeway was filmed interviewing and following Gravel in New Hampshire, in which Gravel is interviewed on the phone by Neal Conan for NPR's, Talk of the Nation. He received about 400 votes out of some 280,000 cast in New Hampshire, or 0.14 percent, before taking time off to improve his health. He resumed campaigning, but fared no better in subsequent states. By the end of January 2008, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Gravel were the only remaining Democrats from the initial debates still running; Gravel vowed to stay in the presidential campaign until November. On March 11, 2008, Gravel continued to remain in the Democratic race but additionally endorsed a Green Party candidate for president, Jesse Johnson, saying he wanted to help Johnson prevail against Green Party rivals Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader. By late March, Gravel had almost no fundraising and was only on the ballot in one of the next ten Democratic primaries.
Switch to Libertarian Party
On March 25, 2008, Gravel announced that he would leave the Democrats and join the Libertarian Party, saying: "My libertarian views, as well as my strong stance against war, the military industrial complex and American imperialism, seem not to be tolerated by Democratic Party elites who are out of touch with the average American; elites that reject the empowerment of American citizens I offered to the Democratic Party at the beginning of this presidential campaign with the National Initiative for Democracy." The following day Gravel entered the race for the 2008 Libertarian presidential nomination, saying that he would have run as a third-party candidate all along except that he needed the public exposure that came from being in the earlier Democratic debates. Gravel's initial notion of running as a fusion candidate with other parties was met with skepticism.
As a Libertarian candidate, Gravel faced resistance to his past support of big government initiatives and his unorthodox positions around direct democracy. Nevertheless, he garnered more support than he had as a Democrat, placing second and third in two April 2008 straw polls. In the May 25 balloting at the 2008 Libertarian National Convention in Denver, Gravel finished fourth out of eight candidates on the initial ballot, with 71 votes out of a total 618; he trailed former Congressman and eventual winner Bob Barr, author Mary Ruwart, and businessman Wayne Allyn Root. Gravel's position did not subsequently improve and he was eliminated on the fourth ballot. Afterwards he stated that "I just ended my political career," but he vowed to continue promoting his positions as a writer and lecturer.
2008–early 2019
In June 2008 Gravel endorsed the NYC 9/11 Ballot Initiative, saying the measure would create a "citizens commission rather than a government commission" with subpoena power against top U.S. officials to "make a true investigation as to what happened" regarding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He later said, "Individuals in and out of government may certainly have participated with the obviously known perpetrators of this dastardly act. Suspicions abound over the analysis presented by government. Obviously an act that has triggered three wars, Afghan, Iraqi and the continuing War on Terror, should be extensively investigated which was not done and which the government avoids addressing."
In August 2008 Gravel was speaking to a crowd of supporters of Sami Al-Arian (who two years earlier had pleaded guilty and been sentenced to prison for a charge of conspiracy in helping Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a "specially designated terrorist" organization) when he was caught on tape saying of Al-Arian's prosecutor, "Find out where he lives, find out where his kids go to school, find out where his office is: picket him all the time. Call him a racist in signs if you see him. Call him an injustice. Call him whatever you want to call him, but in his face all the time." Gravel was criticized for potentially involving the children of the prosecutor, and Al-Arian's family disavowed the sentiments.
Gravel defended Alaska Governor Sarah Palin after she was chosen as Republican presidential nominee John McCain's running mate in September 2008. He praised Palin's record in standing up to corruption among Alaskan Republicans, thought her national inexperience was an asset not a detriment, and predicted that the "Troopergate" investigation into whether she improperly fired a state official would "come out in her favor". Gravel made clear he would not support or vote for either McCain–Palin or Obama–Biden in the general election. The following year Gravel said that Palin's politics were "terrible, but that doesn't detract from the fact that she's a very talented person". He predicted that Palin would run for president in 2012 and that "she's going to surprise a lot of people". Palin did not run, but Gravel's prediction about "TrooperGate" was accurate as Palin was found not to have violated ethics laws.
In 2013, by the invitation of Hamed Ghashghavi, the secretary for international affairs of the 3rd International Conference on Hollywoodism in Tehran, Iran, Gravel attended that event as an Iranian government-organized anti-Hollywood conference. Gravel noted that the conference was attended by "various elements of extremes" but said it was necessary to discuss how the U.S. film industry portrayed Iran in order to prevent "an insane war" between the two nations.
In May 2013 Gravel was one of several former members of Congress to accept $20,000 from the Paradigm Research Group, an advocacy group for UFO disclosure, as part of holding what they termed a Citizen Hearing on Disclosure, modeled after congressional hearings, regarding supposed U.S. government suppression of evidence concerning UFOs. Gravel said, "Something is monitoring the planet, and they are monitoring it very cautiously, because we are a very warlike planet," and, "What we're faced with here is, in areas of the media, and the government too, an effort to marginalize and ridicule people who have specific knowledge."
In December 2014 Gravel was announced as the new CEO of KUSH, a company which makes marijuana-infused products for medicinal and recreational use, and a subsidiary of Cannabis Sativa, Inc. He also became an Independent Director of Cannabis Sativa.
During the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries, Gravel praised Bernie Sanders and his campaign, saying "Bernie is one of the most gifted politicians I have ever observed. He's a person of great integrity and very clever." Gravel predicted that Sanders would be elected president but would be unable to get his key reforms through Congress, and thus that Sanders and his supporters should back some of the proposals of the National Initiative.
In 2016, Gravel said in relation to the September 11 attacks: "We killed 58,000 American servicemen in the Vietnam War and all they did was die in vain. What's so unusual about killing 3,000 more in order to develop the grist for the mill to empower into infinity the military industrial complex?" and "There's no question in my mind that 9/11 was an inside job". The remarks were later disavowed by even Gravel supporters.
By 2019 Gravel was living in Seaside, California. He was working on a book, at the time titled Human Governance, about his principal idea for direct democracy, a U.S. Constitutional Amendment to create a "Legislature of the People" that would circumvent the existing Congress. The book was self-published at the end of the year by AuthorHouse under the title The Failure of Representative Government and the Solution: A Legislature of the People.
2020 presidential campaign
On March 19, 2019, Gravel announced that he was considering running in the 2020 Democratic primaries. He said, "The goal will not be to win, but to bring a critique of American imperialism to the Democratic debate stage." An exploratory committee was formed, with filing a statement of organization with the Federal Election Commission on that same day. The filing was the idea of a group of teenagers, led by David Oks and Henry Williams, inspired by the podcast Chapo Trap House, and done with Gravel's consent (after a week spent convincing him of the idea's merits), but without his involvement. Intrigued by the group's commitment to amplifying his long-held policy goals, Gravel (who would be old on Inauguration Day in 2021) said he planned to meet with them in April, and to discuss a 2020 White House run with his wife. On April 2, 2019, Gravel filed to officially run for office. The campaign called itself the "#Gravelanche".
Gravel's initial stated goal was merely to qualify for debates by getting the required 65,000 small donors. He discouraged people from voting for him and said his preferences were Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard, both of whom favor a non-interventionist foreign policy. But on April 29, Gravel's campaign said he was running to win, not just to participate in debates. In a subsequent interview, though, Gravel emphasized the virtue of Sanders and Gabbard in some order as a presidential ticket. Statements like these caused Vox to call Gravel "2020's oddest Democratic presidential candidate". The New York Times Magazine included Gravel as an example in the rise of democratic socialism in the United States also exemplified by Sanders's 2016 race and the 2018 election of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: "[Gravel's] campaign represents the most absurd form of a legitimate movement on the left that feels little obligation to the Democratic Party."
In June 2019, Gravel touted the endorsement of Muntadher al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who, in December 2008, made headlines after he threw his shoes at President George W. Bush in protest of the U.S. war in Iraq. Al-Zaidi endorsed Gravel based on his promise to improve White House policies regarding Iraq and the Middle East.
On June 13, 2019, the Democratic Party announced the 20 major candidates who qualified for the first debate later that month. Gravel was one of the four who missed out (the others were Montana Governor Steve Bullock, U.S. Representative Seth Moulton, and Miramar, Florida, Mayor Wayne Messam). Gravel had been unable to get the requisite number of donations, or to score one percent or better in enough polls (many polls did not even include him). Nevertheless, Gravel said he would not drop out and would try to qualify for the July debate. In early July, however, Gravel's campaign said it was still 10,000 contributions short of the 65,000-donor threshold and that it was "nearing its conclusion". It solicited suggestions for where to donate $100–150,000 of leftover campaign funds. Gravel added that he had always planned on ending the campaign before the teenagers in charge of it needed to return to school. A few days later the campaign became the first to run an attack ad against Democratic front-runner Joe Biden, using the text "Is this the best our party has to offer?"
Gravel's campaign crossed the threshold of 65,000 donors on July 12, 2019, meeting the qualification mark for that month's debate. But because 20 other candidates, the maximum allowed to participate, had already met at least the polling criterion, which takes priority over the donor criterion, Gravel was not invited.
The campaign officially came to a close on August 6, 2019, with Gravel endorsing both Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard for president. Gravel's campaign later stated on Twitter that they never wanted to win but saw the campaign as an "intimately democratic" project and expressed honor at working with Gravel. Gravel said he would divide remaining campaign funds between charity and a new think tank which would espouse his ideas.
The Gravel Institute
Gravel used some of the funds remaining from his 2020 presidential campaign to found an eponymous progressive think tank called The Gravel Institute in 2019. As noted by Vice magazine, the institute aims to do battle with PragerU from a left-wing perspective. Launched in September 2020, the new entity said it would "carry on the life's work of former U.S Senator Mike Gravel in fighting for global peace and democracy. Its mission is to promote bold and forward-looking ideas about a more peaceful and egalitarian world, and to build a robust movement of young people to win it". Contributors announced include Cornel West and Slavoj Žižek, as well as Lower Brule Indian Reservation activist Nick Estes. Other presenters have included and will include H. Jon Benjamin, Briahna Joy Gray, Bernie Sanders, Chelsea Manning, Richard Wolff, Stephanie Kelton, Zephyr Teachout, David Cross, Jabari Brisport, Zohran Mamdani, and Gravel himself (though it is unknown if his appearance will be cancelled due to his death in June 2021, or if the video has already been recorded).
Death
Gravel died of multiple myeloma at his home in Seaside, California, on June 26, 2021, at age 91.
The obituary for him in The New York Times stated that Gravel was "a two-term Democratic senator from Alaska ... who was perhaps better known as an unabashed attention-getter" who later become known for "mounting long-shot presidential runs". The obituary in The Washington Post was similar, saying that Gravel was "an Alaska Democrat with a flair for the theatrical who rose from obscurity to brief renown" and later "ran quixotic campaigns for the presidency". The Anchorage Daily News quoted Gravel as saying of himself in 1989, "I'm an independent kind of guy. A rough and ready kind of guy. My glands work in a certain way that make me stand up, foolishly sometimes, and fight."
Political positions
Alan Abramowitz and Jeffrey Allan Segal described Gravel as "a maverick, if not an eccentric, in the Senate." His Americans for Democratic Action "Liberal Quotient" scores ranged from 81 out of 100 (1971) to 39 out of 100 (1980), with an average of around 61. His American Conservative Union scores ranged from 0 out of 100 (several years, including 1971 and 1972) to 38 out of 100 (1979), with an average of 14. Abramowitz and Segal note that Gravel's lowest ADA ratings coincided with his two Senate re-election bids, and for the most part his highest ACU ratings followed the same pattern.
In 1972, as a young senator, Gravel published Citizen Power: A People's Platform, a manifesto outlining what Kirkus Reviews termed a "populist reform [that] would provide 'balanced political power' between the people and government and business interests."
Civil rights issues
On drug policy, Gravel said in 2007 that he favored decriminalization and treating addiction as a public health matter. During his 2008 presidential candidacy he condemned the War on Drugs as a failure, saying that it did "nothing but savage our inner cities and put our children at risk". Gravel called for abolition of capital punishment in his book Citizen Power, and adhered to this position during his 2008 run for president. He supported abortion rights.
During the 2008 campaign Gravel was a strong supporter of LGBT rights. He supported same-sex marriage and opposed the Defense of Marriage Act and the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. He wrote in 2008 that "depriving gays and lesbians of equal rights is immoral".
Foreign policy and defense issues
Gravel was a critic of American imperialism.
Gravel firmly opposed U.S. military action against Iran and Syria. He voiced opposition to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the use of torture, indefinite detention, and what he called "flagrant ignorance" of the Geneva Convention. In 2014 Gravel called for the release of the full, unredacted Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture.
Gravel opposed the use of international sanctions as a policy tool and blamed the ones against Iraq under Saddam Hussein for the deaths of a half-million children in that country. In 2013 Gravel said that sanctions against Iran were "illegal".
During his 2008 candidacy, Gravel called for a cut in military spending, variously reported to be 15 percent or 50 percent. He called for the savings to boost public education spending. To spur international nuclear nonproliferation efforts, Gravel called for unilateral reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
In 2008 Gravel criticized the decision of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to not pursue the efforts to impeach George W. Bush and the attempted impeachment of Dick Cheney, saying also that Bush and Cheney had committed crimes and deserved "to be prosecuted" at The Hague. In 2013 he expressed disdain for President Obama, calling him "a total fraud" and saying that both Bush and Obama should be tried "for the crimes and murders they've committed" in the International Court of Justice. Gravel specifically condemned Obama for the drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere.
Economy, immigration, and environment
During his 2008 candidacy Gravel favored a FairTax scheme, which would abolish the Internal Revenue Service, eliminate the federal income tax (which Gravel called "corrupt"), and impose a national sales tax. While Gravel described FairTax as "progressive", others have criticized it as "regressive", disproportionately benefiting the wealthiest Americans. To offset the new sales taxes on essential goods, Gravel's plan called for monthly government rebate payments to individuals and families. During his 2020 campaign Gravel also voiced support for a third legislative body that would give the people direct control of the budget as well as the implementation of a land value tax.
Gravel opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) during his 2008 candidacy, calling it unfair and economically harmful and needing renegotiation. Gravel believed that NAFTA was the "root cause" of illegal migration to the U.S. He favored a guest worker program and "setting up naturalization procedures that would fairly bring immigrants into legal status". In a 2007 interview, Gravel identified himself as "very much of a globalist" who believed in open markets and open borders and condemned the scapegoating of undocumented immigrants. Gravel also said that he favored eliminating the cap on H1B visas.
As a senator from Alaska, Gravel favored drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but opposed it during his 2008 campaign. In 2008, Gravel supported a carbon tax to combat climate change.
Gravel spoke in favor of net neutrality during his presidential campaign.
Education and health care
Gravel called for the cost of college tuition to be borne by the federal government, rather than students. In his 2008 campaign, he called the No Child Left Behind Act "a failure" and called for it to be "reformed and fully funded". He expressed support for universal pre-kindergarten and the expansion of the Head Start program; and expressed an openness to charter schools and school vouchers. He also suggested extending the school day and the school year, and supported merit pay for teachers.
Gravel also called for publicly funded universal health care to replace the current employer-sponsored health insurance system. He supported "full funding" of the VA system. When asked in 2007 about naturopathy, homeopathy, and acupuncture, Gravel said that he was "very very much in favor" of holistic health care.
Awards and honors
In 2008 Gravel received the Columbia University School of General Studies' first annual Isaac Asimov Lifetime Achievement Award.
Electoral history
Writings
Gravel, Mike. Jobs and More Jobs. Mt. McKinley Publishers, 1968.
Gravel, Mike. Citizen Power: A People's Platform. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972. .
revised and reissued as Citizen Power: A Mandate for Change, AuthorHouse, 2008. .
Gravel, Mike and Lauria, Joe. A Political Odyssey: The Rise of American Militarism and One Man's Fight to Stop It. Seven Stories Press, 2008. .
Gravel, Mike and Eisenbach, David. The Kingmakers: How the Media Threatens Our Security and Our Democracy. Phoenix Books, 2008. .
Gravel, Mike. Voice of a Maverick: The Speeches and Writings of Senator Mike Gravel. Brandywine House, 2008.
Gravel, Mike. Foreword to Poisoned Power: The Case Against Nuclear Power Plants. John W. Goffman & Arthur R. Tamplin, Rodale Press, Inc., Emmaus, PA, June 1971.
Gravel, Mike. The Failure of Representative Government and the Solution: A Legislature of the People. AuthorHouse, 2020.
Explanatory notes
References
Citations
General references
The Pentagon Papers Senator Gravel Edition. Vol. Five: Critical Essays. Boston: Beacon Press, 1972. 341p. plus 72p. of Index to Vol. I–IV of the Papers; Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, editors.
External links
Mike Gravel official website
The Gravel Institute
|-
|-
1930 births
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Writers about direct democracy
Writers from Anchorage, Alaska | true | [
"The 2011 Men's Ice Hockey World Championships was the 75th such event hosted by the International Ice Hockey Federation. Teams representing 46 countries participated in four levels of competition. The competition also served as qualifications for division placements in the 2012 competition. Finland won the championship with a 6–1 win in the final game against Sweden.\n\nChampionship \n\nThe Championship took place between sixteen teams from 29 April to 15 May 2011. Slovakia hosted the event with games being played in Bratislava and Košice.\n\nChampionship — Final Standings\n\nDivision I \n\nDivision I competition took place April 17 to April 23, 2011. Group A games were played in Budapest, Hungary and Group B was played in Kyiv, Ukraine. Prior to the start of the tournament the Japanese national team announced they would withdraw, citing the recent earthquake and tsunami. The IIHF council voted unanimously to allow Japan to maintain their seeded position in their respective tournaments for 2012, and the fifth placed team would be relegated.\n\nGroup A — Final Standings\n — promoted to Championship for 2012\n \n \n \n — relegated to Division II for 2012\n (withdrew from tournament)\n\nGroup B — Final Standings\n — promoted to Championship for 2012\n \n \n \n \n — relegated to Division II for 2012\n\nDivision II \n\nParticipants in Division II tournament were in two separate tournament groups. The Group A tournament was contested in Melbourne, Australia, from April 4 to April 10, 2011. Group B's games were played in Zagreb, Croatia, from April 10 to April 16, 2011. Prior to the start of the tournament, the North Korean national team announced they would withdraw, citing financial reasons. All games against them were counted as a forfeit, with a score of 5–0 for the opposing team.\n\nGroup A — Final Standings\n — promoted to Division I for 2012\n \n \n \n \n — relegated to Division III for 2012 (withdrew from tournament)\n\nGroup B — Final Standings\n — promoted to Division I for 2012\n \n \n \n \n — relegated to Division III for 2012\n\nDivision III \n\nDivision III was held from April 11 to April 17, 2011. This tournament was contested in Cape Town, South Africa. Prior to the start of the tournament, the Mongolian national team announced they would withdraw, citing financial reasons. All games against them were counted as a forfeit, with a score of 5–0 for the opposing team. Israel won all five of its games by a combined score of 57-9, and was promoted to the 2012 IIHF World Championship Division II.\n\nDivision III — Final Standings\n — promoted to Division II for 2012\n — promoted to Division II for 2012\n \n \n \n (withdrew from tournament)\n\nSee also \n 2011 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships\n 2011 IIHF World U18 Championships\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n International Ice Hockey Federation\n hokejportal.cz - News service from World Ice Hockey Championships 2011 in Slovakia\n 2011 IIHF World Championship Website\n\n2011\n \n2011 in ice hockey",
"The Men's League for Opposing Woman Suffrage (sometimes referred to as the Men's League for Opposing Women's Suffrage) was founded on 19 January 1909 with Lord Cromer as President, replacing the Men's Committee for Opposing Woman Suffrage, which had been founded in December 1908. In 1910 it merged with the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League to form the National League for Opposing Woman Suffrage.\n\nOrganizations established in 1909\nAnti-suffragist organizations"
] |
[
"Mike Gravel",
"Nuclear issues and the Cold War",
"Did Mike Gravel have problem with Nuclear bomb ?",
"he then made a personal appeal to President Nixon to stop the test.",
"What were his reasons for opposing it ?",
"he said the risk of the test was not worth taking."
] | C_672c6c49d0d948738552b25aaebe1fb2_0 | Did he have problem with the Cold War ? | 3 | Did Mike Gravel have a problem with the Cold War ? | Mike Gravel | In the late 1960s and early 1970s the U.S. Department of Defense was in the process of performing tests for the nuclear warhead for the Spartan anti-ballistic missile. Two tests, the "Milrow" and "Cannikin" tests, were planned, involving the detonation of nuclear bombs under Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Milrow test would be a one megaton calibration exercise for the second, and larger five megaton, Cannikin test, which would measure the effectiveness of the warhead. Gravel opposed the tests in Congress. Before the Milrow test took place in October 1969, he wrote that there were significant risks of earthquakes and other adverse consequences, and called for an independent national commission on nuclear and seismic safety to be created; he then made a personal appeal to President Nixon to stop the test. After Milrow was conducted, there was continued pressure on the part of environmental groups against going forward with the larger Cannikin test, while the Federation of American Scientists claimed that the warhead being tested was already obsolete. In May 1971, Gravel sent a letter to U.S. Atomic Energy Commission hearings held in Anchorage, in which he said the risk of the test was not worth taking. Eventually a group not involving Gravel took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to issue an injunction against it, and the Cannikin test took place as scheduled in November 1971. Gravel had failed to stop the tests (notwithstanding his later claims during his 2008 presidential campaign). Nuclear power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for the commercial generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gravel publicly opposed this policy; besides the dangers of nuclear testing, he was a vocal critic of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw American nuclear efforts, and of the powerful United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had a stranglehold on nuclear policy and which Gravel tried to circumvent. In 1971, Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction and to make power utilities liable for any nuclear accidents; in 1975, he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974, Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power. Six months before U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's secret mission to the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.) in July 1971, Gravel introduced legislation to recognize and normalize relations with China, including a proposal for unity talks between the P.R.C. and the Republic of China (Taiwan) regarding the Chinese seat on the U.N. Security Council. Gravel reiterated his position in favor of recognition, with four other senators in agreement, during Senate hearings in June 1971. CANNOTANSWER | 1971, Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction | Maurice Robert Gravel ( ; May 13, 1930 – June 26, 2021) was an American politician who served as a United States Senator from Alaska from 1969 to 1981 as a member of the Democratic Party, and who, in later life, twice ran for the presidential nomination of that party.
Born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, by French-Canadian immigrant parents, Gravel moved to Alaska in the late 1950s, becoming a real estate developer and entering politics. He served in the Alaska House of Representatives from 1963 to 1967, and also became Speaker of the Alaska House. Gravel was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1968.
As a senator, Gravel became nationally known for his forceful, but unsuccessful, attempts to end the draft during the War in Vietnam, and for putting the Pentagon Papers into the public record in 1971. He conducted a campaign for the Democratic nomination in 1972 for Vice President of the United States, and then played a crucial role in obtaining Congressional approval for the Trans-Alaska pipeline in 1973. He was re-elected to the Senate in 1974, but was defeated in his bid for a third term in the primary election in 1980.
An advocate of direct democracy and the National Initiative, Gravel staged a run for the 2008 Democratic nomination for President of the United States. His campaign failed to gain support, and in March 2008, he left the Democratic Party and joined the Libertarian Party to compete unsuccessfully for its presidential nomination and the inclusion of the National Initiative into the Libertarian Platform. He ran for president as a Democrat again in the 2020 election, in a campaign that ended four months after it began. Two years before his death, Gravel and his campaign staff founded the progressive think tank The Gravel Institute.
Early life, military service, education
Gravel was born on May 13, 1930, in Springfield, Massachusetts, one of five children of French-Canadian immigrant parents, Alphonse and Marie (née Bourassa) Gravel. His parents were part of the Quebec diaspora, and he was raised in a working-class neighborhood during the Great Depression, speaking only French until he was seven years old. Calling him "Mike" from an early age, his father valued work above all else, while his mother stressed the importance of education.
Gravel was educated in parochial schools as a Roman Catholic. There he struggled, due to what he later said was undiagnosed dyslexia, and was left back in third grade. He completed elementary school in 1945 and his class voted him "most charming personality". A summer job as a soda jerk led to Gravel handing out campaign fliers for local candidates on his boss's behalf; Gravel was immediately impressed with "the awesomeness of political office".
Gravel then boarded at Assumption Preparatory School in Worcester, Massachusetts, where his performance was initially mediocre. By Gravel's telling, in the summer of 1948 he intended to volunteer for the Israel Defense Forces during the 1947–1949 Palestine war, but Alexandra Tolstaya told him to return to school. There an English teacher, the Assumptionist Edgar Bourque, gave him personal attention, improving Gravel's language skills and instructing him in public speaking. Gravel's grades improved measurably in his final year and he graduated in 1949. His sister, Marguerite, became a Holy Cross nun, but Gravel himself struggled with the Catholic faith. He studied for one year at Assumption College, a Catholic school in Worcester, then transferred for his sophomore year to American International College in Springfield. Journalist I. F. Stone and philosopher Bertrand Russell strongly influenced Gravel in their willingness to challenge assumptions and oppose social convention and political authority.
Around May 1951, Gravel saw that he was about to be drafted and instead enlisted in the U.S. Army for a three-year term so that he could get into the Counterintelligence Corps. After basic training and counterintelligence school at Fort Holabird in Maryland and in South Carolina, he went to Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia. While he expected to be sent off to the Korean War when he graduated as a second lieutenant in early 1952, he was instead assigned to Stuttgart, West Germany, as a Special Adjutant in the Army's Communications Intelligence Service. In Germany, Gravel conducted surveillance operations on civilians and paid off spies. After about a year, he transferred to Orléans, France, where his French language abilities (if not his French-Canadian accent) allowed him to infiltrate French communist rallies. He worked as a Special Agent in the Counterintelligence Corps until 1954, eventually becoming a first lieutenant.
Following his discharge, Gravel entered the Columbia University School of General Studies in New York City, where he studied economics and received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1956. He moved to New York "flat broke" and supported himself by working as a bar boy in a hotel, driving a taxicab, and working in the investment bond department at Bankers Trust. During this time he left the Roman Catholic faith.
Move to Alaska
Gravel "decided to become a pioneer in a faraway place," and moved to pre-statehood Alaska in August 1956, without funds or a job, looking for a place where someone without social or political connections could be a viable candidate for public office. Alaska's voting age of 19, less than most other states' 21, played a role in his decision, as did its newness and cooler climate. Broke when he arrived, he immediately found work in real estate sales until winter arrived. Gravel then was employed as a brakeman for the Alaska Railroad, working the snow-clearing train on the Anchorage-to-Fairbanks run. Subsequently, he opened a small real estate brokerage in Anchorage (the Territory of Alaska not requiring a license) and saved enough so as not to have to work the railroad again. The firm was named the M. R. Gravel Real Estate Company. Gravel joined the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, and continued a sporadic relationship with the movement throughout his life.
Seeing Alaska as a wide-open place with no political establishment or entrenched interests, Gravel quickly became part of the civic scene there. By October 1957 he was a Division Chairman for Anchorage for the Democratic Central Committee in the territory, and by June 1958 he was president of the Alaska Young Democrats organization. He also became active in the United States Junior Chamber (Jaycees), and by early 1958 his duties included handing out awards for farmer of the year.
By early 1958, Gravel was running as Democratic Party primary candidate for a Third Division seat in House of Representative of the territorial legislature. (This was one of the four judicial divisions into which Alaska was sectioned at the time.) Using the slogan "Gravel, the Roadbed to Prosperity", he ran but lost. At the same time, he was also an advocate for Alaskan statehood.
Gravel went on a 44-state national speaking tour concerning tax reform in 1959, sponsored by the Jaycees, often dressing for events as Paul Revere. Gravel was selected from some two thousand applications for this position. The tour received a good amount of local newspaper coverage at its various stops, with Gravel's first name sometimes given as Mike and other times as Maurice. The tour's general message was an urging of "lower taxes, more efficiency in government and a system of taxation moderate at all levels of income". At several stops Gravel stated that the "tide of socialism" had to be stopped. He elaborated at another stop, "It is part of our Jaycee creed that economic justice can best be won by free men through free enterprise. We really want to see that free enterprise become our inheritance." The tour was scheduled to conclude in Washington D.C., on Tax Day, April 15, with petition signatures accumulated for reform to be presented to U.S. lawmakers: dressed as Revere, Gravel rode with the petition to the steps of the U.S. Capitol.
The tour over, Gravel married Rita Jeannette Martin at the First Methodist Church of Anchorage on April 29, 1959. She was a native of Montana who had attended Billings Business College before moving to Alaska two years prior and becoming a secretary in the office of the Anchorage city manager. She had also been named Anchorage's "Miss Fur Rendezvous" of 1958. They had two children, Martin Anthony Gravel and Lynne Denise Gravel, born c. 1960 and 1962 respectively.
Gravel ran without avail for the City Council in Anchorage in 1960. During this time, he had become a successful real estate agent; after the 1960 election, he became a property developer in a mobile home park on the outskirts of Anchorage. After a partner ran into financial difficulty, however, the project went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and Gravel was forced out in 1962.
State legislator
With the support of Alaska wholesale grocer Barney Gottstein and supermarket builder Larry Carr, Gravel ran for the Alaska House of Representatives representing Anchorage in 1962, initially assigned the 10th and then 8th districts. Alaska had very crowded primaries that year: Gravel was one of 33 Democrats, along with 21 Republicans, who were running for the chance to compete for the 14 House seats allocated to the 8th district. Gravel made it through the primary, and in November eight Republicans and six Democrats were elected to the House from the district, with Gravel finishing eighth overall and third among with Democrats, with 8,174 votes. Gottstein became Gravel's main financial backer during most of his subsequent campaigns.
Gravel served in the Alaska House of Representatives from January 28, 1963 to January 22, 1967, winning reelection in 1964. In his first term, he served as a minority member on two House committees: Commerce, and Labor and Management. He co-authored and sponsored the act that created the Alaska State Commission for Human Rights. Gravel was the chief architect of the law that created a regional high school system for rural Alaska; this allowed Alaska Natives to attend schools near where they lived instead of having to go to schools run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the lower 48 states.
During the half-years that the legislature was not in session, Gravel resumed his real estate work. With Gottstein and Carr's backing, he became quite successful as a property developer on the Kenai Peninsula.
During 1965 and 1966, he served as the Speaker of the House, surprising observers by winning that post. Gravel convinced former Speaker Warren A. Taylor to not try for the position against him by promising Taylor chairmanship of the Rules Committee, then reneged on the promise. Gravel denied later press charges that he had promised but not delivered on other committee chairmanships. As Speaker he antagonized fellow lawmakers by imposing his will on the legislature's committees and feuded with Alaska State Senate president Robert J. McNealy.
Gravel did not run for reelection in 1966, instead choosing to run for Alaska's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, losing the primary to four-term incumbent Democrat Ralph Rivers by 1,300 votes and splitting the Democratic Party in the process. Rivers lost the general election that year to Republican state Senator Howard Pollock. Following this defeat, Gravel returned to the real estate business in Anchorage.
U.S. Senator
Election to Senate in 1968
In 1968, Gravel ran against 81-year-old incumbent Democratic United States Senator Ernest Gruening, a popular former governor of the Alaska Territory who was considered one of the fathers of Alaska's statehood, for his party's nomination to the U.S. Senate. Gravel's campaign was primarily based on his youth and telegenic appearance rather than issue differences. He hired Joseph Napolitan, the first self-described political consultant, in late 1966. They spent over a year and a half planning a short, nine-day primary election campaign that featured the slogans "Alaska first" and "Let's do something about the state we're in", the distribution of a collection of essays titled Jobs and More Jobs, and the creation of a half-hour, well-produced, glamorized biographical film of Gravel, Man for Alaska. The film was shown twice a day on every television station in Alaska, and carried by plane and shown on home projectors in hundreds of Alaska Native villages. The heavy showings quickly reversed a 2–to–1 Gruening lead in polls into a Gravel lead. Gravel visited many remote villages by seaplane and showed a thorough understanding of the needs of the bush country and the fishing and oil industries. Gravel also benefited from maintaining a deliberately ambiguous posture about Vietnam policy. Gruening had been one of only two Senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and his opposition to President Lyndon B. Johnson's war policies was harming him among the Democratic electorate; according to Gravel, "all I had to do was stand up and not deal with the subject, and people would assume that I was to the right of Ernest Gruening, when in point of fact I was to the left of him". In Man for Alaska, Gravel argued that "the liberals" would come to West Germany's defense if it was attacked, and that the same standard should apply to the United States' allies in Asia. During the campaign he also claimed that he was "more in the mainstream of American thought on Vietnam" than Gruening, despite the fact that he had written to Gruening to praise his antiwar stance four years earlier. Decades later, Gravel conceded that "I said what I said [about Vietnam] to advance my career."
Gravel beat Gruening in the primary by about 2,000 votes. Gruening found "the unexpected defeat hard to take" and thought that some aspects of his opponent's biographical film had misled viewers. In the general election, Gravel faced Republican Elmer E. Rasmuson, a banker and former mayor of Anchorage. College students in the state implored Gruening to run a write-in campaign as an Independent, but legal battles prevented him from getting approval for it until only two weeks were left. A late appearance by anti-war presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy did not offset Gruening's lack of funds and endorsements; meanwhile, Gravel and Rasmuson both saturated local media with their filmed biographies. On November 5, 1968, Gravel won the general election with 45 percent of the vote to Rasmuson's 37 percent and Gruening's 18 percent.
Senate assignments and style
When Gravel joined the U.S.Senate in January 1969, he requested and received a seat on the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, which had direct relevance to Alaskan issues. He also got a spot on the Public Works Committee, which he held throughout his time in the Senate. Finally, he was a member of the Select Committee on Small Business. In 1971 he became chair of the Public Works Committee's Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds, and by 1973 he was chair of its Subcommittee on Water Resources, then later its Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution. Gravel was also initially named to the Joint Committee on Congressional Operations. By 1973 Gravel was off the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee and the Select Small Business Committee and instead a member of the Finance Committee, and by 1977 was chair of that body's Subcommittee on Energy and Foundations. By 1973 he had also been on the ad hoc Special Committee to Study Secret and Confidential Government Documents.
By his own admission, Gravel was too new and "too abrasive" to be effective in the Senate by the usual means of seniority-based committee assignments or negotiating deals with other senators, and was sometimes seen as arrogant or a nuisance by the more senior and tradition-oriented members. Gravel relied on attention-getting gestures to achieve what he wanted, hoping national exposure would force other senators to listen to him. But even senators who agreed with him on issues considered his methods to be showboating.
As part of this approach, Gravel voted with Southern Democrats to keep the Senate filibuster rule in place, and accordingly supported Russell Long and Robert Byrd but opposed Ted Kennedy in Senate leadership battles. In retrospective assessment, University of Alaska Anchorage history professor Stephen Haycox said, "Loose cannon is a good description of Gravel's Senate career. He was an off-the-wall guy, and you weren't really ever sure what he would do."
Nuclear issues and the Cold War
In the late 1960s and early 1970s the U.S. Department of Defense was in the process of performing tests for the nuclear warhead for the Spartan anti-ballistic missile. Two tests, the "Milrow" and "Cannikin" tests, were planned, involving the detonation of nuclear bombs under Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Milrow test would be a one-megaton calibration exercise for the second and larger five-megaton Cannikin test, which would measure the effectiveness of the warhead. Gravel opposed the tests. Before the Milrow test took place in October 1969, he wrote that there were significant risks of earthquakes and other adverse consequences and called for an independent national commission on nuclear and seismic safety; he then made a personal appeal to President Richard Nixon to stop the test.
After Milrow was conducted, there was continued pressure on the part of environmental groups against going forward with the Cannikin test, while the Federation of American Scientists claimed that the warhead being tested was already obsolete. In May 1971 Gravel sent a letter to U.S. Atomic Energy Commission hearings held in Anchorage in which he said the risk of the test was not worth taking. Eventually a group not involving Gravel took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to issue an injunction against it, and the Cannikin test took place as scheduled in November 1971. Gravel had failed to stop the tests (notwithstanding his later claims during his 2008 presidential campaign).
In 1971 Gravel voted against the Nixon administration's proposed anti-ballistic missile system, the Safeguard Program, having previously vacillated over the issue, suggesting that he might be willing to support it in exchange for federal lands in Alaska being opened up for private oil drilling. His vote alienated Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, who had raised funds for Gravel's primary campaign.
Nuclear power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for commercial generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gravel publicly opposed this policy; besides the dangers of nuclear testing, he was a vocal critic of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw American nuclear efforts, and of the powerful United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had a stranglehold on nuclear policy and which Gravel tried to circumvent. In 1971 Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction and to make power utilities liable for any nuclear accidents; in 1975 he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974 Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power.
Six months before U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's July 1971 secret mission to the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.), Gravel introduced legislation to recognize and normalize relations with the P.R.C., including a proposal for unity talks between the P.R.C. and the Republic of China (Taiwan) regarding the Chinese seat on the U.N. Security Council. He reiterated his position in favor of recognition, with four other senators in agreement, during Senate hearings in June 1971.
Vietnam War, the draft, and the Pentagon Papers
Although he did not campaign against the Vietnam War during his first Senate campaign, by the end of 1970 Gravel was speaking out against United States policy in southeast Asia: in December of that year he persuaded William Fulbright to join him in a spontaneous two-day filibuster against a $155 million military aid package to Cambodia's Khmer Republic government in the Cambodian Civil War.
President Richard Nixon had campaigned in 1968 on a promise to end the U.S. military draft, a decision endorsed by the February 1970 report of the Gates Commission.
The existing draft law was scheduled to conclude at the end of June 1971, and the Senate faced a contentious debate about whether to extend it as the Vietnam War continued. The Nixon administration announced in February 1971 that it wanted a two-year extension to June 1973, after which the draft would end; Army planners had already been operating under the assumption of a two-year extension, after which an all-volunteer force would be in place. Skeptics such as Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John Stennis thought this unrealistic and wanted a four-year extension, but the two-year proposal is what went forward in Congress. By early May 1971, Gravel had indicated his intention to filibuster the draft renewal legislation, halting conscription and thereby bringing U.S. involvement in the war to a rapid end. During this period he also supported efforts to mobilize and influence public opinion against the war, endorsing the "Vietnam War Out Now" rallies in Washington D.C. and San Francisco on April 24, 1971, and financing a broadcast campaign by the antiwar group War No More with a personal loan. In June 1972 he escorted a group of over 100 antiwar protesters, including psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, actress Candice Bergen, theater producer and director Joseph Papp, and peditrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, into the United States Capitol Building; the group was arrested after blocking a hallway outside the Senate chamber.
By June 1971, some Democratic senators opposed to the war wanted to limit the renewal to a one-year extension, while others wanted to end it immediately; Gravel reiterated that he was one of the latter, saying, "It's a senseless war, and one way to do away with it is to do away with the draft." A Senate vote on June 4 indicated majority support for the two-year extension. On June 18 Gravel announced again his intention to counteract that by filibustering the renewal legislation, defending the practice against those who associated it only with blocking civil rights legislation. The first filibuster attempt failed on June 23 when, by three votes, the Senate voted cloture for only the fifth time since 1927.
Protracted negotiations took place over House conference negotiations on the bill, revolving in large part around Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield's eventually unsuccessful amendment to tie renewal to a troop withdrawal timetable from Vietnam; during this time the draft law expired and no more were conscripted. On August 5, the Nixon administration pleaded for a renewal before the Senate went on recess, but Gravel blocked Stennis's attempt to limit debate, and no vote was held. Finally on September 21, 1971, the Senate invoked cloture over Gravel's second filibuster attempt by one vote, and then passed the two-year draft extension. Gravel's attempts to stop the draft had failed (notwithstanding Gravel's later claims that he had stopped or shortened the draft, taken at face value in some media reports, during his 2008 presidential campaign).
Meanwhile, on June 13, 1971, The New York Times began printing large portions of the Pentagon Papers. The papers were a large collection of secret government documents and studies pertaining to the Vietnam War, of which former Defense Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg had made unauthorized copies and was determined to make public. Ellsberg had for a year and a half approached members of Congress – such as William Fulbright, George McGovern, Charles Mathias, and Pete McCloskey – about publishing the documents, on the grounds that the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution would give congressional members immunity from prosecution, but all had refused. Instead, Ellsberg gave the documents to the Times.
The U.S. Justice Department immediately tried to halt publication, on the grounds that the information revealed within the papers harmed the national interest. Within the next two weeks, a federal court injunction halted publication in the Times; The Washington Post and several other newspapers began publishing parts of the documents, with some of them also being halted by injunctions; and the whole matter went to the U.S. Supreme Court for arguments. Looking for an alternate publication mechanism, Ellsberg returned to his idea of having a member of Congress read them, and chose Gravel based on the latter's efforts against the draft; Gravel agreed where previously others had not. Ellsberg arranged for the papers to be given to Gravel on June 26 via an intermediary, Post editor Ben Bagdikian. Gravel used his counter-intelligence experience to choose a midnight transfer in front of the Mayflower Hotel in the center of Washington, D.C.
On the night of June 29, 1971, Gravel attempted to read the papers on the floor of the Senate as part of his filibuster against the draft, but was thwarted when no quorum could be formed. Gravel instead convened a session of the Buildings and Grounds subcommittee that he chaired. He got New York Congressman John G. Dow to testify that the war had soaked up funding for public buildings, thus making discussion of the war relevant to the committee. He began reading from the papers with the press in attendance, omitting supporting documents that he felt might compromise national security, and declaring, "It is my constitutional obligation to protect the security of the people by fostering the free flow of information absolutely essential to their democratic decision-making."
He read until 1 a.m., culminating by saying "Arms are being severed. Metal is clashing through human bodies because of the public policy this government and all its branches continue to support." Then with tears and sobs he said that he could no longer physically continue, the previous three nights of sleeplessness and fear about the future having taken their toll. Gravel ended the session by, with no other senators present, establishing unanimous consent to insert 4,100 pages of the Papers into the Congressional Record of his subcommittee. The following day, the Supreme Court's New York Times Co. v. United States decision ruled in favor of the newspapers and publication in the Times and others resumed. In July 1971 Bantam Books published an inexpensive paperback edition of the papers containing the material the Times had published.
Gravel, too, wanted to privately publish the portion of the papers he had read into the record, believing that "immediate disclosure of the contents of these papers will change the policy that supports the war". After being turned down by many commercial publishers, on August 4 he reached agreement with Beacon Press, the publishing arm of the Unitarian Universalist Association, of which Gravel was a member. Announced on August 17 and published on October 22, 1971, this four-volume, relatively expensive set became the "Senator Gravel Edition", which studies from Cornell University and the Annenberg Center for Communication have labeled as the most complete edition of the Pentagon Papers to be published. The "Gravel Edition" was edited and annotated by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, and included an additional volume of analytical articles on the origins and progress of the war, also edited by Chomsky and Zinn. Beacon Press then was subjected to a FBI investigation; an outgrowth of this was the Gravel v. United States court case, which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled upon in June 1972; it held that the Speech or Debate Clause did grant immunity to Gravel for his reading the papers in his subcommittee, did grant some immunity to Gravel's congressional aide, but granted no immunity to Beacon Press in relation to their publishing the same papers. The U.S. Senate Democratic Caucus backed Gravel in the case, but due to Republican opposition it did not pay Gravel's legal fees, leaving him owing $25,000 (the equivalent of $150,000 in 2019, adjusted for inflation).
The events of 1971 changed Gravel in the following months from an obscure freshman senator to a nationally visible political figure. He became a sought-after speaker on the college circuit as well as at political fundraisers, opportunities he welcomed as lectures were "the one honest way a Senator has to supplement his income". But his speaking tours caused him to accrue one of the worst absentee records in the Senate. The Democratic candidates for the 1972 presidential election sought his endorsement. In January 1972 Gravel endorsed Maine Senator Ed Muskie, hoping that his support would help Muskie with the party's left wing and in ethnic French-Canadian areas during the first primary contest in New Hampshire (Muskie won, but not overwhelmingly, and his campaign faltered soon after). In April 1972 Gravel appeared on all three networks' nightly newscasts to decry the Nixon administration's reliance on Vietnamization by making reference to the secret National Security Study Memorandum 1 document, which stated it would take 8–13 years for the Army of the Republic of Vietnam to defend South Vietnam. Gravel made excerpts from the study public, but senators Robert P. Griffin and William B. Saxbe blocked his attempt to read NSSM 1 into the Congressional Record.
Domestic policy
In 1970 Gravel co-sponsored legislation to establish a guaranteed minimum income, entitling poor families to up to $6,300 a year (the equivalent of $42,000 in 2019 after adjustment for inflation). He subsequently voted for a "work bonus" program, which would have entitled low-income working families with dependent children if they were paying Social Security or Railroad Retirement taxes to a non-taxable bonus of up to 10 percent of their wages. Gravel also supported extending Social Security to all federal employees and introduced a campaign finance reform bill in 1971 that would have enacted full disclosure of campaign financing, placed limits on large donations, media spending and individual candidate spending.
In 1969, Gravel was the only Democratic Senator outside of the South to vote for Nixon's Supreme Court nominee Clement Haynsworth. The following year Gravel opposed Nixon's next pick, G. Harrold Carswell.
Run for vice president in 1972
Gravel actively campaigned for the office of Vice President of the United States during the 1972 presidential election, announcing on June 2, 1972, over a month before the 1972 Democratic National Convention began, that he was interested in the nomination should the choice be opened up to convention delegates. Toward this end he began soliciting delegates for their support. He was not alone in this effort, as former Governor of Massachusetts Endicott Peabody had been running a quixotic campaign for the same post since the prior year. Likely presidential nominee George McGovern was in fact considering the unusual move of naming three or four acceptable vice-presidential candidates and letting the delegates choose.
On the convention's final day, July 14, 1972, McGovern selected and announced Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his vice-presidential choice. Eagleton was unknown to many delegates and the choice seemed to smack of traditional ticket balancing considerations. Thus there were delegates willing to look elsewhere. Gravel was nominated by Bettye Fahrenkamp, the Democratic National Committeewoman from Alaska. He then seconded his own nomination, breaking down in tears at his own words and maybe trying to withdraw his nomination. In any case he won 226 delegate votes, coming in third behind Eagleton and Frances "Sissy" Farenthold of Texas, in chaotic balloting that included several other candidates.
Gravel attracted some attention for his efforts: writer Norman Mailer said he "provided considerable excitement" and was "good-looking enough to have played leads in B-films", while Rolling Stone correspondent Hunter S. Thompson said Gravel "probably said a few things that might have been worth hearing, under different circumstances". Yet the process was doubly disastrous for the Democrats. In the time consumed by nominating and seconding and all the vice-presidential candidates' speeches, the attention of the delegates on the floor was lost and McGovern's speech was pushed to 3:30 a.m. The haste with which Eagleton was selected led to surprise when his past mental health treatments were revealed; he withdrew from the ticket soon after the convention, to be replaced by Sargent Shriver.
Reelection to Senate in 1974
Several years earlier, Alaska politicians had speculated that Gravel would have a hard time getting both renominated and elected when his first term expired, given that he was originally elected without a base party organization and tended to focus on national rather than local issues.
Nonetheless, after receiving support from national and local labor leaders, securing key earmarks, and producing another half-hour TV advertorial, in 1974 Gravel was reelected to the Senate, with 58 percent of the vote to 42 percent for Republican State Senator C. R. Lewis, who was a national officer of the John Birch Society.
Second term
Gravel's reelection campaign left him $65,000–$75,000 in debt. In 1975 The Washington Post reported on a memo by his executive assistant laying out a fundraising strategy to tackle this, including raising funds from oil companies, meeting with previous donors and "inquir[ing] into the governmental priorities of these people and their groups in the coming session", as well as obtaining further speaking fees to reduce his personal debt. This was followed by a number of stories about links between Gravel, lobbyists and fundraisers, including one that was widely publicized in Alaska about his holding a share in a Colorado resort with two Washington lobbyists he was working with on land and energy legislation. Gravel had been open about the investment and had opposing views to one of the lobbyists on nuclear power. In 1980 the Wall Street Journal published details about his fundraising activities, including writing to individuals and PACs in the oil industry, pledging to kill off proposals for a windfall profits tax on the sector, and traveling in the Middle East with the business partner of one of his donors to sell Alaskan land to businessmen. Gravel suggested that critics of his fundraising were "naive".
In 1975 Gravel introduced an amendment to cut the number of troops overseas by 200,000, but it was defeated on a voice vote.
In September 1975 Gravel was named as one of several Congressional Advisers to the Seventh Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly, which met to discuss problems related to economic development and international economic cooperation.
In June 1976 Gravel was the focus of a federal investigation into allegations that he was involved in a sex-for-vote arrangement. Congressional staff clerk Elizabeth Ray (who had already been involved in a sex scandal that led to the downfall of Representative Wayne Hays) said that in August 1972 she had sex with Gravel aboard a houseboat on the Potomac River, under the instruction of Representative Kenneth J. Gray, her boss at the time. Gray allegedly wanted to secure Gravel's support for further funding for construction of the National Visitor Center in Washington, a troubled project that was under the jurisdiction of subcommittees that both members chaired. Another Congressional staffer said she witnessed the boat encounter, but Gravel said at the time that he had never met either of the women. Gravel and Gray strongly denied that they had made any arrangement regarding legislation, and neither was ever charged with any wrongdoing. Decades later Gravel wrote that he had indeed had sex with Ray, but had not changed any votes because of it.
Gravel and his main financial backer, Gottstein, had a falling out in 1978, during the Congressional debate over whether to allow a controversial sale of U.S. F-15 fighter aircraft to Saudi Arabia. An ardent backer of Israel, Gottstein opposed the sale and asked Gravel to vote against it. But Gravel not only voted for it but made an emotional speech attacking the anti-sale campaign. Gravel wrote in 2008 that it was the only time Gottstein had ever asked him for a favor, and the rupture resulted in their never speaking to each other again.
Alaskan issues
By 1971 Gravel was urging construction of the much-argued Trans-Alaska pipeline, addressing environmental concerns by saying that the pipeline's builders and operators should have "total and absolute" responsibility for any consequent environmental damage. Two years later the debate over the pipeline came to a crux, with The New York Times describing it as "environmentalists [in] a holy war with the major oil companies". In February 1973 the U.S. Court of Appeals blocked the issuance of permits for construction; Gravel and fellow Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens reacted by urging Congress to pass legislation overturning the court's decision. Environmentalists opposed to the pipeline, such as the Environmental Defense Fund and the Sierra Club then sought to use the recently passed National Environmental Policy Act to their advantage; Gravel designed an amendment to the pipeline bill that would immunize the pipeline from any further court challenges under that law, and thus speed its construction. Passage of the amendment became the key battle regarding the pipeline. On July 17, 1973, in a dramatic roll-call vote, the Gravel amendment was approved as a 49–49 tie was broken in favor by Vice President Spiro Agnew. The actual bill enabling the pipeline then passed easily; Gravel had triumphed in what became perhaps his most lasting accomplishment as a senator.
In opposition to the Alaskan fishing industry, Gravel advocated American participation in the formation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. For two years he opposed legislation that established a Exclusive Economic Zone for marine resources. He was one of only 19 senators to vote against Senate approval for the expanded zone in 1976, saying it would undermine the U.S. position in Law of the Sea negotiations and that nations arbitrarily extending their fishing rights limits would "produce anarchy of the seas". The legislation was passed, and the United States has signed but never ratified the Law of the Sea treaty.
Gravel accumulated a complicated record on Indian affairs during his time in the Senate. During his first year in the Senate Gravel urged abolition of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, criticizing the agency for the pace of development of schools in Alaska, its paternalistic attitudes and the culturally inappropriate nature of its education, and advocating greater shared decision-making between the federal government and native communities in Alaska. Later, his views changed; in the early 1970s Gravel supported a demonstration project that established links between Alaskan villages and the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, for medical diagnostic communications. In 1971, he fended off accusations from Alaskan natives that he was not spending enough time working on their land claims. Gravel helped secure a private grant to facilitate the first Inuit Circumpolar Conference in 1977, attended by Inuit representatives from Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. These conferences now also include representatives from Russia. In 1977, Gravel helped lead an effort to have the U.S. Interior Department rename Mount McKinley to Denali; this eventually led to Denali National Park being so named. Subsequently, Gravel proposed a never-built "Denali City" development above the Tokositna River near the mountain, to consist of a giant Teflon dome enclosing hotels, golf courses, condominiums, and commercial buildings. A related idea of his to build a high-speed rail line to Denali also failed to gain traction.
A key, emotional issue in the state at the time was "locking up Alaska", making reference to allocation of its vast, mostly uninhabited land. President Jimmy Carter desired to put large portions of this land under federal protection against development, a move that some Alaskans vociferously opposed.
In 1978 Gravel blocked passage, via procedural delays such as walking out of House–Senate conference committee meetings, of a complex bill which represented a compromise on land use policy. The bill would have put some of Alaska's vast federal land holdings under state control while preserving other portions for federal parks and refuges; the blocking action earned Gravel the enmity of fellow Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who had supported the compromise. In 1980, a new lands bill came up for consideration, that was less favorable to Alaskan interests and more liked by environmentalists; it set aside of Alaska's for national parks, conservation areas, and other restricted federal uses. Gravel blocked it, as not ensuring enough future development in the state. A new compromise version of the 1980 bill came forward, which reduced the land set aside to . Representing Alaskan interests, Gravel tried to stop the bill, including by filibuster. But the Senate voted for cloture and passed the bill. Frustrated, Gravel said, "the legislation denies Alaska its rights as a state, and denies the U.S. crucial strategic resources," and opined that the Senate was "a little bit like a tank of barracudas". Nonetheless, the bill, known as the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, was signed by President Carter shortly before leaving the White House, and led to millions of acres being set aside in the state for national parks, wildlife refuges, and other kinds of areas under protection.
In 1978 Gravel authored and secured the passage into federal law of the General Stock Ownership Corporation, that became Subchapter U of the Tax Code under the Internal Revenue Code of 1954. This gave states the ability to create corporations that would invest in for-profit enterprises, with all citizens within the state owning shares in the corporation. Gravel's attempt to convince the Alaska state legislature to create such a corporation failed, as did a 1980 state ballot initiative towards the same end, but nevertheless the creation of the General Stock Ownership Corporation in federal law turned out to be significant in the development of binary economics.
Loss of Senate seat in 1980
In 1980 Gravel was challenged for the Democratic Party's nomination by State Representative Clark Gruening, the grandson of the man Gravel had defeated in a primary 12 years earlier. One of Gruening's supporters was Gravel's former backer Gottstein. Several factors made Gravel vulnerable. As an insurgent candidate in 1968 Gravel had never established a firm party base. Not liking to hunt or fish, he was also always culturally suspect in the state.
The primary campaign was bitterly fought. A group of Democrats, including future governor Steve Cowper, led the campaign against Gravel, with Gravel's actions in respect to the 1978 and 1980 Alaskan lands bills a major issue. This was especially so given that the 1980 bill's dénouement happened but a week before the primary. The sources of Gravel's campaign funds, some of which Gravel readily acknowledged came from political action committees outside the state, also became an issue in the contest. Gruening had pledged that he would not take special interest group money, but Gravel said that Gruening was "dishonest" in accepting individual contributors from Jewish donors living outside the state because to him such contributors comprised "a special interest group ... that seeks to influence the foreign policy of the U.S."
Gruening won the primary with about 55 percent of the vote to Gravel's 44 percent. Gravel later conceded that by the time of his defeat, he had alienated "almost every constituency in Alaska". Another factor may have been Alaska's blanket primary system of the time, which allowed unlimited voting across party lines and from its many independents; Republicans believed Gruening would be an easier candidate to defeat in the general election.
Gruening lost the general election to Republican Frank Murkowski. Gravel was the last Democrat to represent Alaska in Congress for 28 years, until Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich defeated Ted Stevens, by then an aged, iconic figure who had just been convicted of seven felonies for taking unreported gifts, in a very close and protracted election result in 2008. Stevens's conviction was subsequently vacated due to prosecutorial misconduct.
Career after leaving the Senate
Of his 1980 defeat, Gravel later recalled: "I had lost my career. I lost my marriage. I was in the doldrums for ten years after my defeat," and "Nobody wanted to hire me for anything important. I felt like I was worthless. I didn't know what I could do." By his own later description, Gravel was a womanizer, and had an affair while in the Senate, and in December 1980 he and his wife Rita separated. They filed for divorce in September 1981; she later received all of his Senate pension income.
During the 1980s Gravel was a real estate developer in Anchorage and Kenai, Alaska, a consultant, and a stockbroker. One of his real estate ventures, a condominium business, was forced to declare bankruptcy and a lawsuit ensued. In 1986 Gravel worked in partnership with Merrill Lynch Capital Markets to buy losses that financially troubled Alaska Native Corporations could not take as tax deductions and sell them to large national companies looking for tax writeoffs. Gravel also learned computer programming at some point but never practiced it.
In 1984 Gravel married his second wife, Whitney Stewart Gravel, a former administrative assistant for Senator Jacob Javits.
Return to politics
In 1989 Gravel reentered politics. He founded and led The Democracy Foundation, which promotes direct democracy. He established the Philadelphia II corporation, which seeks to replicate the original 1787 Constitutional Convention and have a Second Constitutional Convention to bring about direct democracy Gravel led an effort to get a United States Constitutional amendment to allow voter-initiated federal legislation similar to state ballot initiatives. He argued that Americans are able to legislate responsibly, and that the Act and Amendment in the National Initiative would allow American citizens to become "law makers". However such efforts met with little success.
In 2001, Gravel became director of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, where he admired institute co-founder Gregory Fossedal's work on direct democracy in Switzerland. By 2004, Gravel had become chair of the institute, and Fossedal (who in turn was a director of the Democracy Foundation) gave the introduction at Gravel's presidential announcement.
In 2003 Gravel gave a speech on direct democracy at a conference hosted by the American Free Press. The event was cosponsored by the Barnes Review, a journal that endorses Holocaust denial. After some controversy over his appearance, Gravel apologized, saying he did not realize the group's ties. Gravel said repeatedly that he did not share the group's views on the Holocaust, stating, "You better believe I know that six million Jews were killed. [The Barnes Review publishers] are nutty as loons if they don't think it happened". The group invited Gravel to speak again, but he declined.
Mike and Whitney Gravel lived in Arlington County, Virginia, until 2010 and then resided in Burlingame, California. They have the two grown children from his first marriage, Martin Gravel and Lynne Gravel Mosier, and four grandchildren. Whitney Gravel's income sustained the couple from 1998 on. In the 2000s, Gravel suffered poor health, requiring three surgeries in 2003 for back pain and neuropathy. Due to unreimbursed medical expenses and debts from his political causes, he declared personal bankruptcy in 2004. He began taking a salary from the non-profit organizations for which he was working; much of that income was lent to his presidential campaign. In 2007, he declared that he had "zero net worth".
2008 presidential campaign
Democratic Party primaries
At the start of 2006 Gravel decided the best way he could promote direct democracy and the National Initiative was to run for president. On April 17, 2006, Gravel became the first candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2008 election, announcing his run in a speech to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Short on campaign cash, he took public transportation to get to his announcement. (Gravel called for public financing of elections.) Other principal Gravel positions were the FairTax, as well as withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq within 120 days and a single payer national health care system.
Gravel had opposed the Iraq War, and President George W. Bush's rationale for it, from the beginning, and in 2006 said that U.S. troops in Iraq, as in Vietnam, had "died in vain". He also favored a regional peace initiative, as well as reparation payments for Iraqis. Gravel also called for a "U.S. corporate withdrawal from Iraq", with reconstruction contracts held by U.S. companies to be turned over to Iraqi firms.
Gravel campaigned almost full-time in New Hampshire, the first primary state, following his announcement. Opinion polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination showed Gravel with 1 percent or less support. By the end of March 2007, Gravel's campaign had less than $500 in cash on hand against debts of nearly $90,000.
Because of his time in the Senate, Gravel was invited to many of the early Democratic presidential debates. During the initial one at South Carolina State University on April 26, 2007, he suggested a bill requiring the president to withdraw from Iraq on pain of criminal penalties. He also advocated positions such as opposing preemptive nuclear war. He stated that the Iraq War had the effect of creating more terrorists and that the "war was lost the day that George Bush invaded Iraq on a fraudulent basis". Regarding his fellow candidates, he said, "I got to tell you, after standing up with them, some of these people frighten me – they frighten me." In one such exchange, Gravel said, "Tell me, Barack, who do you want to nuke?" to which Obama responded, "I'm not planning to nuke anybody right now, Mike, I promise."
Media stories said that Gravel was responsible for much of whatever "heat" and "flashpoints" had taken place during the Democratic debates. Gravel gained considerable publicity by shaking up the normally staid multiple-candidate format; The New York Times' media critic said that what Gravel had done was "steal a debate with outrageous, curmudgeonly statements". The Internet was a benefit: a YouTube video of his responses in the debate was viewed more than 225,892 times, ranking seventeenth in most views for week and first among news and politics clips; his name became the fifteenth most searched-for in the blogosphere; and his website garnered more traffic than those of frontrunners Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or John Edwards. Gravel appeared on the popular Colbert Report on television on May 2, and his campaign and career were profiled in national publications such as Salon. Two wordless, Warholesque campaign videos, "Rock" and "Fire", were released on YouTube in late May and became hits, and eventually gained over 760,000 and 185,000 views respectively. "Rock", in turn, was given airtime during an episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Some thirty-five years after he first achieved the national spotlight, he had found it again.
All this did not improve his performance in the polls; a May 2007 CNN poll showed him with less than 0.5 percent support among Democrats. Gravel was in the next several debates, in one case after CNN reversed a decision to exclude him. Like some of the other second-tier candidates, Gravel did not get as much time as the leaders; during the June 2, 2007, New Hampshire debate, which lasted two hours, he was asked 10 questions and allowed to speak for five minutes and 37 seconds.
During the July 23, 2007, CNN-YouTube presidential debate, Gravel responded to audience applause when he had complained of a lack of airtime and said: "Thank you. Has it been fair thus far?" Detractors began to liken him to "the cranky uncle who lives in the attic," or "the angry old guy that just seemed to want to become angrier". Berkeley political scientist David Terr found that moderator George Stephanopoulos directed roughly five percent of his questions to Gravel; in a poll asking who did the best in the debate, Gravel placed seventh among the eight candidates. National opinion polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination continued to show Gravel with one percent or zero percent numbers. By the end of the third-quarter 2007, Gravel had about $17,500 in cash on hand, had collected a total of about $380,000 during the 2008 election cycle, and was continuing to run a threadbare campaign with minimal staff.
Beginning with the October 30, 2007, Philadelphia event, Gravel was excluded from most of the debates, with the debate sponsors or the Democratic National Committee saying Gravel's campaign had not met fund-raising, polling, or local campaign organizational thresholds. For the Philadelphia exclusion, Gravel blamed corporate censorship on the part of sponsor owner and alleged military-industrial complex member General Electric for his exclusion and mounted a counter-gathering and debate against a video screen a short distance away, but he had lost his easiest publicity. In reaction, supporters organized "mass donation days" to try to help the campaign gain momentum and funds, such as on December 5, 2007, the anniversary of the Repeal of Prohibition.
Gravel did not compete in the initial 2008 vote, the Iowa caucuses, but was still subjected to a false report from MSNBC that he had pulled out of the race afterward. Gravel did focus his attention on the second 2008 vote, the New Hampshire primary. In early January, Mother Jones' investigative reporter James Ridgeway was filmed interviewing and following Gravel in New Hampshire, in which Gravel is interviewed on the phone by Neal Conan for NPR's, Talk of the Nation. He received about 400 votes out of some 280,000 cast in New Hampshire, or 0.14 percent, before taking time off to improve his health. He resumed campaigning, but fared no better in subsequent states. By the end of January 2008, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Gravel were the only remaining Democrats from the initial debates still running; Gravel vowed to stay in the presidential campaign until November. On March 11, 2008, Gravel continued to remain in the Democratic race but additionally endorsed a Green Party candidate for president, Jesse Johnson, saying he wanted to help Johnson prevail against Green Party rivals Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader. By late March, Gravel had almost no fundraising and was only on the ballot in one of the next ten Democratic primaries.
Switch to Libertarian Party
On March 25, 2008, Gravel announced that he would leave the Democrats and join the Libertarian Party, saying: "My libertarian views, as well as my strong stance against war, the military industrial complex and American imperialism, seem not to be tolerated by Democratic Party elites who are out of touch with the average American; elites that reject the empowerment of American citizens I offered to the Democratic Party at the beginning of this presidential campaign with the National Initiative for Democracy." The following day Gravel entered the race for the 2008 Libertarian presidential nomination, saying that he would have run as a third-party candidate all along except that he needed the public exposure that came from being in the earlier Democratic debates. Gravel's initial notion of running as a fusion candidate with other parties was met with skepticism.
As a Libertarian candidate, Gravel faced resistance to his past support of big government initiatives and his unorthodox positions around direct democracy. Nevertheless, he garnered more support than he had as a Democrat, placing second and third in two April 2008 straw polls. In the May 25 balloting at the 2008 Libertarian National Convention in Denver, Gravel finished fourth out of eight candidates on the initial ballot, with 71 votes out of a total 618; he trailed former Congressman and eventual winner Bob Barr, author Mary Ruwart, and businessman Wayne Allyn Root. Gravel's position did not subsequently improve and he was eliminated on the fourth ballot. Afterwards he stated that "I just ended my political career," but he vowed to continue promoting his positions as a writer and lecturer.
2008–early 2019
In June 2008 Gravel endorsed the NYC 9/11 Ballot Initiative, saying the measure would create a "citizens commission rather than a government commission" with subpoena power against top U.S. officials to "make a true investigation as to what happened" regarding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He later said, "Individuals in and out of government may certainly have participated with the obviously known perpetrators of this dastardly act. Suspicions abound over the analysis presented by government. Obviously an act that has triggered three wars, Afghan, Iraqi and the continuing War on Terror, should be extensively investigated which was not done and which the government avoids addressing."
In August 2008 Gravel was speaking to a crowd of supporters of Sami Al-Arian (who two years earlier had pleaded guilty and been sentenced to prison for a charge of conspiracy in helping Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a "specially designated terrorist" organization) when he was caught on tape saying of Al-Arian's prosecutor, "Find out where he lives, find out where his kids go to school, find out where his office is: picket him all the time. Call him a racist in signs if you see him. Call him an injustice. Call him whatever you want to call him, but in his face all the time." Gravel was criticized for potentially involving the children of the prosecutor, and Al-Arian's family disavowed the sentiments.
Gravel defended Alaska Governor Sarah Palin after she was chosen as Republican presidential nominee John McCain's running mate in September 2008. He praised Palin's record in standing up to corruption among Alaskan Republicans, thought her national inexperience was an asset not a detriment, and predicted that the "Troopergate" investigation into whether she improperly fired a state official would "come out in her favor". Gravel made clear he would not support or vote for either McCain–Palin or Obama–Biden in the general election. The following year Gravel said that Palin's politics were "terrible, but that doesn't detract from the fact that she's a very talented person". He predicted that Palin would run for president in 2012 and that "she's going to surprise a lot of people". Palin did not run, but Gravel's prediction about "TrooperGate" was accurate as Palin was found not to have violated ethics laws.
In 2013, by the invitation of Hamed Ghashghavi, the secretary for international affairs of the 3rd International Conference on Hollywoodism in Tehran, Iran, Gravel attended that event as an Iranian government-organized anti-Hollywood conference. Gravel noted that the conference was attended by "various elements of extremes" but said it was necessary to discuss how the U.S. film industry portrayed Iran in order to prevent "an insane war" between the two nations.
In May 2013 Gravel was one of several former members of Congress to accept $20,000 from the Paradigm Research Group, an advocacy group for UFO disclosure, as part of holding what they termed a Citizen Hearing on Disclosure, modeled after congressional hearings, regarding supposed U.S. government suppression of evidence concerning UFOs. Gravel said, "Something is monitoring the planet, and they are monitoring it very cautiously, because we are a very warlike planet," and, "What we're faced with here is, in areas of the media, and the government too, an effort to marginalize and ridicule people who have specific knowledge."
In December 2014 Gravel was announced as the new CEO of KUSH, a company which makes marijuana-infused products for medicinal and recreational use, and a subsidiary of Cannabis Sativa, Inc. He also became an Independent Director of Cannabis Sativa.
During the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries, Gravel praised Bernie Sanders and his campaign, saying "Bernie is one of the most gifted politicians I have ever observed. He's a person of great integrity and very clever." Gravel predicted that Sanders would be elected president but would be unable to get his key reforms through Congress, and thus that Sanders and his supporters should back some of the proposals of the National Initiative.
In 2016, Gravel said in relation to the September 11 attacks: "We killed 58,000 American servicemen in the Vietnam War and all they did was die in vain. What's so unusual about killing 3,000 more in order to develop the grist for the mill to empower into infinity the military industrial complex?" and "There's no question in my mind that 9/11 was an inside job". The remarks were later disavowed by even Gravel supporters.
By 2019 Gravel was living in Seaside, California. He was working on a book, at the time titled Human Governance, about his principal idea for direct democracy, a U.S. Constitutional Amendment to create a "Legislature of the People" that would circumvent the existing Congress. The book was self-published at the end of the year by AuthorHouse under the title The Failure of Representative Government and the Solution: A Legislature of the People.
2020 presidential campaign
On March 19, 2019, Gravel announced that he was considering running in the 2020 Democratic primaries. He said, "The goal will not be to win, but to bring a critique of American imperialism to the Democratic debate stage." An exploratory committee was formed, with filing a statement of organization with the Federal Election Commission on that same day. The filing was the idea of a group of teenagers, led by David Oks and Henry Williams, inspired by the podcast Chapo Trap House, and done with Gravel's consent (after a week spent convincing him of the idea's merits), but without his involvement. Intrigued by the group's commitment to amplifying his long-held policy goals, Gravel (who would be old on Inauguration Day in 2021) said he planned to meet with them in April, and to discuss a 2020 White House run with his wife. On April 2, 2019, Gravel filed to officially run for office. The campaign called itself the "#Gravelanche".
Gravel's initial stated goal was merely to qualify for debates by getting the required 65,000 small donors. He discouraged people from voting for him and said his preferences were Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard, both of whom favor a non-interventionist foreign policy. But on April 29, Gravel's campaign said he was running to win, not just to participate in debates. In a subsequent interview, though, Gravel emphasized the virtue of Sanders and Gabbard in some order as a presidential ticket. Statements like these caused Vox to call Gravel "2020's oddest Democratic presidential candidate". The New York Times Magazine included Gravel as an example in the rise of democratic socialism in the United States also exemplified by Sanders's 2016 race and the 2018 election of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: "[Gravel's] campaign represents the most absurd form of a legitimate movement on the left that feels little obligation to the Democratic Party."
In June 2019, Gravel touted the endorsement of Muntadher al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who, in December 2008, made headlines after he threw his shoes at President George W. Bush in protest of the U.S. war in Iraq. Al-Zaidi endorsed Gravel based on his promise to improve White House policies regarding Iraq and the Middle East.
On June 13, 2019, the Democratic Party announced the 20 major candidates who qualified for the first debate later that month. Gravel was one of the four who missed out (the others were Montana Governor Steve Bullock, U.S. Representative Seth Moulton, and Miramar, Florida, Mayor Wayne Messam). Gravel had been unable to get the requisite number of donations, or to score one percent or better in enough polls (many polls did not even include him). Nevertheless, Gravel said he would not drop out and would try to qualify for the July debate. In early July, however, Gravel's campaign said it was still 10,000 contributions short of the 65,000-donor threshold and that it was "nearing its conclusion". It solicited suggestions for where to donate $100–150,000 of leftover campaign funds. Gravel added that he had always planned on ending the campaign before the teenagers in charge of it needed to return to school. A few days later the campaign became the first to run an attack ad against Democratic front-runner Joe Biden, using the text "Is this the best our party has to offer?"
Gravel's campaign crossed the threshold of 65,000 donors on July 12, 2019, meeting the qualification mark for that month's debate. But because 20 other candidates, the maximum allowed to participate, had already met at least the polling criterion, which takes priority over the donor criterion, Gravel was not invited.
The campaign officially came to a close on August 6, 2019, with Gravel endorsing both Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard for president. Gravel's campaign later stated on Twitter that they never wanted to win but saw the campaign as an "intimately democratic" project and expressed honor at working with Gravel. Gravel said he would divide remaining campaign funds between charity and a new think tank which would espouse his ideas.
The Gravel Institute
Gravel used some of the funds remaining from his 2020 presidential campaign to found an eponymous progressive think tank called The Gravel Institute in 2019. As noted by Vice magazine, the institute aims to do battle with PragerU from a left-wing perspective. Launched in September 2020, the new entity said it would "carry on the life's work of former U.S Senator Mike Gravel in fighting for global peace and democracy. Its mission is to promote bold and forward-looking ideas about a more peaceful and egalitarian world, and to build a robust movement of young people to win it". Contributors announced include Cornel West and Slavoj Žižek, as well as Lower Brule Indian Reservation activist Nick Estes. Other presenters have included and will include H. Jon Benjamin, Briahna Joy Gray, Bernie Sanders, Chelsea Manning, Richard Wolff, Stephanie Kelton, Zephyr Teachout, David Cross, Jabari Brisport, Zohran Mamdani, and Gravel himself (though it is unknown if his appearance will be cancelled due to his death in June 2021, or if the video has already been recorded).
Death
Gravel died of multiple myeloma at his home in Seaside, California, on June 26, 2021, at age 91.
The obituary for him in The New York Times stated that Gravel was "a two-term Democratic senator from Alaska ... who was perhaps better known as an unabashed attention-getter" who later become known for "mounting long-shot presidential runs". The obituary in The Washington Post was similar, saying that Gravel was "an Alaska Democrat with a flair for the theatrical who rose from obscurity to brief renown" and later "ran quixotic campaigns for the presidency". The Anchorage Daily News quoted Gravel as saying of himself in 1989, "I'm an independent kind of guy. A rough and ready kind of guy. My glands work in a certain way that make me stand up, foolishly sometimes, and fight."
Political positions
Alan Abramowitz and Jeffrey Allan Segal described Gravel as "a maverick, if not an eccentric, in the Senate." His Americans for Democratic Action "Liberal Quotient" scores ranged from 81 out of 100 (1971) to 39 out of 100 (1980), with an average of around 61. His American Conservative Union scores ranged from 0 out of 100 (several years, including 1971 and 1972) to 38 out of 100 (1979), with an average of 14. Abramowitz and Segal note that Gravel's lowest ADA ratings coincided with his two Senate re-election bids, and for the most part his highest ACU ratings followed the same pattern.
In 1972, as a young senator, Gravel published Citizen Power: A People's Platform, a manifesto outlining what Kirkus Reviews termed a "populist reform [that] would provide 'balanced political power' between the people and government and business interests."
Civil rights issues
On drug policy, Gravel said in 2007 that he favored decriminalization and treating addiction as a public health matter. During his 2008 presidential candidacy he condemned the War on Drugs as a failure, saying that it did "nothing but savage our inner cities and put our children at risk". Gravel called for abolition of capital punishment in his book Citizen Power, and adhered to this position during his 2008 run for president. He supported abortion rights.
During the 2008 campaign Gravel was a strong supporter of LGBT rights. He supported same-sex marriage and opposed the Defense of Marriage Act and the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. He wrote in 2008 that "depriving gays and lesbians of equal rights is immoral".
Foreign policy and defense issues
Gravel was a critic of American imperialism.
Gravel firmly opposed U.S. military action against Iran and Syria. He voiced opposition to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the use of torture, indefinite detention, and what he called "flagrant ignorance" of the Geneva Convention. In 2014 Gravel called for the release of the full, unredacted Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture.
Gravel opposed the use of international sanctions as a policy tool and blamed the ones against Iraq under Saddam Hussein for the deaths of a half-million children in that country. In 2013 Gravel said that sanctions against Iran were "illegal".
During his 2008 candidacy, Gravel called for a cut in military spending, variously reported to be 15 percent or 50 percent. He called for the savings to boost public education spending. To spur international nuclear nonproliferation efforts, Gravel called for unilateral reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
In 2008 Gravel criticized the decision of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to not pursue the efforts to impeach George W. Bush and the attempted impeachment of Dick Cheney, saying also that Bush and Cheney had committed crimes and deserved "to be prosecuted" at The Hague. In 2013 he expressed disdain for President Obama, calling him "a total fraud" and saying that both Bush and Obama should be tried "for the crimes and murders they've committed" in the International Court of Justice. Gravel specifically condemned Obama for the drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere.
Economy, immigration, and environment
During his 2008 candidacy Gravel favored a FairTax scheme, which would abolish the Internal Revenue Service, eliminate the federal income tax (which Gravel called "corrupt"), and impose a national sales tax. While Gravel described FairTax as "progressive", others have criticized it as "regressive", disproportionately benefiting the wealthiest Americans. To offset the new sales taxes on essential goods, Gravel's plan called for monthly government rebate payments to individuals and families. During his 2020 campaign Gravel also voiced support for a third legislative body that would give the people direct control of the budget as well as the implementation of a land value tax.
Gravel opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) during his 2008 candidacy, calling it unfair and economically harmful and needing renegotiation. Gravel believed that NAFTA was the "root cause" of illegal migration to the U.S. He favored a guest worker program and "setting up naturalization procedures that would fairly bring immigrants into legal status". In a 2007 interview, Gravel identified himself as "very much of a globalist" who believed in open markets and open borders and condemned the scapegoating of undocumented immigrants. Gravel also said that he favored eliminating the cap on H1B visas.
As a senator from Alaska, Gravel favored drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but opposed it during his 2008 campaign. In 2008, Gravel supported a carbon tax to combat climate change.
Gravel spoke in favor of net neutrality during his presidential campaign.
Education and health care
Gravel called for the cost of college tuition to be borne by the federal government, rather than students. In his 2008 campaign, he called the No Child Left Behind Act "a failure" and called for it to be "reformed and fully funded". He expressed support for universal pre-kindergarten and the expansion of the Head Start program; and expressed an openness to charter schools and school vouchers. He also suggested extending the school day and the school year, and supported merit pay for teachers.
Gravel also called for publicly funded universal health care to replace the current employer-sponsored health insurance system. He supported "full funding" of the VA system. When asked in 2007 about naturopathy, homeopathy, and acupuncture, Gravel said that he was "very very much in favor" of holistic health care.
Awards and honors
In 2008 Gravel received the Columbia University School of General Studies' first annual Isaac Asimov Lifetime Achievement Award.
Electoral history
Writings
Gravel, Mike. Jobs and More Jobs. Mt. McKinley Publishers, 1968.
Gravel, Mike. Citizen Power: A People's Platform. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972. .
revised and reissued as Citizen Power: A Mandate for Change, AuthorHouse, 2008. .
Gravel, Mike and Lauria, Joe. A Political Odyssey: The Rise of American Militarism and One Man's Fight to Stop It. Seven Stories Press, 2008. .
Gravel, Mike and Eisenbach, David. The Kingmakers: How the Media Threatens Our Security and Our Democracy. Phoenix Books, 2008. .
Gravel, Mike. Voice of a Maverick: The Speeches and Writings of Senator Mike Gravel. Brandywine House, 2008.
Gravel, Mike. Foreword to Poisoned Power: The Case Against Nuclear Power Plants. John W. Goffman & Arthur R. Tamplin, Rodale Press, Inc., Emmaus, PA, June 1971.
Gravel, Mike. The Failure of Representative Government and the Solution: A Legislature of the People. AuthorHouse, 2020.
Explanatory notes
References
Citations
General references
The Pentagon Papers Senator Gravel Edition. Vol. Five: Critical Essays. Boston: Beacon Press, 1972. 341p. plus 72p. of Index to Vol. I–IV of the Papers; Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, editors.
External links
Mike Gravel official website
The Gravel Institute
|-
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1930 births
2021 deaths
1972 United States vice-presidential candidates
20th-century American male writers
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21st-century American male writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
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Writers from Anchorage, Alaska | false | [
"Cold start can refer to:\n\nCold start (automotive), the starting of a vehicle engine at a low temperature relative to its operating temperature.\nCold start (computing), a startup problem in computer information systems.\nCold Start (military doctrine), a military doctrine developed by the Indian Armed Forces.\nCold start (recommender systems), the problem of recommending items to users with insufficient data",
"The Cold War Museum is a history museum in Warrenton, Virginia, focused on Cold War history.\n\nThe museum was founded in 1996 by Francis Gary Powers Jr. (son of pilot Francis Gary Powers), and John C. Welch to preserve Cold War history and honor Cold War veterans.\n\nCollection and holdings\nThe Cold War museum has over $3 million worth of artefacts in its collection. Museum holdings include items from the 1948–1949 Berlin Airlift, the 1960 U-2 incident (including the helmet used by Francis Gary Powers and the suitcase carried by Powers across Glienicke Bridge when he was exchanged for Rudolf Abel), a display on the Cuban Missile Crisis that includes a Soviet SA-2 missile and four American Nike missiles, and material from the USS Liberty incident, USS Pueblo incident, Corona spy satellites, and the Space Race.\n\nThe museum also has the largest collection of civil defence items in America, mainly acquired from the former Civil Defence headquarters in Washington; a yellow East German Trabant automobile, and Soviet and East German flags and banners. The museum has also acquired the mailbox used by Aldrich Ames to contact his Soviet handlers.\n\nEducational activities and publications\nThe museum has developed various educational programs and activities to help educate future generation about the Cold War. Museum speakers have visited numerous grade schools, high schools, colleges, and universities in order to teach students about the Cold War. The museum also assists with educational programming for the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, A&E Television Networks, the Learning Channel, C-SPAN, and numerous public access stations.\n\nThe mobile exhibit on the U-2 Incident, the \"Spies of Washington Tour,\" and the Cold War Conversations lecture series continue to generate interest and support.\n\nThe mobile exhibit on the U-2 Incident of May 1, 1960, helps promote the need for a permanent Cold War Museum. The exhibit has been displayed at many museums across the United States and internationally. The traveling exhibit helps to promote The Cold War Museum.\n\nIn collaboration with Carol S. Bessette, Certified Master Tour Guide, the Cold War Museum offers the original Spy Tour of Washington. Since its earliest days, Washington, D.C. has been the scene of international intrigue, espionage, and intelligence activity, as the U.S. government has tried to learn the plans of other countries while keeping its own plans secret. Key players in this non-ending drama include personalities as diverse as Rose Greenhow, Herbert Yardley, Major General \"Wild Bill\" Donovan, Aldrich Ames, and Robert Hanssen. The educational bus tour visits many of the locations in and around Washington that have been associated with intelligence and counter intelligence activities for the past 200 years. Tourists are required to walk between some sites, and there is an opportunity to visit the International Spy Museum for an additional fee.\n\nOn October 14, 2006, the museum hosted an international conference to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian and Polish Crises. Dr. Sergei Khrushchev, the son of Nikita Khrushchev, and David Eisenhower, grandson of President Dwight D. Eisenhower participated with VIPs from Hungary and Poland and well renowned scholars. The Hungarian and Polish Embassies, American Hungarian Federation, Fairfax County Economic Development Authority, the Hungarian Technology Center, the Cold War Museum, and the South County Secondary School were hosts for the program. Sponsors included EnviroSolutions, Inc., K. Hovnanian Homes, Marriott Fairfax at Fair Oaks, Northern Virginia Community College, Verizon, and Vulcan Materials Company.\n\nOn October 2, 2007, Cold War Conversations-II took place to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the 1957 launch of Sputnik. Dr. Sergei Khrushchev, the son of Nikita Khrushchev and author of Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev 1953–1964 and Paul Dickson, author of Sputnik—Shock of the Century discussed this important Cold War historical event. Dialog between the two and Q&A from the audience followed their presentations. Washington Dulles Airport Hotel, Northern Virginia Community College – Loudoun Campus, NASA, and the Cold War Museum were event sponsors.\n\nThe museum worked with the Embassy of the Czech Republic to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Prague Spring and with the British Berlin Airlift Association to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift.\n\nPeriodically, the Cold War Museum hosts book signing lectures for authors who have written on the Cold War. The Cold War Times is a quarterly online publication produced for the Cold War Museum and Cold War Veterans.\n\nIn 1997, Congressman Tom Davis, with the assistance of the Cold War Museum, drafted legislation for the creation of a \"Cold War Memorial\" that will honor all the men and women who were part of Cold War events and activities.\n\nLease, status and chapters\nThe museum signed a lease on December 1, 2009, with the Vint Hill Economic Development Authority for the use of a two-story building and secure storage facility at Vint Hill Farms Station, Virginia, in Fauquier County, from Washington Dulles International Airport. Vint Hill Farms is a 695-acre former United States Army communications base. The museum opened on November 11, 2011.\n\nThe Cold War Museum is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charitable organization. As a result, it has pledges of support for loans of artifacts from the Air and Space Museum, the National Museum of American History, the National Portrait Gallery, and the National Postal Museum. The museum is also working with the privately owned International Spy Museum in Washington, Diefenbunker, Canada's Cold War Museum in Ottawa, and the Atombunker Harnekop near Berlin to temporarily display some of its artifacts.\n\nThe Cold War Museum has a chapter in the American Midwest based in Waukesha, Wisconsin, and a chapter in Berlin, Germany.\n\nSee also \n Tagansky Protected Command Point - Cold War museum in Moscow, Russia.\n Plokštinė missile base - Cold War museum in Lithuania.\n Wende Museum - Cold War museum in Culver City, California.\n Strategic missile forces museum - Strategic Missile Forces museum with an exhibitions related to a Cold War in Ukraine\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n The Cold War Times - Cold War Museum's quarterly newsletter\n\nMuseums established in 1996\n1996 establishments in Virginia\nMilitary and war museums in Virginia\nMuseums in Fauquier County, Virginia\nSmithsonian Institution affiliates\nCold War museums in the United States"
] |
[
"Mike Gravel",
"Nuclear issues and the Cold War",
"Did Mike Gravel have problem with Nuclear bomb ?",
"he then made a personal appeal to President Nixon to stop the test.",
"What were his reasons for opposing it ?",
"he said the risk of the test was not worth taking.",
"Did he have problem with the Cold War ?",
"1971, Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction"
] | C_672c6c49d0d948738552b25aaebe1fb2_0 | Did they pass the Bill ? | 4 | Did Congress pass the Bill ? | Mike Gravel | In the late 1960s and early 1970s the U.S. Department of Defense was in the process of performing tests for the nuclear warhead for the Spartan anti-ballistic missile. Two tests, the "Milrow" and "Cannikin" tests, were planned, involving the detonation of nuclear bombs under Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Milrow test would be a one megaton calibration exercise for the second, and larger five megaton, Cannikin test, which would measure the effectiveness of the warhead. Gravel opposed the tests in Congress. Before the Milrow test took place in October 1969, he wrote that there were significant risks of earthquakes and other adverse consequences, and called for an independent national commission on nuclear and seismic safety to be created; he then made a personal appeal to President Nixon to stop the test. After Milrow was conducted, there was continued pressure on the part of environmental groups against going forward with the larger Cannikin test, while the Federation of American Scientists claimed that the warhead being tested was already obsolete. In May 1971, Gravel sent a letter to U.S. Atomic Energy Commission hearings held in Anchorage, in which he said the risk of the test was not worth taking. Eventually a group not involving Gravel took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to issue an injunction against it, and the Cannikin test took place as scheduled in November 1971. Gravel had failed to stop the tests (notwithstanding his later claims during his 2008 presidential campaign). Nuclear power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for the commercial generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gravel publicly opposed this policy; besides the dangers of nuclear testing, he was a vocal critic of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw American nuclear efforts, and of the powerful United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had a stranglehold on nuclear policy and which Gravel tried to circumvent. In 1971, Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction and to make power utilities liable for any nuclear accidents; in 1975, he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974, Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power. Six months before U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's secret mission to the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.) in July 1971, Gravel introduced legislation to recognize and normalize relations with China, including a proposal for unity talks between the P.R.C. and the Republic of China (Taiwan) regarding the Chinese seat on the U.N. Security Council. Gravel reiterated his position in favor of recognition, with four other senators in agreement, during Senate hearings in June 1971. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Maurice Robert Gravel ( ; May 13, 1930 – June 26, 2021) was an American politician who served as a United States Senator from Alaska from 1969 to 1981 as a member of the Democratic Party, and who, in later life, twice ran for the presidential nomination of that party.
Born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, by French-Canadian immigrant parents, Gravel moved to Alaska in the late 1950s, becoming a real estate developer and entering politics. He served in the Alaska House of Representatives from 1963 to 1967, and also became Speaker of the Alaska House. Gravel was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1968.
As a senator, Gravel became nationally known for his forceful, but unsuccessful, attempts to end the draft during the War in Vietnam, and for putting the Pentagon Papers into the public record in 1971. He conducted a campaign for the Democratic nomination in 1972 for Vice President of the United States, and then played a crucial role in obtaining Congressional approval for the Trans-Alaska pipeline in 1973. He was re-elected to the Senate in 1974, but was defeated in his bid for a third term in the primary election in 1980.
An advocate of direct democracy and the National Initiative, Gravel staged a run for the 2008 Democratic nomination for President of the United States. His campaign failed to gain support, and in March 2008, he left the Democratic Party and joined the Libertarian Party to compete unsuccessfully for its presidential nomination and the inclusion of the National Initiative into the Libertarian Platform. He ran for president as a Democrat again in the 2020 election, in a campaign that ended four months after it began. Two years before his death, Gravel and his campaign staff founded the progressive think tank The Gravel Institute.
Early life, military service, education
Gravel was born on May 13, 1930, in Springfield, Massachusetts, one of five children of French-Canadian immigrant parents, Alphonse and Marie (née Bourassa) Gravel. His parents were part of the Quebec diaspora, and he was raised in a working-class neighborhood during the Great Depression, speaking only French until he was seven years old. Calling him "Mike" from an early age, his father valued work above all else, while his mother stressed the importance of education.
Gravel was educated in parochial schools as a Roman Catholic. There he struggled, due to what he later said was undiagnosed dyslexia, and was left back in third grade. He completed elementary school in 1945 and his class voted him "most charming personality". A summer job as a soda jerk led to Gravel handing out campaign fliers for local candidates on his boss's behalf; Gravel was immediately impressed with "the awesomeness of political office".
Gravel then boarded at Assumption Preparatory School in Worcester, Massachusetts, where his performance was initially mediocre. By Gravel's telling, in the summer of 1948 he intended to volunteer for the Israel Defense Forces during the 1947–1949 Palestine war, but Alexandra Tolstaya told him to return to school. There an English teacher, the Assumptionist Edgar Bourque, gave him personal attention, improving Gravel's language skills and instructing him in public speaking. Gravel's grades improved measurably in his final year and he graduated in 1949. His sister, Marguerite, became a Holy Cross nun, but Gravel himself struggled with the Catholic faith. He studied for one year at Assumption College, a Catholic school in Worcester, then transferred for his sophomore year to American International College in Springfield. Journalist I. F. Stone and philosopher Bertrand Russell strongly influenced Gravel in their willingness to challenge assumptions and oppose social convention and political authority.
Around May 1951, Gravel saw that he was about to be drafted and instead enlisted in the U.S. Army for a three-year term so that he could get into the Counterintelligence Corps. After basic training and counterintelligence school at Fort Holabird in Maryland and in South Carolina, he went to Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia. While he expected to be sent off to the Korean War when he graduated as a second lieutenant in early 1952, he was instead assigned to Stuttgart, West Germany, as a Special Adjutant in the Army's Communications Intelligence Service. In Germany, Gravel conducted surveillance operations on civilians and paid off spies. After about a year, he transferred to Orléans, France, where his French language abilities (if not his French-Canadian accent) allowed him to infiltrate French communist rallies. He worked as a Special Agent in the Counterintelligence Corps until 1954, eventually becoming a first lieutenant.
Following his discharge, Gravel entered the Columbia University School of General Studies in New York City, where he studied economics and received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1956. He moved to New York "flat broke" and supported himself by working as a bar boy in a hotel, driving a taxicab, and working in the investment bond department at Bankers Trust. During this time he left the Roman Catholic faith.
Move to Alaska
Gravel "decided to become a pioneer in a faraway place," and moved to pre-statehood Alaska in August 1956, without funds or a job, looking for a place where someone without social or political connections could be a viable candidate for public office. Alaska's voting age of 19, less than most other states' 21, played a role in his decision, as did its newness and cooler climate. Broke when he arrived, he immediately found work in real estate sales until winter arrived. Gravel then was employed as a brakeman for the Alaska Railroad, working the snow-clearing train on the Anchorage-to-Fairbanks run. Subsequently, he opened a small real estate brokerage in Anchorage (the Territory of Alaska not requiring a license) and saved enough so as not to have to work the railroad again. The firm was named the M. R. Gravel Real Estate Company. Gravel joined the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, and continued a sporadic relationship with the movement throughout his life.
Seeing Alaska as a wide-open place with no political establishment or entrenched interests, Gravel quickly became part of the civic scene there. By October 1957 he was a Division Chairman for Anchorage for the Democratic Central Committee in the territory, and by June 1958 he was president of the Alaska Young Democrats organization. He also became active in the United States Junior Chamber (Jaycees), and by early 1958 his duties included handing out awards for farmer of the year.
By early 1958, Gravel was running as Democratic Party primary candidate for a Third Division seat in House of Representative of the territorial legislature. (This was one of the four judicial divisions into which Alaska was sectioned at the time.) Using the slogan "Gravel, the Roadbed to Prosperity", he ran but lost. At the same time, he was also an advocate for Alaskan statehood.
Gravel went on a 44-state national speaking tour concerning tax reform in 1959, sponsored by the Jaycees, often dressing for events as Paul Revere. Gravel was selected from some two thousand applications for this position. The tour received a good amount of local newspaper coverage at its various stops, with Gravel's first name sometimes given as Mike and other times as Maurice. The tour's general message was an urging of "lower taxes, more efficiency in government and a system of taxation moderate at all levels of income". At several stops Gravel stated that the "tide of socialism" had to be stopped. He elaborated at another stop, "It is part of our Jaycee creed that economic justice can best be won by free men through free enterprise. We really want to see that free enterprise become our inheritance." The tour was scheduled to conclude in Washington D.C., on Tax Day, April 15, with petition signatures accumulated for reform to be presented to U.S. lawmakers: dressed as Revere, Gravel rode with the petition to the steps of the U.S. Capitol.
The tour over, Gravel married Rita Jeannette Martin at the First Methodist Church of Anchorage on April 29, 1959. She was a native of Montana who had attended Billings Business College before moving to Alaska two years prior and becoming a secretary in the office of the Anchorage city manager. She had also been named Anchorage's "Miss Fur Rendezvous" of 1958. They had two children, Martin Anthony Gravel and Lynne Denise Gravel, born c. 1960 and 1962 respectively.
Gravel ran without avail for the City Council in Anchorage in 1960. During this time, he had become a successful real estate agent; after the 1960 election, he became a property developer in a mobile home park on the outskirts of Anchorage. After a partner ran into financial difficulty, however, the project went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and Gravel was forced out in 1962.
State legislator
With the support of Alaska wholesale grocer Barney Gottstein and supermarket builder Larry Carr, Gravel ran for the Alaska House of Representatives representing Anchorage in 1962, initially assigned the 10th and then 8th districts. Alaska had very crowded primaries that year: Gravel was one of 33 Democrats, along with 21 Republicans, who were running for the chance to compete for the 14 House seats allocated to the 8th district. Gravel made it through the primary, and in November eight Republicans and six Democrats were elected to the House from the district, with Gravel finishing eighth overall and third among with Democrats, with 8,174 votes. Gottstein became Gravel's main financial backer during most of his subsequent campaigns.
Gravel served in the Alaska House of Representatives from January 28, 1963 to January 22, 1967, winning reelection in 1964. In his first term, he served as a minority member on two House committees: Commerce, and Labor and Management. He co-authored and sponsored the act that created the Alaska State Commission for Human Rights. Gravel was the chief architect of the law that created a regional high school system for rural Alaska; this allowed Alaska Natives to attend schools near where they lived instead of having to go to schools run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the lower 48 states.
During the half-years that the legislature was not in session, Gravel resumed his real estate work. With Gottstein and Carr's backing, he became quite successful as a property developer on the Kenai Peninsula.
During 1965 and 1966, he served as the Speaker of the House, surprising observers by winning that post. Gravel convinced former Speaker Warren A. Taylor to not try for the position against him by promising Taylor chairmanship of the Rules Committee, then reneged on the promise. Gravel denied later press charges that he had promised but not delivered on other committee chairmanships. As Speaker he antagonized fellow lawmakers by imposing his will on the legislature's committees and feuded with Alaska State Senate president Robert J. McNealy.
Gravel did not run for reelection in 1966, instead choosing to run for Alaska's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, losing the primary to four-term incumbent Democrat Ralph Rivers by 1,300 votes and splitting the Democratic Party in the process. Rivers lost the general election that year to Republican state Senator Howard Pollock. Following this defeat, Gravel returned to the real estate business in Anchorage.
U.S. Senator
Election to Senate in 1968
In 1968, Gravel ran against 81-year-old incumbent Democratic United States Senator Ernest Gruening, a popular former governor of the Alaska Territory who was considered one of the fathers of Alaska's statehood, for his party's nomination to the U.S. Senate. Gravel's campaign was primarily based on his youth and telegenic appearance rather than issue differences. He hired Joseph Napolitan, the first self-described political consultant, in late 1966. They spent over a year and a half planning a short, nine-day primary election campaign that featured the slogans "Alaska first" and "Let's do something about the state we're in", the distribution of a collection of essays titled Jobs and More Jobs, and the creation of a half-hour, well-produced, glamorized biographical film of Gravel, Man for Alaska. The film was shown twice a day on every television station in Alaska, and carried by plane and shown on home projectors in hundreds of Alaska Native villages. The heavy showings quickly reversed a 2–to–1 Gruening lead in polls into a Gravel lead. Gravel visited many remote villages by seaplane and showed a thorough understanding of the needs of the bush country and the fishing and oil industries. Gravel also benefited from maintaining a deliberately ambiguous posture about Vietnam policy. Gruening had been one of only two Senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and his opposition to President Lyndon B. Johnson's war policies was harming him among the Democratic electorate; according to Gravel, "all I had to do was stand up and not deal with the subject, and people would assume that I was to the right of Ernest Gruening, when in point of fact I was to the left of him". In Man for Alaska, Gravel argued that "the liberals" would come to West Germany's defense if it was attacked, and that the same standard should apply to the United States' allies in Asia. During the campaign he also claimed that he was "more in the mainstream of American thought on Vietnam" than Gruening, despite the fact that he had written to Gruening to praise his antiwar stance four years earlier. Decades later, Gravel conceded that "I said what I said [about Vietnam] to advance my career."
Gravel beat Gruening in the primary by about 2,000 votes. Gruening found "the unexpected defeat hard to take" and thought that some aspects of his opponent's biographical film had misled viewers. In the general election, Gravel faced Republican Elmer E. Rasmuson, a banker and former mayor of Anchorage. College students in the state implored Gruening to run a write-in campaign as an Independent, but legal battles prevented him from getting approval for it until only two weeks were left. A late appearance by anti-war presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy did not offset Gruening's lack of funds and endorsements; meanwhile, Gravel and Rasmuson both saturated local media with their filmed biographies. On November 5, 1968, Gravel won the general election with 45 percent of the vote to Rasmuson's 37 percent and Gruening's 18 percent.
Senate assignments and style
When Gravel joined the U.S.Senate in January 1969, he requested and received a seat on the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, which had direct relevance to Alaskan issues. He also got a spot on the Public Works Committee, which he held throughout his time in the Senate. Finally, he was a member of the Select Committee on Small Business. In 1971 he became chair of the Public Works Committee's Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds, and by 1973 he was chair of its Subcommittee on Water Resources, then later its Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution. Gravel was also initially named to the Joint Committee on Congressional Operations. By 1973 Gravel was off the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee and the Select Small Business Committee and instead a member of the Finance Committee, and by 1977 was chair of that body's Subcommittee on Energy and Foundations. By 1973 he had also been on the ad hoc Special Committee to Study Secret and Confidential Government Documents.
By his own admission, Gravel was too new and "too abrasive" to be effective in the Senate by the usual means of seniority-based committee assignments or negotiating deals with other senators, and was sometimes seen as arrogant or a nuisance by the more senior and tradition-oriented members. Gravel relied on attention-getting gestures to achieve what he wanted, hoping national exposure would force other senators to listen to him. But even senators who agreed with him on issues considered his methods to be showboating.
As part of this approach, Gravel voted with Southern Democrats to keep the Senate filibuster rule in place, and accordingly supported Russell Long and Robert Byrd but opposed Ted Kennedy in Senate leadership battles. In retrospective assessment, University of Alaska Anchorage history professor Stephen Haycox said, "Loose cannon is a good description of Gravel's Senate career. He was an off-the-wall guy, and you weren't really ever sure what he would do."
Nuclear issues and the Cold War
In the late 1960s and early 1970s the U.S. Department of Defense was in the process of performing tests for the nuclear warhead for the Spartan anti-ballistic missile. Two tests, the "Milrow" and "Cannikin" tests, were planned, involving the detonation of nuclear bombs under Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Milrow test would be a one-megaton calibration exercise for the second and larger five-megaton Cannikin test, which would measure the effectiveness of the warhead. Gravel opposed the tests. Before the Milrow test took place in October 1969, he wrote that there were significant risks of earthquakes and other adverse consequences and called for an independent national commission on nuclear and seismic safety; he then made a personal appeal to President Richard Nixon to stop the test.
After Milrow was conducted, there was continued pressure on the part of environmental groups against going forward with the Cannikin test, while the Federation of American Scientists claimed that the warhead being tested was already obsolete. In May 1971 Gravel sent a letter to U.S. Atomic Energy Commission hearings held in Anchorage in which he said the risk of the test was not worth taking. Eventually a group not involving Gravel took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to issue an injunction against it, and the Cannikin test took place as scheduled in November 1971. Gravel had failed to stop the tests (notwithstanding his later claims during his 2008 presidential campaign).
In 1971 Gravel voted against the Nixon administration's proposed anti-ballistic missile system, the Safeguard Program, having previously vacillated over the issue, suggesting that he might be willing to support it in exchange for federal lands in Alaska being opened up for private oil drilling. His vote alienated Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, who had raised funds for Gravel's primary campaign.
Nuclear power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for commercial generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gravel publicly opposed this policy; besides the dangers of nuclear testing, he was a vocal critic of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw American nuclear efforts, and of the powerful United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had a stranglehold on nuclear policy and which Gravel tried to circumvent. In 1971 Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction and to make power utilities liable for any nuclear accidents; in 1975 he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974 Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power.
Six months before U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's July 1971 secret mission to the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.), Gravel introduced legislation to recognize and normalize relations with the P.R.C., including a proposal for unity talks between the P.R.C. and the Republic of China (Taiwan) regarding the Chinese seat on the U.N. Security Council. He reiterated his position in favor of recognition, with four other senators in agreement, during Senate hearings in June 1971.
Vietnam War, the draft, and the Pentagon Papers
Although he did not campaign against the Vietnam War during his first Senate campaign, by the end of 1970 Gravel was speaking out against United States policy in southeast Asia: in December of that year he persuaded William Fulbright to join him in a spontaneous two-day filibuster against a $155 million military aid package to Cambodia's Khmer Republic government in the Cambodian Civil War.
President Richard Nixon had campaigned in 1968 on a promise to end the U.S. military draft, a decision endorsed by the February 1970 report of the Gates Commission.
The existing draft law was scheduled to conclude at the end of June 1971, and the Senate faced a contentious debate about whether to extend it as the Vietnam War continued. The Nixon administration announced in February 1971 that it wanted a two-year extension to June 1973, after which the draft would end; Army planners had already been operating under the assumption of a two-year extension, after which an all-volunteer force would be in place. Skeptics such as Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John Stennis thought this unrealistic and wanted a four-year extension, but the two-year proposal is what went forward in Congress. By early May 1971, Gravel had indicated his intention to filibuster the draft renewal legislation, halting conscription and thereby bringing U.S. involvement in the war to a rapid end. During this period he also supported efforts to mobilize and influence public opinion against the war, endorsing the "Vietnam War Out Now" rallies in Washington D.C. and San Francisco on April 24, 1971, and financing a broadcast campaign by the antiwar group War No More with a personal loan. In June 1972 he escorted a group of over 100 antiwar protesters, including psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, actress Candice Bergen, theater producer and director Joseph Papp, and peditrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, into the United States Capitol Building; the group was arrested after blocking a hallway outside the Senate chamber.
By June 1971, some Democratic senators opposed to the war wanted to limit the renewal to a one-year extension, while others wanted to end it immediately; Gravel reiterated that he was one of the latter, saying, "It's a senseless war, and one way to do away with it is to do away with the draft." A Senate vote on June 4 indicated majority support for the two-year extension. On June 18 Gravel announced again his intention to counteract that by filibustering the renewal legislation, defending the practice against those who associated it only with blocking civil rights legislation. The first filibuster attempt failed on June 23 when, by three votes, the Senate voted cloture for only the fifth time since 1927.
Protracted negotiations took place over House conference negotiations on the bill, revolving in large part around Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield's eventually unsuccessful amendment to tie renewal to a troop withdrawal timetable from Vietnam; during this time the draft law expired and no more were conscripted. On August 5, the Nixon administration pleaded for a renewal before the Senate went on recess, but Gravel blocked Stennis's attempt to limit debate, and no vote was held. Finally on September 21, 1971, the Senate invoked cloture over Gravel's second filibuster attempt by one vote, and then passed the two-year draft extension. Gravel's attempts to stop the draft had failed (notwithstanding Gravel's later claims that he had stopped or shortened the draft, taken at face value in some media reports, during his 2008 presidential campaign).
Meanwhile, on June 13, 1971, The New York Times began printing large portions of the Pentagon Papers. The papers were a large collection of secret government documents and studies pertaining to the Vietnam War, of which former Defense Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg had made unauthorized copies and was determined to make public. Ellsberg had for a year and a half approached members of Congress – such as William Fulbright, George McGovern, Charles Mathias, and Pete McCloskey – about publishing the documents, on the grounds that the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution would give congressional members immunity from prosecution, but all had refused. Instead, Ellsberg gave the documents to the Times.
The U.S. Justice Department immediately tried to halt publication, on the grounds that the information revealed within the papers harmed the national interest. Within the next two weeks, a federal court injunction halted publication in the Times; The Washington Post and several other newspapers began publishing parts of the documents, with some of them also being halted by injunctions; and the whole matter went to the U.S. Supreme Court for arguments. Looking for an alternate publication mechanism, Ellsberg returned to his idea of having a member of Congress read them, and chose Gravel based on the latter's efforts against the draft; Gravel agreed where previously others had not. Ellsberg arranged for the papers to be given to Gravel on June 26 via an intermediary, Post editor Ben Bagdikian. Gravel used his counter-intelligence experience to choose a midnight transfer in front of the Mayflower Hotel in the center of Washington, D.C.
On the night of June 29, 1971, Gravel attempted to read the papers on the floor of the Senate as part of his filibuster against the draft, but was thwarted when no quorum could be formed. Gravel instead convened a session of the Buildings and Grounds subcommittee that he chaired. He got New York Congressman John G. Dow to testify that the war had soaked up funding for public buildings, thus making discussion of the war relevant to the committee. He began reading from the papers with the press in attendance, omitting supporting documents that he felt might compromise national security, and declaring, "It is my constitutional obligation to protect the security of the people by fostering the free flow of information absolutely essential to their democratic decision-making."
He read until 1 a.m., culminating by saying "Arms are being severed. Metal is clashing through human bodies because of the public policy this government and all its branches continue to support." Then with tears and sobs he said that he could no longer physically continue, the previous three nights of sleeplessness and fear about the future having taken their toll. Gravel ended the session by, with no other senators present, establishing unanimous consent to insert 4,100 pages of the Papers into the Congressional Record of his subcommittee. The following day, the Supreme Court's New York Times Co. v. United States decision ruled in favor of the newspapers and publication in the Times and others resumed. In July 1971 Bantam Books published an inexpensive paperback edition of the papers containing the material the Times had published.
Gravel, too, wanted to privately publish the portion of the papers he had read into the record, believing that "immediate disclosure of the contents of these papers will change the policy that supports the war". After being turned down by many commercial publishers, on August 4 he reached agreement with Beacon Press, the publishing arm of the Unitarian Universalist Association, of which Gravel was a member. Announced on August 17 and published on October 22, 1971, this four-volume, relatively expensive set became the "Senator Gravel Edition", which studies from Cornell University and the Annenberg Center for Communication have labeled as the most complete edition of the Pentagon Papers to be published. The "Gravel Edition" was edited and annotated by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, and included an additional volume of analytical articles on the origins and progress of the war, also edited by Chomsky and Zinn. Beacon Press then was subjected to a FBI investigation; an outgrowth of this was the Gravel v. United States court case, which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled upon in June 1972; it held that the Speech or Debate Clause did grant immunity to Gravel for his reading the papers in his subcommittee, did grant some immunity to Gravel's congressional aide, but granted no immunity to Beacon Press in relation to their publishing the same papers. The U.S. Senate Democratic Caucus backed Gravel in the case, but due to Republican opposition it did not pay Gravel's legal fees, leaving him owing $25,000 (the equivalent of $150,000 in 2019, adjusted for inflation).
The events of 1971 changed Gravel in the following months from an obscure freshman senator to a nationally visible political figure. He became a sought-after speaker on the college circuit as well as at political fundraisers, opportunities he welcomed as lectures were "the one honest way a Senator has to supplement his income". But his speaking tours caused him to accrue one of the worst absentee records in the Senate. The Democratic candidates for the 1972 presidential election sought his endorsement. In January 1972 Gravel endorsed Maine Senator Ed Muskie, hoping that his support would help Muskie with the party's left wing and in ethnic French-Canadian areas during the first primary contest in New Hampshire (Muskie won, but not overwhelmingly, and his campaign faltered soon after). In April 1972 Gravel appeared on all three networks' nightly newscasts to decry the Nixon administration's reliance on Vietnamization by making reference to the secret National Security Study Memorandum 1 document, which stated it would take 8–13 years for the Army of the Republic of Vietnam to defend South Vietnam. Gravel made excerpts from the study public, but senators Robert P. Griffin and William B. Saxbe blocked his attempt to read NSSM 1 into the Congressional Record.
Domestic policy
In 1970 Gravel co-sponsored legislation to establish a guaranteed minimum income, entitling poor families to up to $6,300 a year (the equivalent of $42,000 in 2019 after adjustment for inflation). He subsequently voted for a "work bonus" program, which would have entitled low-income working families with dependent children if they were paying Social Security or Railroad Retirement taxes to a non-taxable bonus of up to 10 percent of their wages. Gravel also supported extending Social Security to all federal employees and introduced a campaign finance reform bill in 1971 that would have enacted full disclosure of campaign financing, placed limits on large donations, media spending and individual candidate spending.
In 1969, Gravel was the only Democratic Senator outside of the South to vote for Nixon's Supreme Court nominee Clement Haynsworth. The following year Gravel opposed Nixon's next pick, G. Harrold Carswell.
Run for vice president in 1972
Gravel actively campaigned for the office of Vice President of the United States during the 1972 presidential election, announcing on June 2, 1972, over a month before the 1972 Democratic National Convention began, that he was interested in the nomination should the choice be opened up to convention delegates. Toward this end he began soliciting delegates for their support. He was not alone in this effort, as former Governor of Massachusetts Endicott Peabody had been running a quixotic campaign for the same post since the prior year. Likely presidential nominee George McGovern was in fact considering the unusual move of naming three or four acceptable vice-presidential candidates and letting the delegates choose.
On the convention's final day, July 14, 1972, McGovern selected and announced Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his vice-presidential choice. Eagleton was unknown to many delegates and the choice seemed to smack of traditional ticket balancing considerations. Thus there were delegates willing to look elsewhere. Gravel was nominated by Bettye Fahrenkamp, the Democratic National Committeewoman from Alaska. He then seconded his own nomination, breaking down in tears at his own words and maybe trying to withdraw his nomination. In any case he won 226 delegate votes, coming in third behind Eagleton and Frances "Sissy" Farenthold of Texas, in chaotic balloting that included several other candidates.
Gravel attracted some attention for his efforts: writer Norman Mailer said he "provided considerable excitement" and was "good-looking enough to have played leads in B-films", while Rolling Stone correspondent Hunter S. Thompson said Gravel "probably said a few things that might have been worth hearing, under different circumstances". Yet the process was doubly disastrous for the Democrats. In the time consumed by nominating and seconding and all the vice-presidential candidates' speeches, the attention of the delegates on the floor was lost and McGovern's speech was pushed to 3:30 a.m. The haste with which Eagleton was selected led to surprise when his past mental health treatments were revealed; he withdrew from the ticket soon after the convention, to be replaced by Sargent Shriver.
Reelection to Senate in 1974
Several years earlier, Alaska politicians had speculated that Gravel would have a hard time getting both renominated and elected when his first term expired, given that he was originally elected without a base party organization and tended to focus on national rather than local issues.
Nonetheless, after receiving support from national and local labor leaders, securing key earmarks, and producing another half-hour TV advertorial, in 1974 Gravel was reelected to the Senate, with 58 percent of the vote to 42 percent for Republican State Senator C. R. Lewis, who was a national officer of the John Birch Society.
Second term
Gravel's reelection campaign left him $65,000–$75,000 in debt. In 1975 The Washington Post reported on a memo by his executive assistant laying out a fundraising strategy to tackle this, including raising funds from oil companies, meeting with previous donors and "inquir[ing] into the governmental priorities of these people and their groups in the coming session", as well as obtaining further speaking fees to reduce his personal debt. This was followed by a number of stories about links between Gravel, lobbyists and fundraisers, including one that was widely publicized in Alaska about his holding a share in a Colorado resort with two Washington lobbyists he was working with on land and energy legislation. Gravel had been open about the investment and had opposing views to one of the lobbyists on nuclear power. In 1980 the Wall Street Journal published details about his fundraising activities, including writing to individuals and PACs in the oil industry, pledging to kill off proposals for a windfall profits tax on the sector, and traveling in the Middle East with the business partner of one of his donors to sell Alaskan land to businessmen. Gravel suggested that critics of his fundraising were "naive".
In 1975 Gravel introduced an amendment to cut the number of troops overseas by 200,000, but it was defeated on a voice vote.
In September 1975 Gravel was named as one of several Congressional Advisers to the Seventh Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly, which met to discuss problems related to economic development and international economic cooperation.
In June 1976 Gravel was the focus of a federal investigation into allegations that he was involved in a sex-for-vote arrangement. Congressional staff clerk Elizabeth Ray (who had already been involved in a sex scandal that led to the downfall of Representative Wayne Hays) said that in August 1972 she had sex with Gravel aboard a houseboat on the Potomac River, under the instruction of Representative Kenneth J. Gray, her boss at the time. Gray allegedly wanted to secure Gravel's support for further funding for construction of the National Visitor Center in Washington, a troubled project that was under the jurisdiction of subcommittees that both members chaired. Another Congressional staffer said she witnessed the boat encounter, but Gravel said at the time that he had never met either of the women. Gravel and Gray strongly denied that they had made any arrangement regarding legislation, and neither was ever charged with any wrongdoing. Decades later Gravel wrote that he had indeed had sex with Ray, but had not changed any votes because of it.
Gravel and his main financial backer, Gottstein, had a falling out in 1978, during the Congressional debate over whether to allow a controversial sale of U.S. F-15 fighter aircraft to Saudi Arabia. An ardent backer of Israel, Gottstein opposed the sale and asked Gravel to vote against it. But Gravel not only voted for it but made an emotional speech attacking the anti-sale campaign. Gravel wrote in 2008 that it was the only time Gottstein had ever asked him for a favor, and the rupture resulted in their never speaking to each other again.
Alaskan issues
By 1971 Gravel was urging construction of the much-argued Trans-Alaska pipeline, addressing environmental concerns by saying that the pipeline's builders and operators should have "total and absolute" responsibility for any consequent environmental damage. Two years later the debate over the pipeline came to a crux, with The New York Times describing it as "environmentalists [in] a holy war with the major oil companies". In February 1973 the U.S. Court of Appeals blocked the issuance of permits for construction; Gravel and fellow Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens reacted by urging Congress to pass legislation overturning the court's decision. Environmentalists opposed to the pipeline, such as the Environmental Defense Fund and the Sierra Club then sought to use the recently passed National Environmental Policy Act to their advantage; Gravel designed an amendment to the pipeline bill that would immunize the pipeline from any further court challenges under that law, and thus speed its construction. Passage of the amendment became the key battle regarding the pipeline. On July 17, 1973, in a dramatic roll-call vote, the Gravel amendment was approved as a 49–49 tie was broken in favor by Vice President Spiro Agnew. The actual bill enabling the pipeline then passed easily; Gravel had triumphed in what became perhaps his most lasting accomplishment as a senator.
In opposition to the Alaskan fishing industry, Gravel advocated American participation in the formation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. For two years he opposed legislation that established a Exclusive Economic Zone for marine resources. He was one of only 19 senators to vote against Senate approval for the expanded zone in 1976, saying it would undermine the U.S. position in Law of the Sea negotiations and that nations arbitrarily extending their fishing rights limits would "produce anarchy of the seas". The legislation was passed, and the United States has signed but never ratified the Law of the Sea treaty.
Gravel accumulated a complicated record on Indian affairs during his time in the Senate. During his first year in the Senate Gravel urged abolition of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, criticizing the agency for the pace of development of schools in Alaska, its paternalistic attitudes and the culturally inappropriate nature of its education, and advocating greater shared decision-making between the federal government and native communities in Alaska. Later, his views changed; in the early 1970s Gravel supported a demonstration project that established links between Alaskan villages and the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, for medical diagnostic communications. In 1971, he fended off accusations from Alaskan natives that he was not spending enough time working on their land claims. Gravel helped secure a private grant to facilitate the first Inuit Circumpolar Conference in 1977, attended by Inuit representatives from Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. These conferences now also include representatives from Russia. In 1977, Gravel helped lead an effort to have the U.S. Interior Department rename Mount McKinley to Denali; this eventually led to Denali National Park being so named. Subsequently, Gravel proposed a never-built "Denali City" development above the Tokositna River near the mountain, to consist of a giant Teflon dome enclosing hotels, golf courses, condominiums, and commercial buildings. A related idea of his to build a high-speed rail line to Denali also failed to gain traction.
A key, emotional issue in the state at the time was "locking up Alaska", making reference to allocation of its vast, mostly uninhabited land. President Jimmy Carter desired to put large portions of this land under federal protection against development, a move that some Alaskans vociferously opposed.
In 1978 Gravel blocked passage, via procedural delays such as walking out of House–Senate conference committee meetings, of a complex bill which represented a compromise on land use policy. The bill would have put some of Alaska's vast federal land holdings under state control while preserving other portions for federal parks and refuges; the blocking action earned Gravel the enmity of fellow Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who had supported the compromise. In 1980, a new lands bill came up for consideration, that was less favorable to Alaskan interests and more liked by environmentalists; it set aside of Alaska's for national parks, conservation areas, and other restricted federal uses. Gravel blocked it, as not ensuring enough future development in the state. A new compromise version of the 1980 bill came forward, which reduced the land set aside to . Representing Alaskan interests, Gravel tried to stop the bill, including by filibuster. But the Senate voted for cloture and passed the bill. Frustrated, Gravel said, "the legislation denies Alaska its rights as a state, and denies the U.S. crucial strategic resources," and opined that the Senate was "a little bit like a tank of barracudas". Nonetheless, the bill, known as the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, was signed by President Carter shortly before leaving the White House, and led to millions of acres being set aside in the state for national parks, wildlife refuges, and other kinds of areas under protection.
In 1978 Gravel authored and secured the passage into federal law of the General Stock Ownership Corporation, that became Subchapter U of the Tax Code under the Internal Revenue Code of 1954. This gave states the ability to create corporations that would invest in for-profit enterprises, with all citizens within the state owning shares in the corporation. Gravel's attempt to convince the Alaska state legislature to create such a corporation failed, as did a 1980 state ballot initiative towards the same end, but nevertheless the creation of the General Stock Ownership Corporation in federal law turned out to be significant in the development of binary economics.
Loss of Senate seat in 1980
In 1980 Gravel was challenged for the Democratic Party's nomination by State Representative Clark Gruening, the grandson of the man Gravel had defeated in a primary 12 years earlier. One of Gruening's supporters was Gravel's former backer Gottstein. Several factors made Gravel vulnerable. As an insurgent candidate in 1968 Gravel had never established a firm party base. Not liking to hunt or fish, he was also always culturally suspect in the state.
The primary campaign was bitterly fought. A group of Democrats, including future governor Steve Cowper, led the campaign against Gravel, with Gravel's actions in respect to the 1978 and 1980 Alaskan lands bills a major issue. This was especially so given that the 1980 bill's dénouement happened but a week before the primary. The sources of Gravel's campaign funds, some of which Gravel readily acknowledged came from political action committees outside the state, also became an issue in the contest. Gruening had pledged that he would not take special interest group money, but Gravel said that Gruening was "dishonest" in accepting individual contributors from Jewish donors living outside the state because to him such contributors comprised "a special interest group ... that seeks to influence the foreign policy of the U.S."
Gruening won the primary with about 55 percent of the vote to Gravel's 44 percent. Gravel later conceded that by the time of his defeat, he had alienated "almost every constituency in Alaska". Another factor may have been Alaska's blanket primary system of the time, which allowed unlimited voting across party lines and from its many independents; Republicans believed Gruening would be an easier candidate to defeat in the general election.
Gruening lost the general election to Republican Frank Murkowski. Gravel was the last Democrat to represent Alaska in Congress for 28 years, until Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich defeated Ted Stevens, by then an aged, iconic figure who had just been convicted of seven felonies for taking unreported gifts, in a very close and protracted election result in 2008. Stevens's conviction was subsequently vacated due to prosecutorial misconduct.
Career after leaving the Senate
Of his 1980 defeat, Gravel later recalled: "I had lost my career. I lost my marriage. I was in the doldrums for ten years after my defeat," and "Nobody wanted to hire me for anything important. I felt like I was worthless. I didn't know what I could do." By his own later description, Gravel was a womanizer, and had an affair while in the Senate, and in December 1980 he and his wife Rita separated. They filed for divorce in September 1981; she later received all of his Senate pension income.
During the 1980s Gravel was a real estate developer in Anchorage and Kenai, Alaska, a consultant, and a stockbroker. One of his real estate ventures, a condominium business, was forced to declare bankruptcy and a lawsuit ensued. In 1986 Gravel worked in partnership with Merrill Lynch Capital Markets to buy losses that financially troubled Alaska Native Corporations could not take as tax deductions and sell them to large national companies looking for tax writeoffs. Gravel also learned computer programming at some point but never practiced it.
In 1984 Gravel married his second wife, Whitney Stewart Gravel, a former administrative assistant for Senator Jacob Javits.
Return to politics
In 1989 Gravel reentered politics. He founded and led The Democracy Foundation, which promotes direct democracy. He established the Philadelphia II corporation, which seeks to replicate the original 1787 Constitutional Convention and have a Second Constitutional Convention to bring about direct democracy Gravel led an effort to get a United States Constitutional amendment to allow voter-initiated federal legislation similar to state ballot initiatives. He argued that Americans are able to legislate responsibly, and that the Act and Amendment in the National Initiative would allow American citizens to become "law makers". However such efforts met with little success.
In 2001, Gravel became director of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, where he admired institute co-founder Gregory Fossedal's work on direct democracy in Switzerland. By 2004, Gravel had become chair of the institute, and Fossedal (who in turn was a director of the Democracy Foundation) gave the introduction at Gravel's presidential announcement.
In 2003 Gravel gave a speech on direct democracy at a conference hosted by the American Free Press. The event was cosponsored by the Barnes Review, a journal that endorses Holocaust denial. After some controversy over his appearance, Gravel apologized, saying he did not realize the group's ties. Gravel said repeatedly that he did not share the group's views on the Holocaust, stating, "You better believe I know that six million Jews were killed. [The Barnes Review publishers] are nutty as loons if they don't think it happened". The group invited Gravel to speak again, but he declined.
Mike and Whitney Gravel lived in Arlington County, Virginia, until 2010 and then resided in Burlingame, California. They have the two grown children from his first marriage, Martin Gravel and Lynne Gravel Mosier, and four grandchildren. Whitney Gravel's income sustained the couple from 1998 on. In the 2000s, Gravel suffered poor health, requiring three surgeries in 2003 for back pain and neuropathy. Due to unreimbursed medical expenses and debts from his political causes, he declared personal bankruptcy in 2004. He began taking a salary from the non-profit organizations for which he was working; much of that income was lent to his presidential campaign. In 2007, he declared that he had "zero net worth".
2008 presidential campaign
Democratic Party primaries
At the start of 2006 Gravel decided the best way he could promote direct democracy and the National Initiative was to run for president. On April 17, 2006, Gravel became the first candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2008 election, announcing his run in a speech to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Short on campaign cash, he took public transportation to get to his announcement. (Gravel called for public financing of elections.) Other principal Gravel positions were the FairTax, as well as withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq within 120 days and a single payer national health care system.
Gravel had opposed the Iraq War, and President George W. Bush's rationale for it, from the beginning, and in 2006 said that U.S. troops in Iraq, as in Vietnam, had "died in vain". He also favored a regional peace initiative, as well as reparation payments for Iraqis. Gravel also called for a "U.S. corporate withdrawal from Iraq", with reconstruction contracts held by U.S. companies to be turned over to Iraqi firms.
Gravel campaigned almost full-time in New Hampshire, the first primary state, following his announcement. Opinion polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination showed Gravel with 1 percent or less support. By the end of March 2007, Gravel's campaign had less than $500 in cash on hand against debts of nearly $90,000.
Because of his time in the Senate, Gravel was invited to many of the early Democratic presidential debates. During the initial one at South Carolina State University on April 26, 2007, he suggested a bill requiring the president to withdraw from Iraq on pain of criminal penalties. He also advocated positions such as opposing preemptive nuclear war. He stated that the Iraq War had the effect of creating more terrorists and that the "war was lost the day that George Bush invaded Iraq on a fraudulent basis". Regarding his fellow candidates, he said, "I got to tell you, after standing up with them, some of these people frighten me – they frighten me." In one such exchange, Gravel said, "Tell me, Barack, who do you want to nuke?" to which Obama responded, "I'm not planning to nuke anybody right now, Mike, I promise."
Media stories said that Gravel was responsible for much of whatever "heat" and "flashpoints" had taken place during the Democratic debates. Gravel gained considerable publicity by shaking up the normally staid multiple-candidate format; The New York Times' media critic said that what Gravel had done was "steal a debate with outrageous, curmudgeonly statements". The Internet was a benefit: a YouTube video of his responses in the debate was viewed more than 225,892 times, ranking seventeenth in most views for week and first among news and politics clips; his name became the fifteenth most searched-for in the blogosphere; and his website garnered more traffic than those of frontrunners Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or John Edwards. Gravel appeared on the popular Colbert Report on television on May 2, and his campaign and career were profiled in national publications such as Salon. Two wordless, Warholesque campaign videos, "Rock" and "Fire", were released on YouTube in late May and became hits, and eventually gained over 760,000 and 185,000 views respectively. "Rock", in turn, was given airtime during an episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Some thirty-five years after he first achieved the national spotlight, he had found it again.
All this did not improve his performance in the polls; a May 2007 CNN poll showed him with less than 0.5 percent support among Democrats. Gravel was in the next several debates, in one case after CNN reversed a decision to exclude him. Like some of the other second-tier candidates, Gravel did not get as much time as the leaders; during the June 2, 2007, New Hampshire debate, which lasted two hours, he was asked 10 questions and allowed to speak for five minutes and 37 seconds.
During the July 23, 2007, CNN-YouTube presidential debate, Gravel responded to audience applause when he had complained of a lack of airtime and said: "Thank you. Has it been fair thus far?" Detractors began to liken him to "the cranky uncle who lives in the attic," or "the angry old guy that just seemed to want to become angrier". Berkeley political scientist David Terr found that moderator George Stephanopoulos directed roughly five percent of his questions to Gravel; in a poll asking who did the best in the debate, Gravel placed seventh among the eight candidates. National opinion polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination continued to show Gravel with one percent or zero percent numbers. By the end of the third-quarter 2007, Gravel had about $17,500 in cash on hand, had collected a total of about $380,000 during the 2008 election cycle, and was continuing to run a threadbare campaign with minimal staff.
Beginning with the October 30, 2007, Philadelphia event, Gravel was excluded from most of the debates, with the debate sponsors or the Democratic National Committee saying Gravel's campaign had not met fund-raising, polling, or local campaign organizational thresholds. For the Philadelphia exclusion, Gravel blamed corporate censorship on the part of sponsor owner and alleged military-industrial complex member General Electric for his exclusion and mounted a counter-gathering and debate against a video screen a short distance away, but he had lost his easiest publicity. In reaction, supporters organized "mass donation days" to try to help the campaign gain momentum and funds, such as on December 5, 2007, the anniversary of the Repeal of Prohibition.
Gravel did not compete in the initial 2008 vote, the Iowa caucuses, but was still subjected to a false report from MSNBC that he had pulled out of the race afterward. Gravel did focus his attention on the second 2008 vote, the New Hampshire primary. In early January, Mother Jones' investigative reporter James Ridgeway was filmed interviewing and following Gravel in New Hampshire, in which Gravel is interviewed on the phone by Neal Conan for NPR's, Talk of the Nation. He received about 400 votes out of some 280,000 cast in New Hampshire, or 0.14 percent, before taking time off to improve his health. He resumed campaigning, but fared no better in subsequent states. By the end of January 2008, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Gravel were the only remaining Democrats from the initial debates still running; Gravel vowed to stay in the presidential campaign until November. On March 11, 2008, Gravel continued to remain in the Democratic race but additionally endorsed a Green Party candidate for president, Jesse Johnson, saying he wanted to help Johnson prevail against Green Party rivals Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader. By late March, Gravel had almost no fundraising and was only on the ballot in one of the next ten Democratic primaries.
Switch to Libertarian Party
On March 25, 2008, Gravel announced that he would leave the Democrats and join the Libertarian Party, saying: "My libertarian views, as well as my strong stance against war, the military industrial complex and American imperialism, seem not to be tolerated by Democratic Party elites who are out of touch with the average American; elites that reject the empowerment of American citizens I offered to the Democratic Party at the beginning of this presidential campaign with the National Initiative for Democracy." The following day Gravel entered the race for the 2008 Libertarian presidential nomination, saying that he would have run as a third-party candidate all along except that he needed the public exposure that came from being in the earlier Democratic debates. Gravel's initial notion of running as a fusion candidate with other parties was met with skepticism.
As a Libertarian candidate, Gravel faced resistance to his past support of big government initiatives and his unorthodox positions around direct democracy. Nevertheless, he garnered more support than he had as a Democrat, placing second and third in two April 2008 straw polls. In the May 25 balloting at the 2008 Libertarian National Convention in Denver, Gravel finished fourth out of eight candidates on the initial ballot, with 71 votes out of a total 618; he trailed former Congressman and eventual winner Bob Barr, author Mary Ruwart, and businessman Wayne Allyn Root. Gravel's position did not subsequently improve and he was eliminated on the fourth ballot. Afterwards he stated that "I just ended my political career," but he vowed to continue promoting his positions as a writer and lecturer.
2008–early 2019
In June 2008 Gravel endorsed the NYC 9/11 Ballot Initiative, saying the measure would create a "citizens commission rather than a government commission" with subpoena power against top U.S. officials to "make a true investigation as to what happened" regarding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He later said, "Individuals in and out of government may certainly have participated with the obviously known perpetrators of this dastardly act. Suspicions abound over the analysis presented by government. Obviously an act that has triggered three wars, Afghan, Iraqi and the continuing War on Terror, should be extensively investigated which was not done and which the government avoids addressing."
In August 2008 Gravel was speaking to a crowd of supporters of Sami Al-Arian (who two years earlier had pleaded guilty and been sentenced to prison for a charge of conspiracy in helping Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a "specially designated terrorist" organization) when he was caught on tape saying of Al-Arian's prosecutor, "Find out where he lives, find out where his kids go to school, find out where his office is: picket him all the time. Call him a racist in signs if you see him. Call him an injustice. Call him whatever you want to call him, but in his face all the time." Gravel was criticized for potentially involving the children of the prosecutor, and Al-Arian's family disavowed the sentiments.
Gravel defended Alaska Governor Sarah Palin after she was chosen as Republican presidential nominee John McCain's running mate in September 2008. He praised Palin's record in standing up to corruption among Alaskan Republicans, thought her national inexperience was an asset not a detriment, and predicted that the "Troopergate" investigation into whether she improperly fired a state official would "come out in her favor". Gravel made clear he would not support or vote for either McCain–Palin or Obama–Biden in the general election. The following year Gravel said that Palin's politics were "terrible, but that doesn't detract from the fact that she's a very talented person". He predicted that Palin would run for president in 2012 and that "she's going to surprise a lot of people". Palin did not run, but Gravel's prediction about "TrooperGate" was accurate as Palin was found not to have violated ethics laws.
In 2013, by the invitation of Hamed Ghashghavi, the secretary for international affairs of the 3rd International Conference on Hollywoodism in Tehran, Iran, Gravel attended that event as an Iranian government-organized anti-Hollywood conference. Gravel noted that the conference was attended by "various elements of extremes" but said it was necessary to discuss how the U.S. film industry portrayed Iran in order to prevent "an insane war" between the two nations.
In May 2013 Gravel was one of several former members of Congress to accept $20,000 from the Paradigm Research Group, an advocacy group for UFO disclosure, as part of holding what they termed a Citizen Hearing on Disclosure, modeled after congressional hearings, regarding supposed U.S. government suppression of evidence concerning UFOs. Gravel said, "Something is monitoring the planet, and they are monitoring it very cautiously, because we are a very warlike planet," and, "What we're faced with here is, in areas of the media, and the government too, an effort to marginalize and ridicule people who have specific knowledge."
In December 2014 Gravel was announced as the new CEO of KUSH, a company which makes marijuana-infused products for medicinal and recreational use, and a subsidiary of Cannabis Sativa, Inc. He also became an Independent Director of Cannabis Sativa.
During the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries, Gravel praised Bernie Sanders and his campaign, saying "Bernie is one of the most gifted politicians I have ever observed. He's a person of great integrity and very clever." Gravel predicted that Sanders would be elected president but would be unable to get his key reforms through Congress, and thus that Sanders and his supporters should back some of the proposals of the National Initiative.
In 2016, Gravel said in relation to the September 11 attacks: "We killed 58,000 American servicemen in the Vietnam War and all they did was die in vain. What's so unusual about killing 3,000 more in order to develop the grist for the mill to empower into infinity the military industrial complex?" and "There's no question in my mind that 9/11 was an inside job". The remarks were later disavowed by even Gravel supporters.
By 2019 Gravel was living in Seaside, California. He was working on a book, at the time titled Human Governance, about his principal idea for direct democracy, a U.S. Constitutional Amendment to create a "Legislature of the People" that would circumvent the existing Congress. The book was self-published at the end of the year by AuthorHouse under the title The Failure of Representative Government and the Solution: A Legislature of the People.
2020 presidential campaign
On March 19, 2019, Gravel announced that he was considering running in the 2020 Democratic primaries. He said, "The goal will not be to win, but to bring a critique of American imperialism to the Democratic debate stage." An exploratory committee was formed, with filing a statement of organization with the Federal Election Commission on that same day. The filing was the idea of a group of teenagers, led by David Oks and Henry Williams, inspired by the podcast Chapo Trap House, and done with Gravel's consent (after a week spent convincing him of the idea's merits), but without his involvement. Intrigued by the group's commitment to amplifying his long-held policy goals, Gravel (who would be old on Inauguration Day in 2021) said he planned to meet with them in April, and to discuss a 2020 White House run with his wife. On April 2, 2019, Gravel filed to officially run for office. The campaign called itself the "#Gravelanche".
Gravel's initial stated goal was merely to qualify for debates by getting the required 65,000 small donors. He discouraged people from voting for him and said his preferences were Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard, both of whom favor a non-interventionist foreign policy. But on April 29, Gravel's campaign said he was running to win, not just to participate in debates. In a subsequent interview, though, Gravel emphasized the virtue of Sanders and Gabbard in some order as a presidential ticket. Statements like these caused Vox to call Gravel "2020's oddest Democratic presidential candidate". The New York Times Magazine included Gravel as an example in the rise of democratic socialism in the United States also exemplified by Sanders's 2016 race and the 2018 election of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: "[Gravel's] campaign represents the most absurd form of a legitimate movement on the left that feels little obligation to the Democratic Party."
In June 2019, Gravel touted the endorsement of Muntadher al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who, in December 2008, made headlines after he threw his shoes at President George W. Bush in protest of the U.S. war in Iraq. Al-Zaidi endorsed Gravel based on his promise to improve White House policies regarding Iraq and the Middle East.
On June 13, 2019, the Democratic Party announced the 20 major candidates who qualified for the first debate later that month. Gravel was one of the four who missed out (the others were Montana Governor Steve Bullock, U.S. Representative Seth Moulton, and Miramar, Florida, Mayor Wayne Messam). Gravel had been unable to get the requisite number of donations, or to score one percent or better in enough polls (many polls did not even include him). Nevertheless, Gravel said he would not drop out and would try to qualify for the July debate. In early July, however, Gravel's campaign said it was still 10,000 contributions short of the 65,000-donor threshold and that it was "nearing its conclusion". It solicited suggestions for where to donate $100–150,000 of leftover campaign funds. Gravel added that he had always planned on ending the campaign before the teenagers in charge of it needed to return to school. A few days later the campaign became the first to run an attack ad against Democratic front-runner Joe Biden, using the text "Is this the best our party has to offer?"
Gravel's campaign crossed the threshold of 65,000 donors on July 12, 2019, meeting the qualification mark for that month's debate. But because 20 other candidates, the maximum allowed to participate, had already met at least the polling criterion, which takes priority over the donor criterion, Gravel was not invited.
The campaign officially came to a close on August 6, 2019, with Gravel endorsing both Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard for president. Gravel's campaign later stated on Twitter that they never wanted to win but saw the campaign as an "intimately democratic" project and expressed honor at working with Gravel. Gravel said he would divide remaining campaign funds between charity and a new think tank which would espouse his ideas.
The Gravel Institute
Gravel used some of the funds remaining from his 2020 presidential campaign to found an eponymous progressive think tank called The Gravel Institute in 2019. As noted by Vice magazine, the institute aims to do battle with PragerU from a left-wing perspective. Launched in September 2020, the new entity said it would "carry on the life's work of former U.S Senator Mike Gravel in fighting for global peace and democracy. Its mission is to promote bold and forward-looking ideas about a more peaceful and egalitarian world, and to build a robust movement of young people to win it". Contributors announced include Cornel West and Slavoj Žižek, as well as Lower Brule Indian Reservation activist Nick Estes. Other presenters have included and will include H. Jon Benjamin, Briahna Joy Gray, Bernie Sanders, Chelsea Manning, Richard Wolff, Stephanie Kelton, Zephyr Teachout, David Cross, Jabari Brisport, Zohran Mamdani, and Gravel himself (though it is unknown if his appearance will be cancelled due to his death in June 2021, or if the video has already been recorded).
Death
Gravel died of multiple myeloma at his home in Seaside, California, on June 26, 2021, at age 91.
The obituary for him in The New York Times stated that Gravel was "a two-term Democratic senator from Alaska ... who was perhaps better known as an unabashed attention-getter" who later become known for "mounting long-shot presidential runs". The obituary in The Washington Post was similar, saying that Gravel was "an Alaska Democrat with a flair for the theatrical who rose from obscurity to brief renown" and later "ran quixotic campaigns for the presidency". The Anchorage Daily News quoted Gravel as saying of himself in 1989, "I'm an independent kind of guy. A rough and ready kind of guy. My glands work in a certain way that make me stand up, foolishly sometimes, and fight."
Political positions
Alan Abramowitz and Jeffrey Allan Segal described Gravel as "a maverick, if not an eccentric, in the Senate." His Americans for Democratic Action "Liberal Quotient" scores ranged from 81 out of 100 (1971) to 39 out of 100 (1980), with an average of around 61. His American Conservative Union scores ranged from 0 out of 100 (several years, including 1971 and 1972) to 38 out of 100 (1979), with an average of 14. Abramowitz and Segal note that Gravel's lowest ADA ratings coincided with his two Senate re-election bids, and for the most part his highest ACU ratings followed the same pattern.
In 1972, as a young senator, Gravel published Citizen Power: A People's Platform, a manifesto outlining what Kirkus Reviews termed a "populist reform [that] would provide 'balanced political power' between the people and government and business interests."
Civil rights issues
On drug policy, Gravel said in 2007 that he favored decriminalization and treating addiction as a public health matter. During his 2008 presidential candidacy he condemned the War on Drugs as a failure, saying that it did "nothing but savage our inner cities and put our children at risk". Gravel called for abolition of capital punishment in his book Citizen Power, and adhered to this position during his 2008 run for president. He supported abortion rights.
During the 2008 campaign Gravel was a strong supporter of LGBT rights. He supported same-sex marriage and opposed the Defense of Marriage Act and the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. He wrote in 2008 that "depriving gays and lesbians of equal rights is immoral".
Foreign policy and defense issues
Gravel was a critic of American imperialism.
Gravel firmly opposed U.S. military action against Iran and Syria. He voiced opposition to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the use of torture, indefinite detention, and what he called "flagrant ignorance" of the Geneva Convention. In 2014 Gravel called for the release of the full, unredacted Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture.
Gravel opposed the use of international sanctions as a policy tool and blamed the ones against Iraq under Saddam Hussein for the deaths of a half-million children in that country. In 2013 Gravel said that sanctions against Iran were "illegal".
During his 2008 candidacy, Gravel called for a cut in military spending, variously reported to be 15 percent or 50 percent. He called for the savings to boost public education spending. To spur international nuclear nonproliferation efforts, Gravel called for unilateral reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
In 2008 Gravel criticized the decision of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to not pursue the efforts to impeach George W. Bush and the attempted impeachment of Dick Cheney, saying also that Bush and Cheney had committed crimes and deserved "to be prosecuted" at The Hague. In 2013 he expressed disdain for President Obama, calling him "a total fraud" and saying that both Bush and Obama should be tried "for the crimes and murders they've committed" in the International Court of Justice. Gravel specifically condemned Obama for the drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere.
Economy, immigration, and environment
During his 2008 candidacy Gravel favored a FairTax scheme, which would abolish the Internal Revenue Service, eliminate the federal income tax (which Gravel called "corrupt"), and impose a national sales tax. While Gravel described FairTax as "progressive", others have criticized it as "regressive", disproportionately benefiting the wealthiest Americans. To offset the new sales taxes on essential goods, Gravel's plan called for monthly government rebate payments to individuals and families. During his 2020 campaign Gravel also voiced support for a third legislative body that would give the people direct control of the budget as well as the implementation of a land value tax.
Gravel opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) during his 2008 candidacy, calling it unfair and economically harmful and needing renegotiation. Gravel believed that NAFTA was the "root cause" of illegal migration to the U.S. He favored a guest worker program and "setting up naturalization procedures that would fairly bring immigrants into legal status". In a 2007 interview, Gravel identified himself as "very much of a globalist" who believed in open markets and open borders and condemned the scapegoating of undocumented immigrants. Gravel also said that he favored eliminating the cap on H1B visas.
As a senator from Alaska, Gravel favored drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but opposed it during his 2008 campaign. In 2008, Gravel supported a carbon tax to combat climate change.
Gravel spoke in favor of net neutrality during his presidential campaign.
Education and health care
Gravel called for the cost of college tuition to be borne by the federal government, rather than students. In his 2008 campaign, he called the No Child Left Behind Act "a failure" and called for it to be "reformed and fully funded". He expressed support for universal pre-kindergarten and the expansion of the Head Start program; and expressed an openness to charter schools and school vouchers. He also suggested extending the school day and the school year, and supported merit pay for teachers.
Gravel also called for publicly funded universal health care to replace the current employer-sponsored health insurance system. He supported "full funding" of the VA system. When asked in 2007 about naturopathy, homeopathy, and acupuncture, Gravel said that he was "very very much in favor" of holistic health care.
Awards and honors
In 2008 Gravel received the Columbia University School of General Studies' first annual Isaac Asimov Lifetime Achievement Award.
Electoral history
Writings
Gravel, Mike. Jobs and More Jobs. Mt. McKinley Publishers, 1968.
Gravel, Mike. Citizen Power: A People's Platform. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972. .
revised and reissued as Citizen Power: A Mandate for Change, AuthorHouse, 2008. .
Gravel, Mike and Lauria, Joe. A Political Odyssey: The Rise of American Militarism and One Man's Fight to Stop It. Seven Stories Press, 2008. .
Gravel, Mike and Eisenbach, David. The Kingmakers: How the Media Threatens Our Security and Our Democracy. Phoenix Books, 2008. .
Gravel, Mike. Voice of a Maverick: The Speeches and Writings of Senator Mike Gravel. Brandywine House, 2008.
Gravel, Mike. Foreword to Poisoned Power: The Case Against Nuclear Power Plants. John W. Goffman & Arthur R. Tamplin, Rodale Press, Inc., Emmaus, PA, June 1971.
Gravel, Mike. The Failure of Representative Government and the Solution: A Legislature of the People. AuthorHouse, 2020.
Explanatory notes
References
Citations
General references
The Pentagon Papers Senator Gravel Edition. Vol. Five: Critical Essays. Boston: Beacon Press, 1972. 341p. plus 72p. of Index to Vol. I–IV of the Papers; Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, editors.
External links
Mike Gravel official website
The Gravel Institute
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Writers from Anchorage, Alaska | false | [
"The 1947 Raisin Bowl was a college football postseason bowl game that featured the Utah State Aggies and the San Jose State Spartans.\n\nBackground\nThe Aggies (their school was then known as Utah Agricultural) were co-champions of the Mountain States Conference with Denver, though they would be the one invited to play San Jose State in the Raisin Bowl in Fresno. The Spartans were an independent team, though they had eight victories under first year head coach Wilbur V. Hubbard. This was the first bowl game for either team.\n\nGame summary\nSan Jose State - Jackson 10 yd pass from Schemmel\nSan Jose State - Jackson 11 yd pass from Schemmel\nSan Jose State - Rhyne 2 yd run\n\nSubstitute halfback Bill Schembel threw a pass to quarterback Bill Jackson for a touchdown to open the scoring for the Spartans. Jackson returned the favor in the second half with a touchdown pass to Schembel. Bill Rhyne scored on a one-yard touchdown run to make it 20-0. The Aggies had the ball at the Spartan one in the first and fourth quarter, but they did not score, a consequence of having only 126 yards the entire game.\n\nAftermath\nThe Aggies did not reach a bowl game again until 1960. The Spartans returned to the Raisin Bowl two years later.\n\nStatistics\n\nReferences\n\nRaisin Bowl\nRaisin Bowl\nSan Jose State Spartans football bowl games\nUtah State Aggies football bowl games\nJanuary 1947 sports events\nRaisin Bowl",
"A must pass bill is a measure, considered vitally important, that must be passed and enacted by the United States Congress (e.g. funding for a function of government). Because of the time-sensitive nature of these bills, they are often amended with policy provisos, or 'riders', unrelated to the principal function of the bill itself. These riders can become law given the president's lack of line-item veto power.\n\nThese measures can also be exploited by the executive branch as was the case with former President Trump's border wall funding. The President claimed he would veto a spending bill that did not include $5.7 billion in border wall funding. The inability of the United States Congress to organize a bill that would have passed both chambers, with President Trump's requirements, resulted in a 35-day federal government shutdown between 2018 and 2019. In this case, the policy rider actually became a so-called poison pill as the added legislation was so controversial that it severely limited the possibility of the bill passing.\n\nAnother example of a must pass bill is legislation that raises the federal government's borrowing limit, known as the debt ceiling. Without passage, the federal government would no longer be able to borrow money to pay its bills, which experts conclude would have damaging effects on the global economy.\n\nReferences\n\nUnited States federal legislation"
] |
[
"Mike Gravel",
"Nuclear issues and the Cold War",
"Did Mike Gravel have problem with Nuclear bomb ?",
"he then made a personal appeal to President Nixon to stop the test.",
"What were his reasons for opposing it ?",
"he said the risk of the test was not worth taking.",
"Did he have problem with the Cold War ?",
"1971, Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction",
"Did they pass the Bill ?",
"I don't know."
] | C_672c6c49d0d948738552b25aaebe1fb2_0 | What else did he do to stop the nuclear plant ? | 5 | What else did Mike Gravel do to stop the nuclear plant besides sponsoring a bill? | Mike Gravel | In the late 1960s and early 1970s the U.S. Department of Defense was in the process of performing tests for the nuclear warhead for the Spartan anti-ballistic missile. Two tests, the "Milrow" and "Cannikin" tests, were planned, involving the detonation of nuclear bombs under Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Milrow test would be a one megaton calibration exercise for the second, and larger five megaton, Cannikin test, which would measure the effectiveness of the warhead. Gravel opposed the tests in Congress. Before the Milrow test took place in October 1969, he wrote that there were significant risks of earthquakes and other adverse consequences, and called for an independent national commission on nuclear and seismic safety to be created; he then made a personal appeal to President Nixon to stop the test. After Milrow was conducted, there was continued pressure on the part of environmental groups against going forward with the larger Cannikin test, while the Federation of American Scientists claimed that the warhead being tested was already obsolete. In May 1971, Gravel sent a letter to U.S. Atomic Energy Commission hearings held in Anchorage, in which he said the risk of the test was not worth taking. Eventually a group not involving Gravel took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to issue an injunction against it, and the Cannikin test took place as scheduled in November 1971. Gravel had failed to stop the tests (notwithstanding his later claims during his 2008 presidential campaign). Nuclear power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for the commercial generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gravel publicly opposed this policy; besides the dangers of nuclear testing, he was a vocal critic of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw American nuclear efforts, and of the powerful United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had a stranglehold on nuclear policy and which Gravel tried to circumvent. In 1971, Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction and to make power utilities liable for any nuclear accidents; in 1975, he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974, Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power. Six months before U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's secret mission to the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.) in July 1971, Gravel introduced legislation to recognize and normalize relations with China, including a proposal for unity talks between the P.R.C. and the Republic of China (Taiwan) regarding the Chinese seat on the U.N. Security Council. Gravel reiterated his position in favor of recognition, with four other senators in agreement, during Senate hearings in June 1971. CANNOTANSWER | in 1975, he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974, Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power. | Maurice Robert Gravel ( ; May 13, 1930 – June 26, 2021) was an American politician who served as a United States Senator from Alaska from 1969 to 1981 as a member of the Democratic Party, and who, in later life, twice ran for the presidential nomination of that party.
Born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, by French-Canadian immigrant parents, Gravel moved to Alaska in the late 1950s, becoming a real estate developer and entering politics. He served in the Alaska House of Representatives from 1963 to 1967, and also became Speaker of the Alaska House. Gravel was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1968.
As a senator, Gravel became nationally known for his forceful, but unsuccessful, attempts to end the draft during the War in Vietnam, and for putting the Pentagon Papers into the public record in 1971. He conducted a campaign for the Democratic nomination in 1972 for Vice President of the United States, and then played a crucial role in obtaining Congressional approval for the Trans-Alaska pipeline in 1973. He was re-elected to the Senate in 1974, but was defeated in his bid for a third term in the primary election in 1980.
An advocate of direct democracy and the National Initiative, Gravel staged a run for the 2008 Democratic nomination for President of the United States. His campaign failed to gain support, and in March 2008, he left the Democratic Party and joined the Libertarian Party to compete unsuccessfully for its presidential nomination and the inclusion of the National Initiative into the Libertarian Platform. He ran for president as a Democrat again in the 2020 election, in a campaign that ended four months after it began. Two years before his death, Gravel and his campaign staff founded the progressive think tank The Gravel Institute.
Early life, military service, education
Gravel was born on May 13, 1930, in Springfield, Massachusetts, one of five children of French-Canadian immigrant parents, Alphonse and Marie (née Bourassa) Gravel. His parents were part of the Quebec diaspora, and he was raised in a working-class neighborhood during the Great Depression, speaking only French until he was seven years old. Calling him "Mike" from an early age, his father valued work above all else, while his mother stressed the importance of education.
Gravel was educated in parochial schools as a Roman Catholic. There he struggled, due to what he later said was undiagnosed dyslexia, and was left back in third grade. He completed elementary school in 1945 and his class voted him "most charming personality". A summer job as a soda jerk led to Gravel handing out campaign fliers for local candidates on his boss's behalf; Gravel was immediately impressed with "the awesomeness of political office".
Gravel then boarded at Assumption Preparatory School in Worcester, Massachusetts, where his performance was initially mediocre. By Gravel's telling, in the summer of 1948 he intended to volunteer for the Israel Defense Forces during the 1947–1949 Palestine war, but Alexandra Tolstaya told him to return to school. There an English teacher, the Assumptionist Edgar Bourque, gave him personal attention, improving Gravel's language skills and instructing him in public speaking. Gravel's grades improved measurably in his final year and he graduated in 1949. His sister, Marguerite, became a Holy Cross nun, but Gravel himself struggled with the Catholic faith. He studied for one year at Assumption College, a Catholic school in Worcester, then transferred for his sophomore year to American International College in Springfield. Journalist I. F. Stone and philosopher Bertrand Russell strongly influenced Gravel in their willingness to challenge assumptions and oppose social convention and political authority.
Around May 1951, Gravel saw that he was about to be drafted and instead enlisted in the U.S. Army for a three-year term so that he could get into the Counterintelligence Corps. After basic training and counterintelligence school at Fort Holabird in Maryland and in South Carolina, he went to Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia. While he expected to be sent off to the Korean War when he graduated as a second lieutenant in early 1952, he was instead assigned to Stuttgart, West Germany, as a Special Adjutant in the Army's Communications Intelligence Service. In Germany, Gravel conducted surveillance operations on civilians and paid off spies. After about a year, he transferred to Orléans, France, where his French language abilities (if not his French-Canadian accent) allowed him to infiltrate French communist rallies. He worked as a Special Agent in the Counterintelligence Corps until 1954, eventually becoming a first lieutenant.
Following his discharge, Gravel entered the Columbia University School of General Studies in New York City, where he studied economics and received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1956. He moved to New York "flat broke" and supported himself by working as a bar boy in a hotel, driving a taxicab, and working in the investment bond department at Bankers Trust. During this time he left the Roman Catholic faith.
Move to Alaska
Gravel "decided to become a pioneer in a faraway place," and moved to pre-statehood Alaska in August 1956, without funds or a job, looking for a place where someone without social or political connections could be a viable candidate for public office. Alaska's voting age of 19, less than most other states' 21, played a role in his decision, as did its newness and cooler climate. Broke when he arrived, he immediately found work in real estate sales until winter arrived. Gravel then was employed as a brakeman for the Alaska Railroad, working the snow-clearing train on the Anchorage-to-Fairbanks run. Subsequently, he opened a small real estate brokerage in Anchorage (the Territory of Alaska not requiring a license) and saved enough so as not to have to work the railroad again. The firm was named the M. R. Gravel Real Estate Company. Gravel joined the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, and continued a sporadic relationship with the movement throughout his life.
Seeing Alaska as a wide-open place with no political establishment or entrenched interests, Gravel quickly became part of the civic scene there. By October 1957 he was a Division Chairman for Anchorage for the Democratic Central Committee in the territory, and by June 1958 he was president of the Alaska Young Democrats organization. He also became active in the United States Junior Chamber (Jaycees), and by early 1958 his duties included handing out awards for farmer of the year.
By early 1958, Gravel was running as Democratic Party primary candidate for a Third Division seat in House of Representative of the territorial legislature. (This was one of the four judicial divisions into which Alaska was sectioned at the time.) Using the slogan "Gravel, the Roadbed to Prosperity", he ran but lost. At the same time, he was also an advocate for Alaskan statehood.
Gravel went on a 44-state national speaking tour concerning tax reform in 1959, sponsored by the Jaycees, often dressing for events as Paul Revere. Gravel was selected from some two thousand applications for this position. The tour received a good amount of local newspaper coverage at its various stops, with Gravel's first name sometimes given as Mike and other times as Maurice. The tour's general message was an urging of "lower taxes, more efficiency in government and a system of taxation moderate at all levels of income". At several stops Gravel stated that the "tide of socialism" had to be stopped. He elaborated at another stop, "It is part of our Jaycee creed that economic justice can best be won by free men through free enterprise. We really want to see that free enterprise become our inheritance." The tour was scheduled to conclude in Washington D.C., on Tax Day, April 15, with petition signatures accumulated for reform to be presented to U.S. lawmakers: dressed as Revere, Gravel rode with the petition to the steps of the U.S. Capitol.
The tour over, Gravel married Rita Jeannette Martin at the First Methodist Church of Anchorage on April 29, 1959. She was a native of Montana who had attended Billings Business College before moving to Alaska two years prior and becoming a secretary in the office of the Anchorage city manager. She had also been named Anchorage's "Miss Fur Rendezvous" of 1958. They had two children, Martin Anthony Gravel and Lynne Denise Gravel, born c. 1960 and 1962 respectively.
Gravel ran without avail for the City Council in Anchorage in 1960. During this time, he had become a successful real estate agent; after the 1960 election, he became a property developer in a mobile home park on the outskirts of Anchorage. After a partner ran into financial difficulty, however, the project went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and Gravel was forced out in 1962.
State legislator
With the support of Alaska wholesale grocer Barney Gottstein and supermarket builder Larry Carr, Gravel ran for the Alaska House of Representatives representing Anchorage in 1962, initially assigned the 10th and then 8th districts. Alaska had very crowded primaries that year: Gravel was one of 33 Democrats, along with 21 Republicans, who were running for the chance to compete for the 14 House seats allocated to the 8th district. Gravel made it through the primary, and in November eight Republicans and six Democrats were elected to the House from the district, with Gravel finishing eighth overall and third among with Democrats, with 8,174 votes. Gottstein became Gravel's main financial backer during most of his subsequent campaigns.
Gravel served in the Alaska House of Representatives from January 28, 1963 to January 22, 1967, winning reelection in 1964. In his first term, he served as a minority member on two House committees: Commerce, and Labor and Management. He co-authored and sponsored the act that created the Alaska State Commission for Human Rights. Gravel was the chief architect of the law that created a regional high school system for rural Alaska; this allowed Alaska Natives to attend schools near where they lived instead of having to go to schools run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the lower 48 states.
During the half-years that the legislature was not in session, Gravel resumed his real estate work. With Gottstein and Carr's backing, he became quite successful as a property developer on the Kenai Peninsula.
During 1965 and 1966, he served as the Speaker of the House, surprising observers by winning that post. Gravel convinced former Speaker Warren A. Taylor to not try for the position against him by promising Taylor chairmanship of the Rules Committee, then reneged on the promise. Gravel denied later press charges that he had promised but not delivered on other committee chairmanships. As Speaker he antagonized fellow lawmakers by imposing his will on the legislature's committees and feuded with Alaska State Senate president Robert J. McNealy.
Gravel did not run for reelection in 1966, instead choosing to run for Alaska's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, losing the primary to four-term incumbent Democrat Ralph Rivers by 1,300 votes and splitting the Democratic Party in the process. Rivers lost the general election that year to Republican state Senator Howard Pollock. Following this defeat, Gravel returned to the real estate business in Anchorage.
U.S. Senator
Election to Senate in 1968
In 1968, Gravel ran against 81-year-old incumbent Democratic United States Senator Ernest Gruening, a popular former governor of the Alaska Territory who was considered one of the fathers of Alaska's statehood, for his party's nomination to the U.S. Senate. Gravel's campaign was primarily based on his youth and telegenic appearance rather than issue differences. He hired Joseph Napolitan, the first self-described political consultant, in late 1966. They spent over a year and a half planning a short, nine-day primary election campaign that featured the slogans "Alaska first" and "Let's do something about the state we're in", the distribution of a collection of essays titled Jobs and More Jobs, and the creation of a half-hour, well-produced, glamorized biographical film of Gravel, Man for Alaska. The film was shown twice a day on every television station in Alaska, and carried by plane and shown on home projectors in hundreds of Alaska Native villages. The heavy showings quickly reversed a 2–to–1 Gruening lead in polls into a Gravel lead. Gravel visited many remote villages by seaplane and showed a thorough understanding of the needs of the bush country and the fishing and oil industries. Gravel also benefited from maintaining a deliberately ambiguous posture about Vietnam policy. Gruening had been one of only two Senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and his opposition to President Lyndon B. Johnson's war policies was harming him among the Democratic electorate; according to Gravel, "all I had to do was stand up and not deal with the subject, and people would assume that I was to the right of Ernest Gruening, when in point of fact I was to the left of him". In Man for Alaska, Gravel argued that "the liberals" would come to West Germany's defense if it was attacked, and that the same standard should apply to the United States' allies in Asia. During the campaign he also claimed that he was "more in the mainstream of American thought on Vietnam" than Gruening, despite the fact that he had written to Gruening to praise his antiwar stance four years earlier. Decades later, Gravel conceded that "I said what I said [about Vietnam] to advance my career."
Gravel beat Gruening in the primary by about 2,000 votes. Gruening found "the unexpected defeat hard to take" and thought that some aspects of his opponent's biographical film had misled viewers. In the general election, Gravel faced Republican Elmer E. Rasmuson, a banker and former mayor of Anchorage. College students in the state implored Gruening to run a write-in campaign as an Independent, but legal battles prevented him from getting approval for it until only two weeks were left. A late appearance by anti-war presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy did not offset Gruening's lack of funds and endorsements; meanwhile, Gravel and Rasmuson both saturated local media with their filmed biographies. On November 5, 1968, Gravel won the general election with 45 percent of the vote to Rasmuson's 37 percent and Gruening's 18 percent.
Senate assignments and style
When Gravel joined the U.S.Senate in January 1969, he requested and received a seat on the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, which had direct relevance to Alaskan issues. He also got a spot on the Public Works Committee, which he held throughout his time in the Senate. Finally, he was a member of the Select Committee on Small Business. In 1971 he became chair of the Public Works Committee's Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds, and by 1973 he was chair of its Subcommittee on Water Resources, then later its Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution. Gravel was also initially named to the Joint Committee on Congressional Operations. By 1973 Gravel was off the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee and the Select Small Business Committee and instead a member of the Finance Committee, and by 1977 was chair of that body's Subcommittee on Energy and Foundations. By 1973 he had also been on the ad hoc Special Committee to Study Secret and Confidential Government Documents.
By his own admission, Gravel was too new and "too abrasive" to be effective in the Senate by the usual means of seniority-based committee assignments or negotiating deals with other senators, and was sometimes seen as arrogant or a nuisance by the more senior and tradition-oriented members. Gravel relied on attention-getting gestures to achieve what he wanted, hoping national exposure would force other senators to listen to him. But even senators who agreed with him on issues considered his methods to be showboating.
As part of this approach, Gravel voted with Southern Democrats to keep the Senate filibuster rule in place, and accordingly supported Russell Long and Robert Byrd but opposed Ted Kennedy in Senate leadership battles. In retrospective assessment, University of Alaska Anchorage history professor Stephen Haycox said, "Loose cannon is a good description of Gravel's Senate career. He was an off-the-wall guy, and you weren't really ever sure what he would do."
Nuclear issues and the Cold War
In the late 1960s and early 1970s the U.S. Department of Defense was in the process of performing tests for the nuclear warhead for the Spartan anti-ballistic missile. Two tests, the "Milrow" and "Cannikin" tests, were planned, involving the detonation of nuclear bombs under Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Milrow test would be a one-megaton calibration exercise for the second and larger five-megaton Cannikin test, which would measure the effectiveness of the warhead. Gravel opposed the tests. Before the Milrow test took place in October 1969, he wrote that there were significant risks of earthquakes and other adverse consequences and called for an independent national commission on nuclear and seismic safety; he then made a personal appeal to President Richard Nixon to stop the test.
After Milrow was conducted, there was continued pressure on the part of environmental groups against going forward with the Cannikin test, while the Federation of American Scientists claimed that the warhead being tested was already obsolete. In May 1971 Gravel sent a letter to U.S. Atomic Energy Commission hearings held in Anchorage in which he said the risk of the test was not worth taking. Eventually a group not involving Gravel took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to issue an injunction against it, and the Cannikin test took place as scheduled in November 1971. Gravel had failed to stop the tests (notwithstanding his later claims during his 2008 presidential campaign).
In 1971 Gravel voted against the Nixon administration's proposed anti-ballistic missile system, the Safeguard Program, having previously vacillated over the issue, suggesting that he might be willing to support it in exchange for federal lands in Alaska being opened up for private oil drilling. His vote alienated Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, who had raised funds for Gravel's primary campaign.
Nuclear power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for commercial generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gravel publicly opposed this policy; besides the dangers of nuclear testing, he was a vocal critic of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw American nuclear efforts, and of the powerful United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had a stranglehold on nuclear policy and which Gravel tried to circumvent. In 1971 Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction and to make power utilities liable for any nuclear accidents; in 1975 he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974 Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power.
Six months before U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's July 1971 secret mission to the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.), Gravel introduced legislation to recognize and normalize relations with the P.R.C., including a proposal for unity talks between the P.R.C. and the Republic of China (Taiwan) regarding the Chinese seat on the U.N. Security Council. He reiterated his position in favor of recognition, with four other senators in agreement, during Senate hearings in June 1971.
Vietnam War, the draft, and the Pentagon Papers
Although he did not campaign against the Vietnam War during his first Senate campaign, by the end of 1970 Gravel was speaking out against United States policy in southeast Asia: in December of that year he persuaded William Fulbright to join him in a spontaneous two-day filibuster against a $155 million military aid package to Cambodia's Khmer Republic government in the Cambodian Civil War.
President Richard Nixon had campaigned in 1968 on a promise to end the U.S. military draft, a decision endorsed by the February 1970 report of the Gates Commission.
The existing draft law was scheduled to conclude at the end of June 1971, and the Senate faced a contentious debate about whether to extend it as the Vietnam War continued. The Nixon administration announced in February 1971 that it wanted a two-year extension to June 1973, after which the draft would end; Army planners had already been operating under the assumption of a two-year extension, after which an all-volunteer force would be in place. Skeptics such as Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John Stennis thought this unrealistic and wanted a four-year extension, but the two-year proposal is what went forward in Congress. By early May 1971, Gravel had indicated his intention to filibuster the draft renewal legislation, halting conscription and thereby bringing U.S. involvement in the war to a rapid end. During this period he also supported efforts to mobilize and influence public opinion against the war, endorsing the "Vietnam War Out Now" rallies in Washington D.C. and San Francisco on April 24, 1971, and financing a broadcast campaign by the antiwar group War No More with a personal loan. In June 1972 he escorted a group of over 100 antiwar protesters, including psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, actress Candice Bergen, theater producer and director Joseph Papp, and peditrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, into the United States Capitol Building; the group was arrested after blocking a hallway outside the Senate chamber.
By June 1971, some Democratic senators opposed to the war wanted to limit the renewal to a one-year extension, while others wanted to end it immediately; Gravel reiterated that he was one of the latter, saying, "It's a senseless war, and one way to do away with it is to do away with the draft." A Senate vote on June 4 indicated majority support for the two-year extension. On June 18 Gravel announced again his intention to counteract that by filibustering the renewal legislation, defending the practice against those who associated it only with blocking civil rights legislation. The first filibuster attempt failed on June 23 when, by three votes, the Senate voted cloture for only the fifth time since 1927.
Protracted negotiations took place over House conference negotiations on the bill, revolving in large part around Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield's eventually unsuccessful amendment to tie renewal to a troop withdrawal timetable from Vietnam; during this time the draft law expired and no more were conscripted. On August 5, the Nixon administration pleaded for a renewal before the Senate went on recess, but Gravel blocked Stennis's attempt to limit debate, and no vote was held. Finally on September 21, 1971, the Senate invoked cloture over Gravel's second filibuster attempt by one vote, and then passed the two-year draft extension. Gravel's attempts to stop the draft had failed (notwithstanding Gravel's later claims that he had stopped or shortened the draft, taken at face value in some media reports, during his 2008 presidential campaign).
Meanwhile, on June 13, 1971, The New York Times began printing large portions of the Pentagon Papers. The papers were a large collection of secret government documents and studies pertaining to the Vietnam War, of which former Defense Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg had made unauthorized copies and was determined to make public. Ellsberg had for a year and a half approached members of Congress – such as William Fulbright, George McGovern, Charles Mathias, and Pete McCloskey – about publishing the documents, on the grounds that the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution would give congressional members immunity from prosecution, but all had refused. Instead, Ellsberg gave the documents to the Times.
The U.S. Justice Department immediately tried to halt publication, on the grounds that the information revealed within the papers harmed the national interest. Within the next two weeks, a federal court injunction halted publication in the Times; The Washington Post and several other newspapers began publishing parts of the documents, with some of them also being halted by injunctions; and the whole matter went to the U.S. Supreme Court for arguments. Looking for an alternate publication mechanism, Ellsberg returned to his idea of having a member of Congress read them, and chose Gravel based on the latter's efforts against the draft; Gravel agreed where previously others had not. Ellsberg arranged for the papers to be given to Gravel on June 26 via an intermediary, Post editor Ben Bagdikian. Gravel used his counter-intelligence experience to choose a midnight transfer in front of the Mayflower Hotel in the center of Washington, D.C.
On the night of June 29, 1971, Gravel attempted to read the papers on the floor of the Senate as part of his filibuster against the draft, but was thwarted when no quorum could be formed. Gravel instead convened a session of the Buildings and Grounds subcommittee that he chaired. He got New York Congressman John G. Dow to testify that the war had soaked up funding for public buildings, thus making discussion of the war relevant to the committee. He began reading from the papers with the press in attendance, omitting supporting documents that he felt might compromise national security, and declaring, "It is my constitutional obligation to protect the security of the people by fostering the free flow of information absolutely essential to their democratic decision-making."
He read until 1 a.m., culminating by saying "Arms are being severed. Metal is clashing through human bodies because of the public policy this government and all its branches continue to support." Then with tears and sobs he said that he could no longer physically continue, the previous three nights of sleeplessness and fear about the future having taken their toll. Gravel ended the session by, with no other senators present, establishing unanimous consent to insert 4,100 pages of the Papers into the Congressional Record of his subcommittee. The following day, the Supreme Court's New York Times Co. v. United States decision ruled in favor of the newspapers and publication in the Times and others resumed. In July 1971 Bantam Books published an inexpensive paperback edition of the papers containing the material the Times had published.
Gravel, too, wanted to privately publish the portion of the papers he had read into the record, believing that "immediate disclosure of the contents of these papers will change the policy that supports the war". After being turned down by many commercial publishers, on August 4 he reached agreement with Beacon Press, the publishing arm of the Unitarian Universalist Association, of which Gravel was a member. Announced on August 17 and published on October 22, 1971, this four-volume, relatively expensive set became the "Senator Gravel Edition", which studies from Cornell University and the Annenberg Center for Communication have labeled as the most complete edition of the Pentagon Papers to be published. The "Gravel Edition" was edited and annotated by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, and included an additional volume of analytical articles on the origins and progress of the war, also edited by Chomsky and Zinn. Beacon Press then was subjected to a FBI investigation; an outgrowth of this was the Gravel v. United States court case, which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled upon in June 1972; it held that the Speech or Debate Clause did grant immunity to Gravel for his reading the papers in his subcommittee, did grant some immunity to Gravel's congressional aide, but granted no immunity to Beacon Press in relation to their publishing the same papers. The U.S. Senate Democratic Caucus backed Gravel in the case, but due to Republican opposition it did not pay Gravel's legal fees, leaving him owing $25,000 (the equivalent of $150,000 in 2019, adjusted for inflation).
The events of 1971 changed Gravel in the following months from an obscure freshman senator to a nationally visible political figure. He became a sought-after speaker on the college circuit as well as at political fundraisers, opportunities he welcomed as lectures were "the one honest way a Senator has to supplement his income". But his speaking tours caused him to accrue one of the worst absentee records in the Senate. The Democratic candidates for the 1972 presidential election sought his endorsement. In January 1972 Gravel endorsed Maine Senator Ed Muskie, hoping that his support would help Muskie with the party's left wing and in ethnic French-Canadian areas during the first primary contest in New Hampshire (Muskie won, but not overwhelmingly, and his campaign faltered soon after). In April 1972 Gravel appeared on all three networks' nightly newscasts to decry the Nixon administration's reliance on Vietnamization by making reference to the secret National Security Study Memorandum 1 document, which stated it would take 8–13 years for the Army of the Republic of Vietnam to defend South Vietnam. Gravel made excerpts from the study public, but senators Robert P. Griffin and William B. Saxbe blocked his attempt to read NSSM 1 into the Congressional Record.
Domestic policy
In 1970 Gravel co-sponsored legislation to establish a guaranteed minimum income, entitling poor families to up to $6,300 a year (the equivalent of $42,000 in 2019 after adjustment for inflation). He subsequently voted for a "work bonus" program, which would have entitled low-income working families with dependent children if they were paying Social Security or Railroad Retirement taxes to a non-taxable bonus of up to 10 percent of their wages. Gravel also supported extending Social Security to all federal employees and introduced a campaign finance reform bill in 1971 that would have enacted full disclosure of campaign financing, placed limits on large donations, media spending and individual candidate spending.
In 1969, Gravel was the only Democratic Senator outside of the South to vote for Nixon's Supreme Court nominee Clement Haynsworth. The following year Gravel opposed Nixon's next pick, G. Harrold Carswell.
Run for vice president in 1972
Gravel actively campaigned for the office of Vice President of the United States during the 1972 presidential election, announcing on June 2, 1972, over a month before the 1972 Democratic National Convention began, that he was interested in the nomination should the choice be opened up to convention delegates. Toward this end he began soliciting delegates for their support. He was not alone in this effort, as former Governor of Massachusetts Endicott Peabody had been running a quixotic campaign for the same post since the prior year. Likely presidential nominee George McGovern was in fact considering the unusual move of naming three or four acceptable vice-presidential candidates and letting the delegates choose.
On the convention's final day, July 14, 1972, McGovern selected and announced Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his vice-presidential choice. Eagleton was unknown to many delegates and the choice seemed to smack of traditional ticket balancing considerations. Thus there were delegates willing to look elsewhere. Gravel was nominated by Bettye Fahrenkamp, the Democratic National Committeewoman from Alaska. He then seconded his own nomination, breaking down in tears at his own words and maybe trying to withdraw his nomination. In any case he won 226 delegate votes, coming in third behind Eagleton and Frances "Sissy" Farenthold of Texas, in chaotic balloting that included several other candidates.
Gravel attracted some attention for his efforts: writer Norman Mailer said he "provided considerable excitement" and was "good-looking enough to have played leads in B-films", while Rolling Stone correspondent Hunter S. Thompson said Gravel "probably said a few things that might have been worth hearing, under different circumstances". Yet the process was doubly disastrous for the Democrats. In the time consumed by nominating and seconding and all the vice-presidential candidates' speeches, the attention of the delegates on the floor was lost and McGovern's speech was pushed to 3:30 a.m. The haste with which Eagleton was selected led to surprise when his past mental health treatments were revealed; he withdrew from the ticket soon after the convention, to be replaced by Sargent Shriver.
Reelection to Senate in 1974
Several years earlier, Alaska politicians had speculated that Gravel would have a hard time getting both renominated and elected when his first term expired, given that he was originally elected without a base party organization and tended to focus on national rather than local issues.
Nonetheless, after receiving support from national and local labor leaders, securing key earmarks, and producing another half-hour TV advertorial, in 1974 Gravel was reelected to the Senate, with 58 percent of the vote to 42 percent for Republican State Senator C. R. Lewis, who was a national officer of the John Birch Society.
Second term
Gravel's reelection campaign left him $65,000–$75,000 in debt. In 1975 The Washington Post reported on a memo by his executive assistant laying out a fundraising strategy to tackle this, including raising funds from oil companies, meeting with previous donors and "inquir[ing] into the governmental priorities of these people and their groups in the coming session", as well as obtaining further speaking fees to reduce his personal debt. This was followed by a number of stories about links between Gravel, lobbyists and fundraisers, including one that was widely publicized in Alaska about his holding a share in a Colorado resort with two Washington lobbyists he was working with on land and energy legislation. Gravel had been open about the investment and had opposing views to one of the lobbyists on nuclear power. In 1980 the Wall Street Journal published details about his fundraising activities, including writing to individuals and PACs in the oil industry, pledging to kill off proposals for a windfall profits tax on the sector, and traveling in the Middle East with the business partner of one of his donors to sell Alaskan land to businessmen. Gravel suggested that critics of his fundraising were "naive".
In 1975 Gravel introduced an amendment to cut the number of troops overseas by 200,000, but it was defeated on a voice vote.
In September 1975 Gravel was named as one of several Congressional Advisers to the Seventh Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly, which met to discuss problems related to economic development and international economic cooperation.
In June 1976 Gravel was the focus of a federal investigation into allegations that he was involved in a sex-for-vote arrangement. Congressional staff clerk Elizabeth Ray (who had already been involved in a sex scandal that led to the downfall of Representative Wayne Hays) said that in August 1972 she had sex with Gravel aboard a houseboat on the Potomac River, under the instruction of Representative Kenneth J. Gray, her boss at the time. Gray allegedly wanted to secure Gravel's support for further funding for construction of the National Visitor Center in Washington, a troubled project that was under the jurisdiction of subcommittees that both members chaired. Another Congressional staffer said she witnessed the boat encounter, but Gravel said at the time that he had never met either of the women. Gravel and Gray strongly denied that they had made any arrangement regarding legislation, and neither was ever charged with any wrongdoing. Decades later Gravel wrote that he had indeed had sex with Ray, but had not changed any votes because of it.
Gravel and his main financial backer, Gottstein, had a falling out in 1978, during the Congressional debate over whether to allow a controversial sale of U.S. F-15 fighter aircraft to Saudi Arabia. An ardent backer of Israel, Gottstein opposed the sale and asked Gravel to vote against it. But Gravel not only voted for it but made an emotional speech attacking the anti-sale campaign. Gravel wrote in 2008 that it was the only time Gottstein had ever asked him for a favor, and the rupture resulted in their never speaking to each other again.
Alaskan issues
By 1971 Gravel was urging construction of the much-argued Trans-Alaska pipeline, addressing environmental concerns by saying that the pipeline's builders and operators should have "total and absolute" responsibility for any consequent environmental damage. Two years later the debate over the pipeline came to a crux, with The New York Times describing it as "environmentalists [in] a holy war with the major oil companies". In February 1973 the U.S. Court of Appeals blocked the issuance of permits for construction; Gravel and fellow Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens reacted by urging Congress to pass legislation overturning the court's decision. Environmentalists opposed to the pipeline, such as the Environmental Defense Fund and the Sierra Club then sought to use the recently passed National Environmental Policy Act to their advantage; Gravel designed an amendment to the pipeline bill that would immunize the pipeline from any further court challenges under that law, and thus speed its construction. Passage of the amendment became the key battle regarding the pipeline. On July 17, 1973, in a dramatic roll-call vote, the Gravel amendment was approved as a 49–49 tie was broken in favor by Vice President Spiro Agnew. The actual bill enabling the pipeline then passed easily; Gravel had triumphed in what became perhaps his most lasting accomplishment as a senator.
In opposition to the Alaskan fishing industry, Gravel advocated American participation in the formation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. For two years he opposed legislation that established a Exclusive Economic Zone for marine resources. He was one of only 19 senators to vote against Senate approval for the expanded zone in 1976, saying it would undermine the U.S. position in Law of the Sea negotiations and that nations arbitrarily extending their fishing rights limits would "produce anarchy of the seas". The legislation was passed, and the United States has signed but never ratified the Law of the Sea treaty.
Gravel accumulated a complicated record on Indian affairs during his time in the Senate. During his first year in the Senate Gravel urged abolition of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, criticizing the agency for the pace of development of schools in Alaska, its paternalistic attitudes and the culturally inappropriate nature of its education, and advocating greater shared decision-making between the federal government and native communities in Alaska. Later, his views changed; in the early 1970s Gravel supported a demonstration project that established links between Alaskan villages and the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, for medical diagnostic communications. In 1971, he fended off accusations from Alaskan natives that he was not spending enough time working on their land claims. Gravel helped secure a private grant to facilitate the first Inuit Circumpolar Conference in 1977, attended by Inuit representatives from Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. These conferences now also include representatives from Russia. In 1977, Gravel helped lead an effort to have the U.S. Interior Department rename Mount McKinley to Denali; this eventually led to Denali National Park being so named. Subsequently, Gravel proposed a never-built "Denali City" development above the Tokositna River near the mountain, to consist of a giant Teflon dome enclosing hotels, golf courses, condominiums, and commercial buildings. A related idea of his to build a high-speed rail line to Denali also failed to gain traction.
A key, emotional issue in the state at the time was "locking up Alaska", making reference to allocation of its vast, mostly uninhabited land. President Jimmy Carter desired to put large portions of this land under federal protection against development, a move that some Alaskans vociferously opposed.
In 1978 Gravel blocked passage, via procedural delays such as walking out of House–Senate conference committee meetings, of a complex bill which represented a compromise on land use policy. The bill would have put some of Alaska's vast federal land holdings under state control while preserving other portions for federal parks and refuges; the blocking action earned Gravel the enmity of fellow Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who had supported the compromise. In 1980, a new lands bill came up for consideration, that was less favorable to Alaskan interests and more liked by environmentalists; it set aside of Alaska's for national parks, conservation areas, and other restricted federal uses. Gravel blocked it, as not ensuring enough future development in the state. A new compromise version of the 1980 bill came forward, which reduced the land set aside to . Representing Alaskan interests, Gravel tried to stop the bill, including by filibuster. But the Senate voted for cloture and passed the bill. Frustrated, Gravel said, "the legislation denies Alaska its rights as a state, and denies the U.S. crucial strategic resources," and opined that the Senate was "a little bit like a tank of barracudas". Nonetheless, the bill, known as the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, was signed by President Carter shortly before leaving the White House, and led to millions of acres being set aside in the state for national parks, wildlife refuges, and other kinds of areas under protection.
In 1978 Gravel authored and secured the passage into federal law of the General Stock Ownership Corporation, that became Subchapter U of the Tax Code under the Internal Revenue Code of 1954. This gave states the ability to create corporations that would invest in for-profit enterprises, with all citizens within the state owning shares in the corporation. Gravel's attempt to convince the Alaska state legislature to create such a corporation failed, as did a 1980 state ballot initiative towards the same end, but nevertheless the creation of the General Stock Ownership Corporation in federal law turned out to be significant in the development of binary economics.
Loss of Senate seat in 1980
In 1980 Gravel was challenged for the Democratic Party's nomination by State Representative Clark Gruening, the grandson of the man Gravel had defeated in a primary 12 years earlier. One of Gruening's supporters was Gravel's former backer Gottstein. Several factors made Gravel vulnerable. As an insurgent candidate in 1968 Gravel had never established a firm party base. Not liking to hunt or fish, he was also always culturally suspect in the state.
The primary campaign was bitterly fought. A group of Democrats, including future governor Steve Cowper, led the campaign against Gravel, with Gravel's actions in respect to the 1978 and 1980 Alaskan lands bills a major issue. This was especially so given that the 1980 bill's dénouement happened but a week before the primary. The sources of Gravel's campaign funds, some of which Gravel readily acknowledged came from political action committees outside the state, also became an issue in the contest. Gruening had pledged that he would not take special interest group money, but Gravel said that Gruening was "dishonest" in accepting individual contributors from Jewish donors living outside the state because to him such contributors comprised "a special interest group ... that seeks to influence the foreign policy of the U.S."
Gruening won the primary with about 55 percent of the vote to Gravel's 44 percent. Gravel later conceded that by the time of his defeat, he had alienated "almost every constituency in Alaska". Another factor may have been Alaska's blanket primary system of the time, which allowed unlimited voting across party lines and from its many independents; Republicans believed Gruening would be an easier candidate to defeat in the general election.
Gruening lost the general election to Republican Frank Murkowski. Gravel was the last Democrat to represent Alaska in Congress for 28 years, until Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich defeated Ted Stevens, by then an aged, iconic figure who had just been convicted of seven felonies for taking unreported gifts, in a very close and protracted election result in 2008. Stevens's conviction was subsequently vacated due to prosecutorial misconduct.
Career after leaving the Senate
Of his 1980 defeat, Gravel later recalled: "I had lost my career. I lost my marriage. I was in the doldrums for ten years after my defeat," and "Nobody wanted to hire me for anything important. I felt like I was worthless. I didn't know what I could do." By his own later description, Gravel was a womanizer, and had an affair while in the Senate, and in December 1980 he and his wife Rita separated. They filed for divorce in September 1981; she later received all of his Senate pension income.
During the 1980s Gravel was a real estate developer in Anchorage and Kenai, Alaska, a consultant, and a stockbroker. One of his real estate ventures, a condominium business, was forced to declare bankruptcy and a lawsuit ensued. In 1986 Gravel worked in partnership with Merrill Lynch Capital Markets to buy losses that financially troubled Alaska Native Corporations could not take as tax deductions and sell them to large national companies looking for tax writeoffs. Gravel also learned computer programming at some point but never practiced it.
In 1984 Gravel married his second wife, Whitney Stewart Gravel, a former administrative assistant for Senator Jacob Javits.
Return to politics
In 1989 Gravel reentered politics. He founded and led The Democracy Foundation, which promotes direct democracy. He established the Philadelphia II corporation, which seeks to replicate the original 1787 Constitutional Convention and have a Second Constitutional Convention to bring about direct democracy Gravel led an effort to get a United States Constitutional amendment to allow voter-initiated federal legislation similar to state ballot initiatives. He argued that Americans are able to legislate responsibly, and that the Act and Amendment in the National Initiative would allow American citizens to become "law makers". However such efforts met with little success.
In 2001, Gravel became director of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, where he admired institute co-founder Gregory Fossedal's work on direct democracy in Switzerland. By 2004, Gravel had become chair of the institute, and Fossedal (who in turn was a director of the Democracy Foundation) gave the introduction at Gravel's presidential announcement.
In 2003 Gravel gave a speech on direct democracy at a conference hosted by the American Free Press. The event was cosponsored by the Barnes Review, a journal that endorses Holocaust denial. After some controversy over his appearance, Gravel apologized, saying he did not realize the group's ties. Gravel said repeatedly that he did not share the group's views on the Holocaust, stating, "You better believe I know that six million Jews were killed. [The Barnes Review publishers] are nutty as loons if they don't think it happened". The group invited Gravel to speak again, but he declined.
Mike and Whitney Gravel lived in Arlington County, Virginia, until 2010 and then resided in Burlingame, California. They have the two grown children from his first marriage, Martin Gravel and Lynne Gravel Mosier, and four grandchildren. Whitney Gravel's income sustained the couple from 1998 on. In the 2000s, Gravel suffered poor health, requiring three surgeries in 2003 for back pain and neuropathy. Due to unreimbursed medical expenses and debts from his political causes, he declared personal bankruptcy in 2004. He began taking a salary from the non-profit organizations for which he was working; much of that income was lent to his presidential campaign. In 2007, he declared that he had "zero net worth".
2008 presidential campaign
Democratic Party primaries
At the start of 2006 Gravel decided the best way he could promote direct democracy and the National Initiative was to run for president. On April 17, 2006, Gravel became the first candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2008 election, announcing his run in a speech to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Short on campaign cash, he took public transportation to get to his announcement. (Gravel called for public financing of elections.) Other principal Gravel positions were the FairTax, as well as withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq within 120 days and a single payer national health care system.
Gravel had opposed the Iraq War, and President George W. Bush's rationale for it, from the beginning, and in 2006 said that U.S. troops in Iraq, as in Vietnam, had "died in vain". He also favored a regional peace initiative, as well as reparation payments for Iraqis. Gravel also called for a "U.S. corporate withdrawal from Iraq", with reconstruction contracts held by U.S. companies to be turned over to Iraqi firms.
Gravel campaigned almost full-time in New Hampshire, the first primary state, following his announcement. Opinion polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination showed Gravel with 1 percent or less support. By the end of March 2007, Gravel's campaign had less than $500 in cash on hand against debts of nearly $90,000.
Because of his time in the Senate, Gravel was invited to many of the early Democratic presidential debates. During the initial one at South Carolina State University on April 26, 2007, he suggested a bill requiring the president to withdraw from Iraq on pain of criminal penalties. He also advocated positions such as opposing preemptive nuclear war. He stated that the Iraq War had the effect of creating more terrorists and that the "war was lost the day that George Bush invaded Iraq on a fraudulent basis". Regarding his fellow candidates, he said, "I got to tell you, after standing up with them, some of these people frighten me – they frighten me." In one such exchange, Gravel said, "Tell me, Barack, who do you want to nuke?" to which Obama responded, "I'm not planning to nuke anybody right now, Mike, I promise."
Media stories said that Gravel was responsible for much of whatever "heat" and "flashpoints" had taken place during the Democratic debates. Gravel gained considerable publicity by shaking up the normally staid multiple-candidate format; The New York Times' media critic said that what Gravel had done was "steal a debate with outrageous, curmudgeonly statements". The Internet was a benefit: a YouTube video of his responses in the debate was viewed more than 225,892 times, ranking seventeenth in most views for week and first among news and politics clips; his name became the fifteenth most searched-for in the blogosphere; and his website garnered more traffic than those of frontrunners Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or John Edwards. Gravel appeared on the popular Colbert Report on television on May 2, and his campaign and career were profiled in national publications such as Salon. Two wordless, Warholesque campaign videos, "Rock" and "Fire", were released on YouTube in late May and became hits, and eventually gained over 760,000 and 185,000 views respectively. "Rock", in turn, was given airtime during an episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Some thirty-five years after he first achieved the national spotlight, he had found it again.
All this did not improve his performance in the polls; a May 2007 CNN poll showed him with less than 0.5 percent support among Democrats. Gravel was in the next several debates, in one case after CNN reversed a decision to exclude him. Like some of the other second-tier candidates, Gravel did not get as much time as the leaders; during the June 2, 2007, New Hampshire debate, which lasted two hours, he was asked 10 questions and allowed to speak for five minutes and 37 seconds.
During the July 23, 2007, CNN-YouTube presidential debate, Gravel responded to audience applause when he had complained of a lack of airtime and said: "Thank you. Has it been fair thus far?" Detractors began to liken him to "the cranky uncle who lives in the attic," or "the angry old guy that just seemed to want to become angrier". Berkeley political scientist David Terr found that moderator George Stephanopoulos directed roughly five percent of his questions to Gravel; in a poll asking who did the best in the debate, Gravel placed seventh among the eight candidates. National opinion polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination continued to show Gravel with one percent or zero percent numbers. By the end of the third-quarter 2007, Gravel had about $17,500 in cash on hand, had collected a total of about $380,000 during the 2008 election cycle, and was continuing to run a threadbare campaign with minimal staff.
Beginning with the October 30, 2007, Philadelphia event, Gravel was excluded from most of the debates, with the debate sponsors or the Democratic National Committee saying Gravel's campaign had not met fund-raising, polling, or local campaign organizational thresholds. For the Philadelphia exclusion, Gravel blamed corporate censorship on the part of sponsor owner and alleged military-industrial complex member General Electric for his exclusion and mounted a counter-gathering and debate against a video screen a short distance away, but he had lost his easiest publicity. In reaction, supporters organized "mass donation days" to try to help the campaign gain momentum and funds, such as on December 5, 2007, the anniversary of the Repeal of Prohibition.
Gravel did not compete in the initial 2008 vote, the Iowa caucuses, but was still subjected to a false report from MSNBC that he had pulled out of the race afterward. Gravel did focus his attention on the second 2008 vote, the New Hampshire primary. In early January, Mother Jones' investigative reporter James Ridgeway was filmed interviewing and following Gravel in New Hampshire, in which Gravel is interviewed on the phone by Neal Conan for NPR's, Talk of the Nation. He received about 400 votes out of some 280,000 cast in New Hampshire, or 0.14 percent, before taking time off to improve his health. He resumed campaigning, but fared no better in subsequent states. By the end of January 2008, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Gravel were the only remaining Democrats from the initial debates still running; Gravel vowed to stay in the presidential campaign until November. On March 11, 2008, Gravel continued to remain in the Democratic race but additionally endorsed a Green Party candidate for president, Jesse Johnson, saying he wanted to help Johnson prevail against Green Party rivals Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader. By late March, Gravel had almost no fundraising and was only on the ballot in one of the next ten Democratic primaries.
Switch to Libertarian Party
On March 25, 2008, Gravel announced that he would leave the Democrats and join the Libertarian Party, saying: "My libertarian views, as well as my strong stance against war, the military industrial complex and American imperialism, seem not to be tolerated by Democratic Party elites who are out of touch with the average American; elites that reject the empowerment of American citizens I offered to the Democratic Party at the beginning of this presidential campaign with the National Initiative for Democracy." The following day Gravel entered the race for the 2008 Libertarian presidential nomination, saying that he would have run as a third-party candidate all along except that he needed the public exposure that came from being in the earlier Democratic debates. Gravel's initial notion of running as a fusion candidate with other parties was met with skepticism.
As a Libertarian candidate, Gravel faced resistance to his past support of big government initiatives and his unorthodox positions around direct democracy. Nevertheless, he garnered more support than he had as a Democrat, placing second and third in two April 2008 straw polls. In the May 25 balloting at the 2008 Libertarian National Convention in Denver, Gravel finished fourth out of eight candidates on the initial ballot, with 71 votes out of a total 618; he trailed former Congressman and eventual winner Bob Barr, author Mary Ruwart, and businessman Wayne Allyn Root. Gravel's position did not subsequently improve and he was eliminated on the fourth ballot. Afterwards he stated that "I just ended my political career," but he vowed to continue promoting his positions as a writer and lecturer.
2008–early 2019
In June 2008 Gravel endorsed the NYC 9/11 Ballot Initiative, saying the measure would create a "citizens commission rather than a government commission" with subpoena power against top U.S. officials to "make a true investigation as to what happened" regarding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He later said, "Individuals in and out of government may certainly have participated with the obviously known perpetrators of this dastardly act. Suspicions abound over the analysis presented by government. Obviously an act that has triggered three wars, Afghan, Iraqi and the continuing War on Terror, should be extensively investigated which was not done and which the government avoids addressing."
In August 2008 Gravel was speaking to a crowd of supporters of Sami Al-Arian (who two years earlier had pleaded guilty and been sentenced to prison for a charge of conspiracy in helping Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a "specially designated terrorist" organization) when he was caught on tape saying of Al-Arian's prosecutor, "Find out where he lives, find out where his kids go to school, find out where his office is: picket him all the time. Call him a racist in signs if you see him. Call him an injustice. Call him whatever you want to call him, but in his face all the time." Gravel was criticized for potentially involving the children of the prosecutor, and Al-Arian's family disavowed the sentiments.
Gravel defended Alaska Governor Sarah Palin after she was chosen as Republican presidential nominee John McCain's running mate in September 2008. He praised Palin's record in standing up to corruption among Alaskan Republicans, thought her national inexperience was an asset not a detriment, and predicted that the "Troopergate" investigation into whether she improperly fired a state official would "come out in her favor". Gravel made clear he would not support or vote for either McCain–Palin or Obama–Biden in the general election. The following year Gravel said that Palin's politics were "terrible, but that doesn't detract from the fact that she's a very talented person". He predicted that Palin would run for president in 2012 and that "she's going to surprise a lot of people". Palin did not run, but Gravel's prediction about "TrooperGate" was accurate as Palin was found not to have violated ethics laws.
In 2013, by the invitation of Hamed Ghashghavi, the secretary for international affairs of the 3rd International Conference on Hollywoodism in Tehran, Iran, Gravel attended that event as an Iranian government-organized anti-Hollywood conference. Gravel noted that the conference was attended by "various elements of extremes" but said it was necessary to discuss how the U.S. film industry portrayed Iran in order to prevent "an insane war" between the two nations.
In May 2013 Gravel was one of several former members of Congress to accept $20,000 from the Paradigm Research Group, an advocacy group for UFO disclosure, as part of holding what they termed a Citizen Hearing on Disclosure, modeled after congressional hearings, regarding supposed U.S. government suppression of evidence concerning UFOs. Gravel said, "Something is monitoring the planet, and they are monitoring it very cautiously, because we are a very warlike planet," and, "What we're faced with here is, in areas of the media, and the government too, an effort to marginalize and ridicule people who have specific knowledge."
In December 2014 Gravel was announced as the new CEO of KUSH, a company which makes marijuana-infused products for medicinal and recreational use, and a subsidiary of Cannabis Sativa, Inc. He also became an Independent Director of Cannabis Sativa.
During the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries, Gravel praised Bernie Sanders and his campaign, saying "Bernie is one of the most gifted politicians I have ever observed. He's a person of great integrity and very clever." Gravel predicted that Sanders would be elected president but would be unable to get his key reforms through Congress, and thus that Sanders and his supporters should back some of the proposals of the National Initiative.
In 2016, Gravel said in relation to the September 11 attacks: "We killed 58,000 American servicemen in the Vietnam War and all they did was die in vain. What's so unusual about killing 3,000 more in order to develop the grist for the mill to empower into infinity the military industrial complex?" and "There's no question in my mind that 9/11 was an inside job". The remarks were later disavowed by even Gravel supporters.
By 2019 Gravel was living in Seaside, California. He was working on a book, at the time titled Human Governance, about his principal idea for direct democracy, a U.S. Constitutional Amendment to create a "Legislature of the People" that would circumvent the existing Congress. The book was self-published at the end of the year by AuthorHouse under the title The Failure of Representative Government and the Solution: A Legislature of the People.
2020 presidential campaign
On March 19, 2019, Gravel announced that he was considering running in the 2020 Democratic primaries. He said, "The goal will not be to win, but to bring a critique of American imperialism to the Democratic debate stage." An exploratory committee was formed, with filing a statement of organization with the Federal Election Commission on that same day. The filing was the idea of a group of teenagers, led by David Oks and Henry Williams, inspired by the podcast Chapo Trap House, and done with Gravel's consent (after a week spent convincing him of the idea's merits), but without his involvement. Intrigued by the group's commitment to amplifying his long-held policy goals, Gravel (who would be old on Inauguration Day in 2021) said he planned to meet with them in April, and to discuss a 2020 White House run with his wife. On April 2, 2019, Gravel filed to officially run for office. The campaign called itself the "#Gravelanche".
Gravel's initial stated goal was merely to qualify for debates by getting the required 65,000 small donors. He discouraged people from voting for him and said his preferences were Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard, both of whom favor a non-interventionist foreign policy. But on April 29, Gravel's campaign said he was running to win, not just to participate in debates. In a subsequent interview, though, Gravel emphasized the virtue of Sanders and Gabbard in some order as a presidential ticket. Statements like these caused Vox to call Gravel "2020's oddest Democratic presidential candidate". The New York Times Magazine included Gravel as an example in the rise of democratic socialism in the United States also exemplified by Sanders's 2016 race and the 2018 election of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: "[Gravel's] campaign represents the most absurd form of a legitimate movement on the left that feels little obligation to the Democratic Party."
In June 2019, Gravel touted the endorsement of Muntadher al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who, in December 2008, made headlines after he threw his shoes at President George W. Bush in protest of the U.S. war in Iraq. Al-Zaidi endorsed Gravel based on his promise to improve White House policies regarding Iraq and the Middle East.
On June 13, 2019, the Democratic Party announced the 20 major candidates who qualified for the first debate later that month. Gravel was one of the four who missed out (the others were Montana Governor Steve Bullock, U.S. Representative Seth Moulton, and Miramar, Florida, Mayor Wayne Messam). Gravel had been unable to get the requisite number of donations, or to score one percent or better in enough polls (many polls did not even include him). Nevertheless, Gravel said he would not drop out and would try to qualify for the July debate. In early July, however, Gravel's campaign said it was still 10,000 contributions short of the 65,000-donor threshold and that it was "nearing its conclusion". It solicited suggestions for where to donate $100–150,000 of leftover campaign funds. Gravel added that he had always planned on ending the campaign before the teenagers in charge of it needed to return to school. A few days later the campaign became the first to run an attack ad against Democratic front-runner Joe Biden, using the text "Is this the best our party has to offer?"
Gravel's campaign crossed the threshold of 65,000 donors on July 12, 2019, meeting the qualification mark for that month's debate. But because 20 other candidates, the maximum allowed to participate, had already met at least the polling criterion, which takes priority over the donor criterion, Gravel was not invited.
The campaign officially came to a close on August 6, 2019, with Gravel endorsing both Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard for president. Gravel's campaign later stated on Twitter that they never wanted to win but saw the campaign as an "intimately democratic" project and expressed honor at working with Gravel. Gravel said he would divide remaining campaign funds between charity and a new think tank which would espouse his ideas.
The Gravel Institute
Gravel used some of the funds remaining from his 2020 presidential campaign to found an eponymous progressive think tank called The Gravel Institute in 2019. As noted by Vice magazine, the institute aims to do battle with PragerU from a left-wing perspective. Launched in September 2020, the new entity said it would "carry on the life's work of former U.S Senator Mike Gravel in fighting for global peace and democracy. Its mission is to promote bold and forward-looking ideas about a more peaceful and egalitarian world, and to build a robust movement of young people to win it". Contributors announced include Cornel West and Slavoj Žižek, as well as Lower Brule Indian Reservation activist Nick Estes. Other presenters have included and will include H. Jon Benjamin, Briahna Joy Gray, Bernie Sanders, Chelsea Manning, Richard Wolff, Stephanie Kelton, Zephyr Teachout, David Cross, Jabari Brisport, Zohran Mamdani, and Gravel himself (though it is unknown if his appearance will be cancelled due to his death in June 2021, or if the video has already been recorded).
Death
Gravel died of multiple myeloma at his home in Seaside, California, on June 26, 2021, at age 91.
The obituary for him in The New York Times stated that Gravel was "a two-term Democratic senator from Alaska ... who was perhaps better known as an unabashed attention-getter" who later become known for "mounting long-shot presidential runs". The obituary in The Washington Post was similar, saying that Gravel was "an Alaska Democrat with a flair for the theatrical who rose from obscurity to brief renown" and later "ran quixotic campaigns for the presidency". The Anchorage Daily News quoted Gravel as saying of himself in 1989, "I'm an independent kind of guy. A rough and ready kind of guy. My glands work in a certain way that make me stand up, foolishly sometimes, and fight."
Political positions
Alan Abramowitz and Jeffrey Allan Segal described Gravel as "a maverick, if not an eccentric, in the Senate." His Americans for Democratic Action "Liberal Quotient" scores ranged from 81 out of 100 (1971) to 39 out of 100 (1980), with an average of around 61. His American Conservative Union scores ranged from 0 out of 100 (several years, including 1971 and 1972) to 38 out of 100 (1979), with an average of 14. Abramowitz and Segal note that Gravel's lowest ADA ratings coincided with his two Senate re-election bids, and for the most part his highest ACU ratings followed the same pattern.
In 1972, as a young senator, Gravel published Citizen Power: A People's Platform, a manifesto outlining what Kirkus Reviews termed a "populist reform [that] would provide 'balanced political power' between the people and government and business interests."
Civil rights issues
On drug policy, Gravel said in 2007 that he favored decriminalization and treating addiction as a public health matter. During his 2008 presidential candidacy he condemned the War on Drugs as a failure, saying that it did "nothing but savage our inner cities and put our children at risk". Gravel called for abolition of capital punishment in his book Citizen Power, and adhered to this position during his 2008 run for president. He supported abortion rights.
During the 2008 campaign Gravel was a strong supporter of LGBT rights. He supported same-sex marriage and opposed the Defense of Marriage Act and the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. He wrote in 2008 that "depriving gays and lesbians of equal rights is immoral".
Foreign policy and defense issues
Gravel was a critic of American imperialism.
Gravel firmly opposed U.S. military action against Iran and Syria. He voiced opposition to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the use of torture, indefinite detention, and what he called "flagrant ignorance" of the Geneva Convention. In 2014 Gravel called for the release of the full, unredacted Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture.
Gravel opposed the use of international sanctions as a policy tool and blamed the ones against Iraq under Saddam Hussein for the deaths of a half-million children in that country. In 2013 Gravel said that sanctions against Iran were "illegal".
During his 2008 candidacy, Gravel called for a cut in military spending, variously reported to be 15 percent or 50 percent. He called for the savings to boost public education spending. To spur international nuclear nonproliferation efforts, Gravel called for unilateral reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
In 2008 Gravel criticized the decision of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to not pursue the efforts to impeach George W. Bush and the attempted impeachment of Dick Cheney, saying also that Bush and Cheney had committed crimes and deserved "to be prosecuted" at The Hague. In 2013 he expressed disdain for President Obama, calling him "a total fraud" and saying that both Bush and Obama should be tried "for the crimes and murders they've committed" in the International Court of Justice. Gravel specifically condemned Obama for the drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere.
Economy, immigration, and environment
During his 2008 candidacy Gravel favored a FairTax scheme, which would abolish the Internal Revenue Service, eliminate the federal income tax (which Gravel called "corrupt"), and impose a national sales tax. While Gravel described FairTax as "progressive", others have criticized it as "regressive", disproportionately benefiting the wealthiest Americans. To offset the new sales taxes on essential goods, Gravel's plan called for monthly government rebate payments to individuals and families. During his 2020 campaign Gravel also voiced support for a third legislative body that would give the people direct control of the budget as well as the implementation of a land value tax.
Gravel opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) during his 2008 candidacy, calling it unfair and economically harmful and needing renegotiation. Gravel believed that NAFTA was the "root cause" of illegal migration to the U.S. He favored a guest worker program and "setting up naturalization procedures that would fairly bring immigrants into legal status". In a 2007 interview, Gravel identified himself as "very much of a globalist" who believed in open markets and open borders and condemned the scapegoating of undocumented immigrants. Gravel also said that he favored eliminating the cap on H1B visas.
As a senator from Alaska, Gravel favored drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but opposed it during his 2008 campaign. In 2008, Gravel supported a carbon tax to combat climate change.
Gravel spoke in favor of net neutrality during his presidential campaign.
Education and health care
Gravel called for the cost of college tuition to be borne by the federal government, rather than students. In his 2008 campaign, he called the No Child Left Behind Act "a failure" and called for it to be "reformed and fully funded". He expressed support for universal pre-kindergarten and the expansion of the Head Start program; and expressed an openness to charter schools and school vouchers. He also suggested extending the school day and the school year, and supported merit pay for teachers.
Gravel also called for publicly funded universal health care to replace the current employer-sponsored health insurance system. He supported "full funding" of the VA system. When asked in 2007 about naturopathy, homeopathy, and acupuncture, Gravel said that he was "very very much in favor" of holistic health care.
Awards and honors
In 2008 Gravel received the Columbia University School of General Studies' first annual Isaac Asimov Lifetime Achievement Award.
Electoral history
Writings
Gravel, Mike. Jobs and More Jobs. Mt. McKinley Publishers, 1968.
Gravel, Mike. Citizen Power: A People's Platform. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972. .
revised and reissued as Citizen Power: A Mandate for Change, AuthorHouse, 2008. .
Gravel, Mike and Lauria, Joe. A Political Odyssey: The Rise of American Militarism and One Man's Fight to Stop It. Seven Stories Press, 2008. .
Gravel, Mike and Eisenbach, David. The Kingmakers: How the Media Threatens Our Security and Our Democracy. Phoenix Books, 2008. .
Gravel, Mike. Voice of a Maverick: The Speeches and Writings of Senator Mike Gravel. Brandywine House, 2008.
Gravel, Mike. Foreword to Poisoned Power: The Case Against Nuclear Power Plants. John W. Goffman & Arthur R. Tamplin, Rodale Press, Inc., Emmaus, PA, June 1971.
Gravel, Mike. The Failure of Representative Government and the Solution: A Legislature of the People. AuthorHouse, 2020.
Explanatory notes
References
Citations
General references
The Pentagon Papers Senator Gravel Edition. Vol. Five: Critical Essays. Boston: Beacon Press, 1972. 341p. plus 72p. of Index to Vol. I–IV of the Papers; Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, editors.
External links
Mike Gravel official website
The Gravel Institute
|-
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1930 births
2021 deaths
1972 United States vice-presidential candidates
20th-century American male writers
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Writers about direct democracy
Writers from Anchorage, Alaska | false | [
"Sébastien Briat was an anti-nuclear activist from Meuse, France who gained international media attention in 2004 when he was struck and killed by a train carrying nuclear waste near Avricourt, France, after preparing to chain himself to the tracks while participating in a protest against nuclear power. Briat was 21 years old at the time. A local Green leader highlighted the wider significance of the incident as an illustration of the protestors' security and safety concerns relating to the transport: \"A train could hit something at any moment, and there's nothing that the SNCF nor the organisations which are meant to provide security can do about it.\"\n\nThe train was carrying 12 containers of waste from German nuclear power plants, which had been reprocessed in France, and was heading to Gorleben, Germany for storage. Germany has an agreement with France which allows Germany to send its nuclear waste to France for reprocessing, as long as Germany takes it back afterward for storage. Briat was one of at least 4,500 people who attended the protest, which the New York Times said was \"prompted by concerns about the safety of the nuclear material.\" \n\nAccording to The New York Times, Briat was \"surprised by the train.\" The train's conductor hit the brakes as soon as he saw Briat, but because of momentum, was not able to stop the train in time to prevent it from hitting him. Briat's leg was severed by the train. As he did not die immediately, paramedics started to take him to the hospital, but he died before reaching the hospital.\n\nAfterwards, it was reported that Briat had violated a number of key safety rules that protesters normally followed. It was reported among others that \"Briat had chained himself shortly after a curve in the track, behind a hill, near a forest, which made it impossible for the conductor to see him in time to stop. In addition, Briat did not wait for the train to stop before chaining himself to the track. Finally, Briat did not have other protesters stationed further down the tracks to alert the conductor with smoke signals. More experienced protesters normally take safety precautions to avoid these mistakes. \"\n\nAfter Briat's death, anti-nuclear activists canceled similar protests along the same train route.\n\nSee also\n Anti-nuclear movement in France\n Anti-nuclear movement in Germany\n\nReferences\n\nFrench anti–nuclear power activists\n2004 deaths\nYear of birth missing\nPeople from Meuse (department)",
"RanGAP is a protein involved in the transport of other proteins from the cytosol to the nucleus in eukaryotic cells.\n\nIn model species such as the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the primate Homo sapiens (See RANGAP1) and the plant Arabidopsis thaliana, it acts as a GTPase-activating protein, catalysing the conversion of cytosolically-bound RanGTP to RanGDP. It has the opposite function of the RCC1, a nuclear-located protein that converts RanGDP to RanGTP. Together, RanGAP and RCC1 maintain what is known as the ran gradient, where RanGDP is in higher concentrations in the cytosol, while RanGTP is in higher concentrations in the nucleus. It is this ran gradient which provides the energy necessary for the transport of proteins into and out of the nucleus by karyopherin proteins.\n\nLocation in cell\nIn mammalian and plant cells, RanGAP is located at the nuclear envelope during interphase. Animal RanGAP is bound to the nuclear pore component RANBP2 (Nup358). Plant RanGAP proteins do not contain the protein domain necessary for association with Nup358 but are targeted to the nuclear rim by the plant-specific WPP domain. In contrast to plant and animal cells, yeast RanGAP is located in the cytosol.\n\nRanGAP and the origin of eukaryotes\nTogether with RCC1 and components of the nuclear pore, RanGAP has been suggested to have evolved at the origin of eukaryotes.\n\nReferences\n\nTransport proteins"
] |
[
"Mike Gravel",
"Nuclear issues and the Cold War",
"Did Mike Gravel have problem with Nuclear bomb ?",
"he then made a personal appeal to President Nixon to stop the test.",
"What were his reasons for opposing it ?",
"he said the risk of the test was not worth taking.",
"Did he have problem with the Cold War ?",
"1971, Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction",
"Did they pass the Bill ?",
"I don't know.",
"What else did he do to stop the nuclear plant ?",
"in 1975, he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974, Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power."
] | C_672c6c49d0d948738552b25aaebe1fb2_0 | What did they do ? | 6 | What did Congress do ? | Mike Gravel | In the late 1960s and early 1970s the U.S. Department of Defense was in the process of performing tests for the nuclear warhead for the Spartan anti-ballistic missile. Two tests, the "Milrow" and "Cannikin" tests, were planned, involving the detonation of nuclear bombs under Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Milrow test would be a one megaton calibration exercise for the second, and larger five megaton, Cannikin test, which would measure the effectiveness of the warhead. Gravel opposed the tests in Congress. Before the Milrow test took place in October 1969, he wrote that there were significant risks of earthquakes and other adverse consequences, and called for an independent national commission on nuclear and seismic safety to be created; he then made a personal appeal to President Nixon to stop the test. After Milrow was conducted, there was continued pressure on the part of environmental groups against going forward with the larger Cannikin test, while the Federation of American Scientists claimed that the warhead being tested was already obsolete. In May 1971, Gravel sent a letter to U.S. Atomic Energy Commission hearings held in Anchorage, in which he said the risk of the test was not worth taking. Eventually a group not involving Gravel took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to issue an injunction against it, and the Cannikin test took place as scheduled in November 1971. Gravel had failed to stop the tests (notwithstanding his later claims during his 2008 presidential campaign). Nuclear power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for the commercial generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gravel publicly opposed this policy; besides the dangers of nuclear testing, he was a vocal critic of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw American nuclear efforts, and of the powerful United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had a stranglehold on nuclear policy and which Gravel tried to circumvent. In 1971, Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction and to make power utilities liable for any nuclear accidents; in 1975, he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974, Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power. Six months before U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's secret mission to the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.) in July 1971, Gravel introduced legislation to recognize and normalize relations with China, including a proposal for unity talks between the P.R.C. and the Republic of China (Taiwan) regarding the Chinese seat on the U.N. Security Council. Gravel reiterated his position in favor of recognition, with four other senators in agreement, during Senate hearings in June 1971. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Maurice Robert Gravel ( ; May 13, 1930 – June 26, 2021) was an American politician who served as a United States Senator from Alaska from 1969 to 1981 as a member of the Democratic Party, and who, in later life, twice ran for the presidential nomination of that party.
Born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, by French-Canadian immigrant parents, Gravel moved to Alaska in the late 1950s, becoming a real estate developer and entering politics. He served in the Alaska House of Representatives from 1963 to 1967, and also became Speaker of the Alaska House. Gravel was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1968.
As a senator, Gravel became nationally known for his forceful, but unsuccessful, attempts to end the draft during the War in Vietnam, and for putting the Pentagon Papers into the public record in 1971. He conducted a campaign for the Democratic nomination in 1972 for Vice President of the United States, and then played a crucial role in obtaining Congressional approval for the Trans-Alaska pipeline in 1973. He was re-elected to the Senate in 1974, but was defeated in his bid for a third term in the primary election in 1980.
An advocate of direct democracy and the National Initiative, Gravel staged a run for the 2008 Democratic nomination for President of the United States. His campaign failed to gain support, and in March 2008, he left the Democratic Party and joined the Libertarian Party to compete unsuccessfully for its presidential nomination and the inclusion of the National Initiative into the Libertarian Platform. He ran for president as a Democrat again in the 2020 election, in a campaign that ended four months after it began. Two years before his death, Gravel and his campaign staff founded the progressive think tank The Gravel Institute.
Early life, military service, education
Gravel was born on May 13, 1930, in Springfield, Massachusetts, one of five children of French-Canadian immigrant parents, Alphonse and Marie (née Bourassa) Gravel. His parents were part of the Quebec diaspora, and he was raised in a working-class neighborhood during the Great Depression, speaking only French until he was seven years old. Calling him "Mike" from an early age, his father valued work above all else, while his mother stressed the importance of education.
Gravel was educated in parochial schools as a Roman Catholic. There he struggled, due to what he later said was undiagnosed dyslexia, and was left back in third grade. He completed elementary school in 1945 and his class voted him "most charming personality". A summer job as a soda jerk led to Gravel handing out campaign fliers for local candidates on his boss's behalf; Gravel was immediately impressed with "the awesomeness of political office".
Gravel then boarded at Assumption Preparatory School in Worcester, Massachusetts, where his performance was initially mediocre. By Gravel's telling, in the summer of 1948 he intended to volunteer for the Israel Defense Forces during the 1947–1949 Palestine war, but Alexandra Tolstaya told him to return to school. There an English teacher, the Assumptionist Edgar Bourque, gave him personal attention, improving Gravel's language skills and instructing him in public speaking. Gravel's grades improved measurably in his final year and he graduated in 1949. His sister, Marguerite, became a Holy Cross nun, but Gravel himself struggled with the Catholic faith. He studied for one year at Assumption College, a Catholic school in Worcester, then transferred for his sophomore year to American International College in Springfield. Journalist I. F. Stone and philosopher Bertrand Russell strongly influenced Gravel in their willingness to challenge assumptions and oppose social convention and political authority.
Around May 1951, Gravel saw that he was about to be drafted and instead enlisted in the U.S. Army for a three-year term so that he could get into the Counterintelligence Corps. After basic training and counterintelligence school at Fort Holabird in Maryland and in South Carolina, he went to Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia. While he expected to be sent off to the Korean War when he graduated as a second lieutenant in early 1952, he was instead assigned to Stuttgart, West Germany, as a Special Adjutant in the Army's Communications Intelligence Service. In Germany, Gravel conducted surveillance operations on civilians and paid off spies. After about a year, he transferred to Orléans, France, where his French language abilities (if not his French-Canadian accent) allowed him to infiltrate French communist rallies. He worked as a Special Agent in the Counterintelligence Corps until 1954, eventually becoming a first lieutenant.
Following his discharge, Gravel entered the Columbia University School of General Studies in New York City, where he studied economics and received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1956. He moved to New York "flat broke" and supported himself by working as a bar boy in a hotel, driving a taxicab, and working in the investment bond department at Bankers Trust. During this time he left the Roman Catholic faith.
Move to Alaska
Gravel "decided to become a pioneer in a faraway place," and moved to pre-statehood Alaska in August 1956, without funds or a job, looking for a place where someone without social or political connections could be a viable candidate for public office. Alaska's voting age of 19, less than most other states' 21, played a role in his decision, as did its newness and cooler climate. Broke when he arrived, he immediately found work in real estate sales until winter arrived. Gravel then was employed as a brakeman for the Alaska Railroad, working the snow-clearing train on the Anchorage-to-Fairbanks run. Subsequently, he opened a small real estate brokerage in Anchorage (the Territory of Alaska not requiring a license) and saved enough so as not to have to work the railroad again. The firm was named the M. R. Gravel Real Estate Company. Gravel joined the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, and continued a sporadic relationship with the movement throughout his life.
Seeing Alaska as a wide-open place with no political establishment or entrenched interests, Gravel quickly became part of the civic scene there. By October 1957 he was a Division Chairman for Anchorage for the Democratic Central Committee in the territory, and by June 1958 he was president of the Alaska Young Democrats organization. He also became active in the United States Junior Chamber (Jaycees), and by early 1958 his duties included handing out awards for farmer of the year.
By early 1958, Gravel was running as Democratic Party primary candidate for a Third Division seat in House of Representative of the territorial legislature. (This was one of the four judicial divisions into which Alaska was sectioned at the time.) Using the slogan "Gravel, the Roadbed to Prosperity", he ran but lost. At the same time, he was also an advocate for Alaskan statehood.
Gravel went on a 44-state national speaking tour concerning tax reform in 1959, sponsored by the Jaycees, often dressing for events as Paul Revere. Gravel was selected from some two thousand applications for this position. The tour received a good amount of local newspaper coverage at its various stops, with Gravel's first name sometimes given as Mike and other times as Maurice. The tour's general message was an urging of "lower taxes, more efficiency in government and a system of taxation moderate at all levels of income". At several stops Gravel stated that the "tide of socialism" had to be stopped. He elaborated at another stop, "It is part of our Jaycee creed that economic justice can best be won by free men through free enterprise. We really want to see that free enterprise become our inheritance." The tour was scheduled to conclude in Washington D.C., on Tax Day, April 15, with petition signatures accumulated for reform to be presented to U.S. lawmakers: dressed as Revere, Gravel rode with the petition to the steps of the U.S. Capitol.
The tour over, Gravel married Rita Jeannette Martin at the First Methodist Church of Anchorage on April 29, 1959. She was a native of Montana who had attended Billings Business College before moving to Alaska two years prior and becoming a secretary in the office of the Anchorage city manager. She had also been named Anchorage's "Miss Fur Rendezvous" of 1958. They had two children, Martin Anthony Gravel and Lynne Denise Gravel, born c. 1960 and 1962 respectively.
Gravel ran without avail for the City Council in Anchorage in 1960. During this time, he had become a successful real estate agent; after the 1960 election, he became a property developer in a mobile home park on the outskirts of Anchorage. After a partner ran into financial difficulty, however, the project went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and Gravel was forced out in 1962.
State legislator
With the support of Alaska wholesale grocer Barney Gottstein and supermarket builder Larry Carr, Gravel ran for the Alaska House of Representatives representing Anchorage in 1962, initially assigned the 10th and then 8th districts. Alaska had very crowded primaries that year: Gravel was one of 33 Democrats, along with 21 Republicans, who were running for the chance to compete for the 14 House seats allocated to the 8th district. Gravel made it through the primary, and in November eight Republicans and six Democrats were elected to the House from the district, with Gravel finishing eighth overall and third among with Democrats, with 8,174 votes. Gottstein became Gravel's main financial backer during most of his subsequent campaigns.
Gravel served in the Alaska House of Representatives from January 28, 1963 to January 22, 1967, winning reelection in 1964. In his first term, he served as a minority member on two House committees: Commerce, and Labor and Management. He co-authored and sponsored the act that created the Alaska State Commission for Human Rights. Gravel was the chief architect of the law that created a regional high school system for rural Alaska; this allowed Alaska Natives to attend schools near where they lived instead of having to go to schools run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the lower 48 states.
During the half-years that the legislature was not in session, Gravel resumed his real estate work. With Gottstein and Carr's backing, he became quite successful as a property developer on the Kenai Peninsula.
During 1965 and 1966, he served as the Speaker of the House, surprising observers by winning that post. Gravel convinced former Speaker Warren A. Taylor to not try for the position against him by promising Taylor chairmanship of the Rules Committee, then reneged on the promise. Gravel denied later press charges that he had promised but not delivered on other committee chairmanships. As Speaker he antagonized fellow lawmakers by imposing his will on the legislature's committees and feuded with Alaska State Senate president Robert J. McNealy.
Gravel did not run for reelection in 1966, instead choosing to run for Alaska's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, losing the primary to four-term incumbent Democrat Ralph Rivers by 1,300 votes and splitting the Democratic Party in the process. Rivers lost the general election that year to Republican state Senator Howard Pollock. Following this defeat, Gravel returned to the real estate business in Anchorage.
U.S. Senator
Election to Senate in 1968
In 1968, Gravel ran against 81-year-old incumbent Democratic United States Senator Ernest Gruening, a popular former governor of the Alaska Territory who was considered one of the fathers of Alaska's statehood, for his party's nomination to the U.S. Senate. Gravel's campaign was primarily based on his youth and telegenic appearance rather than issue differences. He hired Joseph Napolitan, the first self-described political consultant, in late 1966. They spent over a year and a half planning a short, nine-day primary election campaign that featured the slogans "Alaska first" and "Let's do something about the state we're in", the distribution of a collection of essays titled Jobs and More Jobs, and the creation of a half-hour, well-produced, glamorized biographical film of Gravel, Man for Alaska. The film was shown twice a day on every television station in Alaska, and carried by plane and shown on home projectors in hundreds of Alaska Native villages. The heavy showings quickly reversed a 2–to–1 Gruening lead in polls into a Gravel lead. Gravel visited many remote villages by seaplane and showed a thorough understanding of the needs of the bush country and the fishing and oil industries. Gravel also benefited from maintaining a deliberately ambiguous posture about Vietnam policy. Gruening had been one of only two Senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and his opposition to President Lyndon B. Johnson's war policies was harming him among the Democratic electorate; according to Gravel, "all I had to do was stand up and not deal with the subject, and people would assume that I was to the right of Ernest Gruening, when in point of fact I was to the left of him". In Man for Alaska, Gravel argued that "the liberals" would come to West Germany's defense if it was attacked, and that the same standard should apply to the United States' allies in Asia. During the campaign he also claimed that he was "more in the mainstream of American thought on Vietnam" than Gruening, despite the fact that he had written to Gruening to praise his antiwar stance four years earlier. Decades later, Gravel conceded that "I said what I said [about Vietnam] to advance my career."
Gravel beat Gruening in the primary by about 2,000 votes. Gruening found "the unexpected defeat hard to take" and thought that some aspects of his opponent's biographical film had misled viewers. In the general election, Gravel faced Republican Elmer E. Rasmuson, a banker and former mayor of Anchorage. College students in the state implored Gruening to run a write-in campaign as an Independent, but legal battles prevented him from getting approval for it until only two weeks were left. A late appearance by anti-war presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy did not offset Gruening's lack of funds and endorsements; meanwhile, Gravel and Rasmuson both saturated local media with their filmed biographies. On November 5, 1968, Gravel won the general election with 45 percent of the vote to Rasmuson's 37 percent and Gruening's 18 percent.
Senate assignments and style
When Gravel joined the U.S.Senate in January 1969, he requested and received a seat on the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, which had direct relevance to Alaskan issues. He also got a spot on the Public Works Committee, which he held throughout his time in the Senate. Finally, he was a member of the Select Committee on Small Business. In 1971 he became chair of the Public Works Committee's Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds, and by 1973 he was chair of its Subcommittee on Water Resources, then later its Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution. Gravel was also initially named to the Joint Committee on Congressional Operations. By 1973 Gravel was off the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee and the Select Small Business Committee and instead a member of the Finance Committee, and by 1977 was chair of that body's Subcommittee on Energy and Foundations. By 1973 he had also been on the ad hoc Special Committee to Study Secret and Confidential Government Documents.
By his own admission, Gravel was too new and "too abrasive" to be effective in the Senate by the usual means of seniority-based committee assignments or negotiating deals with other senators, and was sometimes seen as arrogant or a nuisance by the more senior and tradition-oriented members. Gravel relied on attention-getting gestures to achieve what he wanted, hoping national exposure would force other senators to listen to him. But even senators who agreed with him on issues considered his methods to be showboating.
As part of this approach, Gravel voted with Southern Democrats to keep the Senate filibuster rule in place, and accordingly supported Russell Long and Robert Byrd but opposed Ted Kennedy in Senate leadership battles. In retrospective assessment, University of Alaska Anchorage history professor Stephen Haycox said, "Loose cannon is a good description of Gravel's Senate career. He was an off-the-wall guy, and you weren't really ever sure what he would do."
Nuclear issues and the Cold War
In the late 1960s and early 1970s the U.S. Department of Defense was in the process of performing tests for the nuclear warhead for the Spartan anti-ballistic missile. Two tests, the "Milrow" and "Cannikin" tests, were planned, involving the detonation of nuclear bombs under Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Milrow test would be a one-megaton calibration exercise for the second and larger five-megaton Cannikin test, which would measure the effectiveness of the warhead. Gravel opposed the tests. Before the Milrow test took place in October 1969, he wrote that there were significant risks of earthquakes and other adverse consequences and called for an independent national commission on nuclear and seismic safety; he then made a personal appeal to President Richard Nixon to stop the test.
After Milrow was conducted, there was continued pressure on the part of environmental groups against going forward with the Cannikin test, while the Federation of American Scientists claimed that the warhead being tested was already obsolete. In May 1971 Gravel sent a letter to U.S. Atomic Energy Commission hearings held in Anchorage in which he said the risk of the test was not worth taking. Eventually a group not involving Gravel took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to issue an injunction against it, and the Cannikin test took place as scheduled in November 1971. Gravel had failed to stop the tests (notwithstanding his later claims during his 2008 presidential campaign).
In 1971 Gravel voted against the Nixon administration's proposed anti-ballistic missile system, the Safeguard Program, having previously vacillated over the issue, suggesting that he might be willing to support it in exchange for federal lands in Alaska being opened up for private oil drilling. His vote alienated Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, who had raised funds for Gravel's primary campaign.
Nuclear power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for commercial generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gravel publicly opposed this policy; besides the dangers of nuclear testing, he was a vocal critic of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw American nuclear efforts, and of the powerful United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had a stranglehold on nuclear policy and which Gravel tried to circumvent. In 1971 Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction and to make power utilities liable for any nuclear accidents; in 1975 he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974 Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power.
Six months before U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's July 1971 secret mission to the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.), Gravel introduced legislation to recognize and normalize relations with the P.R.C., including a proposal for unity talks between the P.R.C. and the Republic of China (Taiwan) regarding the Chinese seat on the U.N. Security Council. He reiterated his position in favor of recognition, with four other senators in agreement, during Senate hearings in June 1971.
Vietnam War, the draft, and the Pentagon Papers
Although he did not campaign against the Vietnam War during his first Senate campaign, by the end of 1970 Gravel was speaking out against United States policy in southeast Asia: in December of that year he persuaded William Fulbright to join him in a spontaneous two-day filibuster against a $155 million military aid package to Cambodia's Khmer Republic government in the Cambodian Civil War.
President Richard Nixon had campaigned in 1968 on a promise to end the U.S. military draft, a decision endorsed by the February 1970 report of the Gates Commission.
The existing draft law was scheduled to conclude at the end of June 1971, and the Senate faced a contentious debate about whether to extend it as the Vietnam War continued. The Nixon administration announced in February 1971 that it wanted a two-year extension to June 1973, after which the draft would end; Army planners had already been operating under the assumption of a two-year extension, after which an all-volunteer force would be in place. Skeptics such as Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John Stennis thought this unrealistic and wanted a four-year extension, but the two-year proposal is what went forward in Congress. By early May 1971, Gravel had indicated his intention to filibuster the draft renewal legislation, halting conscription and thereby bringing U.S. involvement in the war to a rapid end. During this period he also supported efforts to mobilize and influence public opinion against the war, endorsing the "Vietnam War Out Now" rallies in Washington D.C. and San Francisco on April 24, 1971, and financing a broadcast campaign by the antiwar group War No More with a personal loan. In June 1972 he escorted a group of over 100 antiwar protesters, including psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, actress Candice Bergen, theater producer and director Joseph Papp, and peditrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, into the United States Capitol Building; the group was arrested after blocking a hallway outside the Senate chamber.
By June 1971, some Democratic senators opposed to the war wanted to limit the renewal to a one-year extension, while others wanted to end it immediately; Gravel reiterated that he was one of the latter, saying, "It's a senseless war, and one way to do away with it is to do away with the draft." A Senate vote on June 4 indicated majority support for the two-year extension. On June 18 Gravel announced again his intention to counteract that by filibustering the renewal legislation, defending the practice against those who associated it only with blocking civil rights legislation. The first filibuster attempt failed on June 23 when, by three votes, the Senate voted cloture for only the fifth time since 1927.
Protracted negotiations took place over House conference negotiations on the bill, revolving in large part around Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield's eventually unsuccessful amendment to tie renewal to a troop withdrawal timetable from Vietnam; during this time the draft law expired and no more were conscripted. On August 5, the Nixon administration pleaded for a renewal before the Senate went on recess, but Gravel blocked Stennis's attempt to limit debate, and no vote was held. Finally on September 21, 1971, the Senate invoked cloture over Gravel's second filibuster attempt by one vote, and then passed the two-year draft extension. Gravel's attempts to stop the draft had failed (notwithstanding Gravel's later claims that he had stopped or shortened the draft, taken at face value in some media reports, during his 2008 presidential campaign).
Meanwhile, on June 13, 1971, The New York Times began printing large portions of the Pentagon Papers. The papers were a large collection of secret government documents and studies pertaining to the Vietnam War, of which former Defense Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg had made unauthorized copies and was determined to make public. Ellsberg had for a year and a half approached members of Congress – such as William Fulbright, George McGovern, Charles Mathias, and Pete McCloskey – about publishing the documents, on the grounds that the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution would give congressional members immunity from prosecution, but all had refused. Instead, Ellsberg gave the documents to the Times.
The U.S. Justice Department immediately tried to halt publication, on the grounds that the information revealed within the papers harmed the national interest. Within the next two weeks, a federal court injunction halted publication in the Times; The Washington Post and several other newspapers began publishing parts of the documents, with some of them also being halted by injunctions; and the whole matter went to the U.S. Supreme Court for arguments. Looking for an alternate publication mechanism, Ellsberg returned to his idea of having a member of Congress read them, and chose Gravel based on the latter's efforts against the draft; Gravel agreed where previously others had not. Ellsberg arranged for the papers to be given to Gravel on June 26 via an intermediary, Post editor Ben Bagdikian. Gravel used his counter-intelligence experience to choose a midnight transfer in front of the Mayflower Hotel in the center of Washington, D.C.
On the night of June 29, 1971, Gravel attempted to read the papers on the floor of the Senate as part of his filibuster against the draft, but was thwarted when no quorum could be formed. Gravel instead convened a session of the Buildings and Grounds subcommittee that he chaired. He got New York Congressman John G. Dow to testify that the war had soaked up funding for public buildings, thus making discussion of the war relevant to the committee. He began reading from the papers with the press in attendance, omitting supporting documents that he felt might compromise national security, and declaring, "It is my constitutional obligation to protect the security of the people by fostering the free flow of information absolutely essential to their democratic decision-making."
He read until 1 a.m., culminating by saying "Arms are being severed. Metal is clashing through human bodies because of the public policy this government and all its branches continue to support." Then with tears and sobs he said that he could no longer physically continue, the previous three nights of sleeplessness and fear about the future having taken their toll. Gravel ended the session by, with no other senators present, establishing unanimous consent to insert 4,100 pages of the Papers into the Congressional Record of his subcommittee. The following day, the Supreme Court's New York Times Co. v. United States decision ruled in favor of the newspapers and publication in the Times and others resumed. In July 1971 Bantam Books published an inexpensive paperback edition of the papers containing the material the Times had published.
Gravel, too, wanted to privately publish the portion of the papers he had read into the record, believing that "immediate disclosure of the contents of these papers will change the policy that supports the war". After being turned down by many commercial publishers, on August 4 he reached agreement with Beacon Press, the publishing arm of the Unitarian Universalist Association, of which Gravel was a member. Announced on August 17 and published on October 22, 1971, this four-volume, relatively expensive set became the "Senator Gravel Edition", which studies from Cornell University and the Annenberg Center for Communication have labeled as the most complete edition of the Pentagon Papers to be published. The "Gravel Edition" was edited and annotated by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, and included an additional volume of analytical articles on the origins and progress of the war, also edited by Chomsky and Zinn. Beacon Press then was subjected to a FBI investigation; an outgrowth of this was the Gravel v. United States court case, which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled upon in June 1972; it held that the Speech or Debate Clause did grant immunity to Gravel for his reading the papers in his subcommittee, did grant some immunity to Gravel's congressional aide, but granted no immunity to Beacon Press in relation to their publishing the same papers. The U.S. Senate Democratic Caucus backed Gravel in the case, but due to Republican opposition it did not pay Gravel's legal fees, leaving him owing $25,000 (the equivalent of $150,000 in 2019, adjusted for inflation).
The events of 1971 changed Gravel in the following months from an obscure freshman senator to a nationally visible political figure. He became a sought-after speaker on the college circuit as well as at political fundraisers, opportunities he welcomed as lectures were "the one honest way a Senator has to supplement his income". But his speaking tours caused him to accrue one of the worst absentee records in the Senate. The Democratic candidates for the 1972 presidential election sought his endorsement. In January 1972 Gravel endorsed Maine Senator Ed Muskie, hoping that his support would help Muskie with the party's left wing and in ethnic French-Canadian areas during the first primary contest in New Hampshire (Muskie won, but not overwhelmingly, and his campaign faltered soon after). In April 1972 Gravel appeared on all three networks' nightly newscasts to decry the Nixon administration's reliance on Vietnamization by making reference to the secret National Security Study Memorandum 1 document, which stated it would take 8–13 years for the Army of the Republic of Vietnam to defend South Vietnam. Gravel made excerpts from the study public, but senators Robert P. Griffin and William B. Saxbe blocked his attempt to read NSSM 1 into the Congressional Record.
Domestic policy
In 1970 Gravel co-sponsored legislation to establish a guaranteed minimum income, entitling poor families to up to $6,300 a year (the equivalent of $42,000 in 2019 after adjustment for inflation). He subsequently voted for a "work bonus" program, which would have entitled low-income working families with dependent children if they were paying Social Security or Railroad Retirement taxes to a non-taxable bonus of up to 10 percent of their wages. Gravel also supported extending Social Security to all federal employees and introduced a campaign finance reform bill in 1971 that would have enacted full disclosure of campaign financing, placed limits on large donations, media spending and individual candidate spending.
In 1969, Gravel was the only Democratic Senator outside of the South to vote for Nixon's Supreme Court nominee Clement Haynsworth. The following year Gravel opposed Nixon's next pick, G. Harrold Carswell.
Run for vice president in 1972
Gravel actively campaigned for the office of Vice President of the United States during the 1972 presidential election, announcing on June 2, 1972, over a month before the 1972 Democratic National Convention began, that he was interested in the nomination should the choice be opened up to convention delegates. Toward this end he began soliciting delegates for their support. He was not alone in this effort, as former Governor of Massachusetts Endicott Peabody had been running a quixotic campaign for the same post since the prior year. Likely presidential nominee George McGovern was in fact considering the unusual move of naming three or four acceptable vice-presidential candidates and letting the delegates choose.
On the convention's final day, July 14, 1972, McGovern selected and announced Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his vice-presidential choice. Eagleton was unknown to many delegates and the choice seemed to smack of traditional ticket balancing considerations. Thus there were delegates willing to look elsewhere. Gravel was nominated by Bettye Fahrenkamp, the Democratic National Committeewoman from Alaska. He then seconded his own nomination, breaking down in tears at his own words and maybe trying to withdraw his nomination. In any case he won 226 delegate votes, coming in third behind Eagleton and Frances "Sissy" Farenthold of Texas, in chaotic balloting that included several other candidates.
Gravel attracted some attention for his efforts: writer Norman Mailer said he "provided considerable excitement" and was "good-looking enough to have played leads in B-films", while Rolling Stone correspondent Hunter S. Thompson said Gravel "probably said a few things that might have been worth hearing, under different circumstances". Yet the process was doubly disastrous for the Democrats. In the time consumed by nominating and seconding and all the vice-presidential candidates' speeches, the attention of the delegates on the floor was lost and McGovern's speech was pushed to 3:30 a.m. The haste with which Eagleton was selected led to surprise when his past mental health treatments were revealed; he withdrew from the ticket soon after the convention, to be replaced by Sargent Shriver.
Reelection to Senate in 1974
Several years earlier, Alaska politicians had speculated that Gravel would have a hard time getting both renominated and elected when his first term expired, given that he was originally elected without a base party organization and tended to focus on national rather than local issues.
Nonetheless, after receiving support from national and local labor leaders, securing key earmarks, and producing another half-hour TV advertorial, in 1974 Gravel was reelected to the Senate, with 58 percent of the vote to 42 percent for Republican State Senator C. R. Lewis, who was a national officer of the John Birch Society.
Second term
Gravel's reelection campaign left him $65,000–$75,000 in debt. In 1975 The Washington Post reported on a memo by his executive assistant laying out a fundraising strategy to tackle this, including raising funds from oil companies, meeting with previous donors and "inquir[ing] into the governmental priorities of these people and their groups in the coming session", as well as obtaining further speaking fees to reduce his personal debt. This was followed by a number of stories about links between Gravel, lobbyists and fundraisers, including one that was widely publicized in Alaska about his holding a share in a Colorado resort with two Washington lobbyists he was working with on land and energy legislation. Gravel had been open about the investment and had opposing views to one of the lobbyists on nuclear power. In 1980 the Wall Street Journal published details about his fundraising activities, including writing to individuals and PACs in the oil industry, pledging to kill off proposals for a windfall profits tax on the sector, and traveling in the Middle East with the business partner of one of his donors to sell Alaskan land to businessmen. Gravel suggested that critics of his fundraising were "naive".
In 1975 Gravel introduced an amendment to cut the number of troops overseas by 200,000, but it was defeated on a voice vote.
In September 1975 Gravel was named as one of several Congressional Advisers to the Seventh Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly, which met to discuss problems related to economic development and international economic cooperation.
In June 1976 Gravel was the focus of a federal investigation into allegations that he was involved in a sex-for-vote arrangement. Congressional staff clerk Elizabeth Ray (who had already been involved in a sex scandal that led to the downfall of Representative Wayne Hays) said that in August 1972 she had sex with Gravel aboard a houseboat on the Potomac River, under the instruction of Representative Kenneth J. Gray, her boss at the time. Gray allegedly wanted to secure Gravel's support for further funding for construction of the National Visitor Center in Washington, a troubled project that was under the jurisdiction of subcommittees that both members chaired. Another Congressional staffer said she witnessed the boat encounter, but Gravel said at the time that he had never met either of the women. Gravel and Gray strongly denied that they had made any arrangement regarding legislation, and neither was ever charged with any wrongdoing. Decades later Gravel wrote that he had indeed had sex with Ray, but had not changed any votes because of it.
Gravel and his main financial backer, Gottstein, had a falling out in 1978, during the Congressional debate over whether to allow a controversial sale of U.S. F-15 fighter aircraft to Saudi Arabia. An ardent backer of Israel, Gottstein opposed the sale and asked Gravel to vote against it. But Gravel not only voted for it but made an emotional speech attacking the anti-sale campaign. Gravel wrote in 2008 that it was the only time Gottstein had ever asked him for a favor, and the rupture resulted in their never speaking to each other again.
Alaskan issues
By 1971 Gravel was urging construction of the much-argued Trans-Alaska pipeline, addressing environmental concerns by saying that the pipeline's builders and operators should have "total and absolute" responsibility for any consequent environmental damage. Two years later the debate over the pipeline came to a crux, with The New York Times describing it as "environmentalists [in] a holy war with the major oil companies". In February 1973 the U.S. Court of Appeals blocked the issuance of permits for construction; Gravel and fellow Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens reacted by urging Congress to pass legislation overturning the court's decision. Environmentalists opposed to the pipeline, such as the Environmental Defense Fund and the Sierra Club then sought to use the recently passed National Environmental Policy Act to their advantage; Gravel designed an amendment to the pipeline bill that would immunize the pipeline from any further court challenges under that law, and thus speed its construction. Passage of the amendment became the key battle regarding the pipeline. On July 17, 1973, in a dramatic roll-call vote, the Gravel amendment was approved as a 49–49 tie was broken in favor by Vice President Spiro Agnew. The actual bill enabling the pipeline then passed easily; Gravel had triumphed in what became perhaps his most lasting accomplishment as a senator.
In opposition to the Alaskan fishing industry, Gravel advocated American participation in the formation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. For two years he opposed legislation that established a Exclusive Economic Zone for marine resources. He was one of only 19 senators to vote against Senate approval for the expanded zone in 1976, saying it would undermine the U.S. position in Law of the Sea negotiations and that nations arbitrarily extending their fishing rights limits would "produce anarchy of the seas". The legislation was passed, and the United States has signed but never ratified the Law of the Sea treaty.
Gravel accumulated a complicated record on Indian affairs during his time in the Senate. During his first year in the Senate Gravel urged abolition of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, criticizing the agency for the pace of development of schools in Alaska, its paternalistic attitudes and the culturally inappropriate nature of its education, and advocating greater shared decision-making between the federal government and native communities in Alaska. Later, his views changed; in the early 1970s Gravel supported a demonstration project that established links between Alaskan villages and the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, for medical diagnostic communications. In 1971, he fended off accusations from Alaskan natives that he was not spending enough time working on their land claims. Gravel helped secure a private grant to facilitate the first Inuit Circumpolar Conference in 1977, attended by Inuit representatives from Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. These conferences now also include representatives from Russia. In 1977, Gravel helped lead an effort to have the U.S. Interior Department rename Mount McKinley to Denali; this eventually led to Denali National Park being so named. Subsequently, Gravel proposed a never-built "Denali City" development above the Tokositna River near the mountain, to consist of a giant Teflon dome enclosing hotels, golf courses, condominiums, and commercial buildings. A related idea of his to build a high-speed rail line to Denali also failed to gain traction.
A key, emotional issue in the state at the time was "locking up Alaska", making reference to allocation of its vast, mostly uninhabited land. President Jimmy Carter desired to put large portions of this land under federal protection against development, a move that some Alaskans vociferously opposed.
In 1978 Gravel blocked passage, via procedural delays such as walking out of House–Senate conference committee meetings, of a complex bill which represented a compromise on land use policy. The bill would have put some of Alaska's vast federal land holdings under state control while preserving other portions for federal parks and refuges; the blocking action earned Gravel the enmity of fellow Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who had supported the compromise. In 1980, a new lands bill came up for consideration, that was less favorable to Alaskan interests and more liked by environmentalists; it set aside of Alaska's for national parks, conservation areas, and other restricted federal uses. Gravel blocked it, as not ensuring enough future development in the state. A new compromise version of the 1980 bill came forward, which reduced the land set aside to . Representing Alaskan interests, Gravel tried to stop the bill, including by filibuster. But the Senate voted for cloture and passed the bill. Frustrated, Gravel said, "the legislation denies Alaska its rights as a state, and denies the U.S. crucial strategic resources," and opined that the Senate was "a little bit like a tank of barracudas". Nonetheless, the bill, known as the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, was signed by President Carter shortly before leaving the White House, and led to millions of acres being set aside in the state for national parks, wildlife refuges, and other kinds of areas under protection.
In 1978 Gravel authored and secured the passage into federal law of the General Stock Ownership Corporation, that became Subchapter U of the Tax Code under the Internal Revenue Code of 1954. This gave states the ability to create corporations that would invest in for-profit enterprises, with all citizens within the state owning shares in the corporation. Gravel's attempt to convince the Alaska state legislature to create such a corporation failed, as did a 1980 state ballot initiative towards the same end, but nevertheless the creation of the General Stock Ownership Corporation in federal law turned out to be significant in the development of binary economics.
Loss of Senate seat in 1980
In 1980 Gravel was challenged for the Democratic Party's nomination by State Representative Clark Gruening, the grandson of the man Gravel had defeated in a primary 12 years earlier. One of Gruening's supporters was Gravel's former backer Gottstein. Several factors made Gravel vulnerable. As an insurgent candidate in 1968 Gravel had never established a firm party base. Not liking to hunt or fish, he was also always culturally suspect in the state.
The primary campaign was bitterly fought. A group of Democrats, including future governor Steve Cowper, led the campaign against Gravel, with Gravel's actions in respect to the 1978 and 1980 Alaskan lands bills a major issue. This was especially so given that the 1980 bill's dénouement happened but a week before the primary. The sources of Gravel's campaign funds, some of which Gravel readily acknowledged came from political action committees outside the state, also became an issue in the contest. Gruening had pledged that he would not take special interest group money, but Gravel said that Gruening was "dishonest" in accepting individual contributors from Jewish donors living outside the state because to him such contributors comprised "a special interest group ... that seeks to influence the foreign policy of the U.S."
Gruening won the primary with about 55 percent of the vote to Gravel's 44 percent. Gravel later conceded that by the time of his defeat, he had alienated "almost every constituency in Alaska". Another factor may have been Alaska's blanket primary system of the time, which allowed unlimited voting across party lines and from its many independents; Republicans believed Gruening would be an easier candidate to defeat in the general election.
Gruening lost the general election to Republican Frank Murkowski. Gravel was the last Democrat to represent Alaska in Congress for 28 years, until Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich defeated Ted Stevens, by then an aged, iconic figure who had just been convicted of seven felonies for taking unreported gifts, in a very close and protracted election result in 2008. Stevens's conviction was subsequently vacated due to prosecutorial misconduct.
Career after leaving the Senate
Of his 1980 defeat, Gravel later recalled: "I had lost my career. I lost my marriage. I was in the doldrums for ten years after my defeat," and "Nobody wanted to hire me for anything important. I felt like I was worthless. I didn't know what I could do." By his own later description, Gravel was a womanizer, and had an affair while in the Senate, and in December 1980 he and his wife Rita separated. They filed for divorce in September 1981; she later received all of his Senate pension income.
During the 1980s Gravel was a real estate developer in Anchorage and Kenai, Alaska, a consultant, and a stockbroker. One of his real estate ventures, a condominium business, was forced to declare bankruptcy and a lawsuit ensued. In 1986 Gravel worked in partnership with Merrill Lynch Capital Markets to buy losses that financially troubled Alaska Native Corporations could not take as tax deductions and sell them to large national companies looking for tax writeoffs. Gravel also learned computer programming at some point but never practiced it.
In 1984 Gravel married his second wife, Whitney Stewart Gravel, a former administrative assistant for Senator Jacob Javits.
Return to politics
In 1989 Gravel reentered politics. He founded and led The Democracy Foundation, which promotes direct democracy. He established the Philadelphia II corporation, which seeks to replicate the original 1787 Constitutional Convention and have a Second Constitutional Convention to bring about direct democracy Gravel led an effort to get a United States Constitutional amendment to allow voter-initiated federal legislation similar to state ballot initiatives. He argued that Americans are able to legislate responsibly, and that the Act and Amendment in the National Initiative would allow American citizens to become "law makers". However such efforts met with little success.
In 2001, Gravel became director of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, where he admired institute co-founder Gregory Fossedal's work on direct democracy in Switzerland. By 2004, Gravel had become chair of the institute, and Fossedal (who in turn was a director of the Democracy Foundation) gave the introduction at Gravel's presidential announcement.
In 2003 Gravel gave a speech on direct democracy at a conference hosted by the American Free Press. The event was cosponsored by the Barnes Review, a journal that endorses Holocaust denial. After some controversy over his appearance, Gravel apologized, saying he did not realize the group's ties. Gravel said repeatedly that he did not share the group's views on the Holocaust, stating, "You better believe I know that six million Jews were killed. [The Barnes Review publishers] are nutty as loons if they don't think it happened". The group invited Gravel to speak again, but he declined.
Mike and Whitney Gravel lived in Arlington County, Virginia, until 2010 and then resided in Burlingame, California. They have the two grown children from his first marriage, Martin Gravel and Lynne Gravel Mosier, and four grandchildren. Whitney Gravel's income sustained the couple from 1998 on. In the 2000s, Gravel suffered poor health, requiring three surgeries in 2003 for back pain and neuropathy. Due to unreimbursed medical expenses and debts from his political causes, he declared personal bankruptcy in 2004. He began taking a salary from the non-profit organizations for which he was working; much of that income was lent to his presidential campaign. In 2007, he declared that he had "zero net worth".
2008 presidential campaign
Democratic Party primaries
At the start of 2006 Gravel decided the best way he could promote direct democracy and the National Initiative was to run for president. On April 17, 2006, Gravel became the first candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2008 election, announcing his run in a speech to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Short on campaign cash, he took public transportation to get to his announcement. (Gravel called for public financing of elections.) Other principal Gravel positions were the FairTax, as well as withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq within 120 days and a single payer national health care system.
Gravel had opposed the Iraq War, and President George W. Bush's rationale for it, from the beginning, and in 2006 said that U.S. troops in Iraq, as in Vietnam, had "died in vain". He also favored a regional peace initiative, as well as reparation payments for Iraqis. Gravel also called for a "U.S. corporate withdrawal from Iraq", with reconstruction contracts held by U.S. companies to be turned over to Iraqi firms.
Gravel campaigned almost full-time in New Hampshire, the first primary state, following his announcement. Opinion polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination showed Gravel with 1 percent or less support. By the end of March 2007, Gravel's campaign had less than $500 in cash on hand against debts of nearly $90,000.
Because of his time in the Senate, Gravel was invited to many of the early Democratic presidential debates. During the initial one at South Carolina State University on April 26, 2007, he suggested a bill requiring the president to withdraw from Iraq on pain of criminal penalties. He also advocated positions such as opposing preemptive nuclear war. He stated that the Iraq War had the effect of creating more terrorists and that the "war was lost the day that George Bush invaded Iraq on a fraudulent basis". Regarding his fellow candidates, he said, "I got to tell you, after standing up with them, some of these people frighten me – they frighten me." In one such exchange, Gravel said, "Tell me, Barack, who do you want to nuke?" to which Obama responded, "I'm not planning to nuke anybody right now, Mike, I promise."
Media stories said that Gravel was responsible for much of whatever "heat" and "flashpoints" had taken place during the Democratic debates. Gravel gained considerable publicity by shaking up the normally staid multiple-candidate format; The New York Times' media critic said that what Gravel had done was "steal a debate with outrageous, curmudgeonly statements". The Internet was a benefit: a YouTube video of his responses in the debate was viewed more than 225,892 times, ranking seventeenth in most views for week and first among news and politics clips; his name became the fifteenth most searched-for in the blogosphere; and his website garnered more traffic than those of frontrunners Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or John Edwards. Gravel appeared on the popular Colbert Report on television on May 2, and his campaign and career were profiled in national publications such as Salon. Two wordless, Warholesque campaign videos, "Rock" and "Fire", were released on YouTube in late May and became hits, and eventually gained over 760,000 and 185,000 views respectively. "Rock", in turn, was given airtime during an episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Some thirty-five years after he first achieved the national spotlight, he had found it again.
All this did not improve his performance in the polls; a May 2007 CNN poll showed him with less than 0.5 percent support among Democrats. Gravel was in the next several debates, in one case after CNN reversed a decision to exclude him. Like some of the other second-tier candidates, Gravel did not get as much time as the leaders; during the June 2, 2007, New Hampshire debate, which lasted two hours, he was asked 10 questions and allowed to speak for five minutes and 37 seconds.
During the July 23, 2007, CNN-YouTube presidential debate, Gravel responded to audience applause when he had complained of a lack of airtime and said: "Thank you. Has it been fair thus far?" Detractors began to liken him to "the cranky uncle who lives in the attic," or "the angry old guy that just seemed to want to become angrier". Berkeley political scientist David Terr found that moderator George Stephanopoulos directed roughly five percent of his questions to Gravel; in a poll asking who did the best in the debate, Gravel placed seventh among the eight candidates. National opinion polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination continued to show Gravel with one percent or zero percent numbers. By the end of the third-quarter 2007, Gravel had about $17,500 in cash on hand, had collected a total of about $380,000 during the 2008 election cycle, and was continuing to run a threadbare campaign with minimal staff.
Beginning with the October 30, 2007, Philadelphia event, Gravel was excluded from most of the debates, with the debate sponsors or the Democratic National Committee saying Gravel's campaign had not met fund-raising, polling, or local campaign organizational thresholds. For the Philadelphia exclusion, Gravel blamed corporate censorship on the part of sponsor owner and alleged military-industrial complex member General Electric for his exclusion and mounted a counter-gathering and debate against a video screen a short distance away, but he had lost his easiest publicity. In reaction, supporters organized "mass donation days" to try to help the campaign gain momentum and funds, such as on December 5, 2007, the anniversary of the Repeal of Prohibition.
Gravel did not compete in the initial 2008 vote, the Iowa caucuses, but was still subjected to a false report from MSNBC that he had pulled out of the race afterward. Gravel did focus his attention on the second 2008 vote, the New Hampshire primary. In early January, Mother Jones' investigative reporter James Ridgeway was filmed interviewing and following Gravel in New Hampshire, in which Gravel is interviewed on the phone by Neal Conan for NPR's, Talk of the Nation. He received about 400 votes out of some 280,000 cast in New Hampshire, or 0.14 percent, before taking time off to improve his health. He resumed campaigning, but fared no better in subsequent states. By the end of January 2008, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Gravel were the only remaining Democrats from the initial debates still running; Gravel vowed to stay in the presidential campaign until November. On March 11, 2008, Gravel continued to remain in the Democratic race but additionally endorsed a Green Party candidate for president, Jesse Johnson, saying he wanted to help Johnson prevail against Green Party rivals Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader. By late March, Gravel had almost no fundraising and was only on the ballot in one of the next ten Democratic primaries.
Switch to Libertarian Party
On March 25, 2008, Gravel announced that he would leave the Democrats and join the Libertarian Party, saying: "My libertarian views, as well as my strong stance against war, the military industrial complex and American imperialism, seem not to be tolerated by Democratic Party elites who are out of touch with the average American; elites that reject the empowerment of American citizens I offered to the Democratic Party at the beginning of this presidential campaign with the National Initiative for Democracy." The following day Gravel entered the race for the 2008 Libertarian presidential nomination, saying that he would have run as a third-party candidate all along except that he needed the public exposure that came from being in the earlier Democratic debates. Gravel's initial notion of running as a fusion candidate with other parties was met with skepticism.
As a Libertarian candidate, Gravel faced resistance to his past support of big government initiatives and his unorthodox positions around direct democracy. Nevertheless, he garnered more support than he had as a Democrat, placing second and third in two April 2008 straw polls. In the May 25 balloting at the 2008 Libertarian National Convention in Denver, Gravel finished fourth out of eight candidates on the initial ballot, with 71 votes out of a total 618; he trailed former Congressman and eventual winner Bob Barr, author Mary Ruwart, and businessman Wayne Allyn Root. Gravel's position did not subsequently improve and he was eliminated on the fourth ballot. Afterwards he stated that "I just ended my political career," but he vowed to continue promoting his positions as a writer and lecturer.
2008–early 2019
In June 2008 Gravel endorsed the NYC 9/11 Ballot Initiative, saying the measure would create a "citizens commission rather than a government commission" with subpoena power against top U.S. officials to "make a true investigation as to what happened" regarding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He later said, "Individuals in and out of government may certainly have participated with the obviously known perpetrators of this dastardly act. Suspicions abound over the analysis presented by government. Obviously an act that has triggered three wars, Afghan, Iraqi and the continuing War on Terror, should be extensively investigated which was not done and which the government avoids addressing."
In August 2008 Gravel was speaking to a crowd of supporters of Sami Al-Arian (who two years earlier had pleaded guilty and been sentenced to prison for a charge of conspiracy in helping Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a "specially designated terrorist" organization) when he was caught on tape saying of Al-Arian's prosecutor, "Find out where he lives, find out where his kids go to school, find out where his office is: picket him all the time. Call him a racist in signs if you see him. Call him an injustice. Call him whatever you want to call him, but in his face all the time." Gravel was criticized for potentially involving the children of the prosecutor, and Al-Arian's family disavowed the sentiments.
Gravel defended Alaska Governor Sarah Palin after she was chosen as Republican presidential nominee John McCain's running mate in September 2008. He praised Palin's record in standing up to corruption among Alaskan Republicans, thought her national inexperience was an asset not a detriment, and predicted that the "Troopergate" investigation into whether she improperly fired a state official would "come out in her favor". Gravel made clear he would not support or vote for either McCain–Palin or Obama–Biden in the general election. The following year Gravel said that Palin's politics were "terrible, but that doesn't detract from the fact that she's a very talented person". He predicted that Palin would run for president in 2012 and that "she's going to surprise a lot of people". Palin did not run, but Gravel's prediction about "TrooperGate" was accurate as Palin was found not to have violated ethics laws.
In 2013, by the invitation of Hamed Ghashghavi, the secretary for international affairs of the 3rd International Conference on Hollywoodism in Tehran, Iran, Gravel attended that event as an Iranian government-organized anti-Hollywood conference. Gravel noted that the conference was attended by "various elements of extremes" but said it was necessary to discuss how the U.S. film industry portrayed Iran in order to prevent "an insane war" between the two nations.
In May 2013 Gravel was one of several former members of Congress to accept $20,000 from the Paradigm Research Group, an advocacy group for UFO disclosure, as part of holding what they termed a Citizen Hearing on Disclosure, modeled after congressional hearings, regarding supposed U.S. government suppression of evidence concerning UFOs. Gravel said, "Something is monitoring the planet, and they are monitoring it very cautiously, because we are a very warlike planet," and, "What we're faced with here is, in areas of the media, and the government too, an effort to marginalize and ridicule people who have specific knowledge."
In December 2014 Gravel was announced as the new CEO of KUSH, a company which makes marijuana-infused products for medicinal and recreational use, and a subsidiary of Cannabis Sativa, Inc. He also became an Independent Director of Cannabis Sativa.
During the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries, Gravel praised Bernie Sanders and his campaign, saying "Bernie is one of the most gifted politicians I have ever observed. He's a person of great integrity and very clever." Gravel predicted that Sanders would be elected president but would be unable to get his key reforms through Congress, and thus that Sanders and his supporters should back some of the proposals of the National Initiative.
In 2016, Gravel said in relation to the September 11 attacks: "We killed 58,000 American servicemen in the Vietnam War and all they did was die in vain. What's so unusual about killing 3,000 more in order to develop the grist for the mill to empower into infinity the military industrial complex?" and "There's no question in my mind that 9/11 was an inside job". The remarks were later disavowed by even Gravel supporters.
By 2019 Gravel was living in Seaside, California. He was working on a book, at the time titled Human Governance, about his principal idea for direct democracy, a U.S. Constitutional Amendment to create a "Legislature of the People" that would circumvent the existing Congress. The book was self-published at the end of the year by AuthorHouse under the title The Failure of Representative Government and the Solution: A Legislature of the People.
2020 presidential campaign
On March 19, 2019, Gravel announced that he was considering running in the 2020 Democratic primaries. He said, "The goal will not be to win, but to bring a critique of American imperialism to the Democratic debate stage." An exploratory committee was formed, with filing a statement of organization with the Federal Election Commission on that same day. The filing was the idea of a group of teenagers, led by David Oks and Henry Williams, inspired by the podcast Chapo Trap House, and done with Gravel's consent (after a week spent convincing him of the idea's merits), but without his involvement. Intrigued by the group's commitment to amplifying his long-held policy goals, Gravel (who would be old on Inauguration Day in 2021) said he planned to meet with them in April, and to discuss a 2020 White House run with his wife. On April 2, 2019, Gravel filed to officially run for office. The campaign called itself the "#Gravelanche".
Gravel's initial stated goal was merely to qualify for debates by getting the required 65,000 small donors. He discouraged people from voting for him and said his preferences were Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard, both of whom favor a non-interventionist foreign policy. But on April 29, Gravel's campaign said he was running to win, not just to participate in debates. In a subsequent interview, though, Gravel emphasized the virtue of Sanders and Gabbard in some order as a presidential ticket. Statements like these caused Vox to call Gravel "2020's oddest Democratic presidential candidate". The New York Times Magazine included Gravel as an example in the rise of democratic socialism in the United States also exemplified by Sanders's 2016 race and the 2018 election of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: "[Gravel's] campaign represents the most absurd form of a legitimate movement on the left that feels little obligation to the Democratic Party."
In June 2019, Gravel touted the endorsement of Muntadher al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who, in December 2008, made headlines after he threw his shoes at President George W. Bush in protest of the U.S. war in Iraq. Al-Zaidi endorsed Gravel based on his promise to improve White House policies regarding Iraq and the Middle East.
On June 13, 2019, the Democratic Party announced the 20 major candidates who qualified for the first debate later that month. Gravel was one of the four who missed out (the others were Montana Governor Steve Bullock, U.S. Representative Seth Moulton, and Miramar, Florida, Mayor Wayne Messam). Gravel had been unable to get the requisite number of donations, or to score one percent or better in enough polls (many polls did not even include him). Nevertheless, Gravel said he would not drop out and would try to qualify for the July debate. In early July, however, Gravel's campaign said it was still 10,000 contributions short of the 65,000-donor threshold and that it was "nearing its conclusion". It solicited suggestions for where to donate $100–150,000 of leftover campaign funds. Gravel added that he had always planned on ending the campaign before the teenagers in charge of it needed to return to school. A few days later the campaign became the first to run an attack ad against Democratic front-runner Joe Biden, using the text "Is this the best our party has to offer?"
Gravel's campaign crossed the threshold of 65,000 donors on July 12, 2019, meeting the qualification mark for that month's debate. But because 20 other candidates, the maximum allowed to participate, had already met at least the polling criterion, which takes priority over the donor criterion, Gravel was not invited.
The campaign officially came to a close on August 6, 2019, with Gravel endorsing both Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard for president. Gravel's campaign later stated on Twitter that they never wanted to win but saw the campaign as an "intimately democratic" project and expressed honor at working with Gravel. Gravel said he would divide remaining campaign funds between charity and a new think tank which would espouse his ideas.
The Gravel Institute
Gravel used some of the funds remaining from his 2020 presidential campaign to found an eponymous progressive think tank called The Gravel Institute in 2019. As noted by Vice magazine, the institute aims to do battle with PragerU from a left-wing perspective. Launched in September 2020, the new entity said it would "carry on the life's work of former U.S Senator Mike Gravel in fighting for global peace and democracy. Its mission is to promote bold and forward-looking ideas about a more peaceful and egalitarian world, and to build a robust movement of young people to win it". Contributors announced include Cornel West and Slavoj Žižek, as well as Lower Brule Indian Reservation activist Nick Estes. Other presenters have included and will include H. Jon Benjamin, Briahna Joy Gray, Bernie Sanders, Chelsea Manning, Richard Wolff, Stephanie Kelton, Zephyr Teachout, David Cross, Jabari Brisport, Zohran Mamdani, and Gravel himself (though it is unknown if his appearance will be cancelled due to his death in June 2021, or if the video has already been recorded).
Death
Gravel died of multiple myeloma at his home in Seaside, California, on June 26, 2021, at age 91.
The obituary for him in The New York Times stated that Gravel was "a two-term Democratic senator from Alaska ... who was perhaps better known as an unabashed attention-getter" who later become known for "mounting long-shot presidential runs". The obituary in The Washington Post was similar, saying that Gravel was "an Alaska Democrat with a flair for the theatrical who rose from obscurity to brief renown" and later "ran quixotic campaigns for the presidency". The Anchorage Daily News quoted Gravel as saying of himself in 1989, "I'm an independent kind of guy. A rough and ready kind of guy. My glands work in a certain way that make me stand up, foolishly sometimes, and fight."
Political positions
Alan Abramowitz and Jeffrey Allan Segal described Gravel as "a maverick, if not an eccentric, in the Senate." His Americans for Democratic Action "Liberal Quotient" scores ranged from 81 out of 100 (1971) to 39 out of 100 (1980), with an average of around 61. His American Conservative Union scores ranged from 0 out of 100 (several years, including 1971 and 1972) to 38 out of 100 (1979), with an average of 14. Abramowitz and Segal note that Gravel's lowest ADA ratings coincided with his two Senate re-election bids, and for the most part his highest ACU ratings followed the same pattern.
In 1972, as a young senator, Gravel published Citizen Power: A People's Platform, a manifesto outlining what Kirkus Reviews termed a "populist reform [that] would provide 'balanced political power' between the people and government and business interests."
Civil rights issues
On drug policy, Gravel said in 2007 that he favored decriminalization and treating addiction as a public health matter. During his 2008 presidential candidacy he condemned the War on Drugs as a failure, saying that it did "nothing but savage our inner cities and put our children at risk". Gravel called for abolition of capital punishment in his book Citizen Power, and adhered to this position during his 2008 run for president. He supported abortion rights.
During the 2008 campaign Gravel was a strong supporter of LGBT rights. He supported same-sex marriage and opposed the Defense of Marriage Act and the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. He wrote in 2008 that "depriving gays and lesbians of equal rights is immoral".
Foreign policy and defense issues
Gravel was a critic of American imperialism.
Gravel firmly opposed U.S. military action against Iran and Syria. He voiced opposition to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the use of torture, indefinite detention, and what he called "flagrant ignorance" of the Geneva Convention. In 2014 Gravel called for the release of the full, unredacted Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture.
Gravel opposed the use of international sanctions as a policy tool and blamed the ones against Iraq under Saddam Hussein for the deaths of a half-million children in that country. In 2013 Gravel said that sanctions against Iran were "illegal".
During his 2008 candidacy, Gravel called for a cut in military spending, variously reported to be 15 percent or 50 percent. He called for the savings to boost public education spending. To spur international nuclear nonproliferation efforts, Gravel called for unilateral reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
In 2008 Gravel criticized the decision of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to not pursue the efforts to impeach George W. Bush and the attempted impeachment of Dick Cheney, saying also that Bush and Cheney had committed crimes and deserved "to be prosecuted" at The Hague. In 2013 he expressed disdain for President Obama, calling him "a total fraud" and saying that both Bush and Obama should be tried "for the crimes and murders they've committed" in the International Court of Justice. Gravel specifically condemned Obama for the drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere.
Economy, immigration, and environment
During his 2008 candidacy Gravel favored a FairTax scheme, which would abolish the Internal Revenue Service, eliminate the federal income tax (which Gravel called "corrupt"), and impose a national sales tax. While Gravel described FairTax as "progressive", others have criticized it as "regressive", disproportionately benefiting the wealthiest Americans. To offset the new sales taxes on essential goods, Gravel's plan called for monthly government rebate payments to individuals and families. During his 2020 campaign Gravel also voiced support for a third legislative body that would give the people direct control of the budget as well as the implementation of a land value tax.
Gravel opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) during his 2008 candidacy, calling it unfair and economically harmful and needing renegotiation. Gravel believed that NAFTA was the "root cause" of illegal migration to the U.S. He favored a guest worker program and "setting up naturalization procedures that would fairly bring immigrants into legal status". In a 2007 interview, Gravel identified himself as "very much of a globalist" who believed in open markets and open borders and condemned the scapegoating of undocumented immigrants. Gravel also said that he favored eliminating the cap on H1B visas.
As a senator from Alaska, Gravel favored drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but opposed it during his 2008 campaign. In 2008, Gravel supported a carbon tax to combat climate change.
Gravel spoke in favor of net neutrality during his presidential campaign.
Education and health care
Gravel called for the cost of college tuition to be borne by the federal government, rather than students. In his 2008 campaign, he called the No Child Left Behind Act "a failure" and called for it to be "reformed and fully funded". He expressed support for universal pre-kindergarten and the expansion of the Head Start program; and expressed an openness to charter schools and school vouchers. He also suggested extending the school day and the school year, and supported merit pay for teachers.
Gravel also called for publicly funded universal health care to replace the current employer-sponsored health insurance system. He supported "full funding" of the VA system. When asked in 2007 about naturopathy, homeopathy, and acupuncture, Gravel said that he was "very very much in favor" of holistic health care.
Awards and honors
In 2008 Gravel received the Columbia University School of General Studies' first annual Isaac Asimov Lifetime Achievement Award.
Electoral history
Writings
Gravel, Mike. Jobs and More Jobs. Mt. McKinley Publishers, 1968.
Gravel, Mike. Citizen Power: A People's Platform. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972. .
revised and reissued as Citizen Power: A Mandate for Change, AuthorHouse, 2008. .
Gravel, Mike and Lauria, Joe. A Political Odyssey: The Rise of American Militarism and One Man's Fight to Stop It. Seven Stories Press, 2008. .
Gravel, Mike and Eisenbach, David. The Kingmakers: How the Media Threatens Our Security and Our Democracy. Phoenix Books, 2008. .
Gravel, Mike. Voice of a Maverick: The Speeches and Writings of Senator Mike Gravel. Brandywine House, 2008.
Gravel, Mike. Foreword to Poisoned Power: The Case Against Nuclear Power Plants. John W. Goffman & Arthur R. Tamplin, Rodale Press, Inc., Emmaus, PA, June 1971.
Gravel, Mike. The Failure of Representative Government and the Solution: A Legislature of the People. AuthorHouse, 2020.
Explanatory notes
References
Citations
General references
The Pentagon Papers Senator Gravel Edition. Vol. Five: Critical Essays. Boston: Beacon Press, 1972. 341p. plus 72p. of Index to Vol. I–IV of the Papers; Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, editors.
External links
Mike Gravel official website
The Gravel Institute
|-
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1930 births
2021 deaths
1972 United States vice-presidential candidates
20th-century American male writers
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American people of French-Canadian descent
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Businesspeople from Anchorage, Alaska
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Writers from Anchorage, Alaska | 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"
] |
[
"Mike Gravel",
"Nuclear issues and the Cold War",
"Did Mike Gravel have problem with Nuclear bomb ?",
"he then made a personal appeal to President Nixon to stop the test.",
"What were his reasons for opposing it ?",
"he said the risk of the test was not worth taking.",
"Did he have problem with the Cold War ?",
"1971, Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction",
"Did they pass the Bill ?",
"I don't know.",
"What else did he do to stop the nuclear plant ?",
"in 1975, he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974, Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power.",
"What did they do ?",
"I don't know."
] | C_672c6c49d0d948738552b25aaebe1fb2_0 | Did he ever gave up his opposition to the plant ? | 7 | Did Mike Gravel ever gave up his opposition to the nuclear power plant ? | Mike Gravel | In the late 1960s and early 1970s the U.S. Department of Defense was in the process of performing tests for the nuclear warhead for the Spartan anti-ballistic missile. Two tests, the "Milrow" and "Cannikin" tests, were planned, involving the detonation of nuclear bombs under Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Milrow test would be a one megaton calibration exercise for the second, and larger five megaton, Cannikin test, which would measure the effectiveness of the warhead. Gravel opposed the tests in Congress. Before the Milrow test took place in October 1969, he wrote that there were significant risks of earthquakes and other adverse consequences, and called for an independent national commission on nuclear and seismic safety to be created; he then made a personal appeal to President Nixon to stop the test. After Milrow was conducted, there was continued pressure on the part of environmental groups against going forward with the larger Cannikin test, while the Federation of American Scientists claimed that the warhead being tested was already obsolete. In May 1971, Gravel sent a letter to U.S. Atomic Energy Commission hearings held in Anchorage, in which he said the risk of the test was not worth taking. Eventually a group not involving Gravel took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to issue an injunction against it, and the Cannikin test took place as scheduled in November 1971. Gravel had failed to stop the tests (notwithstanding his later claims during his 2008 presidential campaign). Nuclear power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for the commercial generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gravel publicly opposed this policy; besides the dangers of nuclear testing, he was a vocal critic of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw American nuclear efforts, and of the powerful United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had a stranglehold on nuclear policy and which Gravel tried to circumvent. In 1971, Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction and to make power utilities liable for any nuclear accidents; in 1975, he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974, Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power. Six months before U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's secret mission to the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.) in July 1971, Gravel introduced legislation to recognize and normalize relations with China, including a proposal for unity talks between the P.R.C. and the Republic of China (Taiwan) regarding the Chinese seat on the U.N. Security Council. Gravel reiterated his position in favor of recognition, with four other senators in agreement, during Senate hearings in June 1971. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Maurice Robert Gravel ( ; May 13, 1930 – June 26, 2021) was an American politician who served as a United States Senator from Alaska from 1969 to 1981 as a member of the Democratic Party, and who, in later life, twice ran for the presidential nomination of that party.
Born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, by French-Canadian immigrant parents, Gravel moved to Alaska in the late 1950s, becoming a real estate developer and entering politics. He served in the Alaska House of Representatives from 1963 to 1967, and also became Speaker of the Alaska House. Gravel was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1968.
As a senator, Gravel became nationally known for his forceful, but unsuccessful, attempts to end the draft during the War in Vietnam, and for putting the Pentagon Papers into the public record in 1971. He conducted a campaign for the Democratic nomination in 1972 for Vice President of the United States, and then played a crucial role in obtaining Congressional approval for the Trans-Alaska pipeline in 1973. He was re-elected to the Senate in 1974, but was defeated in his bid for a third term in the primary election in 1980.
An advocate of direct democracy and the National Initiative, Gravel staged a run for the 2008 Democratic nomination for President of the United States. His campaign failed to gain support, and in March 2008, he left the Democratic Party and joined the Libertarian Party to compete unsuccessfully for its presidential nomination and the inclusion of the National Initiative into the Libertarian Platform. He ran for president as a Democrat again in the 2020 election, in a campaign that ended four months after it began. Two years before his death, Gravel and his campaign staff founded the progressive think tank The Gravel Institute.
Early life, military service, education
Gravel was born on May 13, 1930, in Springfield, Massachusetts, one of five children of French-Canadian immigrant parents, Alphonse and Marie (née Bourassa) Gravel. His parents were part of the Quebec diaspora, and he was raised in a working-class neighborhood during the Great Depression, speaking only French until he was seven years old. Calling him "Mike" from an early age, his father valued work above all else, while his mother stressed the importance of education.
Gravel was educated in parochial schools as a Roman Catholic. There he struggled, due to what he later said was undiagnosed dyslexia, and was left back in third grade. He completed elementary school in 1945 and his class voted him "most charming personality". A summer job as a soda jerk led to Gravel handing out campaign fliers for local candidates on his boss's behalf; Gravel was immediately impressed with "the awesomeness of political office".
Gravel then boarded at Assumption Preparatory School in Worcester, Massachusetts, where his performance was initially mediocre. By Gravel's telling, in the summer of 1948 he intended to volunteer for the Israel Defense Forces during the 1947–1949 Palestine war, but Alexandra Tolstaya told him to return to school. There an English teacher, the Assumptionist Edgar Bourque, gave him personal attention, improving Gravel's language skills and instructing him in public speaking. Gravel's grades improved measurably in his final year and he graduated in 1949. His sister, Marguerite, became a Holy Cross nun, but Gravel himself struggled with the Catholic faith. He studied for one year at Assumption College, a Catholic school in Worcester, then transferred for his sophomore year to American International College in Springfield. Journalist I. F. Stone and philosopher Bertrand Russell strongly influenced Gravel in their willingness to challenge assumptions and oppose social convention and political authority.
Around May 1951, Gravel saw that he was about to be drafted and instead enlisted in the U.S. Army for a three-year term so that he could get into the Counterintelligence Corps. After basic training and counterintelligence school at Fort Holabird in Maryland and in South Carolina, he went to Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia. While he expected to be sent off to the Korean War when he graduated as a second lieutenant in early 1952, he was instead assigned to Stuttgart, West Germany, as a Special Adjutant in the Army's Communications Intelligence Service. In Germany, Gravel conducted surveillance operations on civilians and paid off spies. After about a year, he transferred to Orléans, France, where his French language abilities (if not his French-Canadian accent) allowed him to infiltrate French communist rallies. He worked as a Special Agent in the Counterintelligence Corps until 1954, eventually becoming a first lieutenant.
Following his discharge, Gravel entered the Columbia University School of General Studies in New York City, where he studied economics and received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1956. He moved to New York "flat broke" and supported himself by working as a bar boy in a hotel, driving a taxicab, and working in the investment bond department at Bankers Trust. During this time he left the Roman Catholic faith.
Move to Alaska
Gravel "decided to become a pioneer in a faraway place," and moved to pre-statehood Alaska in August 1956, without funds or a job, looking for a place where someone without social or political connections could be a viable candidate for public office. Alaska's voting age of 19, less than most other states' 21, played a role in his decision, as did its newness and cooler climate. Broke when he arrived, he immediately found work in real estate sales until winter arrived. Gravel then was employed as a brakeman for the Alaska Railroad, working the snow-clearing train on the Anchorage-to-Fairbanks run. Subsequently, he opened a small real estate brokerage in Anchorage (the Territory of Alaska not requiring a license) and saved enough so as not to have to work the railroad again. The firm was named the M. R. Gravel Real Estate Company. Gravel joined the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, and continued a sporadic relationship with the movement throughout his life.
Seeing Alaska as a wide-open place with no political establishment or entrenched interests, Gravel quickly became part of the civic scene there. By October 1957 he was a Division Chairman for Anchorage for the Democratic Central Committee in the territory, and by June 1958 he was president of the Alaska Young Democrats organization. He also became active in the United States Junior Chamber (Jaycees), and by early 1958 his duties included handing out awards for farmer of the year.
By early 1958, Gravel was running as Democratic Party primary candidate for a Third Division seat in House of Representative of the territorial legislature. (This was one of the four judicial divisions into which Alaska was sectioned at the time.) Using the slogan "Gravel, the Roadbed to Prosperity", he ran but lost. At the same time, he was also an advocate for Alaskan statehood.
Gravel went on a 44-state national speaking tour concerning tax reform in 1959, sponsored by the Jaycees, often dressing for events as Paul Revere. Gravel was selected from some two thousand applications for this position. The tour received a good amount of local newspaper coverage at its various stops, with Gravel's first name sometimes given as Mike and other times as Maurice. The tour's general message was an urging of "lower taxes, more efficiency in government and a system of taxation moderate at all levels of income". At several stops Gravel stated that the "tide of socialism" had to be stopped. He elaborated at another stop, "It is part of our Jaycee creed that economic justice can best be won by free men through free enterprise. We really want to see that free enterprise become our inheritance." The tour was scheduled to conclude in Washington D.C., on Tax Day, April 15, with petition signatures accumulated for reform to be presented to U.S. lawmakers: dressed as Revere, Gravel rode with the petition to the steps of the U.S. Capitol.
The tour over, Gravel married Rita Jeannette Martin at the First Methodist Church of Anchorage on April 29, 1959. She was a native of Montana who had attended Billings Business College before moving to Alaska two years prior and becoming a secretary in the office of the Anchorage city manager. She had also been named Anchorage's "Miss Fur Rendezvous" of 1958. They had two children, Martin Anthony Gravel and Lynne Denise Gravel, born c. 1960 and 1962 respectively.
Gravel ran without avail for the City Council in Anchorage in 1960. During this time, he had become a successful real estate agent; after the 1960 election, he became a property developer in a mobile home park on the outskirts of Anchorage. After a partner ran into financial difficulty, however, the project went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and Gravel was forced out in 1962.
State legislator
With the support of Alaska wholesale grocer Barney Gottstein and supermarket builder Larry Carr, Gravel ran for the Alaska House of Representatives representing Anchorage in 1962, initially assigned the 10th and then 8th districts. Alaska had very crowded primaries that year: Gravel was one of 33 Democrats, along with 21 Republicans, who were running for the chance to compete for the 14 House seats allocated to the 8th district. Gravel made it through the primary, and in November eight Republicans and six Democrats were elected to the House from the district, with Gravel finishing eighth overall and third among with Democrats, with 8,174 votes. Gottstein became Gravel's main financial backer during most of his subsequent campaigns.
Gravel served in the Alaska House of Representatives from January 28, 1963 to January 22, 1967, winning reelection in 1964. In his first term, he served as a minority member on two House committees: Commerce, and Labor and Management. He co-authored and sponsored the act that created the Alaska State Commission for Human Rights. Gravel was the chief architect of the law that created a regional high school system for rural Alaska; this allowed Alaska Natives to attend schools near where they lived instead of having to go to schools run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the lower 48 states.
During the half-years that the legislature was not in session, Gravel resumed his real estate work. With Gottstein and Carr's backing, he became quite successful as a property developer on the Kenai Peninsula.
During 1965 and 1966, he served as the Speaker of the House, surprising observers by winning that post. Gravel convinced former Speaker Warren A. Taylor to not try for the position against him by promising Taylor chairmanship of the Rules Committee, then reneged on the promise. Gravel denied later press charges that he had promised but not delivered on other committee chairmanships. As Speaker he antagonized fellow lawmakers by imposing his will on the legislature's committees and feuded with Alaska State Senate president Robert J. McNealy.
Gravel did not run for reelection in 1966, instead choosing to run for Alaska's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, losing the primary to four-term incumbent Democrat Ralph Rivers by 1,300 votes and splitting the Democratic Party in the process. Rivers lost the general election that year to Republican state Senator Howard Pollock. Following this defeat, Gravel returned to the real estate business in Anchorage.
U.S. Senator
Election to Senate in 1968
In 1968, Gravel ran against 81-year-old incumbent Democratic United States Senator Ernest Gruening, a popular former governor of the Alaska Territory who was considered one of the fathers of Alaska's statehood, for his party's nomination to the U.S. Senate. Gravel's campaign was primarily based on his youth and telegenic appearance rather than issue differences. He hired Joseph Napolitan, the first self-described political consultant, in late 1966. They spent over a year and a half planning a short, nine-day primary election campaign that featured the slogans "Alaska first" and "Let's do something about the state we're in", the distribution of a collection of essays titled Jobs and More Jobs, and the creation of a half-hour, well-produced, glamorized biographical film of Gravel, Man for Alaska. The film was shown twice a day on every television station in Alaska, and carried by plane and shown on home projectors in hundreds of Alaska Native villages. The heavy showings quickly reversed a 2–to–1 Gruening lead in polls into a Gravel lead. Gravel visited many remote villages by seaplane and showed a thorough understanding of the needs of the bush country and the fishing and oil industries. Gravel also benefited from maintaining a deliberately ambiguous posture about Vietnam policy. Gruening had been one of only two Senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and his opposition to President Lyndon B. Johnson's war policies was harming him among the Democratic electorate; according to Gravel, "all I had to do was stand up and not deal with the subject, and people would assume that I was to the right of Ernest Gruening, when in point of fact I was to the left of him". In Man for Alaska, Gravel argued that "the liberals" would come to West Germany's defense if it was attacked, and that the same standard should apply to the United States' allies in Asia. During the campaign he also claimed that he was "more in the mainstream of American thought on Vietnam" than Gruening, despite the fact that he had written to Gruening to praise his antiwar stance four years earlier. Decades later, Gravel conceded that "I said what I said [about Vietnam] to advance my career."
Gravel beat Gruening in the primary by about 2,000 votes. Gruening found "the unexpected defeat hard to take" and thought that some aspects of his opponent's biographical film had misled viewers. In the general election, Gravel faced Republican Elmer E. Rasmuson, a banker and former mayor of Anchorage. College students in the state implored Gruening to run a write-in campaign as an Independent, but legal battles prevented him from getting approval for it until only two weeks were left. A late appearance by anti-war presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy did not offset Gruening's lack of funds and endorsements; meanwhile, Gravel and Rasmuson both saturated local media with their filmed biographies. On November 5, 1968, Gravel won the general election with 45 percent of the vote to Rasmuson's 37 percent and Gruening's 18 percent.
Senate assignments and style
When Gravel joined the U.S.Senate in January 1969, he requested and received a seat on the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, which had direct relevance to Alaskan issues. He also got a spot on the Public Works Committee, which he held throughout his time in the Senate. Finally, he was a member of the Select Committee on Small Business. In 1971 he became chair of the Public Works Committee's Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds, and by 1973 he was chair of its Subcommittee on Water Resources, then later its Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution. Gravel was also initially named to the Joint Committee on Congressional Operations. By 1973 Gravel was off the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee and the Select Small Business Committee and instead a member of the Finance Committee, and by 1977 was chair of that body's Subcommittee on Energy and Foundations. By 1973 he had also been on the ad hoc Special Committee to Study Secret and Confidential Government Documents.
By his own admission, Gravel was too new and "too abrasive" to be effective in the Senate by the usual means of seniority-based committee assignments or negotiating deals with other senators, and was sometimes seen as arrogant or a nuisance by the more senior and tradition-oriented members. Gravel relied on attention-getting gestures to achieve what he wanted, hoping national exposure would force other senators to listen to him. But even senators who agreed with him on issues considered his methods to be showboating.
As part of this approach, Gravel voted with Southern Democrats to keep the Senate filibuster rule in place, and accordingly supported Russell Long and Robert Byrd but opposed Ted Kennedy in Senate leadership battles. In retrospective assessment, University of Alaska Anchorage history professor Stephen Haycox said, "Loose cannon is a good description of Gravel's Senate career. He was an off-the-wall guy, and you weren't really ever sure what he would do."
Nuclear issues and the Cold War
In the late 1960s and early 1970s the U.S. Department of Defense was in the process of performing tests for the nuclear warhead for the Spartan anti-ballistic missile. Two tests, the "Milrow" and "Cannikin" tests, were planned, involving the detonation of nuclear bombs under Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Milrow test would be a one-megaton calibration exercise for the second and larger five-megaton Cannikin test, which would measure the effectiveness of the warhead. Gravel opposed the tests. Before the Milrow test took place in October 1969, he wrote that there were significant risks of earthquakes and other adverse consequences and called for an independent national commission on nuclear and seismic safety; he then made a personal appeal to President Richard Nixon to stop the test.
After Milrow was conducted, there was continued pressure on the part of environmental groups against going forward with the Cannikin test, while the Federation of American Scientists claimed that the warhead being tested was already obsolete. In May 1971 Gravel sent a letter to U.S. Atomic Energy Commission hearings held in Anchorage in which he said the risk of the test was not worth taking. Eventually a group not involving Gravel took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to issue an injunction against it, and the Cannikin test took place as scheduled in November 1971. Gravel had failed to stop the tests (notwithstanding his later claims during his 2008 presidential campaign).
In 1971 Gravel voted against the Nixon administration's proposed anti-ballistic missile system, the Safeguard Program, having previously vacillated over the issue, suggesting that he might be willing to support it in exchange for federal lands in Alaska being opened up for private oil drilling. His vote alienated Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, who had raised funds for Gravel's primary campaign.
Nuclear power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for commercial generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gravel publicly opposed this policy; besides the dangers of nuclear testing, he was a vocal critic of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw American nuclear efforts, and of the powerful United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had a stranglehold on nuclear policy and which Gravel tried to circumvent. In 1971 Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction and to make power utilities liable for any nuclear accidents; in 1975 he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974 Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power.
Six months before U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's July 1971 secret mission to the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.), Gravel introduced legislation to recognize and normalize relations with the P.R.C., including a proposal for unity talks between the P.R.C. and the Republic of China (Taiwan) regarding the Chinese seat on the U.N. Security Council. He reiterated his position in favor of recognition, with four other senators in agreement, during Senate hearings in June 1971.
Vietnam War, the draft, and the Pentagon Papers
Although he did not campaign against the Vietnam War during his first Senate campaign, by the end of 1970 Gravel was speaking out against United States policy in southeast Asia: in December of that year he persuaded William Fulbright to join him in a spontaneous two-day filibuster against a $155 million military aid package to Cambodia's Khmer Republic government in the Cambodian Civil War.
President Richard Nixon had campaigned in 1968 on a promise to end the U.S. military draft, a decision endorsed by the February 1970 report of the Gates Commission.
The existing draft law was scheduled to conclude at the end of June 1971, and the Senate faced a contentious debate about whether to extend it as the Vietnam War continued. The Nixon administration announced in February 1971 that it wanted a two-year extension to June 1973, after which the draft would end; Army planners had already been operating under the assumption of a two-year extension, after which an all-volunteer force would be in place. Skeptics such as Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John Stennis thought this unrealistic and wanted a four-year extension, but the two-year proposal is what went forward in Congress. By early May 1971, Gravel had indicated his intention to filibuster the draft renewal legislation, halting conscription and thereby bringing U.S. involvement in the war to a rapid end. During this period he also supported efforts to mobilize and influence public opinion against the war, endorsing the "Vietnam War Out Now" rallies in Washington D.C. and San Francisco on April 24, 1971, and financing a broadcast campaign by the antiwar group War No More with a personal loan. In June 1972 he escorted a group of over 100 antiwar protesters, including psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, actress Candice Bergen, theater producer and director Joseph Papp, and peditrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, into the United States Capitol Building; the group was arrested after blocking a hallway outside the Senate chamber.
By June 1971, some Democratic senators opposed to the war wanted to limit the renewal to a one-year extension, while others wanted to end it immediately; Gravel reiterated that he was one of the latter, saying, "It's a senseless war, and one way to do away with it is to do away with the draft." A Senate vote on June 4 indicated majority support for the two-year extension. On June 18 Gravel announced again his intention to counteract that by filibustering the renewal legislation, defending the practice against those who associated it only with blocking civil rights legislation. The first filibuster attempt failed on June 23 when, by three votes, the Senate voted cloture for only the fifth time since 1927.
Protracted negotiations took place over House conference negotiations on the bill, revolving in large part around Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield's eventually unsuccessful amendment to tie renewal to a troop withdrawal timetable from Vietnam; during this time the draft law expired and no more were conscripted. On August 5, the Nixon administration pleaded for a renewal before the Senate went on recess, but Gravel blocked Stennis's attempt to limit debate, and no vote was held. Finally on September 21, 1971, the Senate invoked cloture over Gravel's second filibuster attempt by one vote, and then passed the two-year draft extension. Gravel's attempts to stop the draft had failed (notwithstanding Gravel's later claims that he had stopped or shortened the draft, taken at face value in some media reports, during his 2008 presidential campaign).
Meanwhile, on June 13, 1971, The New York Times began printing large portions of the Pentagon Papers. The papers were a large collection of secret government documents and studies pertaining to the Vietnam War, of which former Defense Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg had made unauthorized copies and was determined to make public. Ellsberg had for a year and a half approached members of Congress – such as William Fulbright, George McGovern, Charles Mathias, and Pete McCloskey – about publishing the documents, on the grounds that the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution would give congressional members immunity from prosecution, but all had refused. Instead, Ellsberg gave the documents to the Times.
The U.S. Justice Department immediately tried to halt publication, on the grounds that the information revealed within the papers harmed the national interest. Within the next two weeks, a federal court injunction halted publication in the Times; The Washington Post and several other newspapers began publishing parts of the documents, with some of them also being halted by injunctions; and the whole matter went to the U.S. Supreme Court for arguments. Looking for an alternate publication mechanism, Ellsberg returned to his idea of having a member of Congress read them, and chose Gravel based on the latter's efforts against the draft; Gravel agreed where previously others had not. Ellsberg arranged for the papers to be given to Gravel on June 26 via an intermediary, Post editor Ben Bagdikian. Gravel used his counter-intelligence experience to choose a midnight transfer in front of the Mayflower Hotel in the center of Washington, D.C.
On the night of June 29, 1971, Gravel attempted to read the papers on the floor of the Senate as part of his filibuster against the draft, but was thwarted when no quorum could be formed. Gravel instead convened a session of the Buildings and Grounds subcommittee that he chaired. He got New York Congressman John G. Dow to testify that the war had soaked up funding for public buildings, thus making discussion of the war relevant to the committee. He began reading from the papers with the press in attendance, omitting supporting documents that he felt might compromise national security, and declaring, "It is my constitutional obligation to protect the security of the people by fostering the free flow of information absolutely essential to their democratic decision-making."
He read until 1 a.m., culminating by saying "Arms are being severed. Metal is clashing through human bodies because of the public policy this government and all its branches continue to support." Then with tears and sobs he said that he could no longer physically continue, the previous three nights of sleeplessness and fear about the future having taken their toll. Gravel ended the session by, with no other senators present, establishing unanimous consent to insert 4,100 pages of the Papers into the Congressional Record of his subcommittee. The following day, the Supreme Court's New York Times Co. v. United States decision ruled in favor of the newspapers and publication in the Times and others resumed. In July 1971 Bantam Books published an inexpensive paperback edition of the papers containing the material the Times had published.
Gravel, too, wanted to privately publish the portion of the papers he had read into the record, believing that "immediate disclosure of the contents of these papers will change the policy that supports the war". After being turned down by many commercial publishers, on August 4 he reached agreement with Beacon Press, the publishing arm of the Unitarian Universalist Association, of which Gravel was a member. Announced on August 17 and published on October 22, 1971, this four-volume, relatively expensive set became the "Senator Gravel Edition", which studies from Cornell University and the Annenberg Center for Communication have labeled as the most complete edition of the Pentagon Papers to be published. The "Gravel Edition" was edited and annotated by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, and included an additional volume of analytical articles on the origins and progress of the war, also edited by Chomsky and Zinn. Beacon Press then was subjected to a FBI investigation; an outgrowth of this was the Gravel v. United States court case, which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled upon in June 1972; it held that the Speech or Debate Clause did grant immunity to Gravel for his reading the papers in his subcommittee, did grant some immunity to Gravel's congressional aide, but granted no immunity to Beacon Press in relation to their publishing the same papers. The U.S. Senate Democratic Caucus backed Gravel in the case, but due to Republican opposition it did not pay Gravel's legal fees, leaving him owing $25,000 (the equivalent of $150,000 in 2019, adjusted for inflation).
The events of 1971 changed Gravel in the following months from an obscure freshman senator to a nationally visible political figure. He became a sought-after speaker on the college circuit as well as at political fundraisers, opportunities he welcomed as lectures were "the one honest way a Senator has to supplement his income". But his speaking tours caused him to accrue one of the worst absentee records in the Senate. The Democratic candidates for the 1972 presidential election sought his endorsement. In January 1972 Gravel endorsed Maine Senator Ed Muskie, hoping that his support would help Muskie with the party's left wing and in ethnic French-Canadian areas during the first primary contest in New Hampshire (Muskie won, but not overwhelmingly, and his campaign faltered soon after). In April 1972 Gravel appeared on all three networks' nightly newscasts to decry the Nixon administration's reliance on Vietnamization by making reference to the secret National Security Study Memorandum 1 document, which stated it would take 8–13 years for the Army of the Republic of Vietnam to defend South Vietnam. Gravel made excerpts from the study public, but senators Robert P. Griffin and William B. Saxbe blocked his attempt to read NSSM 1 into the Congressional Record.
Domestic policy
In 1970 Gravel co-sponsored legislation to establish a guaranteed minimum income, entitling poor families to up to $6,300 a year (the equivalent of $42,000 in 2019 after adjustment for inflation). He subsequently voted for a "work bonus" program, which would have entitled low-income working families with dependent children if they were paying Social Security or Railroad Retirement taxes to a non-taxable bonus of up to 10 percent of their wages. Gravel also supported extending Social Security to all federal employees and introduced a campaign finance reform bill in 1971 that would have enacted full disclosure of campaign financing, placed limits on large donations, media spending and individual candidate spending.
In 1969, Gravel was the only Democratic Senator outside of the South to vote for Nixon's Supreme Court nominee Clement Haynsworth. The following year Gravel opposed Nixon's next pick, G. Harrold Carswell.
Run for vice president in 1972
Gravel actively campaigned for the office of Vice President of the United States during the 1972 presidential election, announcing on June 2, 1972, over a month before the 1972 Democratic National Convention began, that he was interested in the nomination should the choice be opened up to convention delegates. Toward this end he began soliciting delegates for their support. He was not alone in this effort, as former Governor of Massachusetts Endicott Peabody had been running a quixotic campaign for the same post since the prior year. Likely presidential nominee George McGovern was in fact considering the unusual move of naming three or four acceptable vice-presidential candidates and letting the delegates choose.
On the convention's final day, July 14, 1972, McGovern selected and announced Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his vice-presidential choice. Eagleton was unknown to many delegates and the choice seemed to smack of traditional ticket balancing considerations. Thus there were delegates willing to look elsewhere. Gravel was nominated by Bettye Fahrenkamp, the Democratic National Committeewoman from Alaska. He then seconded his own nomination, breaking down in tears at his own words and maybe trying to withdraw his nomination. In any case he won 226 delegate votes, coming in third behind Eagleton and Frances "Sissy" Farenthold of Texas, in chaotic balloting that included several other candidates.
Gravel attracted some attention for his efforts: writer Norman Mailer said he "provided considerable excitement" and was "good-looking enough to have played leads in B-films", while Rolling Stone correspondent Hunter S. Thompson said Gravel "probably said a few things that might have been worth hearing, under different circumstances". Yet the process was doubly disastrous for the Democrats. In the time consumed by nominating and seconding and all the vice-presidential candidates' speeches, the attention of the delegates on the floor was lost and McGovern's speech was pushed to 3:30 a.m. The haste with which Eagleton was selected led to surprise when his past mental health treatments were revealed; he withdrew from the ticket soon after the convention, to be replaced by Sargent Shriver.
Reelection to Senate in 1974
Several years earlier, Alaska politicians had speculated that Gravel would have a hard time getting both renominated and elected when his first term expired, given that he was originally elected without a base party organization and tended to focus on national rather than local issues.
Nonetheless, after receiving support from national and local labor leaders, securing key earmarks, and producing another half-hour TV advertorial, in 1974 Gravel was reelected to the Senate, with 58 percent of the vote to 42 percent for Republican State Senator C. R. Lewis, who was a national officer of the John Birch Society.
Second term
Gravel's reelection campaign left him $65,000–$75,000 in debt. In 1975 The Washington Post reported on a memo by his executive assistant laying out a fundraising strategy to tackle this, including raising funds from oil companies, meeting with previous donors and "inquir[ing] into the governmental priorities of these people and their groups in the coming session", as well as obtaining further speaking fees to reduce his personal debt. This was followed by a number of stories about links between Gravel, lobbyists and fundraisers, including one that was widely publicized in Alaska about his holding a share in a Colorado resort with two Washington lobbyists he was working with on land and energy legislation. Gravel had been open about the investment and had opposing views to one of the lobbyists on nuclear power. In 1980 the Wall Street Journal published details about his fundraising activities, including writing to individuals and PACs in the oil industry, pledging to kill off proposals for a windfall profits tax on the sector, and traveling in the Middle East with the business partner of one of his donors to sell Alaskan land to businessmen. Gravel suggested that critics of his fundraising were "naive".
In 1975 Gravel introduced an amendment to cut the number of troops overseas by 200,000, but it was defeated on a voice vote.
In September 1975 Gravel was named as one of several Congressional Advisers to the Seventh Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly, which met to discuss problems related to economic development and international economic cooperation.
In June 1976 Gravel was the focus of a federal investigation into allegations that he was involved in a sex-for-vote arrangement. Congressional staff clerk Elizabeth Ray (who had already been involved in a sex scandal that led to the downfall of Representative Wayne Hays) said that in August 1972 she had sex with Gravel aboard a houseboat on the Potomac River, under the instruction of Representative Kenneth J. Gray, her boss at the time. Gray allegedly wanted to secure Gravel's support for further funding for construction of the National Visitor Center in Washington, a troubled project that was under the jurisdiction of subcommittees that both members chaired. Another Congressional staffer said she witnessed the boat encounter, but Gravel said at the time that he had never met either of the women. Gravel and Gray strongly denied that they had made any arrangement regarding legislation, and neither was ever charged with any wrongdoing. Decades later Gravel wrote that he had indeed had sex with Ray, but had not changed any votes because of it.
Gravel and his main financial backer, Gottstein, had a falling out in 1978, during the Congressional debate over whether to allow a controversial sale of U.S. F-15 fighter aircraft to Saudi Arabia. An ardent backer of Israel, Gottstein opposed the sale and asked Gravel to vote against it. But Gravel not only voted for it but made an emotional speech attacking the anti-sale campaign. Gravel wrote in 2008 that it was the only time Gottstein had ever asked him for a favor, and the rupture resulted in their never speaking to each other again.
Alaskan issues
By 1971 Gravel was urging construction of the much-argued Trans-Alaska pipeline, addressing environmental concerns by saying that the pipeline's builders and operators should have "total and absolute" responsibility for any consequent environmental damage. Two years later the debate over the pipeline came to a crux, with The New York Times describing it as "environmentalists [in] a holy war with the major oil companies". In February 1973 the U.S. Court of Appeals blocked the issuance of permits for construction; Gravel and fellow Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens reacted by urging Congress to pass legislation overturning the court's decision. Environmentalists opposed to the pipeline, such as the Environmental Defense Fund and the Sierra Club then sought to use the recently passed National Environmental Policy Act to their advantage; Gravel designed an amendment to the pipeline bill that would immunize the pipeline from any further court challenges under that law, and thus speed its construction. Passage of the amendment became the key battle regarding the pipeline. On July 17, 1973, in a dramatic roll-call vote, the Gravel amendment was approved as a 49–49 tie was broken in favor by Vice President Spiro Agnew. The actual bill enabling the pipeline then passed easily; Gravel had triumphed in what became perhaps his most lasting accomplishment as a senator.
In opposition to the Alaskan fishing industry, Gravel advocated American participation in the formation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. For two years he opposed legislation that established a Exclusive Economic Zone for marine resources. He was one of only 19 senators to vote against Senate approval for the expanded zone in 1976, saying it would undermine the U.S. position in Law of the Sea negotiations and that nations arbitrarily extending their fishing rights limits would "produce anarchy of the seas". The legislation was passed, and the United States has signed but never ratified the Law of the Sea treaty.
Gravel accumulated a complicated record on Indian affairs during his time in the Senate. During his first year in the Senate Gravel urged abolition of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, criticizing the agency for the pace of development of schools in Alaska, its paternalistic attitudes and the culturally inappropriate nature of its education, and advocating greater shared decision-making between the federal government and native communities in Alaska. Later, his views changed; in the early 1970s Gravel supported a demonstration project that established links between Alaskan villages and the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, for medical diagnostic communications. In 1971, he fended off accusations from Alaskan natives that he was not spending enough time working on their land claims. Gravel helped secure a private grant to facilitate the first Inuit Circumpolar Conference in 1977, attended by Inuit representatives from Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. These conferences now also include representatives from Russia. In 1977, Gravel helped lead an effort to have the U.S. Interior Department rename Mount McKinley to Denali; this eventually led to Denali National Park being so named. Subsequently, Gravel proposed a never-built "Denali City" development above the Tokositna River near the mountain, to consist of a giant Teflon dome enclosing hotels, golf courses, condominiums, and commercial buildings. A related idea of his to build a high-speed rail line to Denali also failed to gain traction.
A key, emotional issue in the state at the time was "locking up Alaska", making reference to allocation of its vast, mostly uninhabited land. President Jimmy Carter desired to put large portions of this land under federal protection against development, a move that some Alaskans vociferously opposed.
In 1978 Gravel blocked passage, via procedural delays such as walking out of House–Senate conference committee meetings, of a complex bill which represented a compromise on land use policy. The bill would have put some of Alaska's vast federal land holdings under state control while preserving other portions for federal parks and refuges; the blocking action earned Gravel the enmity of fellow Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who had supported the compromise. In 1980, a new lands bill came up for consideration, that was less favorable to Alaskan interests and more liked by environmentalists; it set aside of Alaska's for national parks, conservation areas, and other restricted federal uses. Gravel blocked it, as not ensuring enough future development in the state. A new compromise version of the 1980 bill came forward, which reduced the land set aside to . Representing Alaskan interests, Gravel tried to stop the bill, including by filibuster. But the Senate voted for cloture and passed the bill. Frustrated, Gravel said, "the legislation denies Alaska its rights as a state, and denies the U.S. crucial strategic resources," and opined that the Senate was "a little bit like a tank of barracudas". Nonetheless, the bill, known as the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, was signed by President Carter shortly before leaving the White House, and led to millions of acres being set aside in the state for national parks, wildlife refuges, and other kinds of areas under protection.
In 1978 Gravel authored and secured the passage into federal law of the General Stock Ownership Corporation, that became Subchapter U of the Tax Code under the Internal Revenue Code of 1954. This gave states the ability to create corporations that would invest in for-profit enterprises, with all citizens within the state owning shares in the corporation. Gravel's attempt to convince the Alaska state legislature to create such a corporation failed, as did a 1980 state ballot initiative towards the same end, but nevertheless the creation of the General Stock Ownership Corporation in federal law turned out to be significant in the development of binary economics.
Loss of Senate seat in 1980
In 1980 Gravel was challenged for the Democratic Party's nomination by State Representative Clark Gruening, the grandson of the man Gravel had defeated in a primary 12 years earlier. One of Gruening's supporters was Gravel's former backer Gottstein. Several factors made Gravel vulnerable. As an insurgent candidate in 1968 Gravel had never established a firm party base. Not liking to hunt or fish, he was also always culturally suspect in the state.
The primary campaign was bitterly fought. A group of Democrats, including future governor Steve Cowper, led the campaign against Gravel, with Gravel's actions in respect to the 1978 and 1980 Alaskan lands bills a major issue. This was especially so given that the 1980 bill's dénouement happened but a week before the primary. The sources of Gravel's campaign funds, some of which Gravel readily acknowledged came from political action committees outside the state, also became an issue in the contest. Gruening had pledged that he would not take special interest group money, but Gravel said that Gruening was "dishonest" in accepting individual contributors from Jewish donors living outside the state because to him such contributors comprised "a special interest group ... that seeks to influence the foreign policy of the U.S."
Gruening won the primary with about 55 percent of the vote to Gravel's 44 percent. Gravel later conceded that by the time of his defeat, he had alienated "almost every constituency in Alaska". Another factor may have been Alaska's blanket primary system of the time, which allowed unlimited voting across party lines and from its many independents; Republicans believed Gruening would be an easier candidate to defeat in the general election.
Gruening lost the general election to Republican Frank Murkowski. Gravel was the last Democrat to represent Alaska in Congress for 28 years, until Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich defeated Ted Stevens, by then an aged, iconic figure who had just been convicted of seven felonies for taking unreported gifts, in a very close and protracted election result in 2008. Stevens's conviction was subsequently vacated due to prosecutorial misconduct.
Career after leaving the Senate
Of his 1980 defeat, Gravel later recalled: "I had lost my career. I lost my marriage. I was in the doldrums for ten years after my defeat," and "Nobody wanted to hire me for anything important. I felt like I was worthless. I didn't know what I could do." By his own later description, Gravel was a womanizer, and had an affair while in the Senate, and in December 1980 he and his wife Rita separated. They filed for divorce in September 1981; she later received all of his Senate pension income.
During the 1980s Gravel was a real estate developer in Anchorage and Kenai, Alaska, a consultant, and a stockbroker. One of his real estate ventures, a condominium business, was forced to declare bankruptcy and a lawsuit ensued. In 1986 Gravel worked in partnership with Merrill Lynch Capital Markets to buy losses that financially troubled Alaska Native Corporations could not take as tax deductions and sell them to large national companies looking for tax writeoffs. Gravel also learned computer programming at some point but never practiced it.
In 1984 Gravel married his second wife, Whitney Stewart Gravel, a former administrative assistant for Senator Jacob Javits.
Return to politics
In 1989 Gravel reentered politics. He founded and led The Democracy Foundation, which promotes direct democracy. He established the Philadelphia II corporation, which seeks to replicate the original 1787 Constitutional Convention and have a Second Constitutional Convention to bring about direct democracy Gravel led an effort to get a United States Constitutional amendment to allow voter-initiated federal legislation similar to state ballot initiatives. He argued that Americans are able to legislate responsibly, and that the Act and Amendment in the National Initiative would allow American citizens to become "law makers". However such efforts met with little success.
In 2001, Gravel became director of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, where he admired institute co-founder Gregory Fossedal's work on direct democracy in Switzerland. By 2004, Gravel had become chair of the institute, and Fossedal (who in turn was a director of the Democracy Foundation) gave the introduction at Gravel's presidential announcement.
In 2003 Gravel gave a speech on direct democracy at a conference hosted by the American Free Press. The event was cosponsored by the Barnes Review, a journal that endorses Holocaust denial. After some controversy over his appearance, Gravel apologized, saying he did not realize the group's ties. Gravel said repeatedly that he did not share the group's views on the Holocaust, stating, "You better believe I know that six million Jews were killed. [The Barnes Review publishers] are nutty as loons if they don't think it happened". The group invited Gravel to speak again, but he declined.
Mike and Whitney Gravel lived in Arlington County, Virginia, until 2010 and then resided in Burlingame, California. They have the two grown children from his first marriage, Martin Gravel and Lynne Gravel Mosier, and four grandchildren. Whitney Gravel's income sustained the couple from 1998 on. In the 2000s, Gravel suffered poor health, requiring three surgeries in 2003 for back pain and neuropathy. Due to unreimbursed medical expenses and debts from his political causes, he declared personal bankruptcy in 2004. He began taking a salary from the non-profit organizations for which he was working; much of that income was lent to his presidential campaign. In 2007, he declared that he had "zero net worth".
2008 presidential campaign
Democratic Party primaries
At the start of 2006 Gravel decided the best way he could promote direct democracy and the National Initiative was to run for president. On April 17, 2006, Gravel became the first candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2008 election, announcing his run in a speech to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Short on campaign cash, he took public transportation to get to his announcement. (Gravel called for public financing of elections.) Other principal Gravel positions were the FairTax, as well as withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq within 120 days and a single payer national health care system.
Gravel had opposed the Iraq War, and President George W. Bush's rationale for it, from the beginning, and in 2006 said that U.S. troops in Iraq, as in Vietnam, had "died in vain". He also favored a regional peace initiative, as well as reparation payments for Iraqis. Gravel also called for a "U.S. corporate withdrawal from Iraq", with reconstruction contracts held by U.S. companies to be turned over to Iraqi firms.
Gravel campaigned almost full-time in New Hampshire, the first primary state, following his announcement. Opinion polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination showed Gravel with 1 percent or less support. By the end of March 2007, Gravel's campaign had less than $500 in cash on hand against debts of nearly $90,000.
Because of his time in the Senate, Gravel was invited to many of the early Democratic presidential debates. During the initial one at South Carolina State University on April 26, 2007, he suggested a bill requiring the president to withdraw from Iraq on pain of criminal penalties. He also advocated positions such as opposing preemptive nuclear war. He stated that the Iraq War had the effect of creating more terrorists and that the "war was lost the day that George Bush invaded Iraq on a fraudulent basis". Regarding his fellow candidates, he said, "I got to tell you, after standing up with them, some of these people frighten me – they frighten me." In one such exchange, Gravel said, "Tell me, Barack, who do you want to nuke?" to which Obama responded, "I'm not planning to nuke anybody right now, Mike, I promise."
Media stories said that Gravel was responsible for much of whatever "heat" and "flashpoints" had taken place during the Democratic debates. Gravel gained considerable publicity by shaking up the normally staid multiple-candidate format; The New York Times' media critic said that what Gravel had done was "steal a debate with outrageous, curmudgeonly statements". The Internet was a benefit: a YouTube video of his responses in the debate was viewed more than 225,892 times, ranking seventeenth in most views for week and first among news and politics clips; his name became the fifteenth most searched-for in the blogosphere; and his website garnered more traffic than those of frontrunners Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or John Edwards. Gravel appeared on the popular Colbert Report on television on May 2, and his campaign and career were profiled in national publications such as Salon. Two wordless, Warholesque campaign videos, "Rock" and "Fire", were released on YouTube in late May and became hits, and eventually gained over 760,000 and 185,000 views respectively. "Rock", in turn, was given airtime during an episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Some thirty-five years after he first achieved the national spotlight, he had found it again.
All this did not improve his performance in the polls; a May 2007 CNN poll showed him with less than 0.5 percent support among Democrats. Gravel was in the next several debates, in one case after CNN reversed a decision to exclude him. Like some of the other second-tier candidates, Gravel did not get as much time as the leaders; during the June 2, 2007, New Hampshire debate, which lasted two hours, he was asked 10 questions and allowed to speak for five minutes and 37 seconds.
During the July 23, 2007, CNN-YouTube presidential debate, Gravel responded to audience applause when he had complained of a lack of airtime and said: "Thank you. Has it been fair thus far?" Detractors began to liken him to "the cranky uncle who lives in the attic," or "the angry old guy that just seemed to want to become angrier". Berkeley political scientist David Terr found that moderator George Stephanopoulos directed roughly five percent of his questions to Gravel; in a poll asking who did the best in the debate, Gravel placed seventh among the eight candidates. National opinion polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination continued to show Gravel with one percent or zero percent numbers. By the end of the third-quarter 2007, Gravel had about $17,500 in cash on hand, had collected a total of about $380,000 during the 2008 election cycle, and was continuing to run a threadbare campaign with minimal staff.
Beginning with the October 30, 2007, Philadelphia event, Gravel was excluded from most of the debates, with the debate sponsors or the Democratic National Committee saying Gravel's campaign had not met fund-raising, polling, or local campaign organizational thresholds. For the Philadelphia exclusion, Gravel blamed corporate censorship on the part of sponsor owner and alleged military-industrial complex member General Electric for his exclusion and mounted a counter-gathering and debate against a video screen a short distance away, but he had lost his easiest publicity. In reaction, supporters organized "mass donation days" to try to help the campaign gain momentum and funds, such as on December 5, 2007, the anniversary of the Repeal of Prohibition.
Gravel did not compete in the initial 2008 vote, the Iowa caucuses, but was still subjected to a false report from MSNBC that he had pulled out of the race afterward. Gravel did focus his attention on the second 2008 vote, the New Hampshire primary. In early January, Mother Jones' investigative reporter James Ridgeway was filmed interviewing and following Gravel in New Hampshire, in which Gravel is interviewed on the phone by Neal Conan for NPR's, Talk of the Nation. He received about 400 votes out of some 280,000 cast in New Hampshire, or 0.14 percent, before taking time off to improve his health. He resumed campaigning, but fared no better in subsequent states. By the end of January 2008, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Gravel were the only remaining Democrats from the initial debates still running; Gravel vowed to stay in the presidential campaign until November. On March 11, 2008, Gravel continued to remain in the Democratic race but additionally endorsed a Green Party candidate for president, Jesse Johnson, saying he wanted to help Johnson prevail against Green Party rivals Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader. By late March, Gravel had almost no fundraising and was only on the ballot in one of the next ten Democratic primaries.
Switch to Libertarian Party
On March 25, 2008, Gravel announced that he would leave the Democrats and join the Libertarian Party, saying: "My libertarian views, as well as my strong stance against war, the military industrial complex and American imperialism, seem not to be tolerated by Democratic Party elites who are out of touch with the average American; elites that reject the empowerment of American citizens I offered to the Democratic Party at the beginning of this presidential campaign with the National Initiative for Democracy." The following day Gravel entered the race for the 2008 Libertarian presidential nomination, saying that he would have run as a third-party candidate all along except that he needed the public exposure that came from being in the earlier Democratic debates. Gravel's initial notion of running as a fusion candidate with other parties was met with skepticism.
As a Libertarian candidate, Gravel faced resistance to his past support of big government initiatives and his unorthodox positions around direct democracy. Nevertheless, he garnered more support than he had as a Democrat, placing second and third in two April 2008 straw polls. In the May 25 balloting at the 2008 Libertarian National Convention in Denver, Gravel finished fourth out of eight candidates on the initial ballot, with 71 votes out of a total 618; he trailed former Congressman and eventual winner Bob Barr, author Mary Ruwart, and businessman Wayne Allyn Root. Gravel's position did not subsequently improve and he was eliminated on the fourth ballot. Afterwards he stated that "I just ended my political career," but he vowed to continue promoting his positions as a writer and lecturer.
2008–early 2019
In June 2008 Gravel endorsed the NYC 9/11 Ballot Initiative, saying the measure would create a "citizens commission rather than a government commission" with subpoena power against top U.S. officials to "make a true investigation as to what happened" regarding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He later said, "Individuals in and out of government may certainly have participated with the obviously known perpetrators of this dastardly act. Suspicions abound over the analysis presented by government. Obviously an act that has triggered three wars, Afghan, Iraqi and the continuing War on Terror, should be extensively investigated which was not done and which the government avoids addressing."
In August 2008 Gravel was speaking to a crowd of supporters of Sami Al-Arian (who two years earlier had pleaded guilty and been sentenced to prison for a charge of conspiracy in helping Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a "specially designated terrorist" organization) when he was caught on tape saying of Al-Arian's prosecutor, "Find out where he lives, find out where his kids go to school, find out where his office is: picket him all the time. Call him a racist in signs if you see him. Call him an injustice. Call him whatever you want to call him, but in his face all the time." Gravel was criticized for potentially involving the children of the prosecutor, and Al-Arian's family disavowed the sentiments.
Gravel defended Alaska Governor Sarah Palin after she was chosen as Republican presidential nominee John McCain's running mate in September 2008. He praised Palin's record in standing up to corruption among Alaskan Republicans, thought her national inexperience was an asset not a detriment, and predicted that the "Troopergate" investigation into whether she improperly fired a state official would "come out in her favor". Gravel made clear he would not support or vote for either McCain–Palin or Obama–Biden in the general election. The following year Gravel said that Palin's politics were "terrible, but that doesn't detract from the fact that she's a very talented person". He predicted that Palin would run for president in 2012 and that "she's going to surprise a lot of people". Palin did not run, but Gravel's prediction about "TrooperGate" was accurate as Palin was found not to have violated ethics laws.
In 2013, by the invitation of Hamed Ghashghavi, the secretary for international affairs of the 3rd International Conference on Hollywoodism in Tehran, Iran, Gravel attended that event as an Iranian government-organized anti-Hollywood conference. Gravel noted that the conference was attended by "various elements of extremes" but said it was necessary to discuss how the U.S. film industry portrayed Iran in order to prevent "an insane war" between the two nations.
In May 2013 Gravel was one of several former members of Congress to accept $20,000 from the Paradigm Research Group, an advocacy group for UFO disclosure, as part of holding what they termed a Citizen Hearing on Disclosure, modeled after congressional hearings, regarding supposed U.S. government suppression of evidence concerning UFOs. Gravel said, "Something is monitoring the planet, and they are monitoring it very cautiously, because we are a very warlike planet," and, "What we're faced with here is, in areas of the media, and the government too, an effort to marginalize and ridicule people who have specific knowledge."
In December 2014 Gravel was announced as the new CEO of KUSH, a company which makes marijuana-infused products for medicinal and recreational use, and a subsidiary of Cannabis Sativa, Inc. He also became an Independent Director of Cannabis Sativa.
During the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries, Gravel praised Bernie Sanders and his campaign, saying "Bernie is one of the most gifted politicians I have ever observed. He's a person of great integrity and very clever." Gravel predicted that Sanders would be elected president but would be unable to get his key reforms through Congress, and thus that Sanders and his supporters should back some of the proposals of the National Initiative.
In 2016, Gravel said in relation to the September 11 attacks: "We killed 58,000 American servicemen in the Vietnam War and all they did was die in vain. What's so unusual about killing 3,000 more in order to develop the grist for the mill to empower into infinity the military industrial complex?" and "There's no question in my mind that 9/11 was an inside job". The remarks were later disavowed by even Gravel supporters.
By 2019 Gravel was living in Seaside, California. He was working on a book, at the time titled Human Governance, about his principal idea for direct democracy, a U.S. Constitutional Amendment to create a "Legislature of the People" that would circumvent the existing Congress. The book was self-published at the end of the year by AuthorHouse under the title The Failure of Representative Government and the Solution: A Legislature of the People.
2020 presidential campaign
On March 19, 2019, Gravel announced that he was considering running in the 2020 Democratic primaries. He said, "The goal will not be to win, but to bring a critique of American imperialism to the Democratic debate stage." An exploratory committee was formed, with filing a statement of organization with the Federal Election Commission on that same day. The filing was the idea of a group of teenagers, led by David Oks and Henry Williams, inspired by the podcast Chapo Trap House, and done with Gravel's consent (after a week spent convincing him of the idea's merits), but without his involvement. Intrigued by the group's commitment to amplifying his long-held policy goals, Gravel (who would be old on Inauguration Day in 2021) said he planned to meet with them in April, and to discuss a 2020 White House run with his wife. On April 2, 2019, Gravel filed to officially run for office. The campaign called itself the "#Gravelanche".
Gravel's initial stated goal was merely to qualify for debates by getting the required 65,000 small donors. He discouraged people from voting for him and said his preferences were Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard, both of whom favor a non-interventionist foreign policy. But on April 29, Gravel's campaign said he was running to win, not just to participate in debates. In a subsequent interview, though, Gravel emphasized the virtue of Sanders and Gabbard in some order as a presidential ticket. Statements like these caused Vox to call Gravel "2020's oddest Democratic presidential candidate". The New York Times Magazine included Gravel as an example in the rise of democratic socialism in the United States also exemplified by Sanders's 2016 race and the 2018 election of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: "[Gravel's] campaign represents the most absurd form of a legitimate movement on the left that feels little obligation to the Democratic Party."
In June 2019, Gravel touted the endorsement of Muntadher al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who, in December 2008, made headlines after he threw his shoes at President George W. Bush in protest of the U.S. war in Iraq. Al-Zaidi endorsed Gravel based on his promise to improve White House policies regarding Iraq and the Middle East.
On June 13, 2019, the Democratic Party announced the 20 major candidates who qualified for the first debate later that month. Gravel was one of the four who missed out (the others were Montana Governor Steve Bullock, U.S. Representative Seth Moulton, and Miramar, Florida, Mayor Wayne Messam). Gravel had been unable to get the requisite number of donations, or to score one percent or better in enough polls (many polls did not even include him). Nevertheless, Gravel said he would not drop out and would try to qualify for the July debate. In early July, however, Gravel's campaign said it was still 10,000 contributions short of the 65,000-donor threshold and that it was "nearing its conclusion". It solicited suggestions for where to donate $100–150,000 of leftover campaign funds. Gravel added that he had always planned on ending the campaign before the teenagers in charge of it needed to return to school. A few days later the campaign became the first to run an attack ad against Democratic front-runner Joe Biden, using the text "Is this the best our party has to offer?"
Gravel's campaign crossed the threshold of 65,000 donors on July 12, 2019, meeting the qualification mark for that month's debate. But because 20 other candidates, the maximum allowed to participate, had already met at least the polling criterion, which takes priority over the donor criterion, Gravel was not invited.
The campaign officially came to a close on August 6, 2019, with Gravel endorsing both Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard for president. Gravel's campaign later stated on Twitter that they never wanted to win but saw the campaign as an "intimately democratic" project and expressed honor at working with Gravel. Gravel said he would divide remaining campaign funds between charity and a new think tank which would espouse his ideas.
The Gravel Institute
Gravel used some of the funds remaining from his 2020 presidential campaign to found an eponymous progressive think tank called The Gravel Institute in 2019. As noted by Vice magazine, the institute aims to do battle with PragerU from a left-wing perspective. Launched in September 2020, the new entity said it would "carry on the life's work of former U.S Senator Mike Gravel in fighting for global peace and democracy. Its mission is to promote bold and forward-looking ideas about a more peaceful and egalitarian world, and to build a robust movement of young people to win it". Contributors announced include Cornel West and Slavoj Žižek, as well as Lower Brule Indian Reservation activist Nick Estes. Other presenters have included and will include H. Jon Benjamin, Briahna Joy Gray, Bernie Sanders, Chelsea Manning, Richard Wolff, Stephanie Kelton, Zephyr Teachout, David Cross, Jabari Brisport, Zohran Mamdani, and Gravel himself (though it is unknown if his appearance will be cancelled due to his death in June 2021, or if the video has already been recorded).
Death
Gravel died of multiple myeloma at his home in Seaside, California, on June 26, 2021, at age 91.
The obituary for him in The New York Times stated that Gravel was "a two-term Democratic senator from Alaska ... who was perhaps better known as an unabashed attention-getter" who later become known for "mounting long-shot presidential runs". The obituary in The Washington Post was similar, saying that Gravel was "an Alaska Democrat with a flair for the theatrical who rose from obscurity to brief renown" and later "ran quixotic campaigns for the presidency". The Anchorage Daily News quoted Gravel as saying of himself in 1989, "I'm an independent kind of guy. A rough and ready kind of guy. My glands work in a certain way that make me stand up, foolishly sometimes, and fight."
Political positions
Alan Abramowitz and Jeffrey Allan Segal described Gravel as "a maverick, if not an eccentric, in the Senate." His Americans for Democratic Action "Liberal Quotient" scores ranged from 81 out of 100 (1971) to 39 out of 100 (1980), with an average of around 61. His American Conservative Union scores ranged from 0 out of 100 (several years, including 1971 and 1972) to 38 out of 100 (1979), with an average of 14. Abramowitz and Segal note that Gravel's lowest ADA ratings coincided with his two Senate re-election bids, and for the most part his highest ACU ratings followed the same pattern.
In 1972, as a young senator, Gravel published Citizen Power: A People's Platform, a manifesto outlining what Kirkus Reviews termed a "populist reform [that] would provide 'balanced political power' between the people and government and business interests."
Civil rights issues
On drug policy, Gravel said in 2007 that he favored decriminalization and treating addiction as a public health matter. During his 2008 presidential candidacy he condemned the War on Drugs as a failure, saying that it did "nothing but savage our inner cities and put our children at risk". Gravel called for abolition of capital punishment in his book Citizen Power, and adhered to this position during his 2008 run for president. He supported abortion rights.
During the 2008 campaign Gravel was a strong supporter of LGBT rights. He supported same-sex marriage and opposed the Defense of Marriage Act and the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. He wrote in 2008 that "depriving gays and lesbians of equal rights is immoral".
Foreign policy and defense issues
Gravel was a critic of American imperialism.
Gravel firmly opposed U.S. military action against Iran and Syria. He voiced opposition to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the use of torture, indefinite detention, and what he called "flagrant ignorance" of the Geneva Convention. In 2014 Gravel called for the release of the full, unredacted Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture.
Gravel opposed the use of international sanctions as a policy tool and blamed the ones against Iraq under Saddam Hussein for the deaths of a half-million children in that country. In 2013 Gravel said that sanctions against Iran were "illegal".
During his 2008 candidacy, Gravel called for a cut in military spending, variously reported to be 15 percent or 50 percent. He called for the savings to boost public education spending. To spur international nuclear nonproliferation efforts, Gravel called for unilateral reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
In 2008 Gravel criticized the decision of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to not pursue the efforts to impeach George W. Bush and the attempted impeachment of Dick Cheney, saying also that Bush and Cheney had committed crimes and deserved "to be prosecuted" at The Hague. In 2013 he expressed disdain for President Obama, calling him "a total fraud" and saying that both Bush and Obama should be tried "for the crimes and murders they've committed" in the International Court of Justice. Gravel specifically condemned Obama for the drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere.
Economy, immigration, and environment
During his 2008 candidacy Gravel favored a FairTax scheme, which would abolish the Internal Revenue Service, eliminate the federal income tax (which Gravel called "corrupt"), and impose a national sales tax. While Gravel described FairTax as "progressive", others have criticized it as "regressive", disproportionately benefiting the wealthiest Americans. To offset the new sales taxes on essential goods, Gravel's plan called for monthly government rebate payments to individuals and families. During his 2020 campaign Gravel also voiced support for a third legislative body that would give the people direct control of the budget as well as the implementation of a land value tax.
Gravel opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) during his 2008 candidacy, calling it unfair and economically harmful and needing renegotiation. Gravel believed that NAFTA was the "root cause" of illegal migration to the U.S. He favored a guest worker program and "setting up naturalization procedures that would fairly bring immigrants into legal status". In a 2007 interview, Gravel identified himself as "very much of a globalist" who believed in open markets and open borders and condemned the scapegoating of undocumented immigrants. Gravel also said that he favored eliminating the cap on H1B visas.
As a senator from Alaska, Gravel favored drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but opposed it during his 2008 campaign. In 2008, Gravel supported a carbon tax to combat climate change.
Gravel spoke in favor of net neutrality during his presidential campaign.
Education and health care
Gravel called for the cost of college tuition to be borne by the federal government, rather than students. In his 2008 campaign, he called the No Child Left Behind Act "a failure" and called for it to be "reformed and fully funded". He expressed support for universal pre-kindergarten and the expansion of the Head Start program; and expressed an openness to charter schools and school vouchers. He also suggested extending the school day and the school year, and supported merit pay for teachers.
Gravel also called for publicly funded universal health care to replace the current employer-sponsored health insurance system. He supported "full funding" of the VA system. When asked in 2007 about naturopathy, homeopathy, and acupuncture, Gravel said that he was "very very much in favor" of holistic health care.
Awards and honors
In 2008 Gravel received the Columbia University School of General Studies' first annual Isaac Asimov Lifetime Achievement Award.
Electoral history
Writings
Gravel, Mike. Jobs and More Jobs. Mt. McKinley Publishers, 1968.
Gravel, Mike. Citizen Power: A People's Platform. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972. .
revised and reissued as Citizen Power: A Mandate for Change, AuthorHouse, 2008. .
Gravel, Mike and Lauria, Joe. A Political Odyssey: The Rise of American Militarism and One Man's Fight to Stop It. Seven Stories Press, 2008. .
Gravel, Mike and Eisenbach, David. The Kingmakers: How the Media Threatens Our Security and Our Democracy. Phoenix Books, 2008. .
Gravel, Mike. Voice of a Maverick: The Speeches and Writings of Senator Mike Gravel. Brandywine House, 2008.
Gravel, Mike. Foreword to Poisoned Power: The Case Against Nuclear Power Plants. John W. Goffman & Arthur R. Tamplin, Rodale Press, Inc., Emmaus, PA, June 1971.
Gravel, Mike. The Failure of Representative Government and the Solution: A Legislature of the People. AuthorHouse, 2020.
Explanatory notes
References
Citations
General references
The Pentagon Papers Senator Gravel Edition. Vol. Five: Critical Essays. Boston: Beacon Press, 1972. 341p. plus 72p. of Index to Vol. I–IV of the Papers; Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, editors.
External links
Mike Gravel official website
The Gravel Institute
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1930 births
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1972 United States vice-presidential candidates
20th-century American male writers
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21st-century American male writers
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Businesspeople from Anchorage, Alaska
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California Democrats
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Democratic Party United States senators
Direct democracy activists
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Non-interventionism
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Politicians from Anchorage, Alaska
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United States Army officers
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Writers from Anchorage, Alaska | false | [
"Billy Rackard (14 April 1930 – 23 March 2009) was an Irish hurler and Gaelic footballer who played as a centre-back for the Wexford senior teams.\n\nRegarded as one of Wexford's greatest players of all-time, Rackard made his first appearance for the team during the 1949–50 National League and was a regular member of the starting fifteen until his retirement before the 1964 championship. During that time he won three All-Ireland medals, six Leinster medals and two National Hurling League medals. Rackard was an All-Ireland runner-up on three occasions.\n\nAt club level Rackard was a five-time county club championship medalist with Rathnure.\n\nRackard's brothers, Nicky and Bobby, also enjoyed All-Ireland success with Wexford.\n\nPlaying career\n\nClub\nRackard played his club hurling with Rathnure and enjoyed much success in a lengthy career.\n\nIn 1948 he was a key member of the defence as Rathnure reached only their second championship decider ever. A 3–5 to 0–2 trouncing of reigning champions St. Aidan's gave Rackard his first championship medal.\n\nAfter failing to retain their title the following year, Rathnure were back in the county decider once again in 1950. Another convincing 5–10 to 2–6 defeat of old rivals St. Aidan's gave Rackard his second championship medal.\n\nIt was 1955 before Rathnure qualified for another championship decider and four-in-a-row hopefuls St. Aidan's provided the opposition once again. A close game developed, however, a 2–9 to 2–5 victory gave Rackard a third championship medal.\n\nAfter a number of years out of the limelight Rathnure reached the county final once again in 1961. A fourth defeat of St. Aidan's gave Rackard, who scored two goals from his full-forward berth, a fourth and final championship medal.\n\nRackard won a fifth and final championship medal in 1967.\n\nInter-county\nRackard first came to prominence on the inter-county scene as a member of the Wexford minor hurling team in the late 1940s. He enjoyed little success in this grade but was called up to the senior team in 1949 and made his debut in a National League game.\n\nAfter losing the provincial final in 1950, Rackard was at wing-back the following year as Wexford faced Laois in the eastern decider. A 3–12 to 4–3 victory gave him his first Leinster medal as Wexford claimed the provincial crown for the first time since 1918. The subsequent All-Ireland decider saw three-in-a-row hopefuls Tipperary providing the opposition. Nicky Rackard's goal-scoring ability was quelled by Tipp goalkeeper Tony Reddin, while Séamus Bannon, Tim Ryan and Paddy Kenny scored key goals which powered Tipp to a 7–7 to 3–9 victory.\n\nAfter back to back Leinster defeats over the next two years, Wexford faced Dublin in the 1954 decider. A huge 8–5 to 1–4 victory gave Rackard his second Leinster medal. A record crowd of 84,856 attended the subsequent All-Ireland decider with Cork providing the opposition. Wexford had a four-point lead with seventeen minutes left to play, however, history was against Rackard's side when Johnny Clifford scored the winning goal for Cork with just four minutes left. A 1–9 to 1–6 victory secured a third successive All-Ireland for Cork.\n\nIn 1955 Wexford continued their provincial dominance with Rackard collecting a third Leinster medal following a 5–6 to 3–9 defeat of Kilkenny in a replay of the Leinster final. Galway, who got a bye into the final without picking up a hurley, provided the opposition and took a half-time lead. A Tim Flood goal nine minutes from the end clinched a 3–13 to 2–8 victory and a first All-Ireland medal for Rackard. It was Wexford's first All-Ireland triumph in forty-five years.\n\nRackard added a National Hurling League medal to his collection in 1956 as Tipperary were bested by 5–9 to 2–14. The subsequent championship campaign saw Wexford reach the provincial final once again. A narrow 4–8 to 3–10 defeat of Kilkenny gave Rackard his fourth Leinster medal. Galway fell heavily in the All-Ireland semi-final, allowing Wexford to advance to an All-Ireland final meeting with Cork. The game has gone down in history as one of the all-time classics as Christy Ring was bidding for a record ninth All-Ireland medal. The game turned on one important incident as the Wexford goalkeeper, Art Foley, made a miraculous save from a Ring shot and cleared the sliotar up the field to set up another attack. Nicky Rackard scored a crucial goal with two minutes to go giving Wexford a 2–14 to 2–8 victory.\n\nTwo year later in 1958 Rackard added a second National League medal to his collection following a 5–7 to 4–8 defeat of Limerick.\n\nIn 1960 Wexford were back in the provincial decider. A narrow 3–10 to 2–11 defeat of Kilkenny gave Rackard his fifth Leinster medal. The All-Ireland decider saw Tipperary provide the opposition. A pitch invasion at the end resulted in much confusion, however, goals by Mick Hassett and Oliver McGrath gave Wexford a merited 2–15 to 0–11 victory. It was Rackard's third All-Ireland medal.\n\nAfter surrendering their titles the following year, Wexford were back in 1962 with Rackard as captain. Another narrow 3–9 to 2–10 defeat of Kilkenny gave him a sixth Leinster medal. The All-Ireland final was a repeat of 1960 with Tipp, the reigning champions, lining out in opposition. Wexford got off to a disastrous start when Tom Moloughney and Seán McLoughlin scored goals for Tipp inside the first minute. Wexford fought back, however, Rackard's side were bested on a 3–10 to 2–11 score line.\n\nWexford faced early championship exits over the next two years and Rackard called time on his inter-county career in 1964.\n\nInter-provincial\nRackard also had the honour of being selected for Leinster in the inter-provincial series of games and enjoyed some success.\n\nIn 1954 he was on the extended panel as Leinster reached the final against Munster. He was introduced as a substitute and collected a Railway Cup medal following a low-scoring 0–9 to 0–5 victory.\n\nTwo years later he was on the starting fifteen as Leinster faced Munster once again. A 5–11 to 1–7 trouncing of their fierce rivals gave Rackard a second Railway Cup medal.\n\nAfter five years of Munster dominance, Leinster fought back in 1962. A narrow 1–11 to 1–9 defeat of the six-in-a-row hopefuls gave Rackard a third Railway Cup medal.\n\nTwo years later Rackard added a fourth and final Railway Cup medal to his collection as Munster were bested once again in the decider.\n\nPost-playing career\nRackard sought election to Dáil Éireann but did not win.\n\nHonours\n\nTeam\nRathnure\nWexford Senior Club Hurling Championship (5): 1948, 1950, 1955, 1961, 1967\n\nWexford\nAll-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship (3): 1955, 1956, 1960\nLeinster Senior Hurling Championship (6): 1951, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1960, 1962\nNational Hurling League (2): 1955–56, 1957–58\n\nLeinster\nRailway Cup (4): 1954, 1956, 1962, 1964\n\nReferences\n\n \n\n1930 births\n2009 deaths\nDual players\nIrish sportsperson-politicians\nWilliam\nRathnure hurlers\nWexford inter-county hurlers\nWexford inter-county Gaelic footballers\nLeinster inter-provincial hurlers\nAll-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship winners",
"Jack O'Shea (born 19 November 1957 in Cahersiveen, County Kerry) is a former Irish sportsperson. He played Gaelic football at various times with his local clubs St Mary's in Kerry and Leixlip in Kildare. He was a member of the Kerry senior football team from 1976 until 1992. O'Shea is regarded as one of the greatest players of all-time.\n\nHe is currently a media pundit with a column in the sports section of the Irish edition of The Sunday Times. His son Aidan made his debut for the Kerry senior team in their successful 2009 National Football League campaign.\n\nPlaying career\n\nMinor & under-21\nBy the early 1970s, O'Shea had come to prominence on the Kerry minor football team. He made his minor championship debut against Waterford in 1974, however, the year ended without any success for Kerry. In 1975, a 3–7 to 1–11 defeat of arch-rivals Cork gave O'Shea a Munster winners' medal in the minor grade. That same year he was a late inclusion on Kerry's under-21 football team. O'Shea missed Kerry's Munster under-21 final triumph; however, he later lined out in the All-Ireland final in that grade with Dublin providing the opposition. A 1–15 to 0–10 score line gave Kerry the victory and gave O'Shea an All-Ireland winners' medal.\n\nIn 1976, O'Shea won his first Munster under-21 title as Kerry retained their provincial crown at the expense of Cork. He later lined out in a second All-Ireland final. Kildare provided the opposition on that occasion; however, they were no match for Kerry. O'Shea collected a second All-Ireland winners' medal following a 0–14 to 1–3 victory.\n\nKerry and O'Shea made it three Munster under-21 titles in-a-row in 1977 following a two-goal defeat of Cork. O'Shea's side later qualified for the All-Ireland final with Down providing the opposition. A 1–11 to 1–5 score line gave Kerry the victory and gave O'Shea a third under-21 All-Ireland winners' medal.\n\nIn 1978, O'Shea made it an impressive four Munster under-21 titles in-a-row as Kerry retained their provincial crown at the expense of Cork. He later lined out in a fourth consecutive All-Ireland final. Roscommon provided the opposition on that occasion; however, a close game developed. At the final whistle Kerry were defeated by 1–9 to 1–8.\n\nSenior\nO'Shea made his senior inter-county debut with Kerry in late 1976 versus Meath in Navan. In fact, 1976–77 proved to be a successful National Football League campaign with O'Shea capturing a first National Football League winners' medal. He subsequently captured a first Munster title at senior level following a win over Cork. Kerry later took on Dublin for the third consecutive year; however, this time it was in the All-Ireland semi-final. In one of the greatest games of football ever-played 'The Dubs' triumphed and O'Shea was still left waiting for a senior All-Ireland final appearance.\n\nIn 1978, Kerry faced little competition in the provincial championship once again. A defeat of Cork gave O'Shea a second consecutive Munster title. Kerry later qualified for a third All-Ireland final in four years. Old rivals Dublin provided the opposition, however, the game turned into a rout. The game is chiefly remembered for Mikey Sheehy's sensational goal. The Kerry forward lobbed the ball over the head of Paddy Cullen, who was caught off his line arguing with the referee. Eoin Liston announced his arrival on the inter-county scene and scored a hat-trick of goals. Pat Spillane played all over the field, including goalkeeper after Charlie Nelligan was sent off. At the full-time whistle, Kerry were the winners by a 5–11 to 0–9 scoreline.\n\nIn 1979, Kerry made it five-in-a-row in Munster as Cork fell by ten points in the provincial final. It was O'Shea's third Munster title. He later went in search of a second consecutive All-Ireland medal. Dublin provided the opposition for the fifth consecutive occasion. Kerry were handicapped throughout the game. Ger Power did not start the game, while John O'Keeffe got injured and Páidí Ó Sé was sent off during the encounter. Two goals by Mikey Sheehy and a third by John Egan helped 'The Kingdom' to a 3–13 to 1–8 victory. It was O'Shea's second All-Ireland winners' medal.\n\nKerry's dominance continued in 1980. Another defeat of Cork in the provincial final gave O'Shea a fourth Munster winners' medal in succession. Another All-Ireland final appearance beckoned, this time with Roscommon providing the opposition. The Connacht champions shocked Kerry and took a five-point lead inside the first twelve minutes. Mikey Sheehy popped up again to score the decisive goal, as Kerry went on to claim a 1–9 to 1–6 victory in a game that contained sixty-four frees. The victory gave Kerry and O'Shea a third All-Ireland title in succession. He finished off the impressive year by collecting the Texaco Footballer of the Year award.\n\nIn 1981, O'Shea won his fifth consecutive Munster title, before lining out in the All-Ireland final against Offaly. Kerry had an easy win with seven players combining for a great goal. He captured his fourth All-Ireland winners' medal that day as Kerry won by 1–12 to 0–8. O'Shea also retained the Footballer of the Year title.\n\nIn 1982, O'Shea won his second National League medal before Kerry secured an eighth consecutive Munster final victory over Cork, giving him a sixth provincial winners' medal. The All-Ireland final pitted 'the Kingdom' against Offaly for the second consecutive year. Kerry had the upper hand for much of the game and were leading by two points with two minutes left to be played. The game, however, was not over—as Offaly substitute Séamus Darby, who had entered the game almost unnoticed, produced the most spectacular of finishes by scoring a late goal. Kerry failed to score again to level the match and Offaly went on to win their third All-Ireland title ever. Kerry's five-in-a-row dream was shattered.\n\nKerry missed out on a historic nine-in-a-row in Munster in 1983, as Cork finally triumphed. 'The Kingdom' bounced back the following year with O'Shea winning his third National League medal and his seventh Munster title. The centenary-year All-Ireland final pitted Kerry against old rivals and reigning champions Dublin. 'The Kingdom' dominated the game from start to finish. Only two of Dublin's forwards scored as Kerry ran out easy winners by 0–14 to 1–6. It was O'Shea fifth All-Ireland winners' medal. A third Footballer of the Year award quickly followed. Also in this centenary year O'Shea was selected in one of the midfield positions in the GAA's Football Team of the Century.\n\nKerry made no mistake again in 1985. A two-goal victory over Cork gave O'Shea an eighth Munster winners' medal. Another All-Ireland final beckoned, with Dublin providing the opposition for a second consecutive year. O'Shea scored a key goal after eleven minutes and Kerry stormed to a nine-point lead at half-time. 'The Dubs' came storming back with Joe McNally scoring two goals. The gap could not be bridged and Kerry won by 2–12 to 2–8. The victory gave O'Shea a sixth All-Ireland winners' medal. He was also presented with the Footballer of the Year award for a record fourth occasion, while also collecting a record sixth All Star in the midfield position.\n\nIn 1986, Kerry's dominance showed no sign of disappearing. Cork fell again in the provincial final, giving O'Shea a ninth Munster title. An eighth All-Ireland final appearance quickly followed and it turned out to be a historic occasion. Tyrone provided the opposition in their first-ever Championship decider. A Peter Quinn goal gave the Ulster men a six-point lead in the second-half; however, the game was far from over. Pat Spillane ran fifty yards up the field for a hand-passed goal to get Kerry back on track. Mikey Sheehy scored a second goal to give 'the Kingdom' a 2–15 to 1–10 victory. It was O'Shea's seventh All-Ireland medal.\n\nThe glory days were now over for Kerry as Cork captured the next four Munster titles. O'Shea continued to play with Kerry, winning his eleventh Munster title as captain of the team in 1991. Kerry were subsequently defeated by eventual champions Down in the All-Ireland semi-final. O'Shea retired from inter-county football the following year when Clare defeated 'The Kingdom' to win their second ever Munster Senior Football final.\n\nInter-provincial\nO'Shea also lined out with Munster in the inter-provincial football competition and enjoyed much success. He first lined out with his province in 1977 as Munster defeated Connacht in the final by 1–14 to 1–9. It was his first Railway Cup winners' medal and the first of two-in-a-row for Munster. After losing out in 1979 and 1980 O'Shea captured a third Railway Cup title in 1981. A one-point defeat of Connacht gave O'Shea a fourth Railway Cup winners' medal in 1982. He lined out for Munster on a number of occasions between then and 1991; however, he never tasted Railway Cup success again.\n\nInternationals\nO'Shea represented Ireland in 9 International Rules Tests against Australia. He played 3 Tests in each of the 1984 and 1986 series, and culminated in being awarded the Harry Beitzel Medal as the outstanding player of the 1990 series.\n\nManagement\nIn 1992 Jack O'Shea was appointed manager of the Mayo senior football team. His two-year period produced one Connacht title. However, his time as manager was not considered a success as Mayo did not reach an All-Ireland Final. In his first year, he won the Connacht title by beating Roscommon by 1–5 (8) to 0–7 (7). But Cork hammered Mayo 5–15 (30) to 0–10 (10) in the semi-final. In his second campaign as manager, Leitrim, led by former Mayo manager John O'Mahony, beat Mayo 0–12 (12) to 2–4 (10) in the Connacht Final. A poor Mayo performance produced just one point in the second half. Following that final, O'Shea resigned as manager, stating that he had enjoyed management but was not planning to try it again. He has not managed since.\n\nHonours\nKerry\nMunster Minor Football Championship : 1 (1975)\nMunster Under-21 Football Championship : 3 (1976, 1977, 1978)\nAll-Ireland Under-21 Football Championship : 3 (1975, 1976, 1977)\nRunner-Up : 1 (1978)\nMunster Senior Football Championship : 10 (1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1991; capt.)\nRunner-Up : 5 (1983, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990)\nAll-Ireland Senior Football Championship : 7 (1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1984, 1985, 1986)\nRunner-Up : 1 (1982)\nNational Football League : 3 (1976-77, 1981-82, 1983-84)\nRunner-Up : 2 (1979-80, 1986-87)\n\nMunster\nRailway Cup : 4 (1977, 1978, 1981, 1982)\n\nIndividual\nTexaco Footballer of the Year : 4 (1980, 1981, 1984, 1985)\nAll Stars Awards : 6 (1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985)\n In May 2020, a public poll conducted by RTÉ.ie named O'Shea at midfield alongside Brian Fenton in a team of footballers who had won All Stars during the era of The Sunday Game.\n Also in May 2020, the Irish Independent named O'Shea at number one in its \"Top 20 footballers in Ireland over the past 50 years\".\n\nReferences\n\n1957 births\nLiving people\nGaelic football managers\nIrish columnists\nKerry inter-county Gaelic footballers\nMunster inter-provincial Gaelic footballers\nLeixlip Gaelic footballers\nPeople from Cahersiveen\nSt Mary's (Kerry) Gaelic footballers\nSinging talent show winners\nTexaco Footballers of the Year\nWinners of seven All-Ireland medals (Gaelic football)\nYou're a Star contestants"
] |
[
"Yagan",
"Death"
] | C_fd96a17bb9e74371afa728bd135272c3_1 | when did he die? | 1 | When did Yagan die? | Yagan | On 11 July 1833, two teenage brothers named William and James Keates were herding cattle along the Swan River north of Guildford when a group of Noongar approached while en route to collect flour rations from Henry Bull's house. The Keates brothers suggested Yagan remain with them to avoid arrest. While he was staying with them during the morning, the brothers decided to kill the warrior and claim the reward. When the natives were ready to depart, the Keateses took their last opportunity. William Keates shot Yagan, and James shot Heegan, another native, in the act of throwing his spear. The brothers ran away, but other Noongar overtook William and speared him to death. James escaped by swimming the river. Shortly afterward he returned with a party of armed settlers from Bull's estate. When the party of settlers arrived, they found Yagan dead and Heegan dying. Heegan "was groaning and his brains were partly out when the party came, and whether humanity or brutality, a man put a gun to his head and blew it to pieces." The settlers cut Yagan's head from his body, and skinned his back to obtain his tribal markings as a trophy. They buried the bodies a short distance away. James Keates claimed the reward, but his conduct was widely criticised. The Perth Gazette referred to Yagan's killing as "a wild and treacherous act ... it is revolting to hear this lauded as a meritorious deed." However, Daisy Bates understood that "he was killed in self-defence by the young lad." Keates left the colony the following month; it is possible that he left from fear of being murdered in tribal retaliation. CANNOTANSWER | When the party of settlers arrived, they found Yagan dead and Heegan dying. | Yagan (; – 11 July 1833) was an Aboriginal Australian warrior from the Noongar people. He played a key part in early resistance to British colonial settlement and rule in the area surrounding what is now Perth, Western Australia. Yagan was pursued by the local authorities after he killed Erin Entwhistle, a servant of farmer Archibald Butler. It was an act of retaliation after Thomas Smedley, another of Butler's servants, shot at a group of Noongar people stealing potatoes and fowls, killing one of them. The government offered a bounty for Yagan's capture, dead or alive, and a young settler, William Keats, shot and killed him. Yagan's execution figures in Australian history as a symbol of the unjust and sometimes brutal treatment of the indigenous peoples of Australia by colonial settlers. He is considered a hero by the Noongar.
After his shooting, settlers removed Yagan's head to claim the bounty. Later, an official sent it to London, where it was exhibited as an "anthropological curiosity" and eventually given to a museum in Liverpool. It held the head in storage for more than a century before burying it with other remains in an unmarked grave in Liverpool in 1964. Over the years, the Noongar asked for repatriation of the head, both for religious reasons and because of Yagan's traditional stature. The burial site was identified in 1993; officials exhumed the head four years later and repatriated it to Australia. After years of debate within the Noongar community on the appropriate final resting place, Yagan's head was buried in a traditional ceremony in the Swan Valley in July 2010, 177 years after his death.
Biography
Early life
A member of the Whadjuk Noongar people, Yagan belonged to a tribe of around 60 people whose name, according to Robert Lyon, was Beeliar. Scholars now believe that the Beeliar people may have been a family subgroup (or clan) of a larger tribe whom Daisy Bates called Beelgar. According to Lyon, the Beeliar people occupied the land south of the Swan and Canning rivers, as far south as Mangles Bay. The group had customary land usage rights over a much larger area than this, extending north as far as Lake Monger and northeast to the Helena River. The group also had an unusual degree of freedom to move over their neighbours' land, possibly due to kinship and marriage ties with neighbouring groups.
Yagan is thought to have been born around 1795. His father was Midgegooroo, an elder of the Beeliar people; his mother was presumably one of Midgegooroo's two wives. Yagan was probably a Ballaroke in the Noongar classification.
Marriage and family
According to the historian Neville Green, Yagan had a wife and two children. A report in the Perth Gazette in 1833 gives the names of his children as "Naral", age 9, and "Willim", age 11; but most other sources state that the warrior was unmarried and childless. Described as taller than average with an impressive burly physique, Yagan had a distinctive tribal tattoo on his right shoulder, which identified him as "a man of high degree in tribal law". He was generally acknowledged to be the most physically powerful of his tribe, and was said to have been able to spear another stick from a distance of or penetrate a tree from a distance of .
Relations with settlers
Yagan would have been about 35 years old in 1829 when British settlers landed in the area and established the Swan River Colony. For the first two years of the colony, relations between settlers and Noongar were generally amicable, as there was little competition for resources. The Noongar welcomed the white settlers as , the returned spirits of their dead. Historical reports noted the two groups shared fish. As time passed, conflicts between the two cultures gradually became more frequent. The settlers incorrectly thought that the Noongar were nomads who had no claim to the land over which they roamed. Colonists fenced off land for grazing and farming according to their traditional practices of land use.
As the colonists fenced off more land, the Noongar were increasingly denied access to their traditional hunting grounds and sacred sites. In search of food, the Noongar raided the settlers' crops and killed their cattle. They also developed a taste for the settlers' supplies, and began to take flour and other food, which became a serious problem for the colony. In addition, the Noongar practice of firestick farming, or lighting the bush to flush out game and encourage germination of undergrowth for sustainability, threatened the settlers' crops and houses.
In December 1831 Yagan and his father led the first significant Aboriginal resistance to white settlement in Western Australia. Thomas Smedley, a servant of farmer Archibald Butler, ambushed some natives who were raiding a potato patch, and killed one of Yagan's family group. A few days later, Yagan, Midgegooroo and others stormed the farmhouse and, finding the door locked, began to break through the mud-brick walls. Inside were Butler's servant Erin Entwhistle and his two sons Enion and Ralph. After hiding his sons under the bed, Entwhistle opened the door to parley and was killed by Yagan and Midgegooroo. Noongar tribal law required that murders be avenged by the killing of a member of the murderer's tribal group, not necessarily the murderer. The Noongar considered servants and employees to be part of the settlers' groups. Historians believe the Noongar attack on Entwhistle was retribution under their tribal law. Not understanding tribal law (and unlikely to agree with its concepts), the white settlers took the killing to be an unprovoked murder and dispatched a force to arrest Yagan's group, without success.
In June 1832 Yagan led a party of Noongar in attacking two labourers sowing a field of wheat alongside the Canning River near Kelmscott. One of the men, John Thomas, escaped, but the other, William Gaze, was wounded and later died as a result. The settlement declared Yagan an outlaw and offered a reward of £20 for his capture. He avoided capture until early October 1832. A group of fishermen enticed Yagan and two companions into their boat, then pushed off into deep water. The fishermen took the three Noongar men to the Perth guardhouse, from which they were transferred to the Round House at Fremantle. Yagan was sentenced to death, but he was saved by the intercession of settler Robert Lyon. Arguing that Yagan was defending his land against invasion, Lyon said Yagan should not be considered a criminal but a prisoner of war and suggested he should be treated as such. At the recommendation of John Septimus Roe, the Surveyor-General of Western Australia, Yagan and his men were exiled on Carnac Island under the supervision of Lyon and two soldiers.
Lyon thought he could teach Yagan British ways and convert him to Christianity. He hoped to gain his cooperation and use his tribal stature to persuade the Noongar to accept colonial authority. Lyon spent many hours with Yagan learning his language and customs. After a month, Yagan and his companions escaped by stealing an unattended dinghy and rowing to Woodman Point on the mainland. The Government did not pursue them; apparently its officials considered they had been sufficiently punished.
In January 1833 two Noongar, Gyallipert and Manyat, visited Perth from King George Sound, where relations between settlers and natives were amicable. Two settlers, Richard Dale and George Smythe, arranged for the men to meet a party of local Noongar to encourage friendly relations in the Swan River Colony. On 26 January Yagan led a group of ten formally armed Noongars in greeting the two men near Lake Monger. The men exchanged weapons and held a corroboree, though the groups did not appear to share a language. Yagan and Gyallipert competed at spear throwing. As an example of his prowess, Yagan struck a walking stick from a distance of .
Gyallipert and Manyat remained in Perth for some time. On 3 March, Yagan obtained permission to hold another corroboree, this time in the Post Office garden in Perth. The Perth and King George Sound men met at dusk, chalked their bodies, and performed a number of dances including a kangaroo hunt dance. The Perth Gazette wrote that Yagan "was master of ceremonies and acquitted himself with infinite grace and dignity".
During February and March, Yagan was involved in a series of minor conflicts with settlers. In February William Watson complained that Yagan had pushed open his door, demanded a gun, and taken handkerchiefs. Watson had to give him and his companions flour and bread. The following month, Yagan was among a group who received biscuits from a military contingent under Lieutenant Norcott; when Norcott tried to restrict his supply, Yagan threatened him with his spear. Later that month, Yagan was with a group of Noongar who entered Watson's house while he was away. The group left after Watson's wife called on neighbours for help. The next day Captain Ellis lectured the Noongar about their behaviour. The frequent incidents prompted The Perth Gazette to remark on "the reckless daring of this desperado who sets his life at a pin's fee ... For the most trivial offence ... he would take the life of any man who provoked him. He is at the head and front of any mischief."
Wanted dead or alive
On the night of 29 April, a party of Noongar broke into a Fremantle store to steal flour and they were shot at by the caretaker Peter Chidlow. Domjum, a brother of Yagan, was badly injured and died in jail a few days later. The rest of the party moved from Fremantle to Preston Point, where Yagan reportedly vowed vengeance for the death. Between 50 and 60 Noongar gathered at Bull Creek, where they met a party of settlers who were loading carts with provisions. Later that day, the group ambushed the lead cart, killing two settlers, Tom and John Velvick. Tribal law required only a single death for vengeance. Some historians have speculated that the Velvicks were targeted because they had previously been convicted for assaulting Aboriginal people and coloured seamen. Alexandra Hasluck has also argued that stealing provisions was an important motive in the attack, but this has been refuted elsewhere.
For the killing of the Velvicks, the Lieutenant-Governor Frederick Irwin declared Yagan, Midgegooroo and Munday to be outlaws, offering rewards of £20 each for the capture of Midgegooroo and Munday, and a reward of £30 for Yagan's capture, dead or alive. Munday successfully appealed against his proscription. Midgegooroo, Yagan and their group immediately moved from their territory north towards the Helena Valley. On 17 May, Midgegooroo was captured on the Helena River. After a brief, informal trial, he was executed by firing squad. Yagan remained at large for over two months.
Late in May, George Fletcher Moore reported seeing Yagan on his property and talking with him in pidgin English. Moore wrote in the Perth Gazette:
Yagan asked Moore whether Midgegooroo was dead or alive. Moore gave no reply, but a servant answered that Midgegooroo was a prisoner on Carnac Island. Yagan warned, "White man shoot Midgegooroo, Yagan kill three." Moore reported the encounter but made no attempt to restrain Yagan. He later wrote, "The truth is, every one wishes him taken, but no one likes to be the captor ... there is something in his daring which one is forced to admire."
Death
On 11 July 1833, two teenage brothers named William and James Keates were herding cattle along the Swan River north of Guildford when a group of Noongar approached while en route to collect flour rations from Henry Bull's house. The Keates brothers suggested Yagan remain with them to avoid arrest. While he was staying with them during the morning, the brothers decided to kill the warrior and claim the reward. When the natives were ready to depart, the Keateses took their last opportunity. William Keates shot Yagan, and James shot Heegan, another native, in the act of throwing his spear. The brothers ran away, but other Noongar overtook William and speared him to death. James escaped by swimming the river. Shortly afterward he returned with a party of armed settlers from Bull's estate.
When the party of settlers arrived, they found Yagan dead and Heegan dying. Heegan "was groaning and his brains were partly out when the party came, and whether humanity or brutality, a man put a gun to his head and blew it to pieces." The settlers cut Yagan's head from his body, and skinned his back to obtain his tribal markings as a trophy. They buried the bodies a short distance away.
James Keates claimed the reward, but his conduct was widely criticised. The Perth Gazette referred to Yagan's killing as "a wild and treacherous act ... it is revolting to hear this lauded as a meritorious deed." However, Daisy Bates understood that "he was killed in self-defence by the young lad." Keates left the colony the following month; it is possible that he left from fear of being murdered in tribal retaliation.
Yagan's head
Exhibition and burial
Yagan's head was initially taken to Henry Bull's house. Moore saw it there and sketched the head a number of times in his unpublished, handwritten diary, commenting that "possibly it may yet figure in some museum at home." The head was preserved by smoking.
In September 1833, Governor Irwin sailed for London, partly to give his own account of the events leading up to the killing. This was an unusual measure, especially given his regiment was about to leave for a tour of duty in India. The Colonial Office indicated satisfaction with Irwin's administration of the colony.
Travelling with Irwin was Ensign Robert Dale, who had somehow acquired Yagan's head. According to the historian Paul Turnbull, Dale appears to have persuaded Irwin to let him have the head as an "anthropological curiosity". After arriving in London, Dale tried to sell the head to scientists, approaching a number of anatomists and phrenologists. His price of £20 failed to find a buyer, so he made an agreement with Thomas Pettigrew for the exclusive use of the head for 18 months. Pettigrew, a surgeon and antiquarian, was well known in the London social scene for holding private parties at which he unrolled and autopsied ancient Egyptian mummies. He displayed the head on a table in front of a panoramic view of King George Sound reproduced from Dale's sketches. For effect, the head was adorned with a fresh corded headband and feathers of the red-tailed black cockatoo.
Pettigrew had the head examined by a phrenologist. Examination was considered difficult because of the large fracture across the back of the head caused by the gunshot. His conclusions were consistent with contemporary European opinion of Indigenous Australians. Dale published these in a pamphlet entitled Descriptive Account of the Panoramic View &c. of King George's Sound and the Adjacent Country, which Pettigrew encouraged his guests to buy as a souvenir of their evening. The frontispiece of the pamphlet was a hand-coloured aquatint print of Yagan's head by the artist George Cruikshank.
Early in October 1835, Yagan's head and the panoramic view were returned to Dale, then living in Liverpool. On 12 October he presented them to the Liverpool Royal Institution, where the head may have been displayed in a case along with some other preserved heads and wax models illustrating cranial anatomy. In 1894 the Institution's collections were dispersed, and Yagan's head was lent to the Liverpool Museum; it is thought not to have been put on display there. By the 1960s Yagan's head was badly deteriorated. In April 1964 the museum decided to dispose of it. It arranged burial of the head on 10 April 1964, together with a Peruvian mummy and a Māori head. They were buried in Everton Cemetery's General Section 16, grave number 296. In later years a number of burials were made around the grave. For example, in 1968 a local hospital buried directly over the box, 20 stillborn babies and two infants who died soon after birth.
Lobbying for repatriation
For many years beginning in the early 1980s, a number of Noongar groups sought the return of Yagan's head to Australia.
At the time, there was no historical trail for the head after Pettigrew passed it on. Tribal elders entrusted the Aboriginal leader Ken Colbung with the search. In the early 1990s, Colbung enlisted the aid of University of London archaeologist Peter Ucko. One of Ucko's researchers, Cressida Fforde, conducted a literature search for information on the head. Fforde successfully traced the head in December 1993. The following April, Colbung applied to exhume the remains under Section 25 of the Burial Act 1857. Home Office regulations required next of kin consent before disturbing the remains of the 22 infants. Colbung's solicitors requested waiver of this condition on grounds that the exhumation would be of great personal significance to Yagan's living relatives, and great national importance to Australia.
Meanwhile, divisions in the Noongar community in Perth began to develop. Some elders questioned Colbung's role and one Noongar registered a complaint with the Liverpool City Council over his involvement. Media reports indicated acrimonious debate within the Noongar community about who had the best cultural qualifications to take possession of the head. The academic Hannah McGlade claims that these divisions were largely manufactured by the media, particularly The West Australian, which "aimed to and successfully represented the Nyungar community in terms of disharmony and dissent". She alleges that one West reporter contacted Noongar who were known to be in disagreement, and quoted one to the other, so as to elicit provocative responses. The disputes were "trumpeted" by The West, allowing it to "preach" against the infighting.
On 25 July a public meeting was held in Perth. All parties agreed to put aside their differences and co-operate to ensure that the repatriation was a "national success". A Yagan Steering Committee was established to co-ordinate the repatriation, and Colbung's application was allowed to proceed. In January 1995 the Home Office advised Colbung that it was unable to waive the requirement to obtain next of kin consent for the exhumation. It contacted the five relatives whose addresses were known, and received unconditional consent from only one. Accordingly, on 30 June 1995, Colbung and the other interested parties were advised that the application for exhumation had been rejected.
Meeting on 21 September, the Yagan Steering Committee decided to lobby Australian and British politicians for support. In 1997 Colbung was invited to visit the United Kingdom at the British government's expense and he arrived on 20 May. His visit attracted substantial media coverage, and increased the political pressure on the British Government. He secured the support of the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, after gate crashing the Prime Minister's June visit to the United Kingdom.
Exhumation
While Colbung was in the United Kingdom, Martin and Richard Bates were engaged to undertake a geophysical survey of the grave site. Using electromagnetic and ground penetrating radar techniques, they identified an approximate position of the box that suggested it could be accessed from the side via the adjacent plot. A report of the survey was passed to the Home Office, prompting further discussions between the British and Australian Governments.
Of concern to the Home Office were an undisclosed number of letters that it had received objecting to Colbung's involvement in the repatriation process; it therefore sought assurances from the Australian Government that Colbung was a correct applicant. In response Colbung asked his elders to ask the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) to tell the British Home Office that he was the correct applicant. ATSIC then convened a meeting in Perth at which it was again resolved that Colbung's application could proceed.
Colbung continued to press for the exhumation, asking that it be performed before the 164th anniversary of Yagan's death on 11 July, so that the anniversary could be the occasion of a celebration. His request was not met, and on the anniversary of Yagan's death, Colbung conducted a short memorial service at the burial plot in Everton. He returned to Australia empty-handed on 15 July.
The exhumation of Yagan's head eventually proceeded, without Colbung's knowledge, by excavating down the side of the grave, then tunnelling horizontally to the location of the box. Thus the exhumation was performed without disturbing any other remains. The following day, a forensic palaeontologist from the University of Bradford positively identified the skull as Yagan's by correlating the fractures with those described in Pettigrew's report. The skull was then kept at the museum until 29 August, when it was handed over to the Liverpool City Council.
Repatriation
On 27 August 1997, a delegation of Noongars consisting of Ken Colbung, Robert Bropho, Richard Wilkes and Mingli Wanjurri-Nungala arrived in the UK to collect Yagan's head. The delegation was to have been larger, but Commonwealth funding was withdrawn at the last minute. The handover of Yagan's skull was further delayed when a Noongar named Corrie Bodney applied to the Supreme Court of Western Australia for an injunction against the handover. Claiming that his family group has sole responsibility for Yagan's remains, Bodney declared the exhumation illegal and denied the existence of any tradition or belief necessitating the head's exhumation and removal to Australia. On 29 August, Justice Henry Wallwork rejected the injunction application, on the grounds that Bodney had previously agreed to the current arrangements, and on the evidence of another Noongar elder (Albert Corunna, who claimed to be a closer relation of Yagan) and anthropologist Pat Baines, both of whom refuted Bodney's claim to sole responsibility.
Yagan's skull was handed over to the Noongar delegation at a ceremony at Liverpool Town Hall on 31 August 1997. In accepting the skull, Colbung made comments that were interpreted as linking Yagan's death with the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, earlier that day: That is how nature goes ... Nature is a carrier of all good things and all bad things. And because the Poms did the wrong thing, they now have to suffer. Colbung's comments prompted a media furore throughout Australia, with newspapers receiving many letters from the public expressing shock and anger at the comments. Colbung later claimed that his comments had been misinterpreted.
Throughout the repatriation process, many sections of the international media treated the story as a joke. For example, the US News & World Report ran a story under the headline Raiders of the Lost Conk, in which Yagan's head was referred to as a "pickled curio", and Colbung's actions were treated as a publicity stunt.
Preparations for reburial
On its return to Perth, Yagan's head continued to be a source of controversy and conflict. Responsibility for reburial of the head was given to a "Committee for the Reburial of Yagan's Kaat", headed by Richard Wilkes. The reburial was delayed by disputes between elders over the burial location, mainly due to uncertainty of the whereabouts of the rest of his body, and disagreement about the importance of burying the head with the body.
A number of attempts were made to locate the remains of Yagan's body, which were believed to be on Lot 39 West Swan Road in the outer Perth suburb of Belhus. A remote sensing survey of the site was carried out in 1998, but no remains were found. An archaeological survey of the area was undertaken two years later, but this also was unsuccessful. Disputes then arose over whether the head could be buried separately from the body. Wilkes has claimed that it can, so long as it is placed where Yagan was killed, so that Dreamtime spirits can reunite the remains.
In 1998 the Western Australian Planning Commission and the Department of Aboriginal Affairs jointly published a document entitled Yagan's Gravesite Master Plan, which discussed "matters of ownership, management, development and future use" of the property on which Yagan's remains are believed to be buried. Under consideration was the possibility of turning the site into an Indigenous burial site, to be managed by the Metropolitan Cemeteries Board.
Yagan's head spent some time in storage in a bank vault before being handed over to forensics experts who reconstructed a model from it. After that it was held in storage at Western Australia's state mortuary. Plans to re-bury the head were repeatedly deferred, causing ongoing conflict between Noongar groups. In September 2008 it was reported that Yagan's head would be reburied in November, and a Yagan Memorial Park created as a projected cost of A$996,000; but in November it was announced that the reburial had been rescheduled for July 2009 because of logistical problems. In March 2009, it was announced that the Department of Indigenous Affairs had given the City of Swan more than A$500,000 to develop the park.
Reburial
The head was finally buried in a private ceremony attended only by invited Noongar elders, on 10 July 2010, the anniversary of the last full day he lived and one day before the end of NAIDOC Week 2010. The site in Belhus was chosen as it is believed to be near to where the rest of Yagan's body was buried. The burial coincided with a ceremony to mark the opening of the Yagan Memorial Park, which was attended by around 300 people, including Noongar elders and state government representatives. Premier Colin Barnett described the occasion as "a wonderful day for all West Australians".
The art works for the Yagan Memorial Park were designed by Peter Farmer, Sandra Hill, Jenny Dawson and Kylie Ricks. Dawson and Hill created an entry wall of Yagan's story; Farmer designed the park entry statements and Ricks the female coolamon.
Legacy
The repatriation of Yagan's head increased the Aboriginal leader's notability. He is considered a famous historical figure throughout Australia, with material about him appearing in such publications as the Australian Dictionary of Biography, and Western Australia's school curriculum. He is of greatest significance to the Noongar people, for whom he is "a revered, cherished and heroic individual ... patriot and visionary hero of WA's South-West". The return of his head was likened by some Indigenous Australians to the November 1993 ceremonial repatriation from Gallipoli of Australia's unknown soldier.
The former Upper Swan Bridge, which carries the Great Northern Highway over the Swan River at Belhus, was renamed the Yagan Bridge in 2010.
An open plaza in the Perth central business district, constructed as part of the Perth City Link urban renewal project, was named Yagan Square. Featuring the statue "Wirin", the plaza, located adjacent to the Horseshoe Bridge, was opened on 3 March 2018.
Cultural references
Alas Poor Yagan
On 6 September 1997 The West Australian published a Dean Alston cartoon entitled Alas Poor Yagan, which was critical of the fact that the return of Yagan's head had become a source of conflict between Noongars instead of fostering unity. The cartoon was interpreted by some as insulting aspects of Noongar culture, and casting aspersions on the motives and legitimacy of Indigenous Australians with mixed racial heritage. The content of the cartoon offended many Indigenous Australians, and a group of Noongar elders complained about the cartoon to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. The commission ruled that the cartoon made inappropriate references to Noongar beliefs but was not in breach of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 because it was "an artistic work" that was published "reasonably and in good faith", and was therefore exempt. This ruling was upheld on appeal by the Federal Court of Australia. Some academic commentators have since expressed concern that the protections offered under the act have been undermined by the ruling's broad interpretation of the exemptions.
Statue
From the mid-1970s, members of the Noongar community lobbied for the erection of a statue of Yagan as part of the WAY 1979 sesquicentennial celebrations. Their requests were refused, however, after the Premier, Charles Court, was advised by one prominent historian that Yagan was not important enough to warrant a statue. Colbung claims "Court was more interested in spending tax payers' money on refurbishing the badly neglected burial place of Captain James Stirling, WA's first governor." Despite this setback, the Noongar community persisted, establishing a Yagan Committee and running a number of fund-raising drives. Eventually, sufficient funds were collected to allow the commissioning of Australian sculptor Robert Hitchcock to create a statue. The result was a life-size statue in bronze, depicting Yagan standing naked with a spear held across his shoulders. Hitchcock's statue of Yagan was officially opened by Yagan Committee chairperson Elizabeth Hanson on 11 September 1984. It stands on Heirisson Island in the Swan River near Perth.
In 1997, within a week of the return of Yagan's head to Perth, vandals beheaded the statue using an angle grinder. Soon after a replacement head was installed and it too was detached and stolen. Credit for the act was anonymously claimed by a "British loyalist" as an act of retaliation for Colbung's comments about Diana, Princess of Wales. The Western Australia Police did not succeed in identifying the vandals, nor in recovering the heads, and deemed it infeasible to have the statue fenced off or placed under guard.
Commentary on the beheadings varied widely. One column in The West Australian found humour in them, referring to the head as a "bonce" and a "noggin", and finished with a pun on "skullduggery". Stephen Muecke calls this the "satirical trivialising of Aboriginal concerns", and Adam Shoemaker writes "This is the stuff of light humour and comic relief. There is no sense of the decapitation as being an act of vandalism, even less that it could have been motivated by malevolence ... [T]he piece has a definite authorising function." On the other hand, academic analysis has treated the act with much more gravity. In 2007, for example, David Martin described the decapitation as "an act which speaks not only to the continuance of white settler racism, but also to the power of mimesis to invigorate our modern memorials and monuments with a life of their own".
In 2002, Janet Woollard, the member for Alfred Cove, called for the statue's genitalia to be covered up. In November 2005, Richard Wilkes also called for the statue's groin to be covered on the grounds that such a depiction would be more historically accurate, as Yagan would have worn a covering for most of the year. Also under consideration is the creation of a new statue with a head shape that accords better with the forensic reconstruction of Yagan's head.
Literature and film
Mary Durack published a fictionalised account of Yagan's life in her 1964 children's novel The Courteous Savage: Yagan of the Swan River, which was renamed Yagan of the Bibbulmun on reissue in 1976.
The repeated beheading of Yagan's statue in 1997 prompted Aboriginal writer Archie Weller to write a short story entitled Confessions of a Headhunter. Weller later worked with film director Sally Riley to adapt the story into a script, and in 2000 a 35-minute movie, also named Confessions of a Headhunter, was released. Directed by Sally Riley, the movie won Best Short Fiction Film at the 2000 AFI Awards. The following year the script won the Script Award in the 2001 Western Australian Premier's Book Awards.
In 2002, the South African-born Australian poet John Mateer published his fourth collection of poems, entitled Loanwords. The collection is divided into four sections, of which the third, In the Presence of a Severed Head, has Yagan as its subject.
Other cultural references
A section of Kullark, a play by Jack Davis, explores the deteriorating relationship between Yagan and a settler couple.
In September 1989 an early maturing cultivar of barley, bred by the Western Australian Department of Agriculture for performance on sandy soils, was released under the name "Hordeum vulgare (Barley) c.v. Yagan". Commonly referred to simply as "Yagan", the cultivar is named for Yagan, continuing a tradition of labelling Western Australian grain cultivars after historic people of Western Australia.
See also
Jandamarra, and the Bunuba War.
Musquito a warrior of the Gai-Mariagal clan
Pemulwuy a warrior and resistance leader of the Bidjigal clan of the Eora people, in the area around Sydney
Tunnerminnerwait, an Australian Aboriginal resistance fighter and Parperloihener clansman from Tasmania
Windradyne, a warrior and resistance leader of the Wiradjuri nation, in what is now central-western New South Wales
Australian frontier wars
References
General references
1790s births
1833 deaths
Art and cultural repatriation
Australian murderers
Australian outlaws
Deaths by firearm in Western Australia
Escapees from Western Australian detention
History of Western Australia
Noongar people
People from Perth, Western Australia
Resistance to colonialism in Australia
Trophy heads | true | [
"Hagen Friedrich Liebing (18 February 1961 – 25 September 2016), nicknamed \"The Incredible Hagen\", was a German musician and journalist, best known as the bassist for the influential punk band Die Ärzte. \n\nIn 1986, drummer Bela B invited him to join Die Ärzte. The two knew each other from early Berlin punk days. The band disbanded in 1988. Liebing tried his hand at journalism shortly thereafter. He wrote several articles for Der Tagesspiegel, and was the senior music editor of Tip Berlin since the mid-1990s. \n\nWhen Die Ärzte reunited in 1993, Liebing did not join them. However, he did join them on stage as a special guest in 2002. In 2003, he published his memoirs The Incredible Hagen – My Years with Die Ärzte. From 2003 to 2010, he headed the Press and Public Relations at the football club Tennis Borussia Berlin. \n\nLiebing died in Berlin on 25 September 2016, after a battle with a brain tumor.\n\nReferences\n\n1961 births\n2016 deaths\nMusicians from Berlin\nGerman male musicians\nGerman journalists\nDeaths from cancer in Germany\nDeaths from brain tumor",
"Johann Karl Wezel (October 31, 1747 in Sondershausen, Germany – January 28, 1819 in Sondershausen), also Johann Carl Wezel, was a German poet, novelist and philosopher of the Enlightenment.\n\nLife\nBorn the son of domestic servants, Wezel studied Theology, Law, Philosophy and Philology at the University of Leipzig. Early philosophical influences include John Locke and Julien Offray de La Mettrie. After positions as tutor at the courts of Bautzen and Berlin, Wezel lived as a freelance writer. A short stay in Vienna did not result in him getting employed by the local national theater. He thus moved back to Leipzig and, in 1793, to Sondershausen, which he did not leave again until his death in 1819.\n\nAlthough his works were extremely successful when they were published, Wezel was almost forgotten when he died. His rediscovery in the second half of the 20th century is mainly due to German author Arno Schmidt who published a radio essay about him in 1959.\n\nWorks\n Filibert und Theodosia (1772)\n Lebensgeschichte Tobias Knauts, des Weisen, sonst der Stammler genannt: aus Familiennachrichten gesammelt (1773–1776)\n Der Graf von Wickham (1774)\n Epistel an die deutschen Dichter (1775)\n Belphegor oder die wahrscheinlichste Geschichte unter der Sonne (1776)\n Herrmann und Ulrike (1780)\n Appellation der Vokalen an das Publikum (1778)\n Die wilde Betty (1779)\n Zelmor und Ermide (1779)\n Tagebuch eines neuen Ehmanns (1779)\n Robinson Krusoe. Neu bearbeitet (1779)\n Ueber Sprache, Wißenschaften und Geschmack der Teutschen (1781)\n Meine Auferstehung (1782)\n Wilhelmine Arend oder die Gefahren der Empfindsamkeit (1782)\n Kakerlak, oder Geschichte eines Rosenkreuzers aus dem vorigen Jahrhunderte (1784)\n Versuch über die Kenntniß des Menschen (1784–1785)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n \n\n1747 births\n1819 deaths\nPeople from Sondershausen\n\nGerman male writershuort escrouesr"
] |
[
"Yagan",
"Death",
"when did he die?",
"When the party of settlers arrived, they found Yagan dead and Heegan dying."
] | C_fd96a17bb9e74371afa728bd135272c3_1 | what year was this? | 2 | What year did Yagan die? | Yagan | On 11 July 1833, two teenage brothers named William and James Keates were herding cattle along the Swan River north of Guildford when a group of Noongar approached while en route to collect flour rations from Henry Bull's house. The Keates brothers suggested Yagan remain with them to avoid arrest. While he was staying with them during the morning, the brothers decided to kill the warrior and claim the reward. When the natives were ready to depart, the Keateses took their last opportunity. William Keates shot Yagan, and James shot Heegan, another native, in the act of throwing his spear. The brothers ran away, but other Noongar overtook William and speared him to death. James escaped by swimming the river. Shortly afterward he returned with a party of armed settlers from Bull's estate. When the party of settlers arrived, they found Yagan dead and Heegan dying. Heegan "was groaning and his brains were partly out when the party came, and whether humanity or brutality, a man put a gun to his head and blew it to pieces." The settlers cut Yagan's head from his body, and skinned his back to obtain his tribal markings as a trophy. They buried the bodies a short distance away. James Keates claimed the reward, but his conduct was widely criticised. The Perth Gazette referred to Yagan's killing as "a wild and treacherous act ... it is revolting to hear this lauded as a meritorious deed." However, Daisy Bates understood that "he was killed in self-defence by the young lad." Keates left the colony the following month; it is possible that he left from fear of being murdered in tribal retaliation. CANNOTANSWER | 1833, | Yagan (; – 11 July 1833) was an Aboriginal Australian warrior from the Noongar people. He played a key part in early resistance to British colonial settlement and rule in the area surrounding what is now Perth, Western Australia. Yagan was pursued by the local authorities after he killed Erin Entwhistle, a servant of farmer Archibald Butler. It was an act of retaliation after Thomas Smedley, another of Butler's servants, shot at a group of Noongar people stealing potatoes and fowls, killing one of them. The government offered a bounty for Yagan's capture, dead or alive, and a young settler, William Keats, shot and killed him. Yagan's execution figures in Australian history as a symbol of the unjust and sometimes brutal treatment of the indigenous peoples of Australia by colonial settlers. He is considered a hero by the Noongar.
After his shooting, settlers removed Yagan's head to claim the bounty. Later, an official sent it to London, where it was exhibited as an "anthropological curiosity" and eventually given to a museum in Liverpool. It held the head in storage for more than a century before burying it with other remains in an unmarked grave in Liverpool in 1964. Over the years, the Noongar asked for repatriation of the head, both for religious reasons and because of Yagan's traditional stature. The burial site was identified in 1993; officials exhumed the head four years later and repatriated it to Australia. After years of debate within the Noongar community on the appropriate final resting place, Yagan's head was buried in a traditional ceremony in the Swan Valley in July 2010, 177 years after his death.
Biography
Early life
A member of the Whadjuk Noongar people, Yagan belonged to a tribe of around 60 people whose name, according to Robert Lyon, was Beeliar. Scholars now believe that the Beeliar people may have been a family subgroup (or clan) of a larger tribe whom Daisy Bates called Beelgar. According to Lyon, the Beeliar people occupied the land south of the Swan and Canning rivers, as far south as Mangles Bay. The group had customary land usage rights over a much larger area than this, extending north as far as Lake Monger and northeast to the Helena River. The group also had an unusual degree of freedom to move over their neighbours' land, possibly due to kinship and marriage ties with neighbouring groups.
Yagan is thought to have been born around 1795. His father was Midgegooroo, an elder of the Beeliar people; his mother was presumably one of Midgegooroo's two wives. Yagan was probably a Ballaroke in the Noongar classification.
Marriage and family
According to the historian Neville Green, Yagan had a wife and two children. A report in the Perth Gazette in 1833 gives the names of his children as "Naral", age 9, and "Willim", age 11; but most other sources state that the warrior was unmarried and childless. Described as taller than average with an impressive burly physique, Yagan had a distinctive tribal tattoo on his right shoulder, which identified him as "a man of high degree in tribal law". He was generally acknowledged to be the most physically powerful of his tribe, and was said to have been able to spear another stick from a distance of or penetrate a tree from a distance of .
Relations with settlers
Yagan would have been about 35 years old in 1829 when British settlers landed in the area and established the Swan River Colony. For the first two years of the colony, relations between settlers and Noongar were generally amicable, as there was little competition for resources. The Noongar welcomed the white settlers as , the returned spirits of their dead. Historical reports noted the two groups shared fish. As time passed, conflicts between the two cultures gradually became more frequent. The settlers incorrectly thought that the Noongar were nomads who had no claim to the land over which they roamed. Colonists fenced off land for grazing and farming according to their traditional practices of land use.
As the colonists fenced off more land, the Noongar were increasingly denied access to their traditional hunting grounds and sacred sites. In search of food, the Noongar raided the settlers' crops and killed their cattle. They also developed a taste for the settlers' supplies, and began to take flour and other food, which became a serious problem for the colony. In addition, the Noongar practice of firestick farming, or lighting the bush to flush out game and encourage germination of undergrowth for sustainability, threatened the settlers' crops and houses.
In December 1831 Yagan and his father led the first significant Aboriginal resistance to white settlement in Western Australia. Thomas Smedley, a servant of farmer Archibald Butler, ambushed some natives who were raiding a potato patch, and killed one of Yagan's family group. A few days later, Yagan, Midgegooroo and others stormed the farmhouse and, finding the door locked, began to break through the mud-brick walls. Inside were Butler's servant Erin Entwhistle and his two sons Enion and Ralph. After hiding his sons under the bed, Entwhistle opened the door to parley and was killed by Yagan and Midgegooroo. Noongar tribal law required that murders be avenged by the killing of a member of the murderer's tribal group, not necessarily the murderer. The Noongar considered servants and employees to be part of the settlers' groups. Historians believe the Noongar attack on Entwhistle was retribution under their tribal law. Not understanding tribal law (and unlikely to agree with its concepts), the white settlers took the killing to be an unprovoked murder and dispatched a force to arrest Yagan's group, without success.
In June 1832 Yagan led a party of Noongar in attacking two labourers sowing a field of wheat alongside the Canning River near Kelmscott. One of the men, John Thomas, escaped, but the other, William Gaze, was wounded and later died as a result. The settlement declared Yagan an outlaw and offered a reward of £20 for his capture. He avoided capture until early October 1832. A group of fishermen enticed Yagan and two companions into their boat, then pushed off into deep water. The fishermen took the three Noongar men to the Perth guardhouse, from which they were transferred to the Round House at Fremantle. Yagan was sentenced to death, but he was saved by the intercession of settler Robert Lyon. Arguing that Yagan was defending his land against invasion, Lyon said Yagan should not be considered a criminal but a prisoner of war and suggested he should be treated as such. At the recommendation of John Septimus Roe, the Surveyor-General of Western Australia, Yagan and his men were exiled on Carnac Island under the supervision of Lyon and two soldiers.
Lyon thought he could teach Yagan British ways and convert him to Christianity. He hoped to gain his cooperation and use his tribal stature to persuade the Noongar to accept colonial authority. Lyon spent many hours with Yagan learning his language and customs. After a month, Yagan and his companions escaped by stealing an unattended dinghy and rowing to Woodman Point on the mainland. The Government did not pursue them; apparently its officials considered they had been sufficiently punished.
In January 1833 two Noongar, Gyallipert and Manyat, visited Perth from King George Sound, where relations between settlers and natives were amicable. Two settlers, Richard Dale and George Smythe, arranged for the men to meet a party of local Noongar to encourage friendly relations in the Swan River Colony. On 26 January Yagan led a group of ten formally armed Noongars in greeting the two men near Lake Monger. The men exchanged weapons and held a corroboree, though the groups did not appear to share a language. Yagan and Gyallipert competed at spear throwing. As an example of his prowess, Yagan struck a walking stick from a distance of .
Gyallipert and Manyat remained in Perth for some time. On 3 March, Yagan obtained permission to hold another corroboree, this time in the Post Office garden in Perth. The Perth and King George Sound men met at dusk, chalked their bodies, and performed a number of dances including a kangaroo hunt dance. The Perth Gazette wrote that Yagan "was master of ceremonies and acquitted himself with infinite grace and dignity".
During February and March, Yagan was involved in a series of minor conflicts with settlers. In February William Watson complained that Yagan had pushed open his door, demanded a gun, and taken handkerchiefs. Watson had to give him and his companions flour and bread. The following month, Yagan was among a group who received biscuits from a military contingent under Lieutenant Norcott; when Norcott tried to restrict his supply, Yagan threatened him with his spear. Later that month, Yagan was with a group of Noongar who entered Watson's house while he was away. The group left after Watson's wife called on neighbours for help. The next day Captain Ellis lectured the Noongar about their behaviour. The frequent incidents prompted The Perth Gazette to remark on "the reckless daring of this desperado who sets his life at a pin's fee ... For the most trivial offence ... he would take the life of any man who provoked him. He is at the head and front of any mischief."
Wanted dead or alive
On the night of 29 April, a party of Noongar broke into a Fremantle store to steal flour and they were shot at by the caretaker Peter Chidlow. Domjum, a brother of Yagan, was badly injured and died in jail a few days later. The rest of the party moved from Fremantle to Preston Point, where Yagan reportedly vowed vengeance for the death. Between 50 and 60 Noongar gathered at Bull Creek, where they met a party of settlers who were loading carts with provisions. Later that day, the group ambushed the lead cart, killing two settlers, Tom and John Velvick. Tribal law required only a single death for vengeance. Some historians have speculated that the Velvicks were targeted because they had previously been convicted for assaulting Aboriginal people and coloured seamen. Alexandra Hasluck has also argued that stealing provisions was an important motive in the attack, but this has been refuted elsewhere.
For the killing of the Velvicks, the Lieutenant-Governor Frederick Irwin declared Yagan, Midgegooroo and Munday to be outlaws, offering rewards of £20 each for the capture of Midgegooroo and Munday, and a reward of £30 for Yagan's capture, dead or alive. Munday successfully appealed against his proscription. Midgegooroo, Yagan and their group immediately moved from their territory north towards the Helena Valley. On 17 May, Midgegooroo was captured on the Helena River. After a brief, informal trial, he was executed by firing squad. Yagan remained at large for over two months.
Late in May, George Fletcher Moore reported seeing Yagan on his property and talking with him in pidgin English. Moore wrote in the Perth Gazette:
Yagan asked Moore whether Midgegooroo was dead or alive. Moore gave no reply, but a servant answered that Midgegooroo was a prisoner on Carnac Island. Yagan warned, "White man shoot Midgegooroo, Yagan kill three." Moore reported the encounter but made no attempt to restrain Yagan. He later wrote, "The truth is, every one wishes him taken, but no one likes to be the captor ... there is something in his daring which one is forced to admire."
Death
On 11 July 1833, two teenage brothers named William and James Keates were herding cattle along the Swan River north of Guildford when a group of Noongar approached while en route to collect flour rations from Henry Bull's house. The Keates brothers suggested Yagan remain with them to avoid arrest. While he was staying with them during the morning, the brothers decided to kill the warrior and claim the reward. When the natives were ready to depart, the Keateses took their last opportunity. William Keates shot Yagan, and James shot Heegan, another native, in the act of throwing his spear. The brothers ran away, but other Noongar overtook William and speared him to death. James escaped by swimming the river. Shortly afterward he returned with a party of armed settlers from Bull's estate.
When the party of settlers arrived, they found Yagan dead and Heegan dying. Heegan "was groaning and his brains were partly out when the party came, and whether humanity or brutality, a man put a gun to his head and blew it to pieces." The settlers cut Yagan's head from his body, and skinned his back to obtain his tribal markings as a trophy. They buried the bodies a short distance away.
James Keates claimed the reward, but his conduct was widely criticised. The Perth Gazette referred to Yagan's killing as "a wild and treacherous act ... it is revolting to hear this lauded as a meritorious deed." However, Daisy Bates understood that "he was killed in self-defence by the young lad." Keates left the colony the following month; it is possible that he left from fear of being murdered in tribal retaliation.
Yagan's head
Exhibition and burial
Yagan's head was initially taken to Henry Bull's house. Moore saw it there and sketched the head a number of times in his unpublished, handwritten diary, commenting that "possibly it may yet figure in some museum at home." The head was preserved by smoking.
In September 1833, Governor Irwin sailed for London, partly to give his own account of the events leading up to the killing. This was an unusual measure, especially given his regiment was about to leave for a tour of duty in India. The Colonial Office indicated satisfaction with Irwin's administration of the colony.
Travelling with Irwin was Ensign Robert Dale, who had somehow acquired Yagan's head. According to the historian Paul Turnbull, Dale appears to have persuaded Irwin to let him have the head as an "anthropological curiosity". After arriving in London, Dale tried to sell the head to scientists, approaching a number of anatomists and phrenologists. His price of £20 failed to find a buyer, so he made an agreement with Thomas Pettigrew for the exclusive use of the head for 18 months. Pettigrew, a surgeon and antiquarian, was well known in the London social scene for holding private parties at which he unrolled and autopsied ancient Egyptian mummies. He displayed the head on a table in front of a panoramic view of King George Sound reproduced from Dale's sketches. For effect, the head was adorned with a fresh corded headband and feathers of the red-tailed black cockatoo.
Pettigrew had the head examined by a phrenologist. Examination was considered difficult because of the large fracture across the back of the head caused by the gunshot. His conclusions were consistent with contemporary European opinion of Indigenous Australians. Dale published these in a pamphlet entitled Descriptive Account of the Panoramic View &c. of King George's Sound and the Adjacent Country, which Pettigrew encouraged his guests to buy as a souvenir of their evening. The frontispiece of the pamphlet was a hand-coloured aquatint print of Yagan's head by the artist George Cruikshank.
Early in October 1835, Yagan's head and the panoramic view were returned to Dale, then living in Liverpool. On 12 October he presented them to the Liverpool Royal Institution, where the head may have been displayed in a case along with some other preserved heads and wax models illustrating cranial anatomy. In 1894 the Institution's collections were dispersed, and Yagan's head was lent to the Liverpool Museum; it is thought not to have been put on display there. By the 1960s Yagan's head was badly deteriorated. In April 1964 the museum decided to dispose of it. It arranged burial of the head on 10 April 1964, together with a Peruvian mummy and a Māori head. They were buried in Everton Cemetery's General Section 16, grave number 296. In later years a number of burials were made around the grave. For example, in 1968 a local hospital buried directly over the box, 20 stillborn babies and two infants who died soon after birth.
Lobbying for repatriation
For many years beginning in the early 1980s, a number of Noongar groups sought the return of Yagan's head to Australia.
At the time, there was no historical trail for the head after Pettigrew passed it on. Tribal elders entrusted the Aboriginal leader Ken Colbung with the search. In the early 1990s, Colbung enlisted the aid of University of London archaeologist Peter Ucko. One of Ucko's researchers, Cressida Fforde, conducted a literature search for information on the head. Fforde successfully traced the head in December 1993. The following April, Colbung applied to exhume the remains under Section 25 of the Burial Act 1857. Home Office regulations required next of kin consent before disturbing the remains of the 22 infants. Colbung's solicitors requested waiver of this condition on grounds that the exhumation would be of great personal significance to Yagan's living relatives, and great national importance to Australia.
Meanwhile, divisions in the Noongar community in Perth began to develop. Some elders questioned Colbung's role and one Noongar registered a complaint with the Liverpool City Council over his involvement. Media reports indicated acrimonious debate within the Noongar community about who had the best cultural qualifications to take possession of the head. The academic Hannah McGlade claims that these divisions were largely manufactured by the media, particularly The West Australian, which "aimed to and successfully represented the Nyungar community in terms of disharmony and dissent". She alleges that one West reporter contacted Noongar who were known to be in disagreement, and quoted one to the other, so as to elicit provocative responses. The disputes were "trumpeted" by The West, allowing it to "preach" against the infighting.
On 25 July a public meeting was held in Perth. All parties agreed to put aside their differences and co-operate to ensure that the repatriation was a "national success". A Yagan Steering Committee was established to co-ordinate the repatriation, and Colbung's application was allowed to proceed. In January 1995 the Home Office advised Colbung that it was unable to waive the requirement to obtain next of kin consent for the exhumation. It contacted the five relatives whose addresses were known, and received unconditional consent from only one. Accordingly, on 30 June 1995, Colbung and the other interested parties were advised that the application for exhumation had been rejected.
Meeting on 21 September, the Yagan Steering Committee decided to lobby Australian and British politicians for support. In 1997 Colbung was invited to visit the United Kingdom at the British government's expense and he arrived on 20 May. His visit attracted substantial media coverage, and increased the political pressure on the British Government. He secured the support of the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, after gate crashing the Prime Minister's June visit to the United Kingdom.
Exhumation
While Colbung was in the United Kingdom, Martin and Richard Bates were engaged to undertake a geophysical survey of the grave site. Using electromagnetic and ground penetrating radar techniques, they identified an approximate position of the box that suggested it could be accessed from the side via the adjacent plot. A report of the survey was passed to the Home Office, prompting further discussions between the British and Australian Governments.
Of concern to the Home Office were an undisclosed number of letters that it had received objecting to Colbung's involvement in the repatriation process; it therefore sought assurances from the Australian Government that Colbung was a correct applicant. In response Colbung asked his elders to ask the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) to tell the British Home Office that he was the correct applicant. ATSIC then convened a meeting in Perth at which it was again resolved that Colbung's application could proceed.
Colbung continued to press for the exhumation, asking that it be performed before the 164th anniversary of Yagan's death on 11 July, so that the anniversary could be the occasion of a celebration. His request was not met, and on the anniversary of Yagan's death, Colbung conducted a short memorial service at the burial plot in Everton. He returned to Australia empty-handed on 15 July.
The exhumation of Yagan's head eventually proceeded, without Colbung's knowledge, by excavating down the side of the grave, then tunnelling horizontally to the location of the box. Thus the exhumation was performed without disturbing any other remains. The following day, a forensic palaeontologist from the University of Bradford positively identified the skull as Yagan's by correlating the fractures with those described in Pettigrew's report. The skull was then kept at the museum until 29 August, when it was handed over to the Liverpool City Council.
Repatriation
On 27 August 1997, a delegation of Noongars consisting of Ken Colbung, Robert Bropho, Richard Wilkes and Mingli Wanjurri-Nungala arrived in the UK to collect Yagan's head. The delegation was to have been larger, but Commonwealth funding was withdrawn at the last minute. The handover of Yagan's skull was further delayed when a Noongar named Corrie Bodney applied to the Supreme Court of Western Australia for an injunction against the handover. Claiming that his family group has sole responsibility for Yagan's remains, Bodney declared the exhumation illegal and denied the existence of any tradition or belief necessitating the head's exhumation and removal to Australia. On 29 August, Justice Henry Wallwork rejected the injunction application, on the grounds that Bodney had previously agreed to the current arrangements, and on the evidence of another Noongar elder (Albert Corunna, who claimed to be a closer relation of Yagan) and anthropologist Pat Baines, both of whom refuted Bodney's claim to sole responsibility.
Yagan's skull was handed over to the Noongar delegation at a ceremony at Liverpool Town Hall on 31 August 1997. In accepting the skull, Colbung made comments that were interpreted as linking Yagan's death with the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, earlier that day: That is how nature goes ... Nature is a carrier of all good things and all bad things. And because the Poms did the wrong thing, they now have to suffer. Colbung's comments prompted a media furore throughout Australia, with newspapers receiving many letters from the public expressing shock and anger at the comments. Colbung later claimed that his comments had been misinterpreted.
Throughout the repatriation process, many sections of the international media treated the story as a joke. For example, the US News & World Report ran a story under the headline Raiders of the Lost Conk, in which Yagan's head was referred to as a "pickled curio", and Colbung's actions were treated as a publicity stunt.
Preparations for reburial
On its return to Perth, Yagan's head continued to be a source of controversy and conflict. Responsibility for reburial of the head was given to a "Committee for the Reburial of Yagan's Kaat", headed by Richard Wilkes. The reburial was delayed by disputes between elders over the burial location, mainly due to uncertainty of the whereabouts of the rest of his body, and disagreement about the importance of burying the head with the body.
A number of attempts were made to locate the remains of Yagan's body, which were believed to be on Lot 39 West Swan Road in the outer Perth suburb of Belhus. A remote sensing survey of the site was carried out in 1998, but no remains were found. An archaeological survey of the area was undertaken two years later, but this also was unsuccessful. Disputes then arose over whether the head could be buried separately from the body. Wilkes has claimed that it can, so long as it is placed where Yagan was killed, so that Dreamtime spirits can reunite the remains.
In 1998 the Western Australian Planning Commission and the Department of Aboriginal Affairs jointly published a document entitled Yagan's Gravesite Master Plan, which discussed "matters of ownership, management, development and future use" of the property on which Yagan's remains are believed to be buried. Under consideration was the possibility of turning the site into an Indigenous burial site, to be managed by the Metropolitan Cemeteries Board.
Yagan's head spent some time in storage in a bank vault before being handed over to forensics experts who reconstructed a model from it. After that it was held in storage at Western Australia's state mortuary. Plans to re-bury the head were repeatedly deferred, causing ongoing conflict between Noongar groups. In September 2008 it was reported that Yagan's head would be reburied in November, and a Yagan Memorial Park created as a projected cost of A$996,000; but in November it was announced that the reburial had been rescheduled for July 2009 because of logistical problems. In March 2009, it was announced that the Department of Indigenous Affairs had given the City of Swan more than A$500,000 to develop the park.
Reburial
The head was finally buried in a private ceremony attended only by invited Noongar elders, on 10 July 2010, the anniversary of the last full day he lived and one day before the end of NAIDOC Week 2010. The site in Belhus was chosen as it is believed to be near to where the rest of Yagan's body was buried. The burial coincided with a ceremony to mark the opening of the Yagan Memorial Park, which was attended by around 300 people, including Noongar elders and state government representatives. Premier Colin Barnett described the occasion as "a wonderful day for all West Australians".
The art works for the Yagan Memorial Park were designed by Peter Farmer, Sandra Hill, Jenny Dawson and Kylie Ricks. Dawson and Hill created an entry wall of Yagan's story; Farmer designed the park entry statements and Ricks the female coolamon.
Legacy
The repatriation of Yagan's head increased the Aboriginal leader's notability. He is considered a famous historical figure throughout Australia, with material about him appearing in such publications as the Australian Dictionary of Biography, and Western Australia's school curriculum. He is of greatest significance to the Noongar people, for whom he is "a revered, cherished and heroic individual ... patriot and visionary hero of WA's South-West". The return of his head was likened by some Indigenous Australians to the November 1993 ceremonial repatriation from Gallipoli of Australia's unknown soldier.
The former Upper Swan Bridge, which carries the Great Northern Highway over the Swan River at Belhus, was renamed the Yagan Bridge in 2010.
An open plaza in the Perth central business district, constructed as part of the Perth City Link urban renewal project, was named Yagan Square. Featuring the statue "Wirin", the plaza, located adjacent to the Horseshoe Bridge, was opened on 3 March 2018.
Cultural references
Alas Poor Yagan
On 6 September 1997 The West Australian published a Dean Alston cartoon entitled Alas Poor Yagan, which was critical of the fact that the return of Yagan's head had become a source of conflict between Noongars instead of fostering unity. The cartoon was interpreted by some as insulting aspects of Noongar culture, and casting aspersions on the motives and legitimacy of Indigenous Australians with mixed racial heritage. The content of the cartoon offended many Indigenous Australians, and a group of Noongar elders complained about the cartoon to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. The commission ruled that the cartoon made inappropriate references to Noongar beliefs but was not in breach of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 because it was "an artistic work" that was published "reasonably and in good faith", and was therefore exempt. This ruling was upheld on appeal by the Federal Court of Australia. Some academic commentators have since expressed concern that the protections offered under the act have been undermined by the ruling's broad interpretation of the exemptions.
Statue
From the mid-1970s, members of the Noongar community lobbied for the erection of a statue of Yagan as part of the WAY 1979 sesquicentennial celebrations. Their requests were refused, however, after the Premier, Charles Court, was advised by one prominent historian that Yagan was not important enough to warrant a statue. Colbung claims "Court was more interested in spending tax payers' money on refurbishing the badly neglected burial place of Captain James Stirling, WA's first governor." Despite this setback, the Noongar community persisted, establishing a Yagan Committee and running a number of fund-raising drives. Eventually, sufficient funds were collected to allow the commissioning of Australian sculptor Robert Hitchcock to create a statue. The result was a life-size statue in bronze, depicting Yagan standing naked with a spear held across his shoulders. Hitchcock's statue of Yagan was officially opened by Yagan Committee chairperson Elizabeth Hanson on 11 September 1984. It stands on Heirisson Island in the Swan River near Perth.
In 1997, within a week of the return of Yagan's head to Perth, vandals beheaded the statue using an angle grinder. Soon after a replacement head was installed and it too was detached and stolen. Credit for the act was anonymously claimed by a "British loyalist" as an act of retaliation for Colbung's comments about Diana, Princess of Wales. The Western Australia Police did not succeed in identifying the vandals, nor in recovering the heads, and deemed it infeasible to have the statue fenced off or placed under guard.
Commentary on the beheadings varied widely. One column in The West Australian found humour in them, referring to the head as a "bonce" and a "noggin", and finished with a pun on "skullduggery". Stephen Muecke calls this the "satirical trivialising of Aboriginal concerns", and Adam Shoemaker writes "This is the stuff of light humour and comic relief. There is no sense of the decapitation as being an act of vandalism, even less that it could have been motivated by malevolence ... [T]he piece has a definite authorising function." On the other hand, academic analysis has treated the act with much more gravity. In 2007, for example, David Martin described the decapitation as "an act which speaks not only to the continuance of white settler racism, but also to the power of mimesis to invigorate our modern memorials and monuments with a life of their own".
In 2002, Janet Woollard, the member for Alfred Cove, called for the statue's genitalia to be covered up. In November 2005, Richard Wilkes also called for the statue's groin to be covered on the grounds that such a depiction would be more historically accurate, as Yagan would have worn a covering for most of the year. Also under consideration is the creation of a new statue with a head shape that accords better with the forensic reconstruction of Yagan's head.
Literature and film
Mary Durack published a fictionalised account of Yagan's life in her 1964 children's novel The Courteous Savage: Yagan of the Swan River, which was renamed Yagan of the Bibbulmun on reissue in 1976.
The repeated beheading of Yagan's statue in 1997 prompted Aboriginal writer Archie Weller to write a short story entitled Confessions of a Headhunter. Weller later worked with film director Sally Riley to adapt the story into a script, and in 2000 a 35-minute movie, also named Confessions of a Headhunter, was released. Directed by Sally Riley, the movie won Best Short Fiction Film at the 2000 AFI Awards. The following year the script won the Script Award in the 2001 Western Australian Premier's Book Awards.
In 2002, the South African-born Australian poet John Mateer published his fourth collection of poems, entitled Loanwords. The collection is divided into four sections, of which the third, In the Presence of a Severed Head, has Yagan as its subject.
Other cultural references
A section of Kullark, a play by Jack Davis, explores the deteriorating relationship between Yagan and a settler couple.
In September 1989 an early maturing cultivar of barley, bred by the Western Australian Department of Agriculture for performance on sandy soils, was released under the name "Hordeum vulgare (Barley) c.v. Yagan". Commonly referred to simply as "Yagan", the cultivar is named for Yagan, continuing a tradition of labelling Western Australian grain cultivars after historic people of Western Australia.
See also
Jandamarra, and the Bunuba War.
Musquito a warrior of the Gai-Mariagal clan
Pemulwuy a warrior and resistance leader of the Bidjigal clan of the Eora people, in the area around Sydney
Tunnerminnerwait, an Australian Aboriginal resistance fighter and Parperloihener clansman from Tasmania
Windradyne, a warrior and resistance leader of the Wiradjuri nation, in what is now central-western New South Wales
Australian frontier wars
References
General references
1790s births
1833 deaths
Art and cultural repatriation
Australian murderers
Australian outlaws
Deaths by firearm in Western Australia
Escapees from Western Australian detention
History of Western Australia
Noongar people
People from Perth, Western Australia
Resistance to colonialism in Australia
Trophy heads | 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"
] |
[
"Yagan",
"Death",
"when did he die?",
"When the party of settlers arrived, they found Yagan dead and Heegan dying.",
"what year was this?",
"1833,"
] | C_fd96a17bb9e74371afa728bd135272c3_1 | how did he die? | 3 | How did Yagan die? | Yagan | On 11 July 1833, two teenage brothers named William and James Keates were herding cattle along the Swan River north of Guildford when a group of Noongar approached while en route to collect flour rations from Henry Bull's house. The Keates brothers suggested Yagan remain with them to avoid arrest. While he was staying with them during the morning, the brothers decided to kill the warrior and claim the reward. When the natives were ready to depart, the Keateses took their last opportunity. William Keates shot Yagan, and James shot Heegan, another native, in the act of throwing his spear. The brothers ran away, but other Noongar overtook William and speared him to death. James escaped by swimming the river. Shortly afterward he returned with a party of armed settlers from Bull's estate. When the party of settlers arrived, they found Yagan dead and Heegan dying. Heegan "was groaning and his brains were partly out when the party came, and whether humanity or brutality, a man put a gun to his head and blew it to pieces." The settlers cut Yagan's head from his body, and skinned his back to obtain his tribal markings as a trophy. They buried the bodies a short distance away. James Keates claimed the reward, but his conduct was widely criticised. The Perth Gazette referred to Yagan's killing as "a wild and treacherous act ... it is revolting to hear this lauded as a meritorious deed." However, Daisy Bates understood that "he was killed in self-defence by the young lad." Keates left the colony the following month; it is possible that he left from fear of being murdered in tribal retaliation. CANNOTANSWER | William Keates shot Yagan, and James shot Heegan, another native, in the act of throwing his spear. | Yagan (; – 11 July 1833) was an Aboriginal Australian warrior from the Noongar people. He played a key part in early resistance to British colonial settlement and rule in the area surrounding what is now Perth, Western Australia. Yagan was pursued by the local authorities after he killed Erin Entwhistle, a servant of farmer Archibald Butler. It was an act of retaliation after Thomas Smedley, another of Butler's servants, shot at a group of Noongar people stealing potatoes and fowls, killing one of them. The government offered a bounty for Yagan's capture, dead or alive, and a young settler, William Keats, shot and killed him. Yagan's execution figures in Australian history as a symbol of the unjust and sometimes brutal treatment of the indigenous peoples of Australia by colonial settlers. He is considered a hero by the Noongar.
After his shooting, settlers removed Yagan's head to claim the bounty. Later, an official sent it to London, where it was exhibited as an "anthropological curiosity" and eventually given to a museum in Liverpool. It held the head in storage for more than a century before burying it with other remains in an unmarked grave in Liverpool in 1964. Over the years, the Noongar asked for repatriation of the head, both for religious reasons and because of Yagan's traditional stature. The burial site was identified in 1993; officials exhumed the head four years later and repatriated it to Australia. After years of debate within the Noongar community on the appropriate final resting place, Yagan's head was buried in a traditional ceremony in the Swan Valley in July 2010, 177 years after his death.
Biography
Early life
A member of the Whadjuk Noongar people, Yagan belonged to a tribe of around 60 people whose name, according to Robert Lyon, was Beeliar. Scholars now believe that the Beeliar people may have been a family subgroup (or clan) of a larger tribe whom Daisy Bates called Beelgar. According to Lyon, the Beeliar people occupied the land south of the Swan and Canning rivers, as far south as Mangles Bay. The group had customary land usage rights over a much larger area than this, extending north as far as Lake Monger and northeast to the Helena River. The group also had an unusual degree of freedom to move over their neighbours' land, possibly due to kinship and marriage ties with neighbouring groups.
Yagan is thought to have been born around 1795. His father was Midgegooroo, an elder of the Beeliar people; his mother was presumably one of Midgegooroo's two wives. Yagan was probably a Ballaroke in the Noongar classification.
Marriage and family
According to the historian Neville Green, Yagan had a wife and two children. A report in the Perth Gazette in 1833 gives the names of his children as "Naral", age 9, and "Willim", age 11; but most other sources state that the warrior was unmarried and childless. Described as taller than average with an impressive burly physique, Yagan had a distinctive tribal tattoo on his right shoulder, which identified him as "a man of high degree in tribal law". He was generally acknowledged to be the most physically powerful of his tribe, and was said to have been able to spear another stick from a distance of or penetrate a tree from a distance of .
Relations with settlers
Yagan would have been about 35 years old in 1829 when British settlers landed in the area and established the Swan River Colony. For the first two years of the colony, relations between settlers and Noongar were generally amicable, as there was little competition for resources. The Noongar welcomed the white settlers as , the returned spirits of their dead. Historical reports noted the two groups shared fish. As time passed, conflicts between the two cultures gradually became more frequent. The settlers incorrectly thought that the Noongar were nomads who had no claim to the land over which they roamed. Colonists fenced off land for grazing and farming according to their traditional practices of land use.
As the colonists fenced off more land, the Noongar were increasingly denied access to their traditional hunting grounds and sacred sites. In search of food, the Noongar raided the settlers' crops and killed their cattle. They also developed a taste for the settlers' supplies, and began to take flour and other food, which became a serious problem for the colony. In addition, the Noongar practice of firestick farming, or lighting the bush to flush out game and encourage germination of undergrowth for sustainability, threatened the settlers' crops and houses.
In December 1831 Yagan and his father led the first significant Aboriginal resistance to white settlement in Western Australia. Thomas Smedley, a servant of farmer Archibald Butler, ambushed some natives who were raiding a potato patch, and killed one of Yagan's family group. A few days later, Yagan, Midgegooroo and others stormed the farmhouse and, finding the door locked, began to break through the mud-brick walls. Inside were Butler's servant Erin Entwhistle and his two sons Enion and Ralph. After hiding his sons under the bed, Entwhistle opened the door to parley and was killed by Yagan and Midgegooroo. Noongar tribal law required that murders be avenged by the killing of a member of the murderer's tribal group, not necessarily the murderer. The Noongar considered servants and employees to be part of the settlers' groups. Historians believe the Noongar attack on Entwhistle was retribution under their tribal law. Not understanding tribal law (and unlikely to agree with its concepts), the white settlers took the killing to be an unprovoked murder and dispatched a force to arrest Yagan's group, without success.
In June 1832 Yagan led a party of Noongar in attacking two labourers sowing a field of wheat alongside the Canning River near Kelmscott. One of the men, John Thomas, escaped, but the other, William Gaze, was wounded and later died as a result. The settlement declared Yagan an outlaw and offered a reward of £20 for his capture. He avoided capture until early October 1832. A group of fishermen enticed Yagan and two companions into their boat, then pushed off into deep water. The fishermen took the three Noongar men to the Perth guardhouse, from which they were transferred to the Round House at Fremantle. Yagan was sentenced to death, but he was saved by the intercession of settler Robert Lyon. Arguing that Yagan was defending his land against invasion, Lyon said Yagan should not be considered a criminal but a prisoner of war and suggested he should be treated as such. At the recommendation of John Septimus Roe, the Surveyor-General of Western Australia, Yagan and his men were exiled on Carnac Island under the supervision of Lyon and two soldiers.
Lyon thought he could teach Yagan British ways and convert him to Christianity. He hoped to gain his cooperation and use his tribal stature to persuade the Noongar to accept colonial authority. Lyon spent many hours with Yagan learning his language and customs. After a month, Yagan and his companions escaped by stealing an unattended dinghy and rowing to Woodman Point on the mainland. The Government did not pursue them; apparently its officials considered they had been sufficiently punished.
In January 1833 two Noongar, Gyallipert and Manyat, visited Perth from King George Sound, where relations between settlers and natives were amicable. Two settlers, Richard Dale and George Smythe, arranged for the men to meet a party of local Noongar to encourage friendly relations in the Swan River Colony. On 26 January Yagan led a group of ten formally armed Noongars in greeting the two men near Lake Monger. The men exchanged weapons and held a corroboree, though the groups did not appear to share a language. Yagan and Gyallipert competed at spear throwing. As an example of his prowess, Yagan struck a walking stick from a distance of .
Gyallipert and Manyat remained in Perth for some time. On 3 March, Yagan obtained permission to hold another corroboree, this time in the Post Office garden in Perth. The Perth and King George Sound men met at dusk, chalked their bodies, and performed a number of dances including a kangaroo hunt dance. The Perth Gazette wrote that Yagan "was master of ceremonies and acquitted himself with infinite grace and dignity".
During February and March, Yagan was involved in a series of minor conflicts with settlers. In February William Watson complained that Yagan had pushed open his door, demanded a gun, and taken handkerchiefs. Watson had to give him and his companions flour and bread. The following month, Yagan was among a group who received biscuits from a military contingent under Lieutenant Norcott; when Norcott tried to restrict his supply, Yagan threatened him with his spear. Later that month, Yagan was with a group of Noongar who entered Watson's house while he was away. The group left after Watson's wife called on neighbours for help. The next day Captain Ellis lectured the Noongar about their behaviour. The frequent incidents prompted The Perth Gazette to remark on "the reckless daring of this desperado who sets his life at a pin's fee ... For the most trivial offence ... he would take the life of any man who provoked him. He is at the head and front of any mischief."
Wanted dead or alive
On the night of 29 April, a party of Noongar broke into a Fremantle store to steal flour and they were shot at by the caretaker Peter Chidlow. Domjum, a brother of Yagan, was badly injured and died in jail a few days later. The rest of the party moved from Fremantle to Preston Point, where Yagan reportedly vowed vengeance for the death. Between 50 and 60 Noongar gathered at Bull Creek, where they met a party of settlers who were loading carts with provisions. Later that day, the group ambushed the lead cart, killing two settlers, Tom and John Velvick. Tribal law required only a single death for vengeance. Some historians have speculated that the Velvicks were targeted because they had previously been convicted for assaulting Aboriginal people and coloured seamen. Alexandra Hasluck has also argued that stealing provisions was an important motive in the attack, but this has been refuted elsewhere.
For the killing of the Velvicks, the Lieutenant-Governor Frederick Irwin declared Yagan, Midgegooroo and Munday to be outlaws, offering rewards of £20 each for the capture of Midgegooroo and Munday, and a reward of £30 for Yagan's capture, dead or alive. Munday successfully appealed against his proscription. Midgegooroo, Yagan and their group immediately moved from their territory north towards the Helena Valley. On 17 May, Midgegooroo was captured on the Helena River. After a brief, informal trial, he was executed by firing squad. Yagan remained at large for over two months.
Late in May, George Fletcher Moore reported seeing Yagan on his property and talking with him in pidgin English. Moore wrote in the Perth Gazette:
Yagan asked Moore whether Midgegooroo was dead or alive. Moore gave no reply, but a servant answered that Midgegooroo was a prisoner on Carnac Island. Yagan warned, "White man shoot Midgegooroo, Yagan kill three." Moore reported the encounter but made no attempt to restrain Yagan. He later wrote, "The truth is, every one wishes him taken, but no one likes to be the captor ... there is something in his daring which one is forced to admire."
Death
On 11 July 1833, two teenage brothers named William and James Keates were herding cattle along the Swan River north of Guildford when a group of Noongar approached while en route to collect flour rations from Henry Bull's house. The Keates brothers suggested Yagan remain with them to avoid arrest. While he was staying with them during the morning, the brothers decided to kill the warrior and claim the reward. When the natives were ready to depart, the Keateses took their last opportunity. William Keates shot Yagan, and James shot Heegan, another native, in the act of throwing his spear. The brothers ran away, but other Noongar overtook William and speared him to death. James escaped by swimming the river. Shortly afterward he returned with a party of armed settlers from Bull's estate.
When the party of settlers arrived, they found Yagan dead and Heegan dying. Heegan "was groaning and his brains were partly out when the party came, and whether humanity or brutality, a man put a gun to his head and blew it to pieces." The settlers cut Yagan's head from his body, and skinned his back to obtain his tribal markings as a trophy. They buried the bodies a short distance away.
James Keates claimed the reward, but his conduct was widely criticised. The Perth Gazette referred to Yagan's killing as "a wild and treacherous act ... it is revolting to hear this lauded as a meritorious deed." However, Daisy Bates understood that "he was killed in self-defence by the young lad." Keates left the colony the following month; it is possible that he left from fear of being murdered in tribal retaliation.
Yagan's head
Exhibition and burial
Yagan's head was initially taken to Henry Bull's house. Moore saw it there and sketched the head a number of times in his unpublished, handwritten diary, commenting that "possibly it may yet figure in some museum at home." The head was preserved by smoking.
In September 1833, Governor Irwin sailed for London, partly to give his own account of the events leading up to the killing. This was an unusual measure, especially given his regiment was about to leave for a tour of duty in India. The Colonial Office indicated satisfaction with Irwin's administration of the colony.
Travelling with Irwin was Ensign Robert Dale, who had somehow acquired Yagan's head. According to the historian Paul Turnbull, Dale appears to have persuaded Irwin to let him have the head as an "anthropological curiosity". After arriving in London, Dale tried to sell the head to scientists, approaching a number of anatomists and phrenologists. His price of £20 failed to find a buyer, so he made an agreement with Thomas Pettigrew for the exclusive use of the head for 18 months. Pettigrew, a surgeon and antiquarian, was well known in the London social scene for holding private parties at which he unrolled and autopsied ancient Egyptian mummies. He displayed the head on a table in front of a panoramic view of King George Sound reproduced from Dale's sketches. For effect, the head was adorned with a fresh corded headband and feathers of the red-tailed black cockatoo.
Pettigrew had the head examined by a phrenologist. Examination was considered difficult because of the large fracture across the back of the head caused by the gunshot. His conclusions were consistent with contemporary European opinion of Indigenous Australians. Dale published these in a pamphlet entitled Descriptive Account of the Panoramic View &c. of King George's Sound and the Adjacent Country, which Pettigrew encouraged his guests to buy as a souvenir of their evening. The frontispiece of the pamphlet was a hand-coloured aquatint print of Yagan's head by the artist George Cruikshank.
Early in October 1835, Yagan's head and the panoramic view were returned to Dale, then living in Liverpool. On 12 October he presented them to the Liverpool Royal Institution, where the head may have been displayed in a case along with some other preserved heads and wax models illustrating cranial anatomy. In 1894 the Institution's collections were dispersed, and Yagan's head was lent to the Liverpool Museum; it is thought not to have been put on display there. By the 1960s Yagan's head was badly deteriorated. In April 1964 the museum decided to dispose of it. It arranged burial of the head on 10 April 1964, together with a Peruvian mummy and a Māori head. They were buried in Everton Cemetery's General Section 16, grave number 296. In later years a number of burials were made around the grave. For example, in 1968 a local hospital buried directly over the box, 20 stillborn babies and two infants who died soon after birth.
Lobbying for repatriation
For many years beginning in the early 1980s, a number of Noongar groups sought the return of Yagan's head to Australia.
At the time, there was no historical trail for the head after Pettigrew passed it on. Tribal elders entrusted the Aboriginal leader Ken Colbung with the search. In the early 1990s, Colbung enlisted the aid of University of London archaeologist Peter Ucko. One of Ucko's researchers, Cressida Fforde, conducted a literature search for information on the head. Fforde successfully traced the head in December 1993. The following April, Colbung applied to exhume the remains under Section 25 of the Burial Act 1857. Home Office regulations required next of kin consent before disturbing the remains of the 22 infants. Colbung's solicitors requested waiver of this condition on grounds that the exhumation would be of great personal significance to Yagan's living relatives, and great national importance to Australia.
Meanwhile, divisions in the Noongar community in Perth began to develop. Some elders questioned Colbung's role and one Noongar registered a complaint with the Liverpool City Council over his involvement. Media reports indicated acrimonious debate within the Noongar community about who had the best cultural qualifications to take possession of the head. The academic Hannah McGlade claims that these divisions were largely manufactured by the media, particularly The West Australian, which "aimed to and successfully represented the Nyungar community in terms of disharmony and dissent". She alleges that one West reporter contacted Noongar who were known to be in disagreement, and quoted one to the other, so as to elicit provocative responses. The disputes were "trumpeted" by The West, allowing it to "preach" against the infighting.
On 25 July a public meeting was held in Perth. All parties agreed to put aside their differences and co-operate to ensure that the repatriation was a "national success". A Yagan Steering Committee was established to co-ordinate the repatriation, and Colbung's application was allowed to proceed. In January 1995 the Home Office advised Colbung that it was unable to waive the requirement to obtain next of kin consent for the exhumation. It contacted the five relatives whose addresses were known, and received unconditional consent from only one. Accordingly, on 30 June 1995, Colbung and the other interested parties were advised that the application for exhumation had been rejected.
Meeting on 21 September, the Yagan Steering Committee decided to lobby Australian and British politicians for support. In 1997 Colbung was invited to visit the United Kingdom at the British government's expense and he arrived on 20 May. His visit attracted substantial media coverage, and increased the political pressure on the British Government. He secured the support of the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, after gate crashing the Prime Minister's June visit to the United Kingdom.
Exhumation
While Colbung was in the United Kingdom, Martin and Richard Bates were engaged to undertake a geophysical survey of the grave site. Using electromagnetic and ground penetrating radar techniques, they identified an approximate position of the box that suggested it could be accessed from the side via the adjacent plot. A report of the survey was passed to the Home Office, prompting further discussions between the British and Australian Governments.
Of concern to the Home Office were an undisclosed number of letters that it had received objecting to Colbung's involvement in the repatriation process; it therefore sought assurances from the Australian Government that Colbung was a correct applicant. In response Colbung asked his elders to ask the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) to tell the British Home Office that he was the correct applicant. ATSIC then convened a meeting in Perth at which it was again resolved that Colbung's application could proceed.
Colbung continued to press for the exhumation, asking that it be performed before the 164th anniversary of Yagan's death on 11 July, so that the anniversary could be the occasion of a celebration. His request was not met, and on the anniversary of Yagan's death, Colbung conducted a short memorial service at the burial plot in Everton. He returned to Australia empty-handed on 15 July.
The exhumation of Yagan's head eventually proceeded, without Colbung's knowledge, by excavating down the side of the grave, then tunnelling horizontally to the location of the box. Thus the exhumation was performed without disturbing any other remains. The following day, a forensic palaeontologist from the University of Bradford positively identified the skull as Yagan's by correlating the fractures with those described in Pettigrew's report. The skull was then kept at the museum until 29 August, when it was handed over to the Liverpool City Council.
Repatriation
On 27 August 1997, a delegation of Noongars consisting of Ken Colbung, Robert Bropho, Richard Wilkes and Mingli Wanjurri-Nungala arrived in the UK to collect Yagan's head. The delegation was to have been larger, but Commonwealth funding was withdrawn at the last minute. The handover of Yagan's skull was further delayed when a Noongar named Corrie Bodney applied to the Supreme Court of Western Australia for an injunction against the handover. Claiming that his family group has sole responsibility for Yagan's remains, Bodney declared the exhumation illegal and denied the existence of any tradition or belief necessitating the head's exhumation and removal to Australia. On 29 August, Justice Henry Wallwork rejected the injunction application, on the grounds that Bodney had previously agreed to the current arrangements, and on the evidence of another Noongar elder (Albert Corunna, who claimed to be a closer relation of Yagan) and anthropologist Pat Baines, both of whom refuted Bodney's claim to sole responsibility.
Yagan's skull was handed over to the Noongar delegation at a ceremony at Liverpool Town Hall on 31 August 1997. In accepting the skull, Colbung made comments that were interpreted as linking Yagan's death with the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, earlier that day: That is how nature goes ... Nature is a carrier of all good things and all bad things. And because the Poms did the wrong thing, they now have to suffer. Colbung's comments prompted a media furore throughout Australia, with newspapers receiving many letters from the public expressing shock and anger at the comments. Colbung later claimed that his comments had been misinterpreted.
Throughout the repatriation process, many sections of the international media treated the story as a joke. For example, the US News & World Report ran a story under the headline Raiders of the Lost Conk, in which Yagan's head was referred to as a "pickled curio", and Colbung's actions were treated as a publicity stunt.
Preparations for reburial
On its return to Perth, Yagan's head continued to be a source of controversy and conflict. Responsibility for reburial of the head was given to a "Committee for the Reburial of Yagan's Kaat", headed by Richard Wilkes. The reburial was delayed by disputes between elders over the burial location, mainly due to uncertainty of the whereabouts of the rest of his body, and disagreement about the importance of burying the head with the body.
A number of attempts were made to locate the remains of Yagan's body, which were believed to be on Lot 39 West Swan Road in the outer Perth suburb of Belhus. A remote sensing survey of the site was carried out in 1998, but no remains were found. An archaeological survey of the area was undertaken two years later, but this also was unsuccessful. Disputes then arose over whether the head could be buried separately from the body. Wilkes has claimed that it can, so long as it is placed where Yagan was killed, so that Dreamtime spirits can reunite the remains.
In 1998 the Western Australian Planning Commission and the Department of Aboriginal Affairs jointly published a document entitled Yagan's Gravesite Master Plan, which discussed "matters of ownership, management, development and future use" of the property on which Yagan's remains are believed to be buried. Under consideration was the possibility of turning the site into an Indigenous burial site, to be managed by the Metropolitan Cemeteries Board.
Yagan's head spent some time in storage in a bank vault before being handed over to forensics experts who reconstructed a model from it. After that it was held in storage at Western Australia's state mortuary. Plans to re-bury the head were repeatedly deferred, causing ongoing conflict between Noongar groups. In September 2008 it was reported that Yagan's head would be reburied in November, and a Yagan Memorial Park created as a projected cost of A$996,000; but in November it was announced that the reburial had been rescheduled for July 2009 because of logistical problems. In March 2009, it was announced that the Department of Indigenous Affairs had given the City of Swan more than A$500,000 to develop the park.
Reburial
The head was finally buried in a private ceremony attended only by invited Noongar elders, on 10 July 2010, the anniversary of the last full day he lived and one day before the end of NAIDOC Week 2010. The site in Belhus was chosen as it is believed to be near to where the rest of Yagan's body was buried. The burial coincided with a ceremony to mark the opening of the Yagan Memorial Park, which was attended by around 300 people, including Noongar elders and state government representatives. Premier Colin Barnett described the occasion as "a wonderful day for all West Australians".
The art works for the Yagan Memorial Park were designed by Peter Farmer, Sandra Hill, Jenny Dawson and Kylie Ricks. Dawson and Hill created an entry wall of Yagan's story; Farmer designed the park entry statements and Ricks the female coolamon.
Legacy
The repatriation of Yagan's head increased the Aboriginal leader's notability. He is considered a famous historical figure throughout Australia, with material about him appearing in such publications as the Australian Dictionary of Biography, and Western Australia's school curriculum. He is of greatest significance to the Noongar people, for whom he is "a revered, cherished and heroic individual ... patriot and visionary hero of WA's South-West". The return of his head was likened by some Indigenous Australians to the November 1993 ceremonial repatriation from Gallipoli of Australia's unknown soldier.
The former Upper Swan Bridge, which carries the Great Northern Highway over the Swan River at Belhus, was renamed the Yagan Bridge in 2010.
An open plaza in the Perth central business district, constructed as part of the Perth City Link urban renewal project, was named Yagan Square. Featuring the statue "Wirin", the plaza, located adjacent to the Horseshoe Bridge, was opened on 3 March 2018.
Cultural references
Alas Poor Yagan
On 6 September 1997 The West Australian published a Dean Alston cartoon entitled Alas Poor Yagan, which was critical of the fact that the return of Yagan's head had become a source of conflict between Noongars instead of fostering unity. The cartoon was interpreted by some as insulting aspects of Noongar culture, and casting aspersions on the motives and legitimacy of Indigenous Australians with mixed racial heritage. The content of the cartoon offended many Indigenous Australians, and a group of Noongar elders complained about the cartoon to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. The commission ruled that the cartoon made inappropriate references to Noongar beliefs but was not in breach of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 because it was "an artistic work" that was published "reasonably and in good faith", and was therefore exempt. This ruling was upheld on appeal by the Federal Court of Australia. Some academic commentators have since expressed concern that the protections offered under the act have been undermined by the ruling's broad interpretation of the exemptions.
Statue
From the mid-1970s, members of the Noongar community lobbied for the erection of a statue of Yagan as part of the WAY 1979 sesquicentennial celebrations. Their requests were refused, however, after the Premier, Charles Court, was advised by one prominent historian that Yagan was not important enough to warrant a statue. Colbung claims "Court was more interested in spending tax payers' money on refurbishing the badly neglected burial place of Captain James Stirling, WA's first governor." Despite this setback, the Noongar community persisted, establishing a Yagan Committee and running a number of fund-raising drives. Eventually, sufficient funds were collected to allow the commissioning of Australian sculptor Robert Hitchcock to create a statue. The result was a life-size statue in bronze, depicting Yagan standing naked with a spear held across his shoulders. Hitchcock's statue of Yagan was officially opened by Yagan Committee chairperson Elizabeth Hanson on 11 September 1984. It stands on Heirisson Island in the Swan River near Perth.
In 1997, within a week of the return of Yagan's head to Perth, vandals beheaded the statue using an angle grinder. Soon after a replacement head was installed and it too was detached and stolen. Credit for the act was anonymously claimed by a "British loyalist" as an act of retaliation for Colbung's comments about Diana, Princess of Wales. The Western Australia Police did not succeed in identifying the vandals, nor in recovering the heads, and deemed it infeasible to have the statue fenced off or placed under guard.
Commentary on the beheadings varied widely. One column in The West Australian found humour in them, referring to the head as a "bonce" and a "noggin", and finished with a pun on "skullduggery". Stephen Muecke calls this the "satirical trivialising of Aboriginal concerns", and Adam Shoemaker writes "This is the stuff of light humour and comic relief. There is no sense of the decapitation as being an act of vandalism, even less that it could have been motivated by malevolence ... [T]he piece has a definite authorising function." On the other hand, academic analysis has treated the act with much more gravity. In 2007, for example, David Martin described the decapitation as "an act which speaks not only to the continuance of white settler racism, but also to the power of mimesis to invigorate our modern memorials and monuments with a life of their own".
In 2002, Janet Woollard, the member for Alfred Cove, called for the statue's genitalia to be covered up. In November 2005, Richard Wilkes also called for the statue's groin to be covered on the grounds that such a depiction would be more historically accurate, as Yagan would have worn a covering for most of the year. Also under consideration is the creation of a new statue with a head shape that accords better with the forensic reconstruction of Yagan's head.
Literature and film
Mary Durack published a fictionalised account of Yagan's life in her 1964 children's novel The Courteous Savage: Yagan of the Swan River, which was renamed Yagan of the Bibbulmun on reissue in 1976.
The repeated beheading of Yagan's statue in 1997 prompted Aboriginal writer Archie Weller to write a short story entitled Confessions of a Headhunter. Weller later worked with film director Sally Riley to adapt the story into a script, and in 2000 a 35-minute movie, also named Confessions of a Headhunter, was released. Directed by Sally Riley, the movie won Best Short Fiction Film at the 2000 AFI Awards. The following year the script won the Script Award in the 2001 Western Australian Premier's Book Awards.
In 2002, the South African-born Australian poet John Mateer published his fourth collection of poems, entitled Loanwords. The collection is divided into four sections, of which the third, In the Presence of a Severed Head, has Yagan as its subject.
Other cultural references
A section of Kullark, a play by Jack Davis, explores the deteriorating relationship between Yagan and a settler couple.
In September 1989 an early maturing cultivar of barley, bred by the Western Australian Department of Agriculture for performance on sandy soils, was released under the name "Hordeum vulgare (Barley) c.v. Yagan". Commonly referred to simply as "Yagan", the cultivar is named for Yagan, continuing a tradition of labelling Western Australian grain cultivars after historic people of Western Australia.
See also
Jandamarra, and the Bunuba War.
Musquito a warrior of the Gai-Mariagal clan
Pemulwuy a warrior and resistance leader of the Bidjigal clan of the Eora people, in the area around Sydney
Tunnerminnerwait, an Australian Aboriginal resistance fighter and Parperloihener clansman from Tasmania
Windradyne, a warrior and resistance leader of the Wiradjuri nation, in what is now central-western New South Wales
Australian frontier wars
References
General references
1790s births
1833 deaths
Art and cultural repatriation
Australian murderers
Australian outlaws
Deaths by firearm in Western Australia
Escapees from Western Australian detention
History of Western Australia
Noongar people
People from Perth, Western Australia
Resistance to colonialism in Australia
Trophy heads | true | [
"How Not to Die may refer to:\n How Not to Die: Surprising Lessons on Living Longer, Safer, and Healthier from America’s Favorite Medical Examiner, a 2008 book by Jan Garavaglia\n How Not To Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease, a 2015 book by Michael Greger",
"Die Mannequin is a Canadian alternative rock band from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, founded by guitar player and singer Care Failure (born Caroline Kawa) in 2005. The band has toured across Canada several times, opening for Buckcherry, Guns N' Roses, Marilyn Manson and Sum 41. They have also toured Europe on several occasions, alone and as an opening act for Danko Jones in 2008.\n\nHistory\nRising from the ashes of Care Failure's first four-piece band \"The Bloody Mannequins\", Die Mannequin started in the spring of 2006 when Failure recorded her first EP, How to Kill, on How To Kill Records/Cordless Recordings. She sang, played guitar and bass on this EP because she did not have a permanent backing band at that time. Death from Above 1979's Jesse F. Keeler took care of the drum duties as well as production. The E.P. featured four songs and was produced by Keeler and partner Al-P from MSTRKRFT and was mastered by Ryan Mills at Joao Carvalho Mastering. Care Failure was also a member of the supergroup The Big Dirty Band, which included members from the Canadian hardrock band Rush, amongst others. They have recorded a cover version and video of The Bobby Fuller Four song I Fought The Law. This video also featured Anthony Useless, even though he did not play on any of the recordings. It was featured as a soundtrack to the 2006 movie Trailer Park Boys: The Movie.\n\nFailure later hired two of her longtime friends, Ethan Deth (of Toronto band Kïll Cheerleadër) and Pat M. (a.k.a. Ghostwolf), to play bass and drums. Deth was quickly replaced by Anthony \"Useless\" Bleed, also from Kïll Cheerleadër. He played bass guitar and provided backing vocals. Managed by Shull Management, Die Mannequin signed with EMI Publishing in the summer of 2006, and began their own record label, How To Kill Records which is distributed by Warner Music Canada. They were booked as one of the opening bands for Guns N' Roses' eastern leg of their 2006 North-American tour.\n\nDie Mannequin released a new EP in the fall of 2007 entitled Slaughter Daughter. Two tracks, \"Do It Or Die\" and \"Saved By Strangers\", were produced by Ian D'Sa of Billy Talent. The other two tracks, \"Upside Down Cross\" and \"Lonely Of A Woman\", were produced by Junior Sanchez. There was also a live recording of \"Open Season\" included on this EP. The band released a video for the first single, \"Do it or Die\", which entered rotation on Much Music and Much Loud.\n\nBoth EPs have been collected on a single disc entitled Unicorn Steak which features two unreleased songs: an early demo of \"Empty's Promise\" and the cover of the Beatsteaks song Hand in Hand. A video was also recorded after the release of Unicorn Steak, for the song \"Saved By Strangers\", directed by Canadian director Bruce McDonald. He has also directed a documentary about Die Mannequin, entitled The Rawside of Die Mannequin, which premiered at Toronto's North By North East festival on June 15, 2008.\n\nIn 2009 Die Mannequin took part in a documentary series called City Sonic. The series, which featured 20 Toronto artists, had Care Failure reflecting on her memories of CFNY, 102.1 the Edge.\n\nOn September 8, 2009, Die Mannequin released FINO + BLEED, mixed by Mike Fraser.\n\nIn 2009, they opened for the Canadians dates of the Marilyn Manson's The High End of Low Tour.\n\nOn March 21, 2012, Die Mannequin announced on their website that they would be releasing new music mid April, along with a new single and music video. This coincided with the release of Hard Core Logo 2.\n\nOn August 20, 2014, the band released a single for their upcoming album, titled \"Sucker Punch\". Their second full-length album, Neon Zero was released on October 28, 2014. Exclaim! Magazine called it 'evil dance metal'.\n\nMembers\nCurrent members\nCaroline \"Care Failure\" Kawa - vocals, guitar, bass (2005–present)\nKevvy Mental - bass, backing vocals (2015–present)\nKeith Heppler - drums, percussion (2015–present)\nJ.C. Sandoval - guitar, backing vocals (2015–present)\nFormer members\nAnthony \"Useless\" Bleed - bass, backing vocals (2006–2014)\nDazzer Scott - drums, percussion (2009–2014)\nStacy Stray - guitar, backing vocals (2009–2014)\nEthan Kath - bass (2006)\nGhostwolf - drums, percussion (2006–2009)\n\nSession members\nJesse F. Keeler - drums, percussion (on How To Kill EP)\nJack Irons - drums, percussion (on Fino + Bleed)\n\nDiscography\nDie Mannequin has released two recognized albums to date and two EPs.\n\nSingles\n\nStudio albums\nFino + Bleed (2009)\nNeon Zero (2014)\n\nCompilations\nUnicorn Steak (2008)\n\nEPs\nHow To Kill (2006)\nSlaughter Daughter (2007)\nDanceland (2012) No. 76 CAN\n\nSoundtracks\n\nInterviews\nDie Mannequin gets darker and warns of Toronto rapist - From Torontomusicscene.ca\n\nSee also\n\nMusic of Canada\nCanadian rock\nList of Canadian musicians\nList of bands from Canada\n:Category:Canadian musical groups\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nCare Failure Interview – Truth Mag\nDie Mannequin Neon Zero\n\nMusical groups established in 2005\nMusical groups from Toronto\nCanadian punk rock groups\nCanadian alternative rock groups\nCordless Recordings artists\n2005 establishments in Ontario"
] |
[
"Yagan",
"Death",
"when did he die?",
"When the party of settlers arrived, they found Yagan dead and Heegan dying.",
"what year was this?",
"1833,",
"how did he die?",
"William Keates shot Yagan, and James shot Heegan, another native, in the act of throwing his spear."
] | C_fd96a17bb9e74371afa728bd135272c3_1 | why was he killed? | 4 | Why was Yagan killed? | Yagan | On 11 July 1833, two teenage brothers named William and James Keates were herding cattle along the Swan River north of Guildford when a group of Noongar approached while en route to collect flour rations from Henry Bull's house. The Keates brothers suggested Yagan remain with them to avoid arrest. While he was staying with them during the morning, the brothers decided to kill the warrior and claim the reward. When the natives were ready to depart, the Keateses took their last opportunity. William Keates shot Yagan, and James shot Heegan, another native, in the act of throwing his spear. The brothers ran away, but other Noongar overtook William and speared him to death. James escaped by swimming the river. Shortly afterward he returned with a party of armed settlers from Bull's estate. When the party of settlers arrived, they found Yagan dead and Heegan dying. Heegan "was groaning and his brains were partly out when the party came, and whether humanity or brutality, a man put a gun to his head and blew it to pieces." The settlers cut Yagan's head from his body, and skinned his back to obtain his tribal markings as a trophy. They buried the bodies a short distance away. James Keates claimed the reward, but his conduct was widely criticised. The Perth Gazette referred to Yagan's killing as "a wild and treacherous act ... it is revolting to hear this lauded as a meritorious deed." However, Daisy Bates understood that "he was killed in self-defence by the young lad." Keates left the colony the following month; it is possible that he left from fear of being murdered in tribal retaliation. CANNOTANSWER | the brothers decided to kill the warrior and claim the reward. When the natives were ready to depart, the Keateses took their last opportunity. | Yagan (; – 11 July 1833) was an Aboriginal Australian warrior from the Noongar people. He played a key part in early resistance to British colonial settlement and rule in the area surrounding what is now Perth, Western Australia. Yagan was pursued by the local authorities after he killed Erin Entwhistle, a servant of farmer Archibald Butler. It was an act of retaliation after Thomas Smedley, another of Butler's servants, shot at a group of Noongar people stealing potatoes and fowls, killing one of them. The government offered a bounty for Yagan's capture, dead or alive, and a young settler, William Keats, shot and killed him. Yagan's execution figures in Australian history as a symbol of the unjust and sometimes brutal treatment of the indigenous peoples of Australia by colonial settlers. He is considered a hero by the Noongar.
After his shooting, settlers removed Yagan's head to claim the bounty. Later, an official sent it to London, where it was exhibited as an "anthropological curiosity" and eventually given to a museum in Liverpool. It held the head in storage for more than a century before burying it with other remains in an unmarked grave in Liverpool in 1964. Over the years, the Noongar asked for repatriation of the head, both for religious reasons and because of Yagan's traditional stature. The burial site was identified in 1993; officials exhumed the head four years later and repatriated it to Australia. After years of debate within the Noongar community on the appropriate final resting place, Yagan's head was buried in a traditional ceremony in the Swan Valley in July 2010, 177 years after his death.
Biography
Early life
A member of the Whadjuk Noongar people, Yagan belonged to a tribe of around 60 people whose name, according to Robert Lyon, was Beeliar. Scholars now believe that the Beeliar people may have been a family subgroup (or clan) of a larger tribe whom Daisy Bates called Beelgar. According to Lyon, the Beeliar people occupied the land south of the Swan and Canning rivers, as far south as Mangles Bay. The group had customary land usage rights over a much larger area than this, extending north as far as Lake Monger and northeast to the Helena River. The group also had an unusual degree of freedom to move over their neighbours' land, possibly due to kinship and marriage ties with neighbouring groups.
Yagan is thought to have been born around 1795. His father was Midgegooroo, an elder of the Beeliar people; his mother was presumably one of Midgegooroo's two wives. Yagan was probably a Ballaroke in the Noongar classification.
Marriage and family
According to the historian Neville Green, Yagan had a wife and two children. A report in the Perth Gazette in 1833 gives the names of his children as "Naral", age 9, and "Willim", age 11; but most other sources state that the warrior was unmarried and childless. Described as taller than average with an impressive burly physique, Yagan had a distinctive tribal tattoo on his right shoulder, which identified him as "a man of high degree in tribal law". He was generally acknowledged to be the most physically powerful of his tribe, and was said to have been able to spear another stick from a distance of or penetrate a tree from a distance of .
Relations with settlers
Yagan would have been about 35 years old in 1829 when British settlers landed in the area and established the Swan River Colony. For the first two years of the colony, relations between settlers and Noongar were generally amicable, as there was little competition for resources. The Noongar welcomed the white settlers as , the returned spirits of their dead. Historical reports noted the two groups shared fish. As time passed, conflicts between the two cultures gradually became more frequent. The settlers incorrectly thought that the Noongar were nomads who had no claim to the land over which they roamed. Colonists fenced off land for grazing and farming according to their traditional practices of land use.
As the colonists fenced off more land, the Noongar were increasingly denied access to their traditional hunting grounds and sacred sites. In search of food, the Noongar raided the settlers' crops and killed their cattle. They also developed a taste for the settlers' supplies, and began to take flour and other food, which became a serious problem for the colony. In addition, the Noongar practice of firestick farming, or lighting the bush to flush out game and encourage germination of undergrowth for sustainability, threatened the settlers' crops and houses.
In December 1831 Yagan and his father led the first significant Aboriginal resistance to white settlement in Western Australia. Thomas Smedley, a servant of farmer Archibald Butler, ambushed some natives who were raiding a potato patch, and killed one of Yagan's family group. A few days later, Yagan, Midgegooroo and others stormed the farmhouse and, finding the door locked, began to break through the mud-brick walls. Inside were Butler's servant Erin Entwhistle and his two sons Enion and Ralph. After hiding his sons under the bed, Entwhistle opened the door to parley and was killed by Yagan and Midgegooroo. Noongar tribal law required that murders be avenged by the killing of a member of the murderer's tribal group, not necessarily the murderer. The Noongar considered servants and employees to be part of the settlers' groups. Historians believe the Noongar attack on Entwhistle was retribution under their tribal law. Not understanding tribal law (and unlikely to agree with its concepts), the white settlers took the killing to be an unprovoked murder and dispatched a force to arrest Yagan's group, without success.
In June 1832 Yagan led a party of Noongar in attacking two labourers sowing a field of wheat alongside the Canning River near Kelmscott. One of the men, John Thomas, escaped, but the other, William Gaze, was wounded and later died as a result. The settlement declared Yagan an outlaw and offered a reward of £20 for his capture. He avoided capture until early October 1832. A group of fishermen enticed Yagan and two companions into their boat, then pushed off into deep water. The fishermen took the three Noongar men to the Perth guardhouse, from which they were transferred to the Round House at Fremantle. Yagan was sentenced to death, but he was saved by the intercession of settler Robert Lyon. Arguing that Yagan was defending his land against invasion, Lyon said Yagan should not be considered a criminal but a prisoner of war and suggested he should be treated as such. At the recommendation of John Septimus Roe, the Surveyor-General of Western Australia, Yagan and his men were exiled on Carnac Island under the supervision of Lyon and two soldiers.
Lyon thought he could teach Yagan British ways and convert him to Christianity. He hoped to gain his cooperation and use his tribal stature to persuade the Noongar to accept colonial authority. Lyon spent many hours with Yagan learning his language and customs. After a month, Yagan and his companions escaped by stealing an unattended dinghy and rowing to Woodman Point on the mainland. The Government did not pursue them; apparently its officials considered they had been sufficiently punished.
In January 1833 two Noongar, Gyallipert and Manyat, visited Perth from King George Sound, where relations between settlers and natives were amicable. Two settlers, Richard Dale and George Smythe, arranged for the men to meet a party of local Noongar to encourage friendly relations in the Swan River Colony. On 26 January Yagan led a group of ten formally armed Noongars in greeting the two men near Lake Monger. The men exchanged weapons and held a corroboree, though the groups did not appear to share a language. Yagan and Gyallipert competed at spear throwing. As an example of his prowess, Yagan struck a walking stick from a distance of .
Gyallipert and Manyat remained in Perth for some time. On 3 March, Yagan obtained permission to hold another corroboree, this time in the Post Office garden in Perth. The Perth and King George Sound men met at dusk, chalked their bodies, and performed a number of dances including a kangaroo hunt dance. The Perth Gazette wrote that Yagan "was master of ceremonies and acquitted himself with infinite grace and dignity".
During February and March, Yagan was involved in a series of minor conflicts with settlers. In February William Watson complained that Yagan had pushed open his door, demanded a gun, and taken handkerchiefs. Watson had to give him and his companions flour and bread. The following month, Yagan was among a group who received biscuits from a military contingent under Lieutenant Norcott; when Norcott tried to restrict his supply, Yagan threatened him with his spear. Later that month, Yagan was with a group of Noongar who entered Watson's house while he was away. The group left after Watson's wife called on neighbours for help. The next day Captain Ellis lectured the Noongar about their behaviour. The frequent incidents prompted The Perth Gazette to remark on "the reckless daring of this desperado who sets his life at a pin's fee ... For the most trivial offence ... he would take the life of any man who provoked him. He is at the head and front of any mischief."
Wanted dead or alive
On the night of 29 April, a party of Noongar broke into a Fremantle store to steal flour and they were shot at by the caretaker Peter Chidlow. Domjum, a brother of Yagan, was badly injured and died in jail a few days later. The rest of the party moved from Fremantle to Preston Point, where Yagan reportedly vowed vengeance for the death. Between 50 and 60 Noongar gathered at Bull Creek, where they met a party of settlers who were loading carts with provisions. Later that day, the group ambushed the lead cart, killing two settlers, Tom and John Velvick. Tribal law required only a single death for vengeance. Some historians have speculated that the Velvicks were targeted because they had previously been convicted for assaulting Aboriginal people and coloured seamen. Alexandra Hasluck has also argued that stealing provisions was an important motive in the attack, but this has been refuted elsewhere.
For the killing of the Velvicks, the Lieutenant-Governor Frederick Irwin declared Yagan, Midgegooroo and Munday to be outlaws, offering rewards of £20 each for the capture of Midgegooroo and Munday, and a reward of £30 for Yagan's capture, dead or alive. Munday successfully appealed against his proscription. Midgegooroo, Yagan and their group immediately moved from their territory north towards the Helena Valley. On 17 May, Midgegooroo was captured on the Helena River. After a brief, informal trial, he was executed by firing squad. Yagan remained at large for over two months.
Late in May, George Fletcher Moore reported seeing Yagan on his property and talking with him in pidgin English. Moore wrote in the Perth Gazette:
Yagan asked Moore whether Midgegooroo was dead or alive. Moore gave no reply, but a servant answered that Midgegooroo was a prisoner on Carnac Island. Yagan warned, "White man shoot Midgegooroo, Yagan kill three." Moore reported the encounter but made no attempt to restrain Yagan. He later wrote, "The truth is, every one wishes him taken, but no one likes to be the captor ... there is something in his daring which one is forced to admire."
Death
On 11 July 1833, two teenage brothers named William and James Keates were herding cattle along the Swan River north of Guildford when a group of Noongar approached while en route to collect flour rations from Henry Bull's house. The Keates brothers suggested Yagan remain with them to avoid arrest. While he was staying with them during the morning, the brothers decided to kill the warrior and claim the reward. When the natives were ready to depart, the Keateses took their last opportunity. William Keates shot Yagan, and James shot Heegan, another native, in the act of throwing his spear. The brothers ran away, but other Noongar overtook William and speared him to death. James escaped by swimming the river. Shortly afterward he returned with a party of armed settlers from Bull's estate.
When the party of settlers arrived, they found Yagan dead and Heegan dying. Heegan "was groaning and his brains were partly out when the party came, and whether humanity or brutality, a man put a gun to his head and blew it to pieces." The settlers cut Yagan's head from his body, and skinned his back to obtain his tribal markings as a trophy. They buried the bodies a short distance away.
James Keates claimed the reward, but his conduct was widely criticised. The Perth Gazette referred to Yagan's killing as "a wild and treacherous act ... it is revolting to hear this lauded as a meritorious deed." However, Daisy Bates understood that "he was killed in self-defence by the young lad." Keates left the colony the following month; it is possible that he left from fear of being murdered in tribal retaliation.
Yagan's head
Exhibition and burial
Yagan's head was initially taken to Henry Bull's house. Moore saw it there and sketched the head a number of times in his unpublished, handwritten diary, commenting that "possibly it may yet figure in some museum at home." The head was preserved by smoking.
In September 1833, Governor Irwin sailed for London, partly to give his own account of the events leading up to the killing. This was an unusual measure, especially given his regiment was about to leave for a tour of duty in India. The Colonial Office indicated satisfaction with Irwin's administration of the colony.
Travelling with Irwin was Ensign Robert Dale, who had somehow acquired Yagan's head. According to the historian Paul Turnbull, Dale appears to have persuaded Irwin to let him have the head as an "anthropological curiosity". After arriving in London, Dale tried to sell the head to scientists, approaching a number of anatomists and phrenologists. His price of £20 failed to find a buyer, so he made an agreement with Thomas Pettigrew for the exclusive use of the head for 18 months. Pettigrew, a surgeon and antiquarian, was well known in the London social scene for holding private parties at which he unrolled and autopsied ancient Egyptian mummies. He displayed the head on a table in front of a panoramic view of King George Sound reproduced from Dale's sketches. For effect, the head was adorned with a fresh corded headband and feathers of the red-tailed black cockatoo.
Pettigrew had the head examined by a phrenologist. Examination was considered difficult because of the large fracture across the back of the head caused by the gunshot. His conclusions were consistent with contemporary European opinion of Indigenous Australians. Dale published these in a pamphlet entitled Descriptive Account of the Panoramic View &c. of King George's Sound and the Adjacent Country, which Pettigrew encouraged his guests to buy as a souvenir of their evening. The frontispiece of the pamphlet was a hand-coloured aquatint print of Yagan's head by the artist George Cruikshank.
Early in October 1835, Yagan's head and the panoramic view were returned to Dale, then living in Liverpool. On 12 October he presented them to the Liverpool Royal Institution, where the head may have been displayed in a case along with some other preserved heads and wax models illustrating cranial anatomy. In 1894 the Institution's collections were dispersed, and Yagan's head was lent to the Liverpool Museum; it is thought not to have been put on display there. By the 1960s Yagan's head was badly deteriorated. In April 1964 the museum decided to dispose of it. It arranged burial of the head on 10 April 1964, together with a Peruvian mummy and a Māori head. They were buried in Everton Cemetery's General Section 16, grave number 296. In later years a number of burials were made around the grave. For example, in 1968 a local hospital buried directly over the box, 20 stillborn babies and two infants who died soon after birth.
Lobbying for repatriation
For many years beginning in the early 1980s, a number of Noongar groups sought the return of Yagan's head to Australia.
At the time, there was no historical trail for the head after Pettigrew passed it on. Tribal elders entrusted the Aboriginal leader Ken Colbung with the search. In the early 1990s, Colbung enlisted the aid of University of London archaeologist Peter Ucko. One of Ucko's researchers, Cressida Fforde, conducted a literature search for information on the head. Fforde successfully traced the head in December 1993. The following April, Colbung applied to exhume the remains under Section 25 of the Burial Act 1857. Home Office regulations required next of kin consent before disturbing the remains of the 22 infants. Colbung's solicitors requested waiver of this condition on grounds that the exhumation would be of great personal significance to Yagan's living relatives, and great national importance to Australia.
Meanwhile, divisions in the Noongar community in Perth began to develop. Some elders questioned Colbung's role and one Noongar registered a complaint with the Liverpool City Council over his involvement. Media reports indicated acrimonious debate within the Noongar community about who had the best cultural qualifications to take possession of the head. The academic Hannah McGlade claims that these divisions were largely manufactured by the media, particularly The West Australian, which "aimed to and successfully represented the Nyungar community in terms of disharmony and dissent". She alleges that one West reporter contacted Noongar who were known to be in disagreement, and quoted one to the other, so as to elicit provocative responses. The disputes were "trumpeted" by The West, allowing it to "preach" against the infighting.
On 25 July a public meeting was held in Perth. All parties agreed to put aside their differences and co-operate to ensure that the repatriation was a "national success". A Yagan Steering Committee was established to co-ordinate the repatriation, and Colbung's application was allowed to proceed. In January 1995 the Home Office advised Colbung that it was unable to waive the requirement to obtain next of kin consent for the exhumation. It contacted the five relatives whose addresses were known, and received unconditional consent from only one. Accordingly, on 30 June 1995, Colbung and the other interested parties were advised that the application for exhumation had been rejected.
Meeting on 21 September, the Yagan Steering Committee decided to lobby Australian and British politicians for support. In 1997 Colbung was invited to visit the United Kingdom at the British government's expense and he arrived on 20 May. His visit attracted substantial media coverage, and increased the political pressure on the British Government. He secured the support of the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, after gate crashing the Prime Minister's June visit to the United Kingdom.
Exhumation
While Colbung was in the United Kingdom, Martin and Richard Bates were engaged to undertake a geophysical survey of the grave site. Using electromagnetic and ground penetrating radar techniques, they identified an approximate position of the box that suggested it could be accessed from the side via the adjacent plot. A report of the survey was passed to the Home Office, prompting further discussions between the British and Australian Governments.
Of concern to the Home Office were an undisclosed number of letters that it had received objecting to Colbung's involvement in the repatriation process; it therefore sought assurances from the Australian Government that Colbung was a correct applicant. In response Colbung asked his elders to ask the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) to tell the British Home Office that he was the correct applicant. ATSIC then convened a meeting in Perth at which it was again resolved that Colbung's application could proceed.
Colbung continued to press for the exhumation, asking that it be performed before the 164th anniversary of Yagan's death on 11 July, so that the anniversary could be the occasion of a celebration. His request was not met, and on the anniversary of Yagan's death, Colbung conducted a short memorial service at the burial plot in Everton. He returned to Australia empty-handed on 15 July.
The exhumation of Yagan's head eventually proceeded, without Colbung's knowledge, by excavating down the side of the grave, then tunnelling horizontally to the location of the box. Thus the exhumation was performed without disturbing any other remains. The following day, a forensic palaeontologist from the University of Bradford positively identified the skull as Yagan's by correlating the fractures with those described in Pettigrew's report. The skull was then kept at the museum until 29 August, when it was handed over to the Liverpool City Council.
Repatriation
On 27 August 1997, a delegation of Noongars consisting of Ken Colbung, Robert Bropho, Richard Wilkes and Mingli Wanjurri-Nungala arrived in the UK to collect Yagan's head. The delegation was to have been larger, but Commonwealth funding was withdrawn at the last minute. The handover of Yagan's skull was further delayed when a Noongar named Corrie Bodney applied to the Supreme Court of Western Australia for an injunction against the handover. Claiming that his family group has sole responsibility for Yagan's remains, Bodney declared the exhumation illegal and denied the existence of any tradition or belief necessitating the head's exhumation and removal to Australia. On 29 August, Justice Henry Wallwork rejected the injunction application, on the grounds that Bodney had previously agreed to the current arrangements, and on the evidence of another Noongar elder (Albert Corunna, who claimed to be a closer relation of Yagan) and anthropologist Pat Baines, both of whom refuted Bodney's claim to sole responsibility.
Yagan's skull was handed over to the Noongar delegation at a ceremony at Liverpool Town Hall on 31 August 1997. In accepting the skull, Colbung made comments that were interpreted as linking Yagan's death with the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, earlier that day: That is how nature goes ... Nature is a carrier of all good things and all bad things. And because the Poms did the wrong thing, they now have to suffer. Colbung's comments prompted a media furore throughout Australia, with newspapers receiving many letters from the public expressing shock and anger at the comments. Colbung later claimed that his comments had been misinterpreted.
Throughout the repatriation process, many sections of the international media treated the story as a joke. For example, the US News & World Report ran a story under the headline Raiders of the Lost Conk, in which Yagan's head was referred to as a "pickled curio", and Colbung's actions were treated as a publicity stunt.
Preparations for reburial
On its return to Perth, Yagan's head continued to be a source of controversy and conflict. Responsibility for reburial of the head was given to a "Committee for the Reburial of Yagan's Kaat", headed by Richard Wilkes. The reburial was delayed by disputes between elders over the burial location, mainly due to uncertainty of the whereabouts of the rest of his body, and disagreement about the importance of burying the head with the body.
A number of attempts were made to locate the remains of Yagan's body, which were believed to be on Lot 39 West Swan Road in the outer Perth suburb of Belhus. A remote sensing survey of the site was carried out in 1998, but no remains were found. An archaeological survey of the area was undertaken two years later, but this also was unsuccessful. Disputes then arose over whether the head could be buried separately from the body. Wilkes has claimed that it can, so long as it is placed where Yagan was killed, so that Dreamtime spirits can reunite the remains.
In 1998 the Western Australian Planning Commission and the Department of Aboriginal Affairs jointly published a document entitled Yagan's Gravesite Master Plan, which discussed "matters of ownership, management, development and future use" of the property on which Yagan's remains are believed to be buried. Under consideration was the possibility of turning the site into an Indigenous burial site, to be managed by the Metropolitan Cemeteries Board.
Yagan's head spent some time in storage in a bank vault before being handed over to forensics experts who reconstructed a model from it. After that it was held in storage at Western Australia's state mortuary. Plans to re-bury the head were repeatedly deferred, causing ongoing conflict between Noongar groups. In September 2008 it was reported that Yagan's head would be reburied in November, and a Yagan Memorial Park created as a projected cost of A$996,000; but in November it was announced that the reburial had been rescheduled for July 2009 because of logistical problems. In March 2009, it was announced that the Department of Indigenous Affairs had given the City of Swan more than A$500,000 to develop the park.
Reburial
The head was finally buried in a private ceremony attended only by invited Noongar elders, on 10 July 2010, the anniversary of the last full day he lived and one day before the end of NAIDOC Week 2010. The site in Belhus was chosen as it is believed to be near to where the rest of Yagan's body was buried. The burial coincided with a ceremony to mark the opening of the Yagan Memorial Park, which was attended by around 300 people, including Noongar elders and state government representatives. Premier Colin Barnett described the occasion as "a wonderful day for all West Australians".
The art works for the Yagan Memorial Park were designed by Peter Farmer, Sandra Hill, Jenny Dawson and Kylie Ricks. Dawson and Hill created an entry wall of Yagan's story; Farmer designed the park entry statements and Ricks the female coolamon.
Legacy
The repatriation of Yagan's head increased the Aboriginal leader's notability. He is considered a famous historical figure throughout Australia, with material about him appearing in such publications as the Australian Dictionary of Biography, and Western Australia's school curriculum. He is of greatest significance to the Noongar people, for whom he is "a revered, cherished and heroic individual ... patriot and visionary hero of WA's South-West". The return of his head was likened by some Indigenous Australians to the November 1993 ceremonial repatriation from Gallipoli of Australia's unknown soldier.
The former Upper Swan Bridge, which carries the Great Northern Highway over the Swan River at Belhus, was renamed the Yagan Bridge in 2010.
An open plaza in the Perth central business district, constructed as part of the Perth City Link urban renewal project, was named Yagan Square. Featuring the statue "Wirin", the plaza, located adjacent to the Horseshoe Bridge, was opened on 3 March 2018.
Cultural references
Alas Poor Yagan
On 6 September 1997 The West Australian published a Dean Alston cartoon entitled Alas Poor Yagan, which was critical of the fact that the return of Yagan's head had become a source of conflict between Noongars instead of fostering unity. The cartoon was interpreted by some as insulting aspects of Noongar culture, and casting aspersions on the motives and legitimacy of Indigenous Australians with mixed racial heritage. The content of the cartoon offended many Indigenous Australians, and a group of Noongar elders complained about the cartoon to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. The commission ruled that the cartoon made inappropriate references to Noongar beliefs but was not in breach of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 because it was "an artistic work" that was published "reasonably and in good faith", and was therefore exempt. This ruling was upheld on appeal by the Federal Court of Australia. Some academic commentators have since expressed concern that the protections offered under the act have been undermined by the ruling's broad interpretation of the exemptions.
Statue
From the mid-1970s, members of the Noongar community lobbied for the erection of a statue of Yagan as part of the WAY 1979 sesquicentennial celebrations. Their requests were refused, however, after the Premier, Charles Court, was advised by one prominent historian that Yagan was not important enough to warrant a statue. Colbung claims "Court was more interested in spending tax payers' money on refurbishing the badly neglected burial place of Captain James Stirling, WA's first governor." Despite this setback, the Noongar community persisted, establishing a Yagan Committee and running a number of fund-raising drives. Eventually, sufficient funds were collected to allow the commissioning of Australian sculptor Robert Hitchcock to create a statue. The result was a life-size statue in bronze, depicting Yagan standing naked with a spear held across his shoulders. Hitchcock's statue of Yagan was officially opened by Yagan Committee chairperson Elizabeth Hanson on 11 September 1984. It stands on Heirisson Island in the Swan River near Perth.
In 1997, within a week of the return of Yagan's head to Perth, vandals beheaded the statue using an angle grinder. Soon after a replacement head was installed and it too was detached and stolen. Credit for the act was anonymously claimed by a "British loyalist" as an act of retaliation for Colbung's comments about Diana, Princess of Wales. The Western Australia Police did not succeed in identifying the vandals, nor in recovering the heads, and deemed it infeasible to have the statue fenced off or placed under guard.
Commentary on the beheadings varied widely. One column in The West Australian found humour in them, referring to the head as a "bonce" and a "noggin", and finished with a pun on "skullduggery". Stephen Muecke calls this the "satirical trivialising of Aboriginal concerns", and Adam Shoemaker writes "This is the stuff of light humour and comic relief. There is no sense of the decapitation as being an act of vandalism, even less that it could have been motivated by malevolence ... [T]he piece has a definite authorising function." On the other hand, academic analysis has treated the act with much more gravity. In 2007, for example, David Martin described the decapitation as "an act which speaks not only to the continuance of white settler racism, but also to the power of mimesis to invigorate our modern memorials and monuments with a life of their own".
In 2002, Janet Woollard, the member for Alfred Cove, called for the statue's genitalia to be covered up. In November 2005, Richard Wilkes also called for the statue's groin to be covered on the grounds that such a depiction would be more historically accurate, as Yagan would have worn a covering for most of the year. Also under consideration is the creation of a new statue with a head shape that accords better with the forensic reconstruction of Yagan's head.
Literature and film
Mary Durack published a fictionalised account of Yagan's life in her 1964 children's novel The Courteous Savage: Yagan of the Swan River, which was renamed Yagan of the Bibbulmun on reissue in 1976.
The repeated beheading of Yagan's statue in 1997 prompted Aboriginal writer Archie Weller to write a short story entitled Confessions of a Headhunter. Weller later worked with film director Sally Riley to adapt the story into a script, and in 2000 a 35-minute movie, also named Confessions of a Headhunter, was released. Directed by Sally Riley, the movie won Best Short Fiction Film at the 2000 AFI Awards. The following year the script won the Script Award in the 2001 Western Australian Premier's Book Awards.
In 2002, the South African-born Australian poet John Mateer published his fourth collection of poems, entitled Loanwords. The collection is divided into four sections, of which the third, In the Presence of a Severed Head, has Yagan as its subject.
Other cultural references
A section of Kullark, a play by Jack Davis, explores the deteriorating relationship between Yagan and a settler couple.
In September 1989 an early maturing cultivar of barley, bred by the Western Australian Department of Agriculture for performance on sandy soils, was released under the name "Hordeum vulgare (Barley) c.v. Yagan". Commonly referred to simply as "Yagan", the cultivar is named for Yagan, continuing a tradition of labelling Western Australian grain cultivars after historic people of Western Australia.
See also
Jandamarra, and the Bunuba War.
Musquito a warrior of the Gai-Mariagal clan
Pemulwuy a warrior and resistance leader of the Bidjigal clan of the Eora people, in the area around Sydney
Tunnerminnerwait, an Australian Aboriginal resistance fighter and Parperloihener clansman from Tasmania
Windradyne, a warrior and resistance leader of the Wiradjuri nation, in what is now central-western New South Wales
Australian frontier wars
References
General references
1790s births
1833 deaths
Art and cultural repatriation
Australian murderers
Australian outlaws
Deaths by firearm in Western Australia
Escapees from Western Australian detention
History of Western Australia
Noongar people
People from Perth, Western Australia
Resistance to colonialism in Australia
Trophy heads | true | [
"Thomas Halstead or Holstead (1811 – 6 February 1838) was an English trader who worked as an interpreter for Shaka Zulu as well as Dingane until 1838. He was an associate of the Biggar family and was killed with Piet Retief and approximately 100 other men on KwaMatiwane, hill of execution, within sight of Dingane's stronghold, Umgungundglovu, between Melmoth and Vryheid. Halstead was a descendant of the British Settlers.\n\nHe appears as a character in the H. Rider Haggard novel Marie.\n\nHalstead’s fate\nCredo Mutwa puts all the blame for the murder of Retief and his men on the shoulders of the youthful Thomas Halstead, who accompanied the Voortrekkers as interpreter. According to Mutwa, Halstead was known by the Zulu as the “Curious Peeper”. On the evening before the murder Halstead is said to have peered over the fence of the royal harem. One of Dingane’s wives, who was pregnant, saw him and was so frightened that she suffered a miscarriage. According to Zulu law it was a crime punishable by death for any man to approach the vicinity of the royal harem. Mutwa writes that Dingane was beginning to harbour thoughts that his white visitors had vile intentions, as one could expect from wizards, and were targeting his wives. That was why he had them murdered and why he shouted \"“Kill the wizards\".\n\nAccording to Wood, Halstead was sitting among the Voortrekkers when the dancing Zulu attacked. He called out: \"We are done for!\" He added in the Zulu language: \"Let me talk to the King!\" Dingane heard this but rejected his request with a wave of his hand. Halstead thereupon pulled out his knife, cut open one assailant and slit another’s throat before he was overpowered.\n\nMutwa's allegation regarding Halstead is probably untrue. The messenger that Dingane sent to Owen to inform him that he was going to kill Retief and his men specifically added that the interpreter of the Voortrekkers, an English-speaking man from Port Natal [Thomas Halstead], would not be killed.\n\nThree days after the massacre Owen wrote in his diary that Dingane himself had told Hulley that Halstead, who was sitting with the Voortrekkers, was killed against the wishes of the Zulu king; that he was accidentally killed in the confusion. According to a remark that Owen made in his diary one day after the massacre, Dingane informed the missionary Venable that he gave orders that Halstead should not be murdered, but that his warriors did not recognise Halstead in the midst of the Voortrekkers. Owen also added that it was Dingane’s custom to blame his subjects when he did something of which he felt ashamed. Hulley also referred to the fate of Halstead in his report. He recorded that he asked Dingane a few days after the massacre about why Halstead had been killed. According to him the Zulu king replied: \"He is dead. In the mayhem of the massacre he was killed with the others. I am sorry about it. I did not mean to take his life.\"\n\nReferences\n\nSuid-Afrikaanse Biografiese Woordeboek III. Pretoria: Raad vir Geesteswetenskaplike Navorsing.\n\nEnglish translators\nYear of birth uncertain\n1838 deaths\n1811 births\n19th-century British translators",
"Murder In Amityville is a book written by Hans Holzer and serves as a prequel to The Amityville Horror.\nThe book has been turned into a film titled Amityville II: The Possession. It has since been re-released under the title Amityville: Fact or Fiction?\n\nPlot summary \nThe plot tries to explain why Ronald Defeo Jr. killed his family at 112 Ocean Ave. It revolves around Ronald Jr. as he experiences strange events in the house up until he kills his entire family on November 13, 1974. It goes on to explain that he was possessed and that he did not want to kill his family. It introduces controversial events. It is also based on Defeo's explanation of why he says he killed his family.\n\nFilms\nThe film based on the book was the prequels to the 1979 The Amityville Horror and one was titled Amityville II: The Possession and other was The Amityville Murders. The name of the family was changed and the family's stay itself was shortened. While not an accurate prequel it takes some details from Murder in Amityville. The latter film served as a direct prequel to the 1979 film, ignoring Amityville II and did using the book. The remake of The Amityville Horror also uses Holzer's theory. DeFeo was possessed, only in the remake DeFeo is possessed by a film version of John Ketcham. In the remake the house is built on an Native American burial ground. A television special was filmed in 1979, with Holzer narrating and includes interviews with DeFeo and medium Ethel Johnson-Meyers, but eventually was scrapped and never made public.\n\nThe Amityville Horror\n1979 American novels\nAmerican novels adapted into films\nAmerican horror novels"
] |
[
"Yagan",
"Death",
"when did he die?",
"When the party of settlers arrived, they found Yagan dead and Heegan dying.",
"what year was this?",
"1833,",
"how did he die?",
"William Keates shot Yagan, and James shot Heegan, another native, in the act of throwing his spear.",
"why was he killed?",
"the brothers decided to kill the warrior and claim the reward. When the natives were ready to depart, the Keateses took their last opportunity."
] | C_fd96a17bb9e74371afa728bd135272c3_1 | what was the reward? | 5 | What was the reward for killing Yagan? | Yagan | On 11 July 1833, two teenage brothers named William and James Keates were herding cattle along the Swan River north of Guildford when a group of Noongar approached while en route to collect flour rations from Henry Bull's house. The Keates brothers suggested Yagan remain with them to avoid arrest. While he was staying with them during the morning, the brothers decided to kill the warrior and claim the reward. When the natives were ready to depart, the Keateses took their last opportunity. William Keates shot Yagan, and James shot Heegan, another native, in the act of throwing his spear. The brothers ran away, but other Noongar overtook William and speared him to death. James escaped by swimming the river. Shortly afterward he returned with a party of armed settlers from Bull's estate. When the party of settlers arrived, they found Yagan dead and Heegan dying. Heegan "was groaning and his brains were partly out when the party came, and whether humanity or brutality, a man put a gun to his head and blew it to pieces." The settlers cut Yagan's head from his body, and skinned his back to obtain his tribal markings as a trophy. They buried the bodies a short distance away. James Keates claimed the reward, but his conduct was widely criticised. The Perth Gazette referred to Yagan's killing as "a wild and treacherous act ... it is revolting to hear this lauded as a meritorious deed." However, Daisy Bates understood that "he was killed in self-defence by the young lad." Keates left the colony the following month; it is possible that he left from fear of being murdered in tribal retaliation. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Yagan (; – 11 July 1833) was an Aboriginal Australian warrior from the Noongar people. He played a key part in early resistance to British colonial settlement and rule in the area surrounding what is now Perth, Western Australia. Yagan was pursued by the local authorities after he killed Erin Entwhistle, a servant of farmer Archibald Butler. It was an act of retaliation after Thomas Smedley, another of Butler's servants, shot at a group of Noongar people stealing potatoes and fowls, killing one of them. The government offered a bounty for Yagan's capture, dead or alive, and a young settler, William Keats, shot and killed him. Yagan's execution figures in Australian history as a symbol of the unjust and sometimes brutal treatment of the indigenous peoples of Australia by colonial settlers. He is considered a hero by the Noongar.
After his shooting, settlers removed Yagan's head to claim the bounty. Later, an official sent it to London, where it was exhibited as an "anthropological curiosity" and eventually given to a museum in Liverpool. It held the head in storage for more than a century before burying it with other remains in an unmarked grave in Liverpool in 1964. Over the years, the Noongar asked for repatriation of the head, both for religious reasons and because of Yagan's traditional stature. The burial site was identified in 1993; officials exhumed the head four years later and repatriated it to Australia. After years of debate within the Noongar community on the appropriate final resting place, Yagan's head was buried in a traditional ceremony in the Swan Valley in July 2010, 177 years after his death.
Biography
Early life
A member of the Whadjuk Noongar people, Yagan belonged to a tribe of around 60 people whose name, according to Robert Lyon, was Beeliar. Scholars now believe that the Beeliar people may have been a family subgroup (or clan) of a larger tribe whom Daisy Bates called Beelgar. According to Lyon, the Beeliar people occupied the land south of the Swan and Canning rivers, as far south as Mangles Bay. The group had customary land usage rights over a much larger area than this, extending north as far as Lake Monger and northeast to the Helena River. The group also had an unusual degree of freedom to move over their neighbours' land, possibly due to kinship and marriage ties with neighbouring groups.
Yagan is thought to have been born around 1795. His father was Midgegooroo, an elder of the Beeliar people; his mother was presumably one of Midgegooroo's two wives. Yagan was probably a Ballaroke in the Noongar classification.
Marriage and family
According to the historian Neville Green, Yagan had a wife and two children. A report in the Perth Gazette in 1833 gives the names of his children as "Naral", age 9, and "Willim", age 11; but most other sources state that the warrior was unmarried and childless. Described as taller than average with an impressive burly physique, Yagan had a distinctive tribal tattoo on his right shoulder, which identified him as "a man of high degree in tribal law". He was generally acknowledged to be the most physically powerful of his tribe, and was said to have been able to spear another stick from a distance of or penetrate a tree from a distance of .
Relations with settlers
Yagan would have been about 35 years old in 1829 when British settlers landed in the area and established the Swan River Colony. For the first two years of the colony, relations between settlers and Noongar were generally amicable, as there was little competition for resources. The Noongar welcomed the white settlers as , the returned spirits of their dead. Historical reports noted the two groups shared fish. As time passed, conflicts between the two cultures gradually became more frequent. The settlers incorrectly thought that the Noongar were nomads who had no claim to the land over which they roamed. Colonists fenced off land for grazing and farming according to their traditional practices of land use.
As the colonists fenced off more land, the Noongar were increasingly denied access to their traditional hunting grounds and sacred sites. In search of food, the Noongar raided the settlers' crops and killed their cattle. They also developed a taste for the settlers' supplies, and began to take flour and other food, which became a serious problem for the colony. In addition, the Noongar practice of firestick farming, or lighting the bush to flush out game and encourage germination of undergrowth for sustainability, threatened the settlers' crops and houses.
In December 1831 Yagan and his father led the first significant Aboriginal resistance to white settlement in Western Australia. Thomas Smedley, a servant of farmer Archibald Butler, ambushed some natives who were raiding a potato patch, and killed one of Yagan's family group. A few days later, Yagan, Midgegooroo and others stormed the farmhouse and, finding the door locked, began to break through the mud-brick walls. Inside were Butler's servant Erin Entwhistle and his two sons Enion and Ralph. After hiding his sons under the bed, Entwhistle opened the door to parley and was killed by Yagan and Midgegooroo. Noongar tribal law required that murders be avenged by the killing of a member of the murderer's tribal group, not necessarily the murderer. The Noongar considered servants and employees to be part of the settlers' groups. Historians believe the Noongar attack on Entwhistle was retribution under their tribal law. Not understanding tribal law (and unlikely to agree with its concepts), the white settlers took the killing to be an unprovoked murder and dispatched a force to arrest Yagan's group, without success.
In June 1832 Yagan led a party of Noongar in attacking two labourers sowing a field of wheat alongside the Canning River near Kelmscott. One of the men, John Thomas, escaped, but the other, William Gaze, was wounded and later died as a result. The settlement declared Yagan an outlaw and offered a reward of £20 for his capture. He avoided capture until early October 1832. A group of fishermen enticed Yagan and two companions into their boat, then pushed off into deep water. The fishermen took the three Noongar men to the Perth guardhouse, from which they were transferred to the Round House at Fremantle. Yagan was sentenced to death, but he was saved by the intercession of settler Robert Lyon. Arguing that Yagan was defending his land against invasion, Lyon said Yagan should not be considered a criminal but a prisoner of war and suggested he should be treated as such. At the recommendation of John Septimus Roe, the Surveyor-General of Western Australia, Yagan and his men were exiled on Carnac Island under the supervision of Lyon and two soldiers.
Lyon thought he could teach Yagan British ways and convert him to Christianity. He hoped to gain his cooperation and use his tribal stature to persuade the Noongar to accept colonial authority. Lyon spent many hours with Yagan learning his language and customs. After a month, Yagan and his companions escaped by stealing an unattended dinghy and rowing to Woodman Point on the mainland. The Government did not pursue them; apparently its officials considered they had been sufficiently punished.
In January 1833 two Noongar, Gyallipert and Manyat, visited Perth from King George Sound, where relations between settlers and natives were amicable. Two settlers, Richard Dale and George Smythe, arranged for the men to meet a party of local Noongar to encourage friendly relations in the Swan River Colony. On 26 January Yagan led a group of ten formally armed Noongars in greeting the two men near Lake Monger. The men exchanged weapons and held a corroboree, though the groups did not appear to share a language. Yagan and Gyallipert competed at spear throwing. As an example of his prowess, Yagan struck a walking stick from a distance of .
Gyallipert and Manyat remained in Perth for some time. On 3 March, Yagan obtained permission to hold another corroboree, this time in the Post Office garden in Perth. The Perth and King George Sound men met at dusk, chalked their bodies, and performed a number of dances including a kangaroo hunt dance. The Perth Gazette wrote that Yagan "was master of ceremonies and acquitted himself with infinite grace and dignity".
During February and March, Yagan was involved in a series of minor conflicts with settlers. In February William Watson complained that Yagan had pushed open his door, demanded a gun, and taken handkerchiefs. Watson had to give him and his companions flour and bread. The following month, Yagan was among a group who received biscuits from a military contingent under Lieutenant Norcott; when Norcott tried to restrict his supply, Yagan threatened him with his spear. Later that month, Yagan was with a group of Noongar who entered Watson's house while he was away. The group left after Watson's wife called on neighbours for help. The next day Captain Ellis lectured the Noongar about their behaviour. The frequent incidents prompted The Perth Gazette to remark on "the reckless daring of this desperado who sets his life at a pin's fee ... For the most trivial offence ... he would take the life of any man who provoked him. He is at the head and front of any mischief."
Wanted dead or alive
On the night of 29 April, a party of Noongar broke into a Fremantle store to steal flour and they were shot at by the caretaker Peter Chidlow. Domjum, a brother of Yagan, was badly injured and died in jail a few days later. The rest of the party moved from Fremantle to Preston Point, where Yagan reportedly vowed vengeance for the death. Between 50 and 60 Noongar gathered at Bull Creek, where they met a party of settlers who were loading carts with provisions. Later that day, the group ambushed the lead cart, killing two settlers, Tom and John Velvick. Tribal law required only a single death for vengeance. Some historians have speculated that the Velvicks were targeted because they had previously been convicted for assaulting Aboriginal people and coloured seamen. Alexandra Hasluck has also argued that stealing provisions was an important motive in the attack, but this has been refuted elsewhere.
For the killing of the Velvicks, the Lieutenant-Governor Frederick Irwin declared Yagan, Midgegooroo and Munday to be outlaws, offering rewards of £20 each for the capture of Midgegooroo and Munday, and a reward of £30 for Yagan's capture, dead or alive. Munday successfully appealed against his proscription. Midgegooroo, Yagan and their group immediately moved from their territory north towards the Helena Valley. On 17 May, Midgegooroo was captured on the Helena River. After a brief, informal trial, he was executed by firing squad. Yagan remained at large for over two months.
Late in May, George Fletcher Moore reported seeing Yagan on his property and talking with him in pidgin English. Moore wrote in the Perth Gazette:
Yagan asked Moore whether Midgegooroo was dead or alive. Moore gave no reply, but a servant answered that Midgegooroo was a prisoner on Carnac Island. Yagan warned, "White man shoot Midgegooroo, Yagan kill three." Moore reported the encounter but made no attempt to restrain Yagan. He later wrote, "The truth is, every one wishes him taken, but no one likes to be the captor ... there is something in his daring which one is forced to admire."
Death
On 11 July 1833, two teenage brothers named William and James Keates were herding cattle along the Swan River north of Guildford when a group of Noongar approached while en route to collect flour rations from Henry Bull's house. The Keates brothers suggested Yagan remain with them to avoid arrest. While he was staying with them during the morning, the brothers decided to kill the warrior and claim the reward. When the natives were ready to depart, the Keateses took their last opportunity. William Keates shot Yagan, and James shot Heegan, another native, in the act of throwing his spear. The brothers ran away, but other Noongar overtook William and speared him to death. James escaped by swimming the river. Shortly afterward he returned with a party of armed settlers from Bull's estate.
When the party of settlers arrived, they found Yagan dead and Heegan dying. Heegan "was groaning and his brains were partly out when the party came, and whether humanity or brutality, a man put a gun to his head and blew it to pieces." The settlers cut Yagan's head from his body, and skinned his back to obtain his tribal markings as a trophy. They buried the bodies a short distance away.
James Keates claimed the reward, but his conduct was widely criticised. The Perth Gazette referred to Yagan's killing as "a wild and treacherous act ... it is revolting to hear this lauded as a meritorious deed." However, Daisy Bates understood that "he was killed in self-defence by the young lad." Keates left the colony the following month; it is possible that he left from fear of being murdered in tribal retaliation.
Yagan's head
Exhibition and burial
Yagan's head was initially taken to Henry Bull's house. Moore saw it there and sketched the head a number of times in his unpublished, handwritten diary, commenting that "possibly it may yet figure in some museum at home." The head was preserved by smoking.
In September 1833, Governor Irwin sailed for London, partly to give his own account of the events leading up to the killing. This was an unusual measure, especially given his regiment was about to leave for a tour of duty in India. The Colonial Office indicated satisfaction with Irwin's administration of the colony.
Travelling with Irwin was Ensign Robert Dale, who had somehow acquired Yagan's head. According to the historian Paul Turnbull, Dale appears to have persuaded Irwin to let him have the head as an "anthropological curiosity". After arriving in London, Dale tried to sell the head to scientists, approaching a number of anatomists and phrenologists. His price of £20 failed to find a buyer, so he made an agreement with Thomas Pettigrew for the exclusive use of the head for 18 months. Pettigrew, a surgeon and antiquarian, was well known in the London social scene for holding private parties at which he unrolled and autopsied ancient Egyptian mummies. He displayed the head on a table in front of a panoramic view of King George Sound reproduced from Dale's sketches. For effect, the head was adorned with a fresh corded headband and feathers of the red-tailed black cockatoo.
Pettigrew had the head examined by a phrenologist. Examination was considered difficult because of the large fracture across the back of the head caused by the gunshot. His conclusions were consistent with contemporary European opinion of Indigenous Australians. Dale published these in a pamphlet entitled Descriptive Account of the Panoramic View &c. of King George's Sound and the Adjacent Country, which Pettigrew encouraged his guests to buy as a souvenir of their evening. The frontispiece of the pamphlet was a hand-coloured aquatint print of Yagan's head by the artist George Cruikshank.
Early in October 1835, Yagan's head and the panoramic view were returned to Dale, then living in Liverpool. On 12 October he presented them to the Liverpool Royal Institution, where the head may have been displayed in a case along with some other preserved heads and wax models illustrating cranial anatomy. In 1894 the Institution's collections were dispersed, and Yagan's head was lent to the Liverpool Museum; it is thought not to have been put on display there. By the 1960s Yagan's head was badly deteriorated. In April 1964 the museum decided to dispose of it. It arranged burial of the head on 10 April 1964, together with a Peruvian mummy and a Māori head. They were buried in Everton Cemetery's General Section 16, grave number 296. In later years a number of burials were made around the grave. For example, in 1968 a local hospital buried directly over the box, 20 stillborn babies and two infants who died soon after birth.
Lobbying for repatriation
For many years beginning in the early 1980s, a number of Noongar groups sought the return of Yagan's head to Australia.
At the time, there was no historical trail for the head after Pettigrew passed it on. Tribal elders entrusted the Aboriginal leader Ken Colbung with the search. In the early 1990s, Colbung enlisted the aid of University of London archaeologist Peter Ucko. One of Ucko's researchers, Cressida Fforde, conducted a literature search for information on the head. Fforde successfully traced the head in December 1993. The following April, Colbung applied to exhume the remains under Section 25 of the Burial Act 1857. Home Office regulations required next of kin consent before disturbing the remains of the 22 infants. Colbung's solicitors requested waiver of this condition on grounds that the exhumation would be of great personal significance to Yagan's living relatives, and great national importance to Australia.
Meanwhile, divisions in the Noongar community in Perth began to develop. Some elders questioned Colbung's role and one Noongar registered a complaint with the Liverpool City Council over his involvement. Media reports indicated acrimonious debate within the Noongar community about who had the best cultural qualifications to take possession of the head. The academic Hannah McGlade claims that these divisions were largely manufactured by the media, particularly The West Australian, which "aimed to and successfully represented the Nyungar community in terms of disharmony and dissent". She alleges that one West reporter contacted Noongar who were known to be in disagreement, and quoted one to the other, so as to elicit provocative responses. The disputes were "trumpeted" by The West, allowing it to "preach" against the infighting.
On 25 July a public meeting was held in Perth. All parties agreed to put aside their differences and co-operate to ensure that the repatriation was a "national success". A Yagan Steering Committee was established to co-ordinate the repatriation, and Colbung's application was allowed to proceed. In January 1995 the Home Office advised Colbung that it was unable to waive the requirement to obtain next of kin consent for the exhumation. It contacted the five relatives whose addresses were known, and received unconditional consent from only one. Accordingly, on 30 June 1995, Colbung and the other interested parties were advised that the application for exhumation had been rejected.
Meeting on 21 September, the Yagan Steering Committee decided to lobby Australian and British politicians for support. In 1997 Colbung was invited to visit the United Kingdom at the British government's expense and he arrived on 20 May. His visit attracted substantial media coverage, and increased the political pressure on the British Government. He secured the support of the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, after gate crashing the Prime Minister's June visit to the United Kingdom.
Exhumation
While Colbung was in the United Kingdom, Martin and Richard Bates were engaged to undertake a geophysical survey of the grave site. Using electromagnetic and ground penetrating radar techniques, they identified an approximate position of the box that suggested it could be accessed from the side via the adjacent plot. A report of the survey was passed to the Home Office, prompting further discussions between the British and Australian Governments.
Of concern to the Home Office were an undisclosed number of letters that it had received objecting to Colbung's involvement in the repatriation process; it therefore sought assurances from the Australian Government that Colbung was a correct applicant. In response Colbung asked his elders to ask the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) to tell the British Home Office that he was the correct applicant. ATSIC then convened a meeting in Perth at which it was again resolved that Colbung's application could proceed.
Colbung continued to press for the exhumation, asking that it be performed before the 164th anniversary of Yagan's death on 11 July, so that the anniversary could be the occasion of a celebration. His request was not met, and on the anniversary of Yagan's death, Colbung conducted a short memorial service at the burial plot in Everton. He returned to Australia empty-handed on 15 July.
The exhumation of Yagan's head eventually proceeded, without Colbung's knowledge, by excavating down the side of the grave, then tunnelling horizontally to the location of the box. Thus the exhumation was performed without disturbing any other remains. The following day, a forensic palaeontologist from the University of Bradford positively identified the skull as Yagan's by correlating the fractures with those described in Pettigrew's report. The skull was then kept at the museum until 29 August, when it was handed over to the Liverpool City Council.
Repatriation
On 27 August 1997, a delegation of Noongars consisting of Ken Colbung, Robert Bropho, Richard Wilkes and Mingli Wanjurri-Nungala arrived in the UK to collect Yagan's head. The delegation was to have been larger, but Commonwealth funding was withdrawn at the last minute. The handover of Yagan's skull was further delayed when a Noongar named Corrie Bodney applied to the Supreme Court of Western Australia for an injunction against the handover. Claiming that his family group has sole responsibility for Yagan's remains, Bodney declared the exhumation illegal and denied the existence of any tradition or belief necessitating the head's exhumation and removal to Australia. On 29 August, Justice Henry Wallwork rejected the injunction application, on the grounds that Bodney had previously agreed to the current arrangements, and on the evidence of another Noongar elder (Albert Corunna, who claimed to be a closer relation of Yagan) and anthropologist Pat Baines, both of whom refuted Bodney's claim to sole responsibility.
Yagan's skull was handed over to the Noongar delegation at a ceremony at Liverpool Town Hall on 31 August 1997. In accepting the skull, Colbung made comments that were interpreted as linking Yagan's death with the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, earlier that day: That is how nature goes ... Nature is a carrier of all good things and all bad things. And because the Poms did the wrong thing, they now have to suffer. Colbung's comments prompted a media furore throughout Australia, with newspapers receiving many letters from the public expressing shock and anger at the comments. Colbung later claimed that his comments had been misinterpreted.
Throughout the repatriation process, many sections of the international media treated the story as a joke. For example, the US News & World Report ran a story under the headline Raiders of the Lost Conk, in which Yagan's head was referred to as a "pickled curio", and Colbung's actions were treated as a publicity stunt.
Preparations for reburial
On its return to Perth, Yagan's head continued to be a source of controversy and conflict. Responsibility for reburial of the head was given to a "Committee for the Reburial of Yagan's Kaat", headed by Richard Wilkes. The reburial was delayed by disputes between elders over the burial location, mainly due to uncertainty of the whereabouts of the rest of his body, and disagreement about the importance of burying the head with the body.
A number of attempts were made to locate the remains of Yagan's body, which were believed to be on Lot 39 West Swan Road in the outer Perth suburb of Belhus. A remote sensing survey of the site was carried out in 1998, but no remains were found. An archaeological survey of the area was undertaken two years later, but this also was unsuccessful. Disputes then arose over whether the head could be buried separately from the body. Wilkes has claimed that it can, so long as it is placed where Yagan was killed, so that Dreamtime spirits can reunite the remains.
In 1998 the Western Australian Planning Commission and the Department of Aboriginal Affairs jointly published a document entitled Yagan's Gravesite Master Plan, which discussed "matters of ownership, management, development and future use" of the property on which Yagan's remains are believed to be buried. Under consideration was the possibility of turning the site into an Indigenous burial site, to be managed by the Metropolitan Cemeteries Board.
Yagan's head spent some time in storage in a bank vault before being handed over to forensics experts who reconstructed a model from it. After that it was held in storage at Western Australia's state mortuary. Plans to re-bury the head were repeatedly deferred, causing ongoing conflict between Noongar groups. In September 2008 it was reported that Yagan's head would be reburied in November, and a Yagan Memorial Park created as a projected cost of A$996,000; but in November it was announced that the reburial had been rescheduled for July 2009 because of logistical problems. In March 2009, it was announced that the Department of Indigenous Affairs had given the City of Swan more than A$500,000 to develop the park.
Reburial
The head was finally buried in a private ceremony attended only by invited Noongar elders, on 10 July 2010, the anniversary of the last full day he lived and one day before the end of NAIDOC Week 2010. The site in Belhus was chosen as it is believed to be near to where the rest of Yagan's body was buried. The burial coincided with a ceremony to mark the opening of the Yagan Memorial Park, which was attended by around 300 people, including Noongar elders and state government representatives. Premier Colin Barnett described the occasion as "a wonderful day for all West Australians".
The art works for the Yagan Memorial Park were designed by Peter Farmer, Sandra Hill, Jenny Dawson and Kylie Ricks. Dawson and Hill created an entry wall of Yagan's story; Farmer designed the park entry statements and Ricks the female coolamon.
Legacy
The repatriation of Yagan's head increased the Aboriginal leader's notability. He is considered a famous historical figure throughout Australia, with material about him appearing in such publications as the Australian Dictionary of Biography, and Western Australia's school curriculum. He is of greatest significance to the Noongar people, for whom he is "a revered, cherished and heroic individual ... patriot and visionary hero of WA's South-West". The return of his head was likened by some Indigenous Australians to the November 1993 ceremonial repatriation from Gallipoli of Australia's unknown soldier.
The former Upper Swan Bridge, which carries the Great Northern Highway over the Swan River at Belhus, was renamed the Yagan Bridge in 2010.
An open plaza in the Perth central business district, constructed as part of the Perth City Link urban renewal project, was named Yagan Square. Featuring the statue "Wirin", the plaza, located adjacent to the Horseshoe Bridge, was opened on 3 March 2018.
Cultural references
Alas Poor Yagan
On 6 September 1997 The West Australian published a Dean Alston cartoon entitled Alas Poor Yagan, which was critical of the fact that the return of Yagan's head had become a source of conflict between Noongars instead of fostering unity. The cartoon was interpreted by some as insulting aspects of Noongar culture, and casting aspersions on the motives and legitimacy of Indigenous Australians with mixed racial heritage. The content of the cartoon offended many Indigenous Australians, and a group of Noongar elders complained about the cartoon to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. The commission ruled that the cartoon made inappropriate references to Noongar beliefs but was not in breach of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 because it was "an artistic work" that was published "reasonably and in good faith", and was therefore exempt. This ruling was upheld on appeal by the Federal Court of Australia. Some academic commentators have since expressed concern that the protections offered under the act have been undermined by the ruling's broad interpretation of the exemptions.
Statue
From the mid-1970s, members of the Noongar community lobbied for the erection of a statue of Yagan as part of the WAY 1979 sesquicentennial celebrations. Their requests were refused, however, after the Premier, Charles Court, was advised by one prominent historian that Yagan was not important enough to warrant a statue. Colbung claims "Court was more interested in spending tax payers' money on refurbishing the badly neglected burial place of Captain James Stirling, WA's first governor." Despite this setback, the Noongar community persisted, establishing a Yagan Committee and running a number of fund-raising drives. Eventually, sufficient funds were collected to allow the commissioning of Australian sculptor Robert Hitchcock to create a statue. The result was a life-size statue in bronze, depicting Yagan standing naked with a spear held across his shoulders. Hitchcock's statue of Yagan was officially opened by Yagan Committee chairperson Elizabeth Hanson on 11 September 1984. It stands on Heirisson Island in the Swan River near Perth.
In 1997, within a week of the return of Yagan's head to Perth, vandals beheaded the statue using an angle grinder. Soon after a replacement head was installed and it too was detached and stolen. Credit for the act was anonymously claimed by a "British loyalist" as an act of retaliation for Colbung's comments about Diana, Princess of Wales. The Western Australia Police did not succeed in identifying the vandals, nor in recovering the heads, and deemed it infeasible to have the statue fenced off or placed under guard.
Commentary on the beheadings varied widely. One column in The West Australian found humour in them, referring to the head as a "bonce" and a "noggin", and finished with a pun on "skullduggery". Stephen Muecke calls this the "satirical trivialising of Aboriginal concerns", and Adam Shoemaker writes "This is the stuff of light humour and comic relief. There is no sense of the decapitation as being an act of vandalism, even less that it could have been motivated by malevolence ... [T]he piece has a definite authorising function." On the other hand, academic analysis has treated the act with much more gravity. In 2007, for example, David Martin described the decapitation as "an act which speaks not only to the continuance of white settler racism, but also to the power of mimesis to invigorate our modern memorials and monuments with a life of their own".
In 2002, Janet Woollard, the member for Alfred Cove, called for the statue's genitalia to be covered up. In November 2005, Richard Wilkes also called for the statue's groin to be covered on the grounds that such a depiction would be more historically accurate, as Yagan would have worn a covering for most of the year. Also under consideration is the creation of a new statue with a head shape that accords better with the forensic reconstruction of Yagan's head.
Literature and film
Mary Durack published a fictionalised account of Yagan's life in her 1964 children's novel The Courteous Savage: Yagan of the Swan River, which was renamed Yagan of the Bibbulmun on reissue in 1976.
The repeated beheading of Yagan's statue in 1997 prompted Aboriginal writer Archie Weller to write a short story entitled Confessions of a Headhunter. Weller later worked with film director Sally Riley to adapt the story into a script, and in 2000 a 35-minute movie, also named Confessions of a Headhunter, was released. Directed by Sally Riley, the movie won Best Short Fiction Film at the 2000 AFI Awards. The following year the script won the Script Award in the 2001 Western Australian Premier's Book Awards.
In 2002, the South African-born Australian poet John Mateer published his fourth collection of poems, entitled Loanwords. The collection is divided into four sections, of which the third, In the Presence of a Severed Head, has Yagan as its subject.
Other cultural references
A section of Kullark, a play by Jack Davis, explores the deteriorating relationship between Yagan and a settler couple.
In September 1989 an early maturing cultivar of barley, bred by the Western Australian Department of Agriculture for performance on sandy soils, was released under the name "Hordeum vulgare (Barley) c.v. Yagan". Commonly referred to simply as "Yagan", the cultivar is named for Yagan, continuing a tradition of labelling Western Australian grain cultivars after historic people of Western Australia.
See also
Jandamarra, and the Bunuba War.
Musquito a warrior of the Gai-Mariagal clan
Pemulwuy a warrior and resistance leader of the Bidjigal clan of the Eora people, in the area around Sydney
Tunnerminnerwait, an Australian Aboriginal resistance fighter and Parperloihener clansman from Tasmania
Windradyne, a warrior and resistance leader of the Wiradjuri nation, in what is now central-western New South Wales
Australian frontier wars
References
General references
1790s births
1833 deaths
Art and cultural repatriation
Australian murderers
Australian outlaws
Deaths by firearm in Western Australia
Escapees from Western Australian detention
History of Western Australia
Noongar people
People from Perth, Western Australia
Resistance to colonialism in Australia
Trophy heads | false | [
"Reward is an unincorporated community in western Kern County, California.\n\nGeography\nIt is located west-northwest of McKittrick, at an elevation of in the southern Temblor Range. Reward is located in the McKittrick Oil Field.\n\nHistory\nReward was the location of the Aguaje de Santa Maria (Waterhole of Saint Mary) water stop on the 19th century El Camino Viejo in Alta California.\n\nThe first wooden oil derrick in Kern County was constructed at the future site of Reward in 1878, to drill for flux oil to mix with asphalt that was being mined in Asphalto and refined in McKittrick. The settlement of Reward was founded in 1907, its name derived from the discovery of oil at the site. A post office operating there from 1909 to 1937.\n\nReferences\n\nUnincorporated communities in Kern County, California\nEl Camino Viejo\nTemblor Range\nPopulated places established in 1907\n1907 establishments in California\nUnincorporated communities in California",
"Jewel's Reward (March 10, 1955 – September 16, 1959) was a Thoroughbred Champion racehorse. He was voted the American Champion Two-Year-Old Colt of 1957 by the Thoroughbred Racing Association and Turf & Sports Digest magazine. The rival Daily Racing Form poll was topped by Nadir. Owned by the Maine Chance Farm of \"Cosmetics Queen\" Elizabeth Arden, Jewel's Reward was trained by National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame inductee Ivan Parke.\n\nFollowing his championship year, in which he won more money than any other two-year-old in history, at age three Jewel's Reward was ranked a top contender for the U.S. Triple Crown series after winning the Wood Memorial Stakes at Belmont Park in Elmont, New York. However, an injury during a workout hampered the colt and after being sent off as the betting favorite, he ran fourth in the Kentucky Derby and seventh in the Preakness Stakes. Later that year, Jewel's Reward was sent to race in California, where he was trained by Bill Molter.\n\nReturned to the East Coast, in August 1959 the four-year-old Jewel's Reward came down with colic and died on September 16 in his barn at Belmont Park.\n\nReferences\n\n1955 racehorse births\n1959 racehorse deaths\nRacehorses bred in Kentucky\nRacehorses trained in the United States\nAmerican Champion racehorses\nThoroughbred family A11"
] |
[
"Yagan",
"Death",
"when did he die?",
"When the party of settlers arrived, they found Yagan dead and Heegan dying.",
"what year was this?",
"1833,",
"how did he die?",
"William Keates shot Yagan, and James shot Heegan, another native, in the act of throwing his spear.",
"why was he killed?",
"the brothers decided to kill the warrior and claim the reward. When the natives were ready to depart, the Keateses took their last opportunity.",
"what was the reward?",
"I don't know."
] | C_fd96a17bb9e74371afa728bd135272c3_1 | who else was involved in his death? | 6 | Besides Yagan's brother's, who else was involved in Yagan's death? | Yagan | On 11 July 1833, two teenage brothers named William and James Keates were herding cattle along the Swan River north of Guildford when a group of Noongar approached while en route to collect flour rations from Henry Bull's house. The Keates brothers suggested Yagan remain with them to avoid arrest. While he was staying with them during the morning, the brothers decided to kill the warrior and claim the reward. When the natives were ready to depart, the Keateses took their last opportunity. William Keates shot Yagan, and James shot Heegan, another native, in the act of throwing his spear. The brothers ran away, but other Noongar overtook William and speared him to death. James escaped by swimming the river. Shortly afterward he returned with a party of armed settlers from Bull's estate. When the party of settlers arrived, they found Yagan dead and Heegan dying. Heegan "was groaning and his brains were partly out when the party came, and whether humanity or brutality, a man put a gun to his head and blew it to pieces." The settlers cut Yagan's head from his body, and skinned his back to obtain his tribal markings as a trophy. They buried the bodies a short distance away. James Keates claimed the reward, but his conduct was widely criticised. The Perth Gazette referred to Yagan's killing as "a wild and treacherous act ... it is revolting to hear this lauded as a meritorious deed." However, Daisy Bates understood that "he was killed in self-defence by the young lad." Keates left the colony the following month; it is possible that he left from fear of being murdered in tribal retaliation. CANNOTANSWER | When the party of settlers arrived, they found Yagan dead and Heegan dying. Heegan "was groaning and his brains were partly out when the party came, | Yagan (; – 11 July 1833) was an Aboriginal Australian warrior from the Noongar people. He played a key part in early resistance to British colonial settlement and rule in the area surrounding what is now Perth, Western Australia. Yagan was pursued by the local authorities after he killed Erin Entwhistle, a servant of farmer Archibald Butler. It was an act of retaliation after Thomas Smedley, another of Butler's servants, shot at a group of Noongar people stealing potatoes and fowls, killing one of them. The government offered a bounty for Yagan's capture, dead or alive, and a young settler, William Keats, shot and killed him. Yagan's execution figures in Australian history as a symbol of the unjust and sometimes brutal treatment of the indigenous peoples of Australia by colonial settlers. He is considered a hero by the Noongar.
After his shooting, settlers removed Yagan's head to claim the bounty. Later, an official sent it to London, where it was exhibited as an "anthropological curiosity" and eventually given to a museum in Liverpool. It held the head in storage for more than a century before burying it with other remains in an unmarked grave in Liverpool in 1964. Over the years, the Noongar asked for repatriation of the head, both for religious reasons and because of Yagan's traditional stature. The burial site was identified in 1993; officials exhumed the head four years later and repatriated it to Australia. After years of debate within the Noongar community on the appropriate final resting place, Yagan's head was buried in a traditional ceremony in the Swan Valley in July 2010, 177 years after his death.
Biography
Early life
A member of the Whadjuk Noongar people, Yagan belonged to a tribe of around 60 people whose name, according to Robert Lyon, was Beeliar. Scholars now believe that the Beeliar people may have been a family subgroup (or clan) of a larger tribe whom Daisy Bates called Beelgar. According to Lyon, the Beeliar people occupied the land south of the Swan and Canning rivers, as far south as Mangles Bay. The group had customary land usage rights over a much larger area than this, extending north as far as Lake Monger and northeast to the Helena River. The group also had an unusual degree of freedom to move over their neighbours' land, possibly due to kinship and marriage ties with neighbouring groups.
Yagan is thought to have been born around 1795. His father was Midgegooroo, an elder of the Beeliar people; his mother was presumably one of Midgegooroo's two wives. Yagan was probably a Ballaroke in the Noongar classification.
Marriage and family
According to the historian Neville Green, Yagan had a wife and two children. A report in the Perth Gazette in 1833 gives the names of his children as "Naral", age 9, and "Willim", age 11; but most other sources state that the warrior was unmarried and childless. Described as taller than average with an impressive burly physique, Yagan had a distinctive tribal tattoo on his right shoulder, which identified him as "a man of high degree in tribal law". He was generally acknowledged to be the most physically powerful of his tribe, and was said to have been able to spear another stick from a distance of or penetrate a tree from a distance of .
Relations with settlers
Yagan would have been about 35 years old in 1829 when British settlers landed in the area and established the Swan River Colony. For the first two years of the colony, relations between settlers and Noongar were generally amicable, as there was little competition for resources. The Noongar welcomed the white settlers as , the returned spirits of their dead. Historical reports noted the two groups shared fish. As time passed, conflicts between the two cultures gradually became more frequent. The settlers incorrectly thought that the Noongar were nomads who had no claim to the land over which they roamed. Colonists fenced off land for grazing and farming according to their traditional practices of land use.
As the colonists fenced off more land, the Noongar were increasingly denied access to their traditional hunting grounds and sacred sites. In search of food, the Noongar raided the settlers' crops and killed their cattle. They also developed a taste for the settlers' supplies, and began to take flour and other food, which became a serious problem for the colony. In addition, the Noongar practice of firestick farming, or lighting the bush to flush out game and encourage germination of undergrowth for sustainability, threatened the settlers' crops and houses.
In December 1831 Yagan and his father led the first significant Aboriginal resistance to white settlement in Western Australia. Thomas Smedley, a servant of farmer Archibald Butler, ambushed some natives who were raiding a potato patch, and killed one of Yagan's family group. A few days later, Yagan, Midgegooroo and others stormed the farmhouse and, finding the door locked, began to break through the mud-brick walls. Inside were Butler's servant Erin Entwhistle and his two sons Enion and Ralph. After hiding his sons under the bed, Entwhistle opened the door to parley and was killed by Yagan and Midgegooroo. Noongar tribal law required that murders be avenged by the killing of a member of the murderer's tribal group, not necessarily the murderer. The Noongar considered servants and employees to be part of the settlers' groups. Historians believe the Noongar attack on Entwhistle was retribution under their tribal law. Not understanding tribal law (and unlikely to agree with its concepts), the white settlers took the killing to be an unprovoked murder and dispatched a force to arrest Yagan's group, without success.
In June 1832 Yagan led a party of Noongar in attacking two labourers sowing a field of wheat alongside the Canning River near Kelmscott. One of the men, John Thomas, escaped, but the other, William Gaze, was wounded and later died as a result. The settlement declared Yagan an outlaw and offered a reward of £20 for his capture. He avoided capture until early October 1832. A group of fishermen enticed Yagan and two companions into their boat, then pushed off into deep water. The fishermen took the three Noongar men to the Perth guardhouse, from which they were transferred to the Round House at Fremantle. Yagan was sentenced to death, but he was saved by the intercession of settler Robert Lyon. Arguing that Yagan was defending his land against invasion, Lyon said Yagan should not be considered a criminal but a prisoner of war and suggested he should be treated as such. At the recommendation of John Septimus Roe, the Surveyor-General of Western Australia, Yagan and his men were exiled on Carnac Island under the supervision of Lyon and two soldiers.
Lyon thought he could teach Yagan British ways and convert him to Christianity. He hoped to gain his cooperation and use his tribal stature to persuade the Noongar to accept colonial authority. Lyon spent many hours with Yagan learning his language and customs. After a month, Yagan and his companions escaped by stealing an unattended dinghy and rowing to Woodman Point on the mainland. The Government did not pursue them; apparently its officials considered they had been sufficiently punished.
In January 1833 two Noongar, Gyallipert and Manyat, visited Perth from King George Sound, where relations between settlers and natives were amicable. Two settlers, Richard Dale and George Smythe, arranged for the men to meet a party of local Noongar to encourage friendly relations in the Swan River Colony. On 26 January Yagan led a group of ten formally armed Noongars in greeting the two men near Lake Monger. The men exchanged weapons and held a corroboree, though the groups did not appear to share a language. Yagan and Gyallipert competed at spear throwing. As an example of his prowess, Yagan struck a walking stick from a distance of .
Gyallipert and Manyat remained in Perth for some time. On 3 March, Yagan obtained permission to hold another corroboree, this time in the Post Office garden in Perth. The Perth and King George Sound men met at dusk, chalked their bodies, and performed a number of dances including a kangaroo hunt dance. The Perth Gazette wrote that Yagan "was master of ceremonies and acquitted himself with infinite grace and dignity".
During February and March, Yagan was involved in a series of minor conflicts with settlers. In February William Watson complained that Yagan had pushed open his door, demanded a gun, and taken handkerchiefs. Watson had to give him and his companions flour and bread. The following month, Yagan was among a group who received biscuits from a military contingent under Lieutenant Norcott; when Norcott tried to restrict his supply, Yagan threatened him with his spear. Later that month, Yagan was with a group of Noongar who entered Watson's house while he was away. The group left after Watson's wife called on neighbours for help. The next day Captain Ellis lectured the Noongar about their behaviour. The frequent incidents prompted The Perth Gazette to remark on "the reckless daring of this desperado who sets his life at a pin's fee ... For the most trivial offence ... he would take the life of any man who provoked him. He is at the head and front of any mischief."
Wanted dead or alive
On the night of 29 April, a party of Noongar broke into a Fremantle store to steal flour and they were shot at by the caretaker Peter Chidlow. Domjum, a brother of Yagan, was badly injured and died in jail a few days later. The rest of the party moved from Fremantle to Preston Point, where Yagan reportedly vowed vengeance for the death. Between 50 and 60 Noongar gathered at Bull Creek, where they met a party of settlers who were loading carts with provisions. Later that day, the group ambushed the lead cart, killing two settlers, Tom and John Velvick. Tribal law required only a single death for vengeance. Some historians have speculated that the Velvicks were targeted because they had previously been convicted for assaulting Aboriginal people and coloured seamen. Alexandra Hasluck has also argued that stealing provisions was an important motive in the attack, but this has been refuted elsewhere.
For the killing of the Velvicks, the Lieutenant-Governor Frederick Irwin declared Yagan, Midgegooroo and Munday to be outlaws, offering rewards of £20 each for the capture of Midgegooroo and Munday, and a reward of £30 for Yagan's capture, dead or alive. Munday successfully appealed against his proscription. Midgegooroo, Yagan and their group immediately moved from their territory north towards the Helena Valley. On 17 May, Midgegooroo was captured on the Helena River. After a brief, informal trial, he was executed by firing squad. Yagan remained at large for over two months.
Late in May, George Fletcher Moore reported seeing Yagan on his property and talking with him in pidgin English. Moore wrote in the Perth Gazette:
Yagan asked Moore whether Midgegooroo was dead or alive. Moore gave no reply, but a servant answered that Midgegooroo was a prisoner on Carnac Island. Yagan warned, "White man shoot Midgegooroo, Yagan kill three." Moore reported the encounter but made no attempt to restrain Yagan. He later wrote, "The truth is, every one wishes him taken, but no one likes to be the captor ... there is something in his daring which one is forced to admire."
Death
On 11 July 1833, two teenage brothers named William and James Keates were herding cattle along the Swan River north of Guildford when a group of Noongar approached while en route to collect flour rations from Henry Bull's house. The Keates brothers suggested Yagan remain with them to avoid arrest. While he was staying with them during the morning, the brothers decided to kill the warrior and claim the reward. When the natives were ready to depart, the Keateses took their last opportunity. William Keates shot Yagan, and James shot Heegan, another native, in the act of throwing his spear. The brothers ran away, but other Noongar overtook William and speared him to death. James escaped by swimming the river. Shortly afterward he returned with a party of armed settlers from Bull's estate.
When the party of settlers arrived, they found Yagan dead and Heegan dying. Heegan "was groaning and his brains were partly out when the party came, and whether humanity or brutality, a man put a gun to his head and blew it to pieces." The settlers cut Yagan's head from his body, and skinned his back to obtain his tribal markings as a trophy. They buried the bodies a short distance away.
James Keates claimed the reward, but his conduct was widely criticised. The Perth Gazette referred to Yagan's killing as "a wild and treacherous act ... it is revolting to hear this lauded as a meritorious deed." However, Daisy Bates understood that "he was killed in self-defence by the young lad." Keates left the colony the following month; it is possible that he left from fear of being murdered in tribal retaliation.
Yagan's head
Exhibition and burial
Yagan's head was initially taken to Henry Bull's house. Moore saw it there and sketched the head a number of times in his unpublished, handwritten diary, commenting that "possibly it may yet figure in some museum at home." The head was preserved by smoking.
In September 1833, Governor Irwin sailed for London, partly to give his own account of the events leading up to the killing. This was an unusual measure, especially given his regiment was about to leave for a tour of duty in India. The Colonial Office indicated satisfaction with Irwin's administration of the colony.
Travelling with Irwin was Ensign Robert Dale, who had somehow acquired Yagan's head. According to the historian Paul Turnbull, Dale appears to have persuaded Irwin to let him have the head as an "anthropological curiosity". After arriving in London, Dale tried to sell the head to scientists, approaching a number of anatomists and phrenologists. His price of £20 failed to find a buyer, so he made an agreement with Thomas Pettigrew for the exclusive use of the head for 18 months. Pettigrew, a surgeon and antiquarian, was well known in the London social scene for holding private parties at which he unrolled and autopsied ancient Egyptian mummies. He displayed the head on a table in front of a panoramic view of King George Sound reproduced from Dale's sketches. For effect, the head was adorned with a fresh corded headband and feathers of the red-tailed black cockatoo.
Pettigrew had the head examined by a phrenologist. Examination was considered difficult because of the large fracture across the back of the head caused by the gunshot. His conclusions were consistent with contemporary European opinion of Indigenous Australians. Dale published these in a pamphlet entitled Descriptive Account of the Panoramic View &c. of King George's Sound and the Adjacent Country, which Pettigrew encouraged his guests to buy as a souvenir of their evening. The frontispiece of the pamphlet was a hand-coloured aquatint print of Yagan's head by the artist George Cruikshank.
Early in October 1835, Yagan's head and the panoramic view were returned to Dale, then living in Liverpool. On 12 October he presented them to the Liverpool Royal Institution, where the head may have been displayed in a case along with some other preserved heads and wax models illustrating cranial anatomy. In 1894 the Institution's collections were dispersed, and Yagan's head was lent to the Liverpool Museum; it is thought not to have been put on display there. By the 1960s Yagan's head was badly deteriorated. In April 1964 the museum decided to dispose of it. It arranged burial of the head on 10 April 1964, together with a Peruvian mummy and a Māori head. They were buried in Everton Cemetery's General Section 16, grave number 296. In later years a number of burials were made around the grave. For example, in 1968 a local hospital buried directly over the box, 20 stillborn babies and two infants who died soon after birth.
Lobbying for repatriation
For many years beginning in the early 1980s, a number of Noongar groups sought the return of Yagan's head to Australia.
At the time, there was no historical trail for the head after Pettigrew passed it on. Tribal elders entrusted the Aboriginal leader Ken Colbung with the search. In the early 1990s, Colbung enlisted the aid of University of London archaeologist Peter Ucko. One of Ucko's researchers, Cressida Fforde, conducted a literature search for information on the head. Fforde successfully traced the head in December 1993. The following April, Colbung applied to exhume the remains under Section 25 of the Burial Act 1857. Home Office regulations required next of kin consent before disturbing the remains of the 22 infants. Colbung's solicitors requested waiver of this condition on grounds that the exhumation would be of great personal significance to Yagan's living relatives, and great national importance to Australia.
Meanwhile, divisions in the Noongar community in Perth began to develop. Some elders questioned Colbung's role and one Noongar registered a complaint with the Liverpool City Council over his involvement. Media reports indicated acrimonious debate within the Noongar community about who had the best cultural qualifications to take possession of the head. The academic Hannah McGlade claims that these divisions were largely manufactured by the media, particularly The West Australian, which "aimed to and successfully represented the Nyungar community in terms of disharmony and dissent". She alleges that one West reporter contacted Noongar who were known to be in disagreement, and quoted one to the other, so as to elicit provocative responses. The disputes were "trumpeted" by The West, allowing it to "preach" against the infighting.
On 25 July a public meeting was held in Perth. All parties agreed to put aside their differences and co-operate to ensure that the repatriation was a "national success". A Yagan Steering Committee was established to co-ordinate the repatriation, and Colbung's application was allowed to proceed. In January 1995 the Home Office advised Colbung that it was unable to waive the requirement to obtain next of kin consent for the exhumation. It contacted the five relatives whose addresses were known, and received unconditional consent from only one. Accordingly, on 30 June 1995, Colbung and the other interested parties were advised that the application for exhumation had been rejected.
Meeting on 21 September, the Yagan Steering Committee decided to lobby Australian and British politicians for support. In 1997 Colbung was invited to visit the United Kingdom at the British government's expense and he arrived on 20 May. His visit attracted substantial media coverage, and increased the political pressure on the British Government. He secured the support of the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, after gate crashing the Prime Minister's June visit to the United Kingdom.
Exhumation
While Colbung was in the United Kingdom, Martin and Richard Bates were engaged to undertake a geophysical survey of the grave site. Using electromagnetic and ground penetrating radar techniques, they identified an approximate position of the box that suggested it could be accessed from the side via the adjacent plot. A report of the survey was passed to the Home Office, prompting further discussions between the British and Australian Governments.
Of concern to the Home Office were an undisclosed number of letters that it had received objecting to Colbung's involvement in the repatriation process; it therefore sought assurances from the Australian Government that Colbung was a correct applicant. In response Colbung asked his elders to ask the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) to tell the British Home Office that he was the correct applicant. ATSIC then convened a meeting in Perth at which it was again resolved that Colbung's application could proceed.
Colbung continued to press for the exhumation, asking that it be performed before the 164th anniversary of Yagan's death on 11 July, so that the anniversary could be the occasion of a celebration. His request was not met, and on the anniversary of Yagan's death, Colbung conducted a short memorial service at the burial plot in Everton. He returned to Australia empty-handed on 15 July.
The exhumation of Yagan's head eventually proceeded, without Colbung's knowledge, by excavating down the side of the grave, then tunnelling horizontally to the location of the box. Thus the exhumation was performed without disturbing any other remains. The following day, a forensic palaeontologist from the University of Bradford positively identified the skull as Yagan's by correlating the fractures with those described in Pettigrew's report. The skull was then kept at the museum until 29 August, when it was handed over to the Liverpool City Council.
Repatriation
On 27 August 1997, a delegation of Noongars consisting of Ken Colbung, Robert Bropho, Richard Wilkes and Mingli Wanjurri-Nungala arrived in the UK to collect Yagan's head. The delegation was to have been larger, but Commonwealth funding was withdrawn at the last minute. The handover of Yagan's skull was further delayed when a Noongar named Corrie Bodney applied to the Supreme Court of Western Australia for an injunction against the handover. Claiming that his family group has sole responsibility for Yagan's remains, Bodney declared the exhumation illegal and denied the existence of any tradition or belief necessitating the head's exhumation and removal to Australia. On 29 August, Justice Henry Wallwork rejected the injunction application, on the grounds that Bodney had previously agreed to the current arrangements, and on the evidence of another Noongar elder (Albert Corunna, who claimed to be a closer relation of Yagan) and anthropologist Pat Baines, both of whom refuted Bodney's claim to sole responsibility.
Yagan's skull was handed over to the Noongar delegation at a ceremony at Liverpool Town Hall on 31 August 1997. In accepting the skull, Colbung made comments that were interpreted as linking Yagan's death with the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, earlier that day: That is how nature goes ... Nature is a carrier of all good things and all bad things. And because the Poms did the wrong thing, they now have to suffer. Colbung's comments prompted a media furore throughout Australia, with newspapers receiving many letters from the public expressing shock and anger at the comments. Colbung later claimed that his comments had been misinterpreted.
Throughout the repatriation process, many sections of the international media treated the story as a joke. For example, the US News & World Report ran a story under the headline Raiders of the Lost Conk, in which Yagan's head was referred to as a "pickled curio", and Colbung's actions were treated as a publicity stunt.
Preparations for reburial
On its return to Perth, Yagan's head continued to be a source of controversy and conflict. Responsibility for reburial of the head was given to a "Committee for the Reburial of Yagan's Kaat", headed by Richard Wilkes. The reburial was delayed by disputes between elders over the burial location, mainly due to uncertainty of the whereabouts of the rest of his body, and disagreement about the importance of burying the head with the body.
A number of attempts were made to locate the remains of Yagan's body, which were believed to be on Lot 39 West Swan Road in the outer Perth suburb of Belhus. A remote sensing survey of the site was carried out in 1998, but no remains were found. An archaeological survey of the area was undertaken two years later, but this also was unsuccessful. Disputes then arose over whether the head could be buried separately from the body. Wilkes has claimed that it can, so long as it is placed where Yagan was killed, so that Dreamtime spirits can reunite the remains.
In 1998 the Western Australian Planning Commission and the Department of Aboriginal Affairs jointly published a document entitled Yagan's Gravesite Master Plan, which discussed "matters of ownership, management, development and future use" of the property on which Yagan's remains are believed to be buried. Under consideration was the possibility of turning the site into an Indigenous burial site, to be managed by the Metropolitan Cemeteries Board.
Yagan's head spent some time in storage in a bank vault before being handed over to forensics experts who reconstructed a model from it. After that it was held in storage at Western Australia's state mortuary. Plans to re-bury the head were repeatedly deferred, causing ongoing conflict between Noongar groups. In September 2008 it was reported that Yagan's head would be reburied in November, and a Yagan Memorial Park created as a projected cost of A$996,000; but in November it was announced that the reburial had been rescheduled for July 2009 because of logistical problems. In March 2009, it was announced that the Department of Indigenous Affairs had given the City of Swan more than A$500,000 to develop the park.
Reburial
The head was finally buried in a private ceremony attended only by invited Noongar elders, on 10 July 2010, the anniversary of the last full day he lived and one day before the end of NAIDOC Week 2010. The site in Belhus was chosen as it is believed to be near to where the rest of Yagan's body was buried. The burial coincided with a ceremony to mark the opening of the Yagan Memorial Park, which was attended by around 300 people, including Noongar elders and state government representatives. Premier Colin Barnett described the occasion as "a wonderful day for all West Australians".
The art works for the Yagan Memorial Park were designed by Peter Farmer, Sandra Hill, Jenny Dawson and Kylie Ricks. Dawson and Hill created an entry wall of Yagan's story; Farmer designed the park entry statements and Ricks the female coolamon.
Legacy
The repatriation of Yagan's head increased the Aboriginal leader's notability. He is considered a famous historical figure throughout Australia, with material about him appearing in such publications as the Australian Dictionary of Biography, and Western Australia's school curriculum. He is of greatest significance to the Noongar people, for whom he is "a revered, cherished and heroic individual ... patriot and visionary hero of WA's South-West". The return of his head was likened by some Indigenous Australians to the November 1993 ceremonial repatriation from Gallipoli of Australia's unknown soldier.
The former Upper Swan Bridge, which carries the Great Northern Highway over the Swan River at Belhus, was renamed the Yagan Bridge in 2010.
An open plaza in the Perth central business district, constructed as part of the Perth City Link urban renewal project, was named Yagan Square. Featuring the statue "Wirin", the plaza, located adjacent to the Horseshoe Bridge, was opened on 3 March 2018.
Cultural references
Alas Poor Yagan
On 6 September 1997 The West Australian published a Dean Alston cartoon entitled Alas Poor Yagan, which was critical of the fact that the return of Yagan's head had become a source of conflict between Noongars instead of fostering unity. The cartoon was interpreted by some as insulting aspects of Noongar culture, and casting aspersions on the motives and legitimacy of Indigenous Australians with mixed racial heritage. The content of the cartoon offended many Indigenous Australians, and a group of Noongar elders complained about the cartoon to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. The commission ruled that the cartoon made inappropriate references to Noongar beliefs but was not in breach of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 because it was "an artistic work" that was published "reasonably and in good faith", and was therefore exempt. This ruling was upheld on appeal by the Federal Court of Australia. Some academic commentators have since expressed concern that the protections offered under the act have been undermined by the ruling's broad interpretation of the exemptions.
Statue
From the mid-1970s, members of the Noongar community lobbied for the erection of a statue of Yagan as part of the WAY 1979 sesquicentennial celebrations. Their requests were refused, however, after the Premier, Charles Court, was advised by one prominent historian that Yagan was not important enough to warrant a statue. Colbung claims "Court was more interested in spending tax payers' money on refurbishing the badly neglected burial place of Captain James Stirling, WA's first governor." Despite this setback, the Noongar community persisted, establishing a Yagan Committee and running a number of fund-raising drives. Eventually, sufficient funds were collected to allow the commissioning of Australian sculptor Robert Hitchcock to create a statue. The result was a life-size statue in bronze, depicting Yagan standing naked with a spear held across his shoulders. Hitchcock's statue of Yagan was officially opened by Yagan Committee chairperson Elizabeth Hanson on 11 September 1984. It stands on Heirisson Island in the Swan River near Perth.
In 1997, within a week of the return of Yagan's head to Perth, vandals beheaded the statue using an angle grinder. Soon after a replacement head was installed and it too was detached and stolen. Credit for the act was anonymously claimed by a "British loyalist" as an act of retaliation for Colbung's comments about Diana, Princess of Wales. The Western Australia Police did not succeed in identifying the vandals, nor in recovering the heads, and deemed it infeasible to have the statue fenced off or placed under guard.
Commentary on the beheadings varied widely. One column in The West Australian found humour in them, referring to the head as a "bonce" and a "noggin", and finished with a pun on "skullduggery". Stephen Muecke calls this the "satirical trivialising of Aboriginal concerns", and Adam Shoemaker writes "This is the stuff of light humour and comic relief. There is no sense of the decapitation as being an act of vandalism, even less that it could have been motivated by malevolence ... [T]he piece has a definite authorising function." On the other hand, academic analysis has treated the act with much more gravity. In 2007, for example, David Martin described the decapitation as "an act which speaks not only to the continuance of white settler racism, but also to the power of mimesis to invigorate our modern memorials and monuments with a life of their own".
In 2002, Janet Woollard, the member for Alfred Cove, called for the statue's genitalia to be covered up. In November 2005, Richard Wilkes also called for the statue's groin to be covered on the grounds that such a depiction would be more historically accurate, as Yagan would have worn a covering for most of the year. Also under consideration is the creation of a new statue with a head shape that accords better with the forensic reconstruction of Yagan's head.
Literature and film
Mary Durack published a fictionalised account of Yagan's life in her 1964 children's novel The Courteous Savage: Yagan of the Swan River, which was renamed Yagan of the Bibbulmun on reissue in 1976.
The repeated beheading of Yagan's statue in 1997 prompted Aboriginal writer Archie Weller to write a short story entitled Confessions of a Headhunter. Weller later worked with film director Sally Riley to adapt the story into a script, and in 2000 a 35-minute movie, also named Confessions of a Headhunter, was released. Directed by Sally Riley, the movie won Best Short Fiction Film at the 2000 AFI Awards. The following year the script won the Script Award in the 2001 Western Australian Premier's Book Awards.
In 2002, the South African-born Australian poet John Mateer published his fourth collection of poems, entitled Loanwords. The collection is divided into four sections, of which the third, In the Presence of a Severed Head, has Yagan as its subject.
Other cultural references
A section of Kullark, a play by Jack Davis, explores the deteriorating relationship between Yagan and a settler couple.
In September 1989 an early maturing cultivar of barley, bred by the Western Australian Department of Agriculture for performance on sandy soils, was released under the name "Hordeum vulgare (Barley) c.v. Yagan". Commonly referred to simply as "Yagan", the cultivar is named for Yagan, continuing a tradition of labelling Western Australian grain cultivars after historic people of Western Australia.
See also
Jandamarra, and the Bunuba War.
Musquito a warrior of the Gai-Mariagal clan
Pemulwuy a warrior and resistance leader of the Bidjigal clan of the Eora people, in the area around Sydney
Tunnerminnerwait, an Australian Aboriginal resistance fighter and Parperloihener clansman from Tasmania
Windradyne, a warrior and resistance leader of the Wiradjuri nation, in what is now central-western New South Wales
Australian frontier wars
References
General references
1790s births
1833 deaths
Art and cultural repatriation
Australian murderers
Australian outlaws
Deaths by firearm in Western Australia
Escapees from Western Australian detention
History of Western Australia
Noongar people
People from Perth, Western Australia
Resistance to colonialism in Australia
Trophy heads | true | [
"Else Fenger (18 June 1737 27 January 1811) was a Danish businessperson. She managed the soap company Borre & Fenger in Copenhagen after the death of her spouse Peter Fenger (d. 1774). She was one of few women in Denmark of her time to manage a major company.\n\nBiography\nElse Brock was born on 18 June 1737 in Randers, the daughter of merchant Rasmus Brock (1695-1752) and Marie Kirstine Andersdatter Knudsen (1710-45). She was the younger sister of businessman Niels Brock.\n\nShe married Peter Fenger on 17 June 1758 in the Church of Our Saviour in Copenhagen. Her spouse was a major industrialist, but at the time of his death, his partner Borre had retired and Fenger had mismanaged the factory to a point that it was threathened by ruin and the family's palatial home in Copenhagen near public auction. Else Fenger managed to get the company back on its feet and keep the family's luxurious living standard and became a well known and respected business figure. Many anecdotes are told about her.\n\nReferences\n\nRxternal links\n Else Fenger\n\n18th-century Danish businesspeople\n19th-century Danish businesspeople\n18th-century Danish businesswomen\n19th-century Danish businesswomen\n1737 births\n1811 deaths",
"Fredrick Else (31 March 193320 July 2015) was an English footballer, who played as a goalkeeper. Else gained over 600 professional appearances in his career playing for three clubs, Preston North End, Blackburn Rovers and Barrow.\n\nClub career\nElse was born in Golborne near Wigan on 31 March 1933. Whilst on national service in the north-east he played for amateur club Axwell Park Colliery Welfare in the Derwent Valley League. He attracted the attention of Football League teams and signed as a junior for Preston North End in 1951, and as a professional in 1953. He made his debut for Preston against Manchester City in 1954, but was restricted to 14 appearances over his first three seasons. He eventually became first choice, displacing George Thompson, and played 238 times for North End. During this time Preston's most successful season came in 1957–58, when the club finished as runners up in Division One.\n\nThe 1960–61 season ended in relegation for Preston and Else was sold to neighbours Blackburn Rovers for £20,000. Else became a first choice for Blackburn straight away and played 221 times for the club. A collarbone injury in 1964–65 resulted in a period out of the game, though Else returned to regain the goalkeeper's jersey at Blackburn. Nonetheless the team were relegated the following season and Else was released. During the summer of 1966 Else signed with Barrow of the Fourth Division. Else became part of Barrow's most successful team, with the side winning promotion to the Third Division in his first season there. Else was Barrow's first choice keeper for the entire period that they were in the third division, and played 148 league matches for the club. He retired from football after Barrow's relegation in 1970 following a leg infection. His final season included a brief stint as caretaker manager at Barrow.\n\nHonours\n Football League Division One Runner-up 1957–1958\n Football League Division Four Promotion 1966–1967\n\nInternational career\nElse has been described by fans of the clubs that he played for as one of the best English goalkeepers never to win a full international cap. He did, however, make one appearance for the England B team in 1957 against Scotland B, as well as participating in a Football Association touring side of 1961.\n\nPersonal life and death\nElse met his wife Marjorie in 1949 in Douglas on the Isle of Man. They married when Else was 22 and Marjorie 20, on 29 October 1955, a Saturday morning. The wedding was held in Marjorie's home town of Blackpool and the date was chosen so that the couple could marry in the morning and Else could then travel either to Deepdale, to play for Preston North End's reserve team, or to Bloomfield Road where Preston's first team was due to be playing Blackpool F.C. In the event Else was selected for the reserves and the couple had to travel by bus to Preston.\n\nAfter retiring from football, Else remained in Barrow-in-Furness, becoming a geography and maths teacher at a local secondary school. He retired from teaching in 1999 and moved to Cyprus, though still attended some Barrow matches. Else died in Barrow-in-Furness on 20 July 2015, aged 82.\n\nReferences\n\n2015 deaths\n1933 births\nBarrow A.F.C. managers\nBarrow A.F.C. players\nBlackburn Rovers F.C. players\nPreston North End F.C. players\nPeople from Golborne\nEnglish footballers\nAssociation football goalkeepers\nSchoolteachers from Cumbria\nEnglish Football League players\nEngland B international footballers\nEnglish football managers"
] |
[
"Yagan",
"Death",
"when did he die?",
"When the party of settlers arrived, they found Yagan dead and Heegan dying.",
"what year was this?",
"1833,",
"how did he die?",
"William Keates shot Yagan, and James shot Heegan, another native, in the act of throwing his spear.",
"why was he killed?",
"the brothers decided to kill the warrior and claim the reward. When the natives were ready to depart, the Keateses took their last opportunity.",
"what was the reward?",
"I don't know.",
"who else was involved in his death?",
"When the party of settlers arrived, they found Yagan dead and Heegan dying. Heegan \"was groaning and his brains were partly out when the party came,"
] | C_fd96a17bb9e74371afa728bd135272c3_1 | did heegan die as well? | 7 | Did Heehan die as well? | Yagan | On 11 July 1833, two teenage brothers named William and James Keates were herding cattle along the Swan River north of Guildford when a group of Noongar approached while en route to collect flour rations from Henry Bull's house. The Keates brothers suggested Yagan remain with them to avoid arrest. While he was staying with them during the morning, the brothers decided to kill the warrior and claim the reward. When the natives were ready to depart, the Keateses took their last opportunity. William Keates shot Yagan, and James shot Heegan, another native, in the act of throwing his spear. The brothers ran away, but other Noongar overtook William and speared him to death. James escaped by swimming the river. Shortly afterward he returned with a party of armed settlers from Bull's estate. When the party of settlers arrived, they found Yagan dead and Heegan dying. Heegan "was groaning and his brains were partly out when the party came, and whether humanity or brutality, a man put a gun to his head and blew it to pieces." The settlers cut Yagan's head from his body, and skinned his back to obtain his tribal markings as a trophy. They buried the bodies a short distance away. James Keates claimed the reward, but his conduct was widely criticised. The Perth Gazette referred to Yagan's killing as "a wild and treacherous act ... it is revolting to hear this lauded as a meritorious deed." However, Daisy Bates understood that "he was killed in self-defence by the young lad." Keates left the colony the following month; it is possible that he left from fear of being murdered in tribal retaliation. CANNOTANSWER | whether humanity or brutality, a man put a gun to his head and blew it to pieces." | Yagan (; – 11 July 1833) was an Aboriginal Australian warrior from the Noongar people. He played a key part in early resistance to British colonial settlement and rule in the area surrounding what is now Perth, Western Australia. Yagan was pursued by the local authorities after he killed Erin Entwhistle, a servant of farmer Archibald Butler. It was an act of retaliation after Thomas Smedley, another of Butler's servants, shot at a group of Noongar people stealing potatoes and fowls, killing one of them. The government offered a bounty for Yagan's capture, dead or alive, and a young settler, William Keats, shot and killed him. Yagan's execution figures in Australian history as a symbol of the unjust and sometimes brutal treatment of the indigenous peoples of Australia by colonial settlers. He is considered a hero by the Noongar.
After his shooting, settlers removed Yagan's head to claim the bounty. Later, an official sent it to London, where it was exhibited as an "anthropological curiosity" and eventually given to a museum in Liverpool. It held the head in storage for more than a century before burying it with other remains in an unmarked grave in Liverpool in 1964. Over the years, the Noongar asked for repatriation of the head, both for religious reasons and because of Yagan's traditional stature. The burial site was identified in 1993; officials exhumed the head four years later and repatriated it to Australia. After years of debate within the Noongar community on the appropriate final resting place, Yagan's head was buried in a traditional ceremony in the Swan Valley in July 2010, 177 years after his death.
Biography
Early life
A member of the Whadjuk Noongar people, Yagan belonged to a tribe of around 60 people whose name, according to Robert Lyon, was Beeliar. Scholars now believe that the Beeliar people may have been a family subgroup (or clan) of a larger tribe whom Daisy Bates called Beelgar. According to Lyon, the Beeliar people occupied the land south of the Swan and Canning rivers, as far south as Mangles Bay. The group had customary land usage rights over a much larger area than this, extending north as far as Lake Monger and northeast to the Helena River. The group also had an unusual degree of freedom to move over their neighbours' land, possibly due to kinship and marriage ties with neighbouring groups.
Yagan is thought to have been born around 1795. His father was Midgegooroo, an elder of the Beeliar people; his mother was presumably one of Midgegooroo's two wives. Yagan was probably a Ballaroke in the Noongar classification.
Marriage and family
According to the historian Neville Green, Yagan had a wife and two children. A report in the Perth Gazette in 1833 gives the names of his children as "Naral", age 9, and "Willim", age 11; but most other sources state that the warrior was unmarried and childless. Described as taller than average with an impressive burly physique, Yagan had a distinctive tribal tattoo on his right shoulder, which identified him as "a man of high degree in tribal law". He was generally acknowledged to be the most physically powerful of his tribe, and was said to have been able to spear another stick from a distance of or penetrate a tree from a distance of .
Relations with settlers
Yagan would have been about 35 years old in 1829 when British settlers landed in the area and established the Swan River Colony. For the first two years of the colony, relations between settlers and Noongar were generally amicable, as there was little competition for resources. The Noongar welcomed the white settlers as , the returned spirits of their dead. Historical reports noted the two groups shared fish. As time passed, conflicts between the two cultures gradually became more frequent. The settlers incorrectly thought that the Noongar were nomads who had no claim to the land over which they roamed. Colonists fenced off land for grazing and farming according to their traditional practices of land use.
As the colonists fenced off more land, the Noongar were increasingly denied access to their traditional hunting grounds and sacred sites. In search of food, the Noongar raided the settlers' crops and killed their cattle. They also developed a taste for the settlers' supplies, and began to take flour and other food, which became a serious problem for the colony. In addition, the Noongar practice of firestick farming, or lighting the bush to flush out game and encourage germination of undergrowth for sustainability, threatened the settlers' crops and houses.
In December 1831 Yagan and his father led the first significant Aboriginal resistance to white settlement in Western Australia. Thomas Smedley, a servant of farmer Archibald Butler, ambushed some natives who were raiding a potato patch, and killed one of Yagan's family group. A few days later, Yagan, Midgegooroo and others stormed the farmhouse and, finding the door locked, began to break through the mud-brick walls. Inside were Butler's servant Erin Entwhistle and his two sons Enion and Ralph. After hiding his sons under the bed, Entwhistle opened the door to parley and was killed by Yagan and Midgegooroo. Noongar tribal law required that murders be avenged by the killing of a member of the murderer's tribal group, not necessarily the murderer. The Noongar considered servants and employees to be part of the settlers' groups. Historians believe the Noongar attack on Entwhistle was retribution under their tribal law. Not understanding tribal law (and unlikely to agree with its concepts), the white settlers took the killing to be an unprovoked murder and dispatched a force to arrest Yagan's group, without success.
In June 1832 Yagan led a party of Noongar in attacking two labourers sowing a field of wheat alongside the Canning River near Kelmscott. One of the men, John Thomas, escaped, but the other, William Gaze, was wounded and later died as a result. The settlement declared Yagan an outlaw and offered a reward of £20 for his capture. He avoided capture until early October 1832. A group of fishermen enticed Yagan and two companions into their boat, then pushed off into deep water. The fishermen took the three Noongar men to the Perth guardhouse, from which they were transferred to the Round House at Fremantle. Yagan was sentenced to death, but he was saved by the intercession of settler Robert Lyon. Arguing that Yagan was defending his land against invasion, Lyon said Yagan should not be considered a criminal but a prisoner of war and suggested he should be treated as such. At the recommendation of John Septimus Roe, the Surveyor-General of Western Australia, Yagan and his men were exiled on Carnac Island under the supervision of Lyon and two soldiers.
Lyon thought he could teach Yagan British ways and convert him to Christianity. He hoped to gain his cooperation and use his tribal stature to persuade the Noongar to accept colonial authority. Lyon spent many hours with Yagan learning his language and customs. After a month, Yagan and his companions escaped by stealing an unattended dinghy and rowing to Woodman Point on the mainland. The Government did not pursue them; apparently its officials considered they had been sufficiently punished.
In January 1833 two Noongar, Gyallipert and Manyat, visited Perth from King George Sound, where relations between settlers and natives were amicable. Two settlers, Richard Dale and George Smythe, arranged for the men to meet a party of local Noongar to encourage friendly relations in the Swan River Colony. On 26 January Yagan led a group of ten formally armed Noongars in greeting the two men near Lake Monger. The men exchanged weapons and held a corroboree, though the groups did not appear to share a language. Yagan and Gyallipert competed at spear throwing. As an example of his prowess, Yagan struck a walking stick from a distance of .
Gyallipert and Manyat remained in Perth for some time. On 3 March, Yagan obtained permission to hold another corroboree, this time in the Post Office garden in Perth. The Perth and King George Sound men met at dusk, chalked their bodies, and performed a number of dances including a kangaroo hunt dance. The Perth Gazette wrote that Yagan "was master of ceremonies and acquitted himself with infinite grace and dignity".
During February and March, Yagan was involved in a series of minor conflicts with settlers. In February William Watson complained that Yagan had pushed open his door, demanded a gun, and taken handkerchiefs. Watson had to give him and his companions flour and bread. The following month, Yagan was among a group who received biscuits from a military contingent under Lieutenant Norcott; when Norcott tried to restrict his supply, Yagan threatened him with his spear. Later that month, Yagan was with a group of Noongar who entered Watson's house while he was away. The group left after Watson's wife called on neighbours for help. The next day Captain Ellis lectured the Noongar about their behaviour. The frequent incidents prompted The Perth Gazette to remark on "the reckless daring of this desperado who sets his life at a pin's fee ... For the most trivial offence ... he would take the life of any man who provoked him. He is at the head and front of any mischief."
Wanted dead or alive
On the night of 29 April, a party of Noongar broke into a Fremantle store to steal flour and they were shot at by the caretaker Peter Chidlow. Domjum, a brother of Yagan, was badly injured and died in jail a few days later. The rest of the party moved from Fremantle to Preston Point, where Yagan reportedly vowed vengeance for the death. Between 50 and 60 Noongar gathered at Bull Creek, where they met a party of settlers who were loading carts with provisions. Later that day, the group ambushed the lead cart, killing two settlers, Tom and John Velvick. Tribal law required only a single death for vengeance. Some historians have speculated that the Velvicks were targeted because they had previously been convicted for assaulting Aboriginal people and coloured seamen. Alexandra Hasluck has also argued that stealing provisions was an important motive in the attack, but this has been refuted elsewhere.
For the killing of the Velvicks, the Lieutenant-Governor Frederick Irwin declared Yagan, Midgegooroo and Munday to be outlaws, offering rewards of £20 each for the capture of Midgegooroo and Munday, and a reward of £30 for Yagan's capture, dead or alive. Munday successfully appealed against his proscription. Midgegooroo, Yagan and their group immediately moved from their territory north towards the Helena Valley. On 17 May, Midgegooroo was captured on the Helena River. After a brief, informal trial, he was executed by firing squad. Yagan remained at large for over two months.
Late in May, George Fletcher Moore reported seeing Yagan on his property and talking with him in pidgin English. Moore wrote in the Perth Gazette:
Yagan asked Moore whether Midgegooroo was dead or alive. Moore gave no reply, but a servant answered that Midgegooroo was a prisoner on Carnac Island. Yagan warned, "White man shoot Midgegooroo, Yagan kill three." Moore reported the encounter but made no attempt to restrain Yagan. He later wrote, "The truth is, every one wishes him taken, but no one likes to be the captor ... there is something in his daring which one is forced to admire."
Death
On 11 July 1833, two teenage brothers named William and James Keates were herding cattle along the Swan River north of Guildford when a group of Noongar approached while en route to collect flour rations from Henry Bull's house. The Keates brothers suggested Yagan remain with them to avoid arrest. While he was staying with them during the morning, the brothers decided to kill the warrior and claim the reward. When the natives were ready to depart, the Keateses took their last opportunity. William Keates shot Yagan, and James shot Heegan, another native, in the act of throwing his spear. The brothers ran away, but other Noongar overtook William and speared him to death. James escaped by swimming the river. Shortly afterward he returned with a party of armed settlers from Bull's estate.
When the party of settlers arrived, they found Yagan dead and Heegan dying. Heegan "was groaning and his brains were partly out when the party came, and whether humanity or brutality, a man put a gun to his head and blew it to pieces." The settlers cut Yagan's head from his body, and skinned his back to obtain his tribal markings as a trophy. They buried the bodies a short distance away.
James Keates claimed the reward, but his conduct was widely criticised. The Perth Gazette referred to Yagan's killing as "a wild and treacherous act ... it is revolting to hear this lauded as a meritorious deed." However, Daisy Bates understood that "he was killed in self-defence by the young lad." Keates left the colony the following month; it is possible that he left from fear of being murdered in tribal retaliation.
Yagan's head
Exhibition and burial
Yagan's head was initially taken to Henry Bull's house. Moore saw it there and sketched the head a number of times in his unpublished, handwritten diary, commenting that "possibly it may yet figure in some museum at home." The head was preserved by smoking.
In September 1833, Governor Irwin sailed for London, partly to give his own account of the events leading up to the killing. This was an unusual measure, especially given his regiment was about to leave for a tour of duty in India. The Colonial Office indicated satisfaction with Irwin's administration of the colony.
Travelling with Irwin was Ensign Robert Dale, who had somehow acquired Yagan's head. According to the historian Paul Turnbull, Dale appears to have persuaded Irwin to let him have the head as an "anthropological curiosity". After arriving in London, Dale tried to sell the head to scientists, approaching a number of anatomists and phrenologists. His price of £20 failed to find a buyer, so he made an agreement with Thomas Pettigrew for the exclusive use of the head for 18 months. Pettigrew, a surgeon and antiquarian, was well known in the London social scene for holding private parties at which he unrolled and autopsied ancient Egyptian mummies. He displayed the head on a table in front of a panoramic view of King George Sound reproduced from Dale's sketches. For effect, the head was adorned with a fresh corded headband and feathers of the red-tailed black cockatoo.
Pettigrew had the head examined by a phrenologist. Examination was considered difficult because of the large fracture across the back of the head caused by the gunshot. His conclusions were consistent with contemporary European opinion of Indigenous Australians. Dale published these in a pamphlet entitled Descriptive Account of the Panoramic View &c. of King George's Sound and the Adjacent Country, which Pettigrew encouraged his guests to buy as a souvenir of their evening. The frontispiece of the pamphlet was a hand-coloured aquatint print of Yagan's head by the artist George Cruikshank.
Early in October 1835, Yagan's head and the panoramic view were returned to Dale, then living in Liverpool. On 12 October he presented them to the Liverpool Royal Institution, where the head may have been displayed in a case along with some other preserved heads and wax models illustrating cranial anatomy. In 1894 the Institution's collections were dispersed, and Yagan's head was lent to the Liverpool Museum; it is thought not to have been put on display there. By the 1960s Yagan's head was badly deteriorated. In April 1964 the museum decided to dispose of it. It arranged burial of the head on 10 April 1964, together with a Peruvian mummy and a Māori head. They were buried in Everton Cemetery's General Section 16, grave number 296. In later years a number of burials were made around the grave. For example, in 1968 a local hospital buried directly over the box, 20 stillborn babies and two infants who died soon after birth.
Lobbying for repatriation
For many years beginning in the early 1980s, a number of Noongar groups sought the return of Yagan's head to Australia.
At the time, there was no historical trail for the head after Pettigrew passed it on. Tribal elders entrusted the Aboriginal leader Ken Colbung with the search. In the early 1990s, Colbung enlisted the aid of University of London archaeologist Peter Ucko. One of Ucko's researchers, Cressida Fforde, conducted a literature search for information on the head. Fforde successfully traced the head in December 1993. The following April, Colbung applied to exhume the remains under Section 25 of the Burial Act 1857. Home Office regulations required next of kin consent before disturbing the remains of the 22 infants. Colbung's solicitors requested waiver of this condition on grounds that the exhumation would be of great personal significance to Yagan's living relatives, and great national importance to Australia.
Meanwhile, divisions in the Noongar community in Perth began to develop. Some elders questioned Colbung's role and one Noongar registered a complaint with the Liverpool City Council over his involvement. Media reports indicated acrimonious debate within the Noongar community about who had the best cultural qualifications to take possession of the head. The academic Hannah McGlade claims that these divisions were largely manufactured by the media, particularly The West Australian, which "aimed to and successfully represented the Nyungar community in terms of disharmony and dissent". She alleges that one West reporter contacted Noongar who were known to be in disagreement, and quoted one to the other, so as to elicit provocative responses. The disputes were "trumpeted" by The West, allowing it to "preach" against the infighting.
On 25 July a public meeting was held in Perth. All parties agreed to put aside their differences and co-operate to ensure that the repatriation was a "national success". A Yagan Steering Committee was established to co-ordinate the repatriation, and Colbung's application was allowed to proceed. In January 1995 the Home Office advised Colbung that it was unable to waive the requirement to obtain next of kin consent for the exhumation. It contacted the five relatives whose addresses were known, and received unconditional consent from only one. Accordingly, on 30 June 1995, Colbung and the other interested parties were advised that the application for exhumation had been rejected.
Meeting on 21 September, the Yagan Steering Committee decided to lobby Australian and British politicians for support. In 1997 Colbung was invited to visit the United Kingdom at the British government's expense and he arrived on 20 May. His visit attracted substantial media coverage, and increased the political pressure on the British Government. He secured the support of the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, after gate crashing the Prime Minister's June visit to the United Kingdom.
Exhumation
While Colbung was in the United Kingdom, Martin and Richard Bates were engaged to undertake a geophysical survey of the grave site. Using electromagnetic and ground penetrating radar techniques, they identified an approximate position of the box that suggested it could be accessed from the side via the adjacent plot. A report of the survey was passed to the Home Office, prompting further discussions between the British and Australian Governments.
Of concern to the Home Office were an undisclosed number of letters that it had received objecting to Colbung's involvement in the repatriation process; it therefore sought assurances from the Australian Government that Colbung was a correct applicant. In response Colbung asked his elders to ask the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) to tell the British Home Office that he was the correct applicant. ATSIC then convened a meeting in Perth at which it was again resolved that Colbung's application could proceed.
Colbung continued to press for the exhumation, asking that it be performed before the 164th anniversary of Yagan's death on 11 July, so that the anniversary could be the occasion of a celebration. His request was not met, and on the anniversary of Yagan's death, Colbung conducted a short memorial service at the burial plot in Everton. He returned to Australia empty-handed on 15 July.
The exhumation of Yagan's head eventually proceeded, without Colbung's knowledge, by excavating down the side of the grave, then tunnelling horizontally to the location of the box. Thus the exhumation was performed without disturbing any other remains. The following day, a forensic palaeontologist from the University of Bradford positively identified the skull as Yagan's by correlating the fractures with those described in Pettigrew's report. The skull was then kept at the museum until 29 August, when it was handed over to the Liverpool City Council.
Repatriation
On 27 August 1997, a delegation of Noongars consisting of Ken Colbung, Robert Bropho, Richard Wilkes and Mingli Wanjurri-Nungala arrived in the UK to collect Yagan's head. The delegation was to have been larger, but Commonwealth funding was withdrawn at the last minute. The handover of Yagan's skull was further delayed when a Noongar named Corrie Bodney applied to the Supreme Court of Western Australia for an injunction against the handover. Claiming that his family group has sole responsibility for Yagan's remains, Bodney declared the exhumation illegal and denied the existence of any tradition or belief necessitating the head's exhumation and removal to Australia. On 29 August, Justice Henry Wallwork rejected the injunction application, on the grounds that Bodney had previously agreed to the current arrangements, and on the evidence of another Noongar elder (Albert Corunna, who claimed to be a closer relation of Yagan) and anthropologist Pat Baines, both of whom refuted Bodney's claim to sole responsibility.
Yagan's skull was handed over to the Noongar delegation at a ceremony at Liverpool Town Hall on 31 August 1997. In accepting the skull, Colbung made comments that were interpreted as linking Yagan's death with the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, earlier that day: That is how nature goes ... Nature is a carrier of all good things and all bad things. And because the Poms did the wrong thing, they now have to suffer. Colbung's comments prompted a media furore throughout Australia, with newspapers receiving many letters from the public expressing shock and anger at the comments. Colbung later claimed that his comments had been misinterpreted.
Throughout the repatriation process, many sections of the international media treated the story as a joke. For example, the US News & World Report ran a story under the headline Raiders of the Lost Conk, in which Yagan's head was referred to as a "pickled curio", and Colbung's actions were treated as a publicity stunt.
Preparations for reburial
On its return to Perth, Yagan's head continued to be a source of controversy and conflict. Responsibility for reburial of the head was given to a "Committee for the Reburial of Yagan's Kaat", headed by Richard Wilkes. The reburial was delayed by disputes between elders over the burial location, mainly due to uncertainty of the whereabouts of the rest of his body, and disagreement about the importance of burying the head with the body.
A number of attempts were made to locate the remains of Yagan's body, which were believed to be on Lot 39 West Swan Road in the outer Perth suburb of Belhus. A remote sensing survey of the site was carried out in 1998, but no remains were found. An archaeological survey of the area was undertaken two years later, but this also was unsuccessful. Disputes then arose over whether the head could be buried separately from the body. Wilkes has claimed that it can, so long as it is placed where Yagan was killed, so that Dreamtime spirits can reunite the remains.
In 1998 the Western Australian Planning Commission and the Department of Aboriginal Affairs jointly published a document entitled Yagan's Gravesite Master Plan, which discussed "matters of ownership, management, development and future use" of the property on which Yagan's remains are believed to be buried. Under consideration was the possibility of turning the site into an Indigenous burial site, to be managed by the Metropolitan Cemeteries Board.
Yagan's head spent some time in storage in a bank vault before being handed over to forensics experts who reconstructed a model from it. After that it was held in storage at Western Australia's state mortuary. Plans to re-bury the head were repeatedly deferred, causing ongoing conflict between Noongar groups. In September 2008 it was reported that Yagan's head would be reburied in November, and a Yagan Memorial Park created as a projected cost of A$996,000; but in November it was announced that the reburial had been rescheduled for July 2009 because of logistical problems. In March 2009, it was announced that the Department of Indigenous Affairs had given the City of Swan more than A$500,000 to develop the park.
Reburial
The head was finally buried in a private ceremony attended only by invited Noongar elders, on 10 July 2010, the anniversary of the last full day he lived and one day before the end of NAIDOC Week 2010. The site in Belhus was chosen as it is believed to be near to where the rest of Yagan's body was buried. The burial coincided with a ceremony to mark the opening of the Yagan Memorial Park, which was attended by around 300 people, including Noongar elders and state government representatives. Premier Colin Barnett described the occasion as "a wonderful day for all West Australians".
The art works for the Yagan Memorial Park were designed by Peter Farmer, Sandra Hill, Jenny Dawson and Kylie Ricks. Dawson and Hill created an entry wall of Yagan's story; Farmer designed the park entry statements and Ricks the female coolamon.
Legacy
The repatriation of Yagan's head increased the Aboriginal leader's notability. He is considered a famous historical figure throughout Australia, with material about him appearing in such publications as the Australian Dictionary of Biography, and Western Australia's school curriculum. He is of greatest significance to the Noongar people, for whom he is "a revered, cherished and heroic individual ... patriot and visionary hero of WA's South-West". The return of his head was likened by some Indigenous Australians to the November 1993 ceremonial repatriation from Gallipoli of Australia's unknown soldier.
The former Upper Swan Bridge, which carries the Great Northern Highway over the Swan River at Belhus, was renamed the Yagan Bridge in 2010.
An open plaza in the Perth central business district, constructed as part of the Perth City Link urban renewal project, was named Yagan Square. Featuring the statue "Wirin", the plaza, located adjacent to the Horseshoe Bridge, was opened on 3 March 2018.
Cultural references
Alas Poor Yagan
On 6 September 1997 The West Australian published a Dean Alston cartoon entitled Alas Poor Yagan, which was critical of the fact that the return of Yagan's head had become a source of conflict between Noongars instead of fostering unity. The cartoon was interpreted by some as insulting aspects of Noongar culture, and casting aspersions on the motives and legitimacy of Indigenous Australians with mixed racial heritage. The content of the cartoon offended many Indigenous Australians, and a group of Noongar elders complained about the cartoon to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. The commission ruled that the cartoon made inappropriate references to Noongar beliefs but was not in breach of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 because it was "an artistic work" that was published "reasonably and in good faith", and was therefore exempt. This ruling was upheld on appeal by the Federal Court of Australia. Some academic commentators have since expressed concern that the protections offered under the act have been undermined by the ruling's broad interpretation of the exemptions.
Statue
From the mid-1970s, members of the Noongar community lobbied for the erection of a statue of Yagan as part of the WAY 1979 sesquicentennial celebrations. Their requests were refused, however, after the Premier, Charles Court, was advised by one prominent historian that Yagan was not important enough to warrant a statue. Colbung claims "Court was more interested in spending tax payers' money on refurbishing the badly neglected burial place of Captain James Stirling, WA's first governor." Despite this setback, the Noongar community persisted, establishing a Yagan Committee and running a number of fund-raising drives. Eventually, sufficient funds were collected to allow the commissioning of Australian sculptor Robert Hitchcock to create a statue. The result was a life-size statue in bronze, depicting Yagan standing naked with a spear held across his shoulders. Hitchcock's statue of Yagan was officially opened by Yagan Committee chairperson Elizabeth Hanson on 11 September 1984. It stands on Heirisson Island in the Swan River near Perth.
In 1997, within a week of the return of Yagan's head to Perth, vandals beheaded the statue using an angle grinder. Soon after a replacement head was installed and it too was detached and stolen. Credit for the act was anonymously claimed by a "British loyalist" as an act of retaliation for Colbung's comments about Diana, Princess of Wales. The Western Australia Police did not succeed in identifying the vandals, nor in recovering the heads, and deemed it infeasible to have the statue fenced off or placed under guard.
Commentary on the beheadings varied widely. One column in The West Australian found humour in them, referring to the head as a "bonce" and a "noggin", and finished with a pun on "skullduggery". Stephen Muecke calls this the "satirical trivialising of Aboriginal concerns", and Adam Shoemaker writes "This is the stuff of light humour and comic relief. There is no sense of the decapitation as being an act of vandalism, even less that it could have been motivated by malevolence ... [T]he piece has a definite authorising function." On the other hand, academic analysis has treated the act with much more gravity. In 2007, for example, David Martin described the decapitation as "an act which speaks not only to the continuance of white settler racism, but also to the power of mimesis to invigorate our modern memorials and monuments with a life of their own".
In 2002, Janet Woollard, the member for Alfred Cove, called for the statue's genitalia to be covered up. In November 2005, Richard Wilkes also called for the statue's groin to be covered on the grounds that such a depiction would be more historically accurate, as Yagan would have worn a covering for most of the year. Also under consideration is the creation of a new statue with a head shape that accords better with the forensic reconstruction of Yagan's head.
Literature and film
Mary Durack published a fictionalised account of Yagan's life in her 1964 children's novel The Courteous Savage: Yagan of the Swan River, which was renamed Yagan of the Bibbulmun on reissue in 1976.
The repeated beheading of Yagan's statue in 1997 prompted Aboriginal writer Archie Weller to write a short story entitled Confessions of a Headhunter. Weller later worked with film director Sally Riley to adapt the story into a script, and in 2000 a 35-minute movie, also named Confessions of a Headhunter, was released. Directed by Sally Riley, the movie won Best Short Fiction Film at the 2000 AFI Awards. The following year the script won the Script Award in the 2001 Western Australian Premier's Book Awards.
In 2002, the South African-born Australian poet John Mateer published his fourth collection of poems, entitled Loanwords. The collection is divided into four sections, of which the third, In the Presence of a Severed Head, has Yagan as its subject.
Other cultural references
A section of Kullark, a play by Jack Davis, explores the deteriorating relationship between Yagan and a settler couple.
In September 1989 an early maturing cultivar of barley, bred by the Western Australian Department of Agriculture for performance on sandy soils, was released under the name "Hordeum vulgare (Barley) c.v. Yagan". Commonly referred to simply as "Yagan", the cultivar is named for Yagan, continuing a tradition of labelling Western Australian grain cultivars after historic people of Western Australia.
See also
Jandamarra, and the Bunuba War.
Musquito a warrior of the Gai-Mariagal clan
Pemulwuy a warrior and resistance leader of the Bidjigal clan of the Eora people, in the area around Sydney
Tunnerminnerwait, an Australian Aboriginal resistance fighter and Parperloihener clansman from Tasmania
Windradyne, a warrior and resistance leader of the Wiradjuri nation, in what is now central-western New South Wales
Australian frontier wars
References
General references
1790s births
1833 deaths
Art and cultural repatriation
Australian murderers
Australian outlaws
Deaths by firearm in Western Australia
Escapees from Western Australian detention
History of Western Australia
Noongar people
People from Perth, Western Australia
Resistance to colonialism in Australia
Trophy heads | true | [
"The Silver Tassie is a four-act Expressionist play about the First World War, written between 1927 and 1928 by the Irish playwright Seán O'Casey. It was O'Casey's fourth play and attacks imperialist wars and the suffering that they cause. O'Casey described the play as \"A generous handful of stones, aimed indiscriminately, with the aim of breaking a few windows. I don't think it makes a good play, but it's a remarkable one.\"\n\nPlot\nAn antiwar play in four acts, focusing on Harry Heegan, a soldier who goes to war as if going to a football match.\n\nAct 1 : The opening presents Harry in the prime of life, as an athletic hero, but unaware of the possibilities and values of life. \nAct 2 is a sudden change of tempo, being an experiment with expressionist and symbolic theater. Set at the battlefront it unexpectedly concentrates on the cynicism and despair of the common soldier at the front lines. \nAct 3 portrays the bitterness of the veterans in a veterans’ hospital\nAct 4 contrasts the grim plight of the disabled Harry Heegan with the vitality of those who were not combatants and have normal lives and futures to anticipate.\n\nThe play's study of Harry’s loss of many of his life’s hopes during and after the war marks it as unusual.\n\nProduction history\nIn 1928, W. B. Yeats rejected the play for the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. It premièred at the Apollo Theatre in the West End of London on 11 October 1929. It was directed by Raymond Massey and starred Charles Laughton and Barry Fitzgerald. The set design for act two was by Augustus John. It ran for twenty-six performances. George Bernard Shaw and Lady Gregory were both great admirers of the production.\n\nIts Irish première was on 12 August 1935 at the Abbey Theatre, directed by Arthur Shields, though it ran for only five performances. Despite being popular, the controversy it caused led to O'Casey's permanent departure from Ireland.\n\nThe first major production in England was by the RSC at the Aldwych Theatre, London, directed by David Jones, which opened on 10 September 1969 with Richard Moore as Harry Heegan.\n\nMore recent productions include a 1990 production at the Abbey Theatre directed by Patrick Mason, a 1995 production at the Almeida Theatre, a 2010 tour of Ireland (along with performances in The Lowry in Manchester and the Oxford Playhouse) by the Druid Theatre Company. and a 2014 production at London's National Theatre.\n\nAdaptations\nMark Anthony Turnage adapted the play as an opera under the same title in 1999.\n\nThe Druid Theatre Company adapted the play as part of the 2010 Dublin Theatre Festival starring Aaron Monaghan as Harry Heegan.\n\nSee also\n List of plays with anti-war themes\n\nReferences\n\nSources\n\n Quinn, Edward. 2006. A Dictionary of Literary and Thematic Terms. 2nd, rev. ed. New York: Facts on File. .\n\n1929 plays\nExpressionist plays\nPlays by Seán O'Casey\nWest End plays\nPlays about World War I",
"Horseed FC vs Heegan FC was the first ever association football match to be aired live in Somalia.\n\nSignificance\nThe significance of this event is attributed to the fact that this sports event is an indication for the increasing visibility of stability in Somalia. After the country had undergone two decades and a half of civil war it made any semblance of entertainment unthinkable due to the fact that venues that hosted such events would usually be targeted. The Somali Football Federation president Abdiqani Said Arab considered the ability to broadcast live on local television as \"a breakthrough\" and evidence that the country is recovering after a lengthy period of violence. It was expected to attract a large number of fans from all over the country.\n\nOverview\nIt simultaneously was also the most watched Somali football game in history, and described by media officials as ‘the most hotly-contested’ football game in Somalia ever. Deeq Abdullahi Nur AKA Aariyo scored the first goal for Heegan in the 32nd minute. In the second half however, Horseed upped their game after the equalizer by Adaani Barre Isse and the winning goal by Kenyan Daniel Matango.\n\nSee also\n Somalia League\n\nReferences\n\nAssociation football matches in Africa\nFoo\nFootball competitions in Somalia"
] |
[
"Yagan",
"Death",
"when did he die?",
"When the party of settlers arrived, they found Yagan dead and Heegan dying.",
"what year was this?",
"1833,",
"how did he die?",
"William Keates shot Yagan, and James shot Heegan, another native, in the act of throwing his spear.",
"why was he killed?",
"the brothers decided to kill the warrior and claim the reward. When the natives were ready to depart, the Keateses took their last opportunity.",
"what was the reward?",
"I don't know.",
"who else was involved in his death?",
"When the party of settlers arrived, they found Yagan dead and Heegan dying. Heegan \"was groaning and his brains were partly out when the party came,",
"did heegan die as well?",
"whether humanity or brutality, a man put a gun to his head and blew it to pieces.\""
] | C_fd96a17bb9e74371afa728bd135272c3_1 | Are there any other interesting aspects about this article? | 8 | Besides Yagan's brothers deciding to kill him, are there any other interesting aspects about Yagan? | Yagan | On 11 July 1833, two teenage brothers named William and James Keates were herding cattle along the Swan River north of Guildford when a group of Noongar approached while en route to collect flour rations from Henry Bull's house. The Keates brothers suggested Yagan remain with them to avoid arrest. While he was staying with them during the morning, the brothers decided to kill the warrior and claim the reward. When the natives were ready to depart, the Keateses took their last opportunity. William Keates shot Yagan, and James shot Heegan, another native, in the act of throwing his spear. The brothers ran away, but other Noongar overtook William and speared him to death. James escaped by swimming the river. Shortly afterward he returned with a party of armed settlers from Bull's estate. When the party of settlers arrived, they found Yagan dead and Heegan dying. Heegan "was groaning and his brains were partly out when the party came, and whether humanity or brutality, a man put a gun to his head and blew it to pieces." The settlers cut Yagan's head from his body, and skinned his back to obtain his tribal markings as a trophy. They buried the bodies a short distance away. James Keates claimed the reward, but his conduct was widely criticised. The Perth Gazette referred to Yagan's killing as "a wild and treacherous act ... it is revolting to hear this lauded as a meritorious deed." However, Daisy Bates understood that "he was killed in self-defence by the young lad." Keates left the colony the following month; it is possible that he left from fear of being murdered in tribal retaliation. CANNOTANSWER | The settlers cut Yagan's head from his body, and skinned his back | Yagan (; – 11 July 1833) was an Aboriginal Australian warrior from the Noongar people. He played a key part in early resistance to British colonial settlement and rule in the area surrounding what is now Perth, Western Australia. Yagan was pursued by the local authorities after he killed Erin Entwhistle, a servant of farmer Archibald Butler. It was an act of retaliation after Thomas Smedley, another of Butler's servants, shot at a group of Noongar people stealing potatoes and fowls, killing one of them. The government offered a bounty for Yagan's capture, dead or alive, and a young settler, William Keats, shot and killed him. Yagan's execution figures in Australian history as a symbol of the unjust and sometimes brutal treatment of the indigenous peoples of Australia by colonial settlers. He is considered a hero by the Noongar.
After his shooting, settlers removed Yagan's head to claim the bounty. Later, an official sent it to London, where it was exhibited as an "anthropological curiosity" and eventually given to a museum in Liverpool. It held the head in storage for more than a century before burying it with other remains in an unmarked grave in Liverpool in 1964. Over the years, the Noongar asked for repatriation of the head, both for religious reasons and because of Yagan's traditional stature. The burial site was identified in 1993; officials exhumed the head four years later and repatriated it to Australia. After years of debate within the Noongar community on the appropriate final resting place, Yagan's head was buried in a traditional ceremony in the Swan Valley in July 2010, 177 years after his death.
Biography
Early life
A member of the Whadjuk Noongar people, Yagan belonged to a tribe of around 60 people whose name, according to Robert Lyon, was Beeliar. Scholars now believe that the Beeliar people may have been a family subgroup (or clan) of a larger tribe whom Daisy Bates called Beelgar. According to Lyon, the Beeliar people occupied the land south of the Swan and Canning rivers, as far south as Mangles Bay. The group had customary land usage rights over a much larger area than this, extending north as far as Lake Monger and northeast to the Helena River. The group also had an unusual degree of freedom to move over their neighbours' land, possibly due to kinship and marriage ties with neighbouring groups.
Yagan is thought to have been born around 1795. His father was Midgegooroo, an elder of the Beeliar people; his mother was presumably one of Midgegooroo's two wives. Yagan was probably a Ballaroke in the Noongar classification.
Marriage and family
According to the historian Neville Green, Yagan had a wife and two children. A report in the Perth Gazette in 1833 gives the names of his children as "Naral", age 9, and "Willim", age 11; but most other sources state that the warrior was unmarried and childless. Described as taller than average with an impressive burly physique, Yagan had a distinctive tribal tattoo on his right shoulder, which identified him as "a man of high degree in tribal law". He was generally acknowledged to be the most physically powerful of his tribe, and was said to have been able to spear another stick from a distance of or penetrate a tree from a distance of .
Relations with settlers
Yagan would have been about 35 years old in 1829 when British settlers landed in the area and established the Swan River Colony. For the first two years of the colony, relations between settlers and Noongar were generally amicable, as there was little competition for resources. The Noongar welcomed the white settlers as , the returned spirits of their dead. Historical reports noted the two groups shared fish. As time passed, conflicts between the two cultures gradually became more frequent. The settlers incorrectly thought that the Noongar were nomads who had no claim to the land over which they roamed. Colonists fenced off land for grazing and farming according to their traditional practices of land use.
As the colonists fenced off more land, the Noongar were increasingly denied access to their traditional hunting grounds and sacred sites. In search of food, the Noongar raided the settlers' crops and killed their cattle. They also developed a taste for the settlers' supplies, and began to take flour and other food, which became a serious problem for the colony. In addition, the Noongar practice of firestick farming, or lighting the bush to flush out game and encourage germination of undergrowth for sustainability, threatened the settlers' crops and houses.
In December 1831 Yagan and his father led the first significant Aboriginal resistance to white settlement in Western Australia. Thomas Smedley, a servant of farmer Archibald Butler, ambushed some natives who were raiding a potato patch, and killed one of Yagan's family group. A few days later, Yagan, Midgegooroo and others stormed the farmhouse and, finding the door locked, began to break through the mud-brick walls. Inside were Butler's servant Erin Entwhistle and his two sons Enion and Ralph. After hiding his sons under the bed, Entwhistle opened the door to parley and was killed by Yagan and Midgegooroo. Noongar tribal law required that murders be avenged by the killing of a member of the murderer's tribal group, not necessarily the murderer. The Noongar considered servants and employees to be part of the settlers' groups. Historians believe the Noongar attack on Entwhistle was retribution under their tribal law. Not understanding tribal law (and unlikely to agree with its concepts), the white settlers took the killing to be an unprovoked murder and dispatched a force to arrest Yagan's group, without success.
In June 1832 Yagan led a party of Noongar in attacking two labourers sowing a field of wheat alongside the Canning River near Kelmscott. One of the men, John Thomas, escaped, but the other, William Gaze, was wounded and later died as a result. The settlement declared Yagan an outlaw and offered a reward of £20 for his capture. He avoided capture until early October 1832. A group of fishermen enticed Yagan and two companions into their boat, then pushed off into deep water. The fishermen took the three Noongar men to the Perth guardhouse, from which they were transferred to the Round House at Fremantle. Yagan was sentenced to death, but he was saved by the intercession of settler Robert Lyon. Arguing that Yagan was defending his land against invasion, Lyon said Yagan should not be considered a criminal but a prisoner of war and suggested he should be treated as such. At the recommendation of John Septimus Roe, the Surveyor-General of Western Australia, Yagan and his men were exiled on Carnac Island under the supervision of Lyon and two soldiers.
Lyon thought he could teach Yagan British ways and convert him to Christianity. He hoped to gain his cooperation and use his tribal stature to persuade the Noongar to accept colonial authority. Lyon spent many hours with Yagan learning his language and customs. After a month, Yagan and his companions escaped by stealing an unattended dinghy and rowing to Woodman Point on the mainland. The Government did not pursue them; apparently its officials considered they had been sufficiently punished.
In January 1833 two Noongar, Gyallipert and Manyat, visited Perth from King George Sound, where relations between settlers and natives were amicable. Two settlers, Richard Dale and George Smythe, arranged for the men to meet a party of local Noongar to encourage friendly relations in the Swan River Colony. On 26 January Yagan led a group of ten formally armed Noongars in greeting the two men near Lake Monger. The men exchanged weapons and held a corroboree, though the groups did not appear to share a language. Yagan and Gyallipert competed at spear throwing. As an example of his prowess, Yagan struck a walking stick from a distance of .
Gyallipert and Manyat remained in Perth for some time. On 3 March, Yagan obtained permission to hold another corroboree, this time in the Post Office garden in Perth. The Perth and King George Sound men met at dusk, chalked their bodies, and performed a number of dances including a kangaroo hunt dance. The Perth Gazette wrote that Yagan "was master of ceremonies and acquitted himself with infinite grace and dignity".
During February and March, Yagan was involved in a series of minor conflicts with settlers. In February William Watson complained that Yagan had pushed open his door, demanded a gun, and taken handkerchiefs. Watson had to give him and his companions flour and bread. The following month, Yagan was among a group who received biscuits from a military contingent under Lieutenant Norcott; when Norcott tried to restrict his supply, Yagan threatened him with his spear. Later that month, Yagan was with a group of Noongar who entered Watson's house while he was away. The group left after Watson's wife called on neighbours for help. The next day Captain Ellis lectured the Noongar about their behaviour. The frequent incidents prompted The Perth Gazette to remark on "the reckless daring of this desperado who sets his life at a pin's fee ... For the most trivial offence ... he would take the life of any man who provoked him. He is at the head and front of any mischief."
Wanted dead or alive
On the night of 29 April, a party of Noongar broke into a Fremantle store to steal flour and they were shot at by the caretaker Peter Chidlow. Domjum, a brother of Yagan, was badly injured and died in jail a few days later. The rest of the party moved from Fremantle to Preston Point, where Yagan reportedly vowed vengeance for the death. Between 50 and 60 Noongar gathered at Bull Creek, where they met a party of settlers who were loading carts with provisions. Later that day, the group ambushed the lead cart, killing two settlers, Tom and John Velvick. Tribal law required only a single death for vengeance. Some historians have speculated that the Velvicks were targeted because they had previously been convicted for assaulting Aboriginal people and coloured seamen. Alexandra Hasluck has also argued that stealing provisions was an important motive in the attack, but this has been refuted elsewhere.
For the killing of the Velvicks, the Lieutenant-Governor Frederick Irwin declared Yagan, Midgegooroo and Munday to be outlaws, offering rewards of £20 each for the capture of Midgegooroo and Munday, and a reward of £30 for Yagan's capture, dead or alive. Munday successfully appealed against his proscription. Midgegooroo, Yagan and their group immediately moved from their territory north towards the Helena Valley. On 17 May, Midgegooroo was captured on the Helena River. After a brief, informal trial, he was executed by firing squad. Yagan remained at large for over two months.
Late in May, George Fletcher Moore reported seeing Yagan on his property and talking with him in pidgin English. Moore wrote in the Perth Gazette:
Yagan asked Moore whether Midgegooroo was dead or alive. Moore gave no reply, but a servant answered that Midgegooroo was a prisoner on Carnac Island. Yagan warned, "White man shoot Midgegooroo, Yagan kill three." Moore reported the encounter but made no attempt to restrain Yagan. He later wrote, "The truth is, every one wishes him taken, but no one likes to be the captor ... there is something in his daring which one is forced to admire."
Death
On 11 July 1833, two teenage brothers named William and James Keates were herding cattle along the Swan River north of Guildford when a group of Noongar approached while en route to collect flour rations from Henry Bull's house. The Keates brothers suggested Yagan remain with them to avoid arrest. While he was staying with them during the morning, the brothers decided to kill the warrior and claim the reward. When the natives were ready to depart, the Keateses took their last opportunity. William Keates shot Yagan, and James shot Heegan, another native, in the act of throwing his spear. The brothers ran away, but other Noongar overtook William and speared him to death. James escaped by swimming the river. Shortly afterward he returned with a party of armed settlers from Bull's estate.
When the party of settlers arrived, they found Yagan dead and Heegan dying. Heegan "was groaning and his brains were partly out when the party came, and whether humanity or brutality, a man put a gun to his head and blew it to pieces." The settlers cut Yagan's head from his body, and skinned his back to obtain his tribal markings as a trophy. They buried the bodies a short distance away.
James Keates claimed the reward, but his conduct was widely criticised. The Perth Gazette referred to Yagan's killing as "a wild and treacherous act ... it is revolting to hear this lauded as a meritorious deed." However, Daisy Bates understood that "he was killed in self-defence by the young lad." Keates left the colony the following month; it is possible that he left from fear of being murdered in tribal retaliation.
Yagan's head
Exhibition and burial
Yagan's head was initially taken to Henry Bull's house. Moore saw it there and sketched the head a number of times in his unpublished, handwritten diary, commenting that "possibly it may yet figure in some museum at home." The head was preserved by smoking.
In September 1833, Governor Irwin sailed for London, partly to give his own account of the events leading up to the killing. This was an unusual measure, especially given his regiment was about to leave for a tour of duty in India. The Colonial Office indicated satisfaction with Irwin's administration of the colony.
Travelling with Irwin was Ensign Robert Dale, who had somehow acquired Yagan's head. According to the historian Paul Turnbull, Dale appears to have persuaded Irwin to let him have the head as an "anthropological curiosity". After arriving in London, Dale tried to sell the head to scientists, approaching a number of anatomists and phrenologists. His price of £20 failed to find a buyer, so he made an agreement with Thomas Pettigrew for the exclusive use of the head for 18 months. Pettigrew, a surgeon and antiquarian, was well known in the London social scene for holding private parties at which he unrolled and autopsied ancient Egyptian mummies. He displayed the head on a table in front of a panoramic view of King George Sound reproduced from Dale's sketches. For effect, the head was adorned with a fresh corded headband and feathers of the red-tailed black cockatoo.
Pettigrew had the head examined by a phrenologist. Examination was considered difficult because of the large fracture across the back of the head caused by the gunshot. His conclusions were consistent with contemporary European opinion of Indigenous Australians. Dale published these in a pamphlet entitled Descriptive Account of the Panoramic View &c. of King George's Sound and the Adjacent Country, which Pettigrew encouraged his guests to buy as a souvenir of their evening. The frontispiece of the pamphlet was a hand-coloured aquatint print of Yagan's head by the artist George Cruikshank.
Early in October 1835, Yagan's head and the panoramic view were returned to Dale, then living in Liverpool. On 12 October he presented them to the Liverpool Royal Institution, where the head may have been displayed in a case along with some other preserved heads and wax models illustrating cranial anatomy. In 1894 the Institution's collections were dispersed, and Yagan's head was lent to the Liverpool Museum; it is thought not to have been put on display there. By the 1960s Yagan's head was badly deteriorated. In April 1964 the museum decided to dispose of it. It arranged burial of the head on 10 April 1964, together with a Peruvian mummy and a Māori head. They were buried in Everton Cemetery's General Section 16, grave number 296. In later years a number of burials were made around the grave. For example, in 1968 a local hospital buried directly over the box, 20 stillborn babies and two infants who died soon after birth.
Lobbying for repatriation
For many years beginning in the early 1980s, a number of Noongar groups sought the return of Yagan's head to Australia.
At the time, there was no historical trail for the head after Pettigrew passed it on. Tribal elders entrusted the Aboriginal leader Ken Colbung with the search. In the early 1990s, Colbung enlisted the aid of University of London archaeologist Peter Ucko. One of Ucko's researchers, Cressida Fforde, conducted a literature search for information on the head. Fforde successfully traced the head in December 1993. The following April, Colbung applied to exhume the remains under Section 25 of the Burial Act 1857. Home Office regulations required next of kin consent before disturbing the remains of the 22 infants. Colbung's solicitors requested waiver of this condition on grounds that the exhumation would be of great personal significance to Yagan's living relatives, and great national importance to Australia.
Meanwhile, divisions in the Noongar community in Perth began to develop. Some elders questioned Colbung's role and one Noongar registered a complaint with the Liverpool City Council over his involvement. Media reports indicated acrimonious debate within the Noongar community about who had the best cultural qualifications to take possession of the head. The academic Hannah McGlade claims that these divisions were largely manufactured by the media, particularly The West Australian, which "aimed to and successfully represented the Nyungar community in terms of disharmony and dissent". She alleges that one West reporter contacted Noongar who were known to be in disagreement, and quoted one to the other, so as to elicit provocative responses. The disputes were "trumpeted" by The West, allowing it to "preach" against the infighting.
On 25 July a public meeting was held in Perth. All parties agreed to put aside their differences and co-operate to ensure that the repatriation was a "national success". A Yagan Steering Committee was established to co-ordinate the repatriation, and Colbung's application was allowed to proceed. In January 1995 the Home Office advised Colbung that it was unable to waive the requirement to obtain next of kin consent for the exhumation. It contacted the five relatives whose addresses were known, and received unconditional consent from only one. Accordingly, on 30 June 1995, Colbung and the other interested parties were advised that the application for exhumation had been rejected.
Meeting on 21 September, the Yagan Steering Committee decided to lobby Australian and British politicians for support. In 1997 Colbung was invited to visit the United Kingdom at the British government's expense and he arrived on 20 May. His visit attracted substantial media coverage, and increased the political pressure on the British Government. He secured the support of the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, after gate crashing the Prime Minister's June visit to the United Kingdom.
Exhumation
While Colbung was in the United Kingdom, Martin and Richard Bates were engaged to undertake a geophysical survey of the grave site. Using electromagnetic and ground penetrating radar techniques, they identified an approximate position of the box that suggested it could be accessed from the side via the adjacent plot. A report of the survey was passed to the Home Office, prompting further discussions between the British and Australian Governments.
Of concern to the Home Office were an undisclosed number of letters that it had received objecting to Colbung's involvement in the repatriation process; it therefore sought assurances from the Australian Government that Colbung was a correct applicant. In response Colbung asked his elders to ask the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) to tell the British Home Office that he was the correct applicant. ATSIC then convened a meeting in Perth at which it was again resolved that Colbung's application could proceed.
Colbung continued to press for the exhumation, asking that it be performed before the 164th anniversary of Yagan's death on 11 July, so that the anniversary could be the occasion of a celebration. His request was not met, and on the anniversary of Yagan's death, Colbung conducted a short memorial service at the burial plot in Everton. He returned to Australia empty-handed on 15 July.
The exhumation of Yagan's head eventually proceeded, without Colbung's knowledge, by excavating down the side of the grave, then tunnelling horizontally to the location of the box. Thus the exhumation was performed without disturbing any other remains. The following day, a forensic palaeontologist from the University of Bradford positively identified the skull as Yagan's by correlating the fractures with those described in Pettigrew's report. The skull was then kept at the museum until 29 August, when it was handed over to the Liverpool City Council.
Repatriation
On 27 August 1997, a delegation of Noongars consisting of Ken Colbung, Robert Bropho, Richard Wilkes and Mingli Wanjurri-Nungala arrived in the UK to collect Yagan's head. The delegation was to have been larger, but Commonwealth funding was withdrawn at the last minute. The handover of Yagan's skull was further delayed when a Noongar named Corrie Bodney applied to the Supreme Court of Western Australia for an injunction against the handover. Claiming that his family group has sole responsibility for Yagan's remains, Bodney declared the exhumation illegal and denied the existence of any tradition or belief necessitating the head's exhumation and removal to Australia. On 29 August, Justice Henry Wallwork rejected the injunction application, on the grounds that Bodney had previously agreed to the current arrangements, and on the evidence of another Noongar elder (Albert Corunna, who claimed to be a closer relation of Yagan) and anthropologist Pat Baines, both of whom refuted Bodney's claim to sole responsibility.
Yagan's skull was handed over to the Noongar delegation at a ceremony at Liverpool Town Hall on 31 August 1997. In accepting the skull, Colbung made comments that were interpreted as linking Yagan's death with the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, earlier that day: That is how nature goes ... Nature is a carrier of all good things and all bad things. And because the Poms did the wrong thing, they now have to suffer. Colbung's comments prompted a media furore throughout Australia, with newspapers receiving many letters from the public expressing shock and anger at the comments. Colbung later claimed that his comments had been misinterpreted.
Throughout the repatriation process, many sections of the international media treated the story as a joke. For example, the US News & World Report ran a story under the headline Raiders of the Lost Conk, in which Yagan's head was referred to as a "pickled curio", and Colbung's actions were treated as a publicity stunt.
Preparations for reburial
On its return to Perth, Yagan's head continued to be a source of controversy and conflict. Responsibility for reburial of the head was given to a "Committee for the Reburial of Yagan's Kaat", headed by Richard Wilkes. The reburial was delayed by disputes between elders over the burial location, mainly due to uncertainty of the whereabouts of the rest of his body, and disagreement about the importance of burying the head with the body.
A number of attempts were made to locate the remains of Yagan's body, which were believed to be on Lot 39 West Swan Road in the outer Perth suburb of Belhus. A remote sensing survey of the site was carried out in 1998, but no remains were found. An archaeological survey of the area was undertaken two years later, but this also was unsuccessful. Disputes then arose over whether the head could be buried separately from the body. Wilkes has claimed that it can, so long as it is placed where Yagan was killed, so that Dreamtime spirits can reunite the remains.
In 1998 the Western Australian Planning Commission and the Department of Aboriginal Affairs jointly published a document entitled Yagan's Gravesite Master Plan, which discussed "matters of ownership, management, development and future use" of the property on which Yagan's remains are believed to be buried. Under consideration was the possibility of turning the site into an Indigenous burial site, to be managed by the Metropolitan Cemeteries Board.
Yagan's head spent some time in storage in a bank vault before being handed over to forensics experts who reconstructed a model from it. After that it was held in storage at Western Australia's state mortuary. Plans to re-bury the head were repeatedly deferred, causing ongoing conflict between Noongar groups. In September 2008 it was reported that Yagan's head would be reburied in November, and a Yagan Memorial Park created as a projected cost of A$996,000; but in November it was announced that the reburial had been rescheduled for July 2009 because of logistical problems. In March 2009, it was announced that the Department of Indigenous Affairs had given the City of Swan more than A$500,000 to develop the park.
Reburial
The head was finally buried in a private ceremony attended only by invited Noongar elders, on 10 July 2010, the anniversary of the last full day he lived and one day before the end of NAIDOC Week 2010. The site in Belhus was chosen as it is believed to be near to where the rest of Yagan's body was buried. The burial coincided with a ceremony to mark the opening of the Yagan Memorial Park, which was attended by around 300 people, including Noongar elders and state government representatives. Premier Colin Barnett described the occasion as "a wonderful day for all West Australians".
The art works for the Yagan Memorial Park were designed by Peter Farmer, Sandra Hill, Jenny Dawson and Kylie Ricks. Dawson and Hill created an entry wall of Yagan's story; Farmer designed the park entry statements and Ricks the female coolamon.
Legacy
The repatriation of Yagan's head increased the Aboriginal leader's notability. He is considered a famous historical figure throughout Australia, with material about him appearing in such publications as the Australian Dictionary of Biography, and Western Australia's school curriculum. He is of greatest significance to the Noongar people, for whom he is "a revered, cherished and heroic individual ... patriot and visionary hero of WA's South-West". The return of his head was likened by some Indigenous Australians to the November 1993 ceremonial repatriation from Gallipoli of Australia's unknown soldier.
The former Upper Swan Bridge, which carries the Great Northern Highway over the Swan River at Belhus, was renamed the Yagan Bridge in 2010.
An open plaza in the Perth central business district, constructed as part of the Perth City Link urban renewal project, was named Yagan Square. Featuring the statue "Wirin", the plaza, located adjacent to the Horseshoe Bridge, was opened on 3 March 2018.
Cultural references
Alas Poor Yagan
On 6 September 1997 The West Australian published a Dean Alston cartoon entitled Alas Poor Yagan, which was critical of the fact that the return of Yagan's head had become a source of conflict between Noongars instead of fostering unity. The cartoon was interpreted by some as insulting aspects of Noongar culture, and casting aspersions on the motives and legitimacy of Indigenous Australians with mixed racial heritage. The content of the cartoon offended many Indigenous Australians, and a group of Noongar elders complained about the cartoon to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. The commission ruled that the cartoon made inappropriate references to Noongar beliefs but was not in breach of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 because it was "an artistic work" that was published "reasonably and in good faith", and was therefore exempt. This ruling was upheld on appeal by the Federal Court of Australia. Some academic commentators have since expressed concern that the protections offered under the act have been undermined by the ruling's broad interpretation of the exemptions.
Statue
From the mid-1970s, members of the Noongar community lobbied for the erection of a statue of Yagan as part of the WAY 1979 sesquicentennial celebrations. Their requests were refused, however, after the Premier, Charles Court, was advised by one prominent historian that Yagan was not important enough to warrant a statue. Colbung claims "Court was more interested in spending tax payers' money on refurbishing the badly neglected burial place of Captain James Stirling, WA's first governor." Despite this setback, the Noongar community persisted, establishing a Yagan Committee and running a number of fund-raising drives. Eventually, sufficient funds were collected to allow the commissioning of Australian sculptor Robert Hitchcock to create a statue. The result was a life-size statue in bronze, depicting Yagan standing naked with a spear held across his shoulders. Hitchcock's statue of Yagan was officially opened by Yagan Committee chairperson Elizabeth Hanson on 11 September 1984. It stands on Heirisson Island in the Swan River near Perth.
In 1997, within a week of the return of Yagan's head to Perth, vandals beheaded the statue using an angle grinder. Soon after a replacement head was installed and it too was detached and stolen. Credit for the act was anonymously claimed by a "British loyalist" as an act of retaliation for Colbung's comments about Diana, Princess of Wales. The Western Australia Police did not succeed in identifying the vandals, nor in recovering the heads, and deemed it infeasible to have the statue fenced off or placed under guard.
Commentary on the beheadings varied widely. One column in The West Australian found humour in them, referring to the head as a "bonce" and a "noggin", and finished with a pun on "skullduggery". Stephen Muecke calls this the "satirical trivialising of Aboriginal concerns", and Adam Shoemaker writes "This is the stuff of light humour and comic relief. There is no sense of the decapitation as being an act of vandalism, even less that it could have been motivated by malevolence ... [T]he piece has a definite authorising function." On the other hand, academic analysis has treated the act with much more gravity. In 2007, for example, David Martin described the decapitation as "an act which speaks not only to the continuance of white settler racism, but also to the power of mimesis to invigorate our modern memorials and monuments with a life of their own".
In 2002, Janet Woollard, the member for Alfred Cove, called for the statue's genitalia to be covered up. In November 2005, Richard Wilkes also called for the statue's groin to be covered on the grounds that such a depiction would be more historically accurate, as Yagan would have worn a covering for most of the year. Also under consideration is the creation of a new statue with a head shape that accords better with the forensic reconstruction of Yagan's head.
Literature and film
Mary Durack published a fictionalised account of Yagan's life in her 1964 children's novel The Courteous Savage: Yagan of the Swan River, which was renamed Yagan of the Bibbulmun on reissue in 1976.
The repeated beheading of Yagan's statue in 1997 prompted Aboriginal writer Archie Weller to write a short story entitled Confessions of a Headhunter. Weller later worked with film director Sally Riley to adapt the story into a script, and in 2000 a 35-minute movie, also named Confessions of a Headhunter, was released. Directed by Sally Riley, the movie won Best Short Fiction Film at the 2000 AFI Awards. The following year the script won the Script Award in the 2001 Western Australian Premier's Book Awards.
In 2002, the South African-born Australian poet John Mateer published his fourth collection of poems, entitled Loanwords. The collection is divided into four sections, of which the third, In the Presence of a Severed Head, has Yagan as its subject.
Other cultural references
A section of Kullark, a play by Jack Davis, explores the deteriorating relationship between Yagan and a settler couple.
In September 1989 an early maturing cultivar of barley, bred by the Western Australian Department of Agriculture for performance on sandy soils, was released under the name "Hordeum vulgare (Barley) c.v. Yagan". Commonly referred to simply as "Yagan", the cultivar is named for Yagan, continuing a tradition of labelling Western Australian grain cultivars after historic people of Western Australia.
See also
Jandamarra, and the Bunuba War.
Musquito a warrior of the Gai-Mariagal clan
Pemulwuy a warrior and resistance leader of the Bidjigal clan of the Eora people, in the area around Sydney
Tunnerminnerwait, an Australian Aboriginal resistance fighter and Parperloihener clansman from Tasmania
Windradyne, a warrior and resistance leader of the Wiradjuri nation, in what is now central-western New South Wales
Australian frontier wars
References
General references
1790s births
1833 deaths
Art and cultural repatriation
Australian murderers
Australian outlaws
Deaths by firearm in Western Australia
Escapees from Western Australian detention
History of Western Australia
Noongar people
People from Perth, Western Australia
Resistance to colonialism in Australia
Trophy heads | 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"
] |
[
"Kitty Pryde",
"Publication history"
] | C_98d6a9f0735942e3a427f07b743f5a4d_1 | What was the first publication date? | 1 | What was the first publication date of Kitty Pryde? | Kitty Pryde | Kitty Pryde was introduced into the X-Men title as the result of an editorial dictate that the book was supposed to depict a school for mutants. Uncanny X-Men artist John Byrne named Kitty Pryde after a classmate he met in art school, Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary in 1973. He had told Pryde he liked her name and asked for permission to use it, promising to name his first original comics character after her. Byrne drew the character to slightly resemble an adolescent Sigourney Weaver. The fictional Kitty Pryde first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980), by writer Chris Claremont and artist Byrne, as a highly intelligent 13-year-old girl. Claremont said several elements of the character's personality were derived from those of X-Men editor Louise Simonson's daughter, Julie. Claremont and Byrne made the new character a full-fledged X-Man in issue #139, where she was codenamed "Sprite". She was the main character in issues #141-142, the "Days of Future Past" storyline, where she is possessed by her older self, whose consciousness time travels to the past to prevent a mass extermination of mutants. The six-issue miniseries Kitty Pryde and Wolverine (1984-1985), written by Claremont, is a coming-of-age storyline in which she matures from a girl to a young woman, adopting the new name "Shadowcat". In the late '80s, she joined the British-based super team, Excalibur, where she remained for roughly ten years before coming back to the X-Men. In the early 2000s, she disappeared from the spotlight after semi-retiring from superhero work. She was featured in the 2002 mini-series Mekanix and came back to the main X-Men books in 2004 under the pen of Joss Whedon in Astonishing X-Men. She remained a part of the X-Men books until 2008 when she left again for roughly 2 years. After coming back, she was featured in Jason Aaron's Wolverine and the X-Men and Brian Michael Bendis' All-New X-Men books. In early 2015, she joined the Guardians of the Galaxy. After the Secret Wars event, she adopted her new alias, Star-Lord (first believed to be Star-Lady). Shadowcat's popularity had a profound effect on the real-life Kitty Pryde: the latter became so overwhelmed by attention from Shadowcat fans, she abbreviated her name to K.D. Pryde to avoid association with her fictional counterpart. She has since stated she has mixed feelings about her fame, saying she values Byrne's comics for their entertainment and artistic value, but wishes more people would appreciate her as more than just Shadowcat's namesake. CANNOTANSWER | The fictional Kitty Pryde first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980), | Katherine Anne "Kitty" Pryde is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics, commonly in association with the X-Men. The character first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980) and was co-created by writer-artist John Byrne and Chris Claremont.
A mutant, Pryde possesses a "phasing" ability that allows her, as well as objects or people she is in contact with, to become intangible. This power also disrupts any electrical field she passes through, and lets her simulate levitation.
The youngest to join the X-Men, she was first portrayed as a "kid sister" to many older members of the group, filling the role of literary foil to the more established characters. She occasionally used the codenames Sprite and Ariel, cycling through several uniforms until settling for her trademark black-and-gold costume. During the miniseries Kitty Pryde and Wolverine, she was renamed Shadowcat, the alias she would be most associated with, and shifted to a more mature depiction in her subsequent appearances. Pryde would eventually abandon her nickname, "Kitty", and switch to "Kate". She was one of the main cast of characters depicted in the original Excalibur title. After momentarily joining the Guardians of the Galaxy, she assumed her then-fiancé's superhero identity as the Star-Lord (Star-Lady). As of the series Marauders, she is now informally known as Captain Kate Pryde and the Red Queen of the Hellfire Trading Company.
In the X-Men film series, Kitty Pryde was initially portrayed by young actresses in cameos; Sumela Kay in X-Men (2000) and Katie Stuart in X2 (2003). Later, a pre-transition Elliot Page portrayed the character in X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) and X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) in full-length appearances. Pryde is ranked #47 in IGN's Top 100 Comic Book Heroes.
Publication history
Kitty Pryde was introduced into the X-Men title as the result of an editorial dictate that the book was supposed to depict a school for mutants. Uncanny X-Men artist John Byrne named Kitty Pryde after a classmate he met in art school, Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary in 1973. He had told Pryde he liked her name and asked for permission to use it, promising to name his first original comics character after her. Byrne drew the character to slightly resemble an adolescent Sigourney Weaver.
The fictional Kitty Pryde first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980), by writer Chris Claremont and artist Byrne, as a highly intelligent 13-year-old girl. Claremont said several elements of the character's personality were derived from those of X-Men editor Louise Simonson's daughter, Julie. Claremont and Byrne made the new character a full-fledged X-Man in issue #139, where she was codenamed "Sprite". She was the main character in issues #141–142, the "Days of Future Past" storyline, where she is possessed by her older self, whose consciousness time travels to the past to prevent a mass extermination of mutants. The six-issue miniseries Kitty Pryde and Wolverine (1984–1985), written by Claremont, is a coming-of-age storyline in which she matures from a girl to a young woman, adopting the new name "Shadowcat".
In the late 1980s, Kitty joined the British-based super team, Excalibur, where she remained for roughly ten years before coming back to the X-Men. In the early 2000s, she disappeared from the spotlight after semi-retiring from superhero work. She was featured in the 2002 mini-series Mekanix and came back to the main X-Men books in 2004 under the pen of Joss Whedon in Astonishing X-Men. She remained a part of the X-Men books until 2008 when she left again for roughly 2 years. After coming back, she was featured in Jason Aaron's Wolverine and the X-Men and Brian Michael Bendis' All-New X-Men books.
In early 2015, she joined the Guardians of the Galaxy. After the Secret Wars event, she adopted her new alias, Star-Lord (first believed to be Star-Lady).
In 2020, Kitty Pryde was revealed to be bisexual. Her co-creator, Chris Claremont, had always intended this to be the case, considering Rachel Summers as a possible love interest for Pryde. However, Claremont wasn't allowed to show this at the time due to censorship, as he revealed on the "Xplain the X-Men" podcast in 2016.
Shadowcat's popularity had a profound effect on the real-life Kitty Pryde: the latter became so overwhelmed by attention from Shadowcat fans, she abbreviated her name to K.D. Pryde to avoid association with her fictional counterpart. She has since stated she has mixed feelings about her fame, saying she values Byrne's comics for their entertainment and artistic value, but wishes more people would appreciate her as more than just Shadowcat's namesake.
Fictional character biography
Katherine Anne "Kitty" Pryde was born in Deerfield, Illinois, to Carmen and Theresa Pryde. She is an Ashkenazi Jewish-American and her paternal grandfather, Samuel Prydeman, was held in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. Kitty started to have headaches at age thirteen, signaling the emergence of her mutant powers. She was approached by both the X-Men's Charles Xavier and the Hellfire Club's White Queen, Emma Frost, both of whom hoped to recruit her for their respective causes. Kitty was unnerved by Frost, observing that the White Queen looked at her as if she were "something good to eat." She got along better with Xavier and the three X-Men who escorted him, quickly becoming friends with Ororo Munroe. Ororo told Kitty who she really was and about the X-Men, which made the teenager even more enthusiastic about attending Xavier's school.
Their conversation was cut short when they (along with Wolverine and Colossus) were attacked by armored mercenaries in the employ of Frost and the Hellfire Club. The X-Men defeated their assailants, but were subdued by the White Queen's telepathic powers immediately after. In the confusion, Kitty was separated from the X-Men, and not captured along with them. She managed to contact Cyclops, Phoenix, and Nightcrawler. With the help of Dazzler and Pryde, those X-Men rescued their teammates from the Hellfire Club.
The White Queen appeared to perish in the battle, which meant she was no longer competing with Xavier for the approval of Kitty's parents. Kitty's parents had not heard from her in more than a day, because during that time she was first being pursued by the Hellfire Club's men and then working with the X-Men to save their friends. All they knew was Kitty had left with Xavier's "students" to get a soda, there had been reports that the soda shop had been blown up, and Kitty had been missing since. Therefore, they were angry at Xavier when he finally returned with Kitty in tow. At first, it seemed like there was no chance of Kitty being allowed to attend the school and join the X-Men. Phoenix then used her considerable telepathic power to erase the memories of Kitty's parents and plant false ones, resulting in a complete shift in their attitude towards Xavier. Kitty was then allowed to enroll at Xavier's school with her parents' blessing, becoming the youngest member of the team.
Joining the X-Men
Kitty joined the X-Men, and assumed the costumed identity of Sprite. Early in her career as an X-Man, Kitty's adult self from an alternate future took possession of her body in the present to help X-Men thwart the assassination of Senator Robert Kelly by the second Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Kitty then singlehandedly defeated a N'Garai demon. Kitty also briefly attended the White Queen's Massachusetts Academy when her parents became convinced that she needed to be with students of her own age, but following a failed attempt to subdue the X-Men, Frost revoked Kitty's admission.
During her teen years, Kitty fostered a number of close relationships with others at the school and in the X-Men. She developed a crush on Colossus and became close friends with his little sister Illyana Rasputin. Initially uneasy around Nightcrawler and other mutants with physical deformities, Kitty finally overcame her fears and became close friends with him. Kitty also befriended Lockheed, a highly intelligent alien resembling a dragon, who followed her home after a mission in outer space. Lockheed is extremely loyal to Kitty, and the two of them share a psychic bond. Wolverine became something of a mentor to Kitty despite his usually gruff personality. Storm came to view Kitty as the daughter she never had.
Though Xavier has threatened to reassign Kitty to the New Mutants, a team of younger mutants he established in the absence of the X-Men, ever since the X-Men returned from outer space, she never ended up joining the group, who she derisively calls the "X-Babies". Kitty was later abducted by the Morlocks and nearly forced to wed Caliban. She was then abducted by the White Queen, but rescued by the New Mutants.
During this time, Kitty began to date Colossus, although this did not last long. Colossus developed feelings for an alien woman named Zsaji whom he met on the Beyonder's planet in the first Secret Wars. Colossus' feelings toward Zsaji were primarily a side effect of her own unique healing abilities, which she had used on him after he became injured. Regardless, Colossus' feelings were real and he returned to Earth consumed with grief after Zsaji's death. He admitted to Kitty that he loved Zsaji, which hurt her deeply and ended the budding romantic relationship. Kitty had made good friends with a local boy from Salem Central named Doug Ramsey around this time, but her feelings for him never went as deep as his for her, and they never actually dated, though they remained close, even more so after Doug's status as a mutant was revealed and he joined the New Mutants under the codename Cypher. They remained friends until his death some time later.
Ogun
During the 1984–1985 Kitty Pryde and Wolverine miniseries, Kitty is possessed by a demon, the ninja Ogun. Ogun psychically bestows upon Kitty a virtual lifetime of martial arts training. Kitty was brainwashed by Ogun into becoming a ninja assassin, and was sent to attack Wolverine. Kitty is able to resist Ogun's influence with Wolverine's help, and the two form a strong teacher/student bond, which helps them in vanquishing Ogun. Kitty returns to the X-Men, no longer the innocent girl they once knew, and officially adopts the codename Shadowcat.
Morlock Massacre
While trying to save Rogue, Kitty was badly injured by Harpoon's energy spear during the Mutant Massacre story arc, in the massacre of the Morlocks, with the result that she lost control of her power and was stuck in an intangible state and could not regain her solidity. She was rushed to Muir Island along with other surviving casualties of the Massacre to be tended to by Moira MacTaggert. MacTaggert was able to keep Kitty's condition from deteriorating to the point where she completely lost physical substance and ceased to exist, but was not able to do any more to help her.
At this time, Kitty's natural state was to be intangible. Where she once had to make a conscious effort to phase, she could now only maintain her solidity through an act of conscious will. The X-Men went to Reed Richards, Mister Fantastic of the Fantastic Four, for aid, but Richards initially refused because he was not sure he would be able to help.
Having nowhere else to go, the X-Men turned to Richards' enemy Doctor Doom. This created a moral dilemma for both the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, and both teams fought each other because the Fantastic Four were trying to stop the treatment while the X-Men were determined to save Kitty's life. In the end, both the personal crisis of the Fantastic Four and the life of Shadowcat were saved after Franklin Richards, with the help of Lockheed, brought both teams to their senses. Kitty has since recovered from this state and now has full control over her power again.
Excalibur
Among the others injured and brought to Muir Isle were Colossus and Nightcrawler, although Colossus left the United Kingdom shortly after being released from MacTaggert's care to join the rest of the X-Men on their mission to battle the Adversary. The X-Men sacrificed their lives to defeat the Adversary, the battle and their sacrifice was televised and broadcast across the world. The X-Men were resurrected later in the same issue, unknown to the world at large, but chose to keep a low profile and perpetuate the belief that they were still dead. This strategy was enforced to more effectively fight their enemies. This meant avoiding contact with friends and family, including Kitty. Thinking the X-Men were dead, Kitty and Nightcrawler joined Rachel Summers, Captain Britain, and Meggan to form the Britain-based team Excalibur. For a brief time, Kitty studied at St. Searle's School for Girls in Britain. During her time with Excalibur, Kitty developed a crush on Professor Alistaire Stuart which went unreciprocated since Alistaire was attracted to Rachel. Later, she was romantically involved with former Black Air agent Pete Wisdom. At some point Kitty was recruited by the international law enforcement agency S.H.I.E.L.D. to repair the computer system of their flying headquarters. Kitty discovered the problem was due to Ogun's spirit having infiltrated the computer system, and with the aid of Wolverine, she managed to purge Ogun's presence. During this time, Kitty was attracted to a S.H.I.E.L.D. intern her own age, and this made her begin to doubt her relationship with Wisdom. Soon after, she broke off their relationship.
Back to the X-Men
After Excalibur's dissolution, Shadowcat, Nightcrawler, and Colossus return to the X-Men. While returning, they faced a group of imposters following Cerebro, in the guise of Professor X. While tracking Mystique, she stumbles onto prophetic diaries that belonged to Irene Adler, a precognitive. During the six-month gap, Kitty visited Genosha. Whatever she experienced there is unknown (although presumably connected to her father, living on Genosha at the time), but it had a profound effect on her. She cut her hair and began to act rebelliously, also using one of Wolverine's bone claws broken off during battle as a weapon. Kitty remained with the X-Men for a while before leaving after the apparent death of Colossus. Trying to give herself a normal life, she attended the University of Chicago. During this time, her father was killed when Cassandra Nova’s Sentinels destroyed Genosha. Kitty later finds a recording of his death due to exploring footage of the attack. She is also kidnapped by William Stryker, but the X-Treme X-Men team helped her escape, and she assisted them on several missions.
At the start of Joss Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men, Kitty once again rejoins the X-Men, despite having extreme reservations about working with the former White Queen, given their history. This was the primary reason why Frost herself wanted Kitty on the team, as a sort of "safety" should Frost ever revert to type. Frost reasoned that the person who trusted her least would be most likely to spot such behavior. On one of the team's first missions, Shadowcat discovered Colossus was alive. After some initial awkwardness, Kitty and Colossus resumed dating.
Kitty Pryde appeared alongside Colossus in the "Blinded by the Light" arc in X-Men. They are the two X-Men left to look after the students while the rest of the X-Men leave for Mystique's home in Mississippi to check up on Rogue, during which they are ambushed by the Marauders. Kitty and Colossus, meanwhile, attempt to protect the students from a faction of the Marauders led by Exodus. It is revealed over the course of the story that Kitty, worried of the Destiny Diaries' safety, devised a plan with Cyclops and Emma Frost to hide them and have Emma wipe the location from her mind. The location could only be revealed by a code word spoken to Kitty. The arc concludes with a battle between Iceman and Cannonball against the Marauders for the diaries, during which they are destroyed by Gambit.
In the "Torn" arc, the latest incarnation of the Hellfire Club begin an assault on Xavier's School. Kitty fulfilled the role that Emma Frost envisioned, personally taking down Frost and imprisoning her, only to fall under a telepathic delusion created by Hellfire member Perfection, who claimed to be the true, unreformed Emma Frost. Under this delusion, Kitty was made to believe that she and Colossus had conceived a child, which was later taken away by the X-Men because its potential mutant abilities were supposedly dangerous. Kitty reacts in the delusion by attempting to rescue the child from a near-inescapable "box" in the depths of the school, unaware that in reality she is freeing an alien entity, Stuff, who contains the trapped consciousness of Cassandra Nova, the apparent ringleader of this new Hellfire Club. A newly awakened Cyclops revealed that the new Hellfire Club, including Perfection and Nova, are actually mental projections created by a piece of Cassandra Nova's consciousness; which became lodged in Emma's mind during the X-Men's last confrontation with her, playing on her survivor's guilt over the Genoshan massacre, and utilizing Emma's telepathy to both confound the X-Men and orchestrate her (Nova's) escape from the Stuff body. As Cyclops killed the mental projections, Emma tried to force Kitty to kill her to get rid of Nova. Undeterred, Cassandra Nova switched her focus to attempt to transfer her mind to Hisako Ichiki. It appears that Nova did not succeed, as the team was transported to S.W.O.R.D.'s air station en route to Ord's Breakworld for the "Unstoppable" arc that concludes Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men.
Breakworld
As the team prepares to end the confrontation with the Breakworld leader, the team splits up—with Kitty on the team appointed to stop the missile pointed at Earth. Kitty phases into the missile to disrupt its circuitry noting that it is composed of the same material as the rest of Breakworld, a material that is difficult and exhausting for her to phase through. After phasing for a mile into the missile, Kitty finds the center only to discover it empty. The missile is fired, causing Kitty to pass out inside of it as Beast discovers too late that due to its shape, trajectory, and lack of internal circuitry, the Breakworld's weapon is not a missile, but a bullet. As the bullet hurtles toward Earth, Kitty lies unconscious within it.
As the situation becomes increasingly dire, Emma establishes mental contact with Kitty, reassuring her that she will come out of this fine, though it eventually becomes clear to both that the situation will be grim. Kitty and Emma come to an understanding and reconciliation, Emma stating that she never wanted something like this to happen to her. Kitty then phases the bullet through Earth, but is trapped within. At the end of Giant-Size Astonishing X-Men, Scott Summers mentions that Doctor Strange, Reed Richards, and some "top men" tried to save her, but believe she has fused to the bullet, as it continues to hurtle through space. Whether she is alive or dead is unknown, though the X-Men consider her lost to them.
As a result of these events Kitty does not appear in the X-Men crossover event X-Men: Messiah Complex, since this takes place after the events of Giant-Size Astonishing X-Men. She is briefly mentioned in the aftermath of the Messiah Complex, by Colossus, Nightcrawler, and Wolverine, as the three of them discuss "losing her."
To cope with Kitty's loss, Colossus takes down a group of Russian criminals dealing in human trafficking, and gets a tattoo of the name 'Katya' on his chest. Emma begins having a recurring dream in which she hears a voice whom she believes is Kitty's trying to reach out to her.
It was later confirmed by Abigail Brand that Kitty Pryde was still alive within the bullet, but because the bullet's design would harden as time went on, it would become increasingly difficult to break the bullet open.
Return
After the X-Men move to the island of Utopia, Magneto arrives on the island professing his desire to join and support the X-Men in their effort to unite the world's remaining mutants. The X-Men reluctantly let him stay, remaining wary of him despite his efforts to gain their trust. In a final bid to gain their trust, Magneto focuses his powers, attempting to divert the interstellar path of the metal bullet Kitty is trapped in and bring her home to Earth. Meanwhile, inside the bullet, Kitty is revealed to still be alive. Unbeknownst to the others, Magneto had encountered the bullet earlier while attempting to regain his powers with the High Evolutionary and surmised that Kitty was inside. Despite this and the High Evolutionary's apparent ability to retrieve the bullet and Kitty, Magneto chose to focus on regaining his powers, secretly keeping tabs on the bullet until his decision to draw it back to Earth. During her time trapped inside the bullet, Kitty keeps herself and the bullet phased to avoid collisions with any inhabited objects in its path.
Magneto brings Kitty Pryde safely down to Earth by cracking the bullet in two and levitating Kitty to the ground. When she and Colossus try to touch, it is revealed that she is trapped in her intangible form, unable to speak, and the X-Men place her in a protective chamber similar to the one used for her following the events of the Mutant Massacre. How Kitty survived her time in the bullet is unclear to the X-Men's science team, where the X-Men discover that all her bodily functions halted. An analysis by Kavita Rao hypothesizes that Kitty created an intense muscle memory to keep herself and the bullet phased and has "forgotten" how to un-phase.
During a conversation with Colossus, with Emma Frost acting as the psi-conduit, Kitty picks up Emma's stray thoughts on killing the captive Sebastian Shaw, to prevent Namor from discovering she previously lied to him. While disgusted at Emma's intentions, Kitty offers a compromise. Due to her current ghost state, she is the perfect tool for making Shaw disappear.
In a storyline in Uncanny X-Men, the Breakworlders make their way to Earth. During the conflict between the Breakworlder Kr'uun and the X-Men, Kitty is slain and resurrected by Kr'uun's mate in an alien ritual, which results in her powers returning to normal.
Regenesis
Shortly thereafter, Kitty breaks up with Colossus, and decides to return with Wolverine to Westchester to open the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning. In Wolverine and the X-Men #4, she appears to be suddenly pregnant, but the pregnancy was revealed to be a Brood infestation, and it was swiftly dealt with by a team of X-Men. Since returning to Westchester, Kitty has shared several kisses with Iceman. During the events of Avengers vs. X-Men, Kitty does not take a side, but instead decides to stay at the school to work with the students. Once Bobby returned from working with the X-Men after realizing that the Phoenix had corrupted them, he and Kitty finally decide to go on a date.
All-New X-Men
After Beast brings the original five X-Men into the future to stop Cyclops in the present, Kitty volunteers to take responsibility for the temporally relocated X-Men while they work to undo this dark future. This soon puts her at odds with the rest of her team as they believed the original five should go back to their own time in order to prevent any damage to the space-time continuity. Eventually, this leads Kitty to take the decision of abandoning the school with the time-displaced X-Men and join Cyclops's X-Men at the New Xavier School. During the first few weeks at the New Xavier School, Jean Grey is abducted by the Shiar Empire to stand trial for her future self's crimes. Kitty and the time-displaced X-Men team up with the Guardians of the Galaxy and succeed in rescuing Jean from the Shiar. At the conclusion of the storyline, Kitty begins a long-distance, flirtatious relationship with Starlord, Peter Quill.
The Black Vortex
In the following weeks, Kitty's relationship with Peter Quill evolves more and more as they developed stronger feelings for each other every day. At one point, Quill gets captured during one of their dates and she has no option but to go to his rescue, despite her fear of space as a result of her being trapped on the giant space bullet. After rescuing Peter, she decides to stay in space with him. Then, Kitty convinces Peter to steal a powerful artifact called the Black Vortex from his father J'son. Soon, they find themselves being chased by J'son's assassination squad, the Slaughter Lords. In despair, they request the aid of the X-Men and the Guardians of the Galaxy to protect the Vortex. After a few of their own friends can't resist the temptation and submit to the Vortex, betray the team, and escape with the artifact; the team splits and Kitty stays in Spartax to help an orphanage. She is encased in amber after Thane (who was allied with J'son) freezes the whole planet along with the people inside it; but thanks to her phasing powers, she manages to get out of the amber. Then the Brood attacks Spartax, planning to use every encased person to lay eggs and create an army of Brood to start invading other planets and conquering them. Kitty feels the only way to stop them is by submitting to the Vortex herself as she's the only one who can resist the cosmic corruption. She reluctantly submits and becomes a being of unlimited power. After being reminded of the love between her and Peter Quill, she goes back and phases all the amber that encased Spartax, along with the Broods trying to infect the people, and sends them all to another dimension. Kitty doesn't give up the cosmic power but admits to Peter that she is afraid of it. Peter promises her that he will never abandon her no matter how much she changes. Then, Peter kneels and proposes marriage to Kitty. She, with tears in her eyes, accepts. Later when Star Lord is declared Emperor of Spartax she is told she will become the first lady of Spartax.
Guardians of the Galaxy
Kitty takes on the mantle of Star Lord and joins the Guardians of the Galaxy in Peter Quill's place so he can take on his royal duties. When Hala the Accuser massacres Spartax in an attempt to make Quill pay for J'son's actions against her people, she initially easily lays waste to the capitol and overpowers the Guardians. After the Guardians regroup and formulate a strategy to defeat her, Kitty manages to partially phase Hala into the ground so the rest of the Guardians can knock her out and separate her from her weapon. After Quill loses his title as king he and Kitty end up on a mission with the rest of the Guardians on a concentration camp prison planet owned by the Badoon after Gamora gave them information on it so they can free Angela. Once there, Kitty has a personal reaction upon seeing the prisoners and makes it her mission to liberate everyone there and defeat the captors, as it reminds her of Nazi concentration camps. After Quill gets captured and sentenced to death in an arena battle, Kitty finds and kills one of the Badoon leaders by phasing his heart out of his body. When Captain Marvel summons the Guardians to Earth to help her address Tony Stark, Kitty learns that Thanos is a prisoner on Earth and tries to convince Quill to tell Gamora. When fighting starts Kitty woefully realizes that some of her former students are on Tony Stark's side instead of fighting with Captain Marvel. During the battle the Guardians' ship was destroyed, effectively stranding them on Earth. After helping the Guardians stop Thanos from leading an invasion from the Negative Zone the Guardians are given a new ship; however, Kitty decides to stay on Earth and ends her time with the Guardians and Quill.
Leading the X-Men
Upon returning to Earth, Kitty hopes to finally regain a semblance of a normal life but ends up approached by Storm, who informs Kitty of everything the X-Men have gone through while Kitty was away. Storm announces to Kitty that she intends to step down as leader of the X-Men due to the guilt that she feels for leading the X-Men to war and offers Kitty her position. After touring X-Haven and seeing how much things have changed and how much things need to change for the better, Kitty agrees to lead the X-Men as long as Storm remains on the team. Her next act is to relocate the mansion from Limbo to Central Park, New York so the X-Men can refocus on being part of the world instead of fearing it under the belief that if the X-Men truly are to be seen as heroes, then they need to actually live in the world that they are trying to save instead of constantly worrying about their own survival.
Under Kitty's new leadership, the X-Men go through some small changes in order to shed their past history and make new names for themselves, such as convincing Rachel Summers to change her code name to Prestige and renaming the mansion as The Xavier Institute for Mutant Education and Outreach. Kitty learns first-hand how hard it is to balance leading the X-Men as well as managing the mansion when there are many political factors trying to deliberately get in the way of the X-Men. She also begins to have awkward one-on-one moments with Colossus; they try to remain friends, but given their long history their interactions swiftly become complicated. Kitty's first case as field leader of the X-Men sees her and her team taking on a new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. After discovering that an outspoken anti-mutant politician brainwashed this new Brotherhood to work for her to publicly discredit mutants, Kitty threatened to expose her if she continued exploiting mutants for her own personal gain.
Dawn of X
After Krakoa became a new sovereign nation for Mutants, Kitty Pryde, now going by Captain Kate Pryde, discovers she is the sole mutant who is, for unknown reasons, unable to use the various warp gates leading to Krakoa. It is implied that she has done something to anger Krakoa, but that restriction does not mean Kitty cannot use other means to reach the mutant homeland. She steals a boat and sets sail for the island. Kitty's time on Krakoa proves to be just as fruitless, as the island's natural resources (like flowers that grow into biome homes) are similarly prohibited to Kitty. Emma Frost comes asking Kitty to take up a special mission: taking a bigger boat out to serve as pirate captain on the X-Men's mission to liberate mutants trapped in oppressive countries that do not recognize mutant sovereignty, while also smuggling and supplying for Emma's Hellfire Trading Company the lifesaving drugs the X-Men provide to humans. Kate Pryde is later appointed the new Red Queen of the Hellfire Trading Company by Emma Frost, to the dismay of Sebastian Shaw. Seeing Pryde as an obstacle to his complete control of the Hellfire Corporation, Shaw began plotting against Kate and her crew. After taking notice how Emma became overprotective of the newly crowned Red Queen, Shaw realized that for the same reason she can't travel through Krakoa's gates nor read or understand the Krakoan language until Emma implanted it in her brain, the X-Men's Resurrection Protocols also won't apply to her, which means Kate cannot be resurrected if she died. He orchestrated a distraction by paying off human supremacists Homines Verendi to stage an attack on his own son. Once Kate was defenseless, Shaw emerged from below deck and ensnared Lockheed with a net gun, making him a helpless hostage. He then released Krakoan seeds at her feet, which wrapped around her and prevented her from using her powers. He then dropped her and Lockheed into the sea. While Lockheed was able to survive, Kate sank helplessly, and once her head dropped under the surface, she had no air left and drowned instantly. Her death is later confirmed by Bishop as he retrieves Kate's body, as it was also established that the Resurrection Protocols indeed do not apply to Kate, as the Five, for reasons unknown, cannot resurrect her. However, she is later resurrected, as Emma Frost realized that it was due to the nature of Kate's intangibility powers that her mindless body was unable to break out of the egg.
Powers and abilities
Kitty is a mutant with the ability to pass through solid matter by passing her atomic particles through the spaces between the atoms of the object through which she is moving. In this way she and the object through which she is passing can temporarily merge without interacting, and each is unharmed when Shadowcat has finished passing through the object. This process is called "phasing" or quantum tunneling and it renders her almost completely intangible to physical touch. Shadowcat passes through objects at the same speed at which she is moving before she enters them. Since she is unable to breathe while inside an object, she can only continuously phase through solid objects (as when she travels underground) as long as she can hold her breath. However, contrary depictions of the duration of her phasing ability have been presented, such as when she has phased miles within an object. The use of her abilities also interferes with any electrical systems as she passes through by disrupting the flow of electrons from atom to atom, including the bio-electric systems of living bodies if she concentrates in the right way. This typically causes machines to malfunction or be destroyed as she phases through them, and can induce shock and unconsciousness in living beings.
Using her power began as an optional ability, but for a period (over ten years of published comics, approximately two years in-continuity) Kitty existed in a naturally "phased" state, and had to consciously choose to become solid. Kitty has returned to her original form and is normally solid and must choose to use her power. While phasing, she does not physically walk on surfaces, but rather interacts with the molecules of air above them, allowing her to ascend and descend, causing her to seemingly walk on air. While phased, she is immune to most physical attacks, and has inconsistent showings of some resistance to telepathy. The density of some materials (such as adamantium) can prove deleterious to her phasing, causing her to be severely disoriented or experience pain if she tries to pass through them. Some energy attacks also prove problematic for Kitty. For example, an energy blast fired by Harpoon, a member of the Marauders, caused her to lose her ability to become fully tangible for months. Magic and magical beings can also harm her in her phased state, as demonstrated in a battle with a N'Garai demon whose claws left no visible marks, but caused Kitty severe pain as they passed through her intangible body.
Kitty can also extend her powers to phase other people and objects. She is able to phase at least six other people (or objects of similar mass) with her, so long as they establish and maintain physical contact with her. She can extend her phasing effect to her own clothing or any other object with mass up to that of a small truck, as long as she remains in contact with it. Kitty can also make objects intangible by maintaining contact with them. She has threatened to leave people phased into a wall, and used her power offensively to harm the Technarch Magus, and Danger.
Kitty's powers seem to have increased over the years. During an X-Treme X-Men story arc in which she is kidnapped by Reverend William Stryker, she phases out of sync with Earth's rotation to move from one place in the world (only east or west) to another seemingly instantaneously. At the climax of Astonishing X-Men, Kitty phases a 10 mi (16 km) long "bullet" composed of super-dense alien metals through the entire planet Earth. This feat caused her considerable strain, but she is unable to phase out of the bullet. Moreover, originally Kitty found it difficult or impossible to phase only part of her body at a time. In the Days of Future Past story arc, she is possessed by her older future self, allowing her to solidify only her shoulder while phasing the rest of her body through Destiny—a feat explicitly beyond the 13-year-old Kitty's abilities. By contrast, the Kitty Pryde of Joss Whedon's run can punch and kick someone standing on the other side of a wall, selectively phasing and unphasing body parts as necessary. She can even run and leap through an armed opponent, grabbing their weapon as she passes by, which presumably requires her to solidify only the surface area of the palms of her hands and then immediately phase both her palms and the weapon.
Besides her mutant powers, Kitty is a genius in the field of applied technology and computer science. She is highly talented in the design and use of computer hardware. She is a skilled pilot of piston and jet engine aircraft, and a competent pilot of certain advanced interstellar vehicles. She has previously shown a unique ability to wield the Soulsword and also be harmed by it. Since her possession by the ninja demon Ogun, she has been consistently shown to be an excellent hand-to-hand combatant, having since been endowed with a lifetime of training in the martial arts of Japanese ninja and samurai.
She is a professional-level dancer in both ballet and modern dance. She speaks fluent English, Japanese, Russian, and the royal and standard languages of the alien Shi'ar and Skrull, and has moderate expertise in Gaelic, Hebrew, and German.
Kitty also shares a mental/empathic connection with her pet dragon Lockheed; both she and the alien dragon can "sense" each other's presence at times and generally understand one another's thoughts and actions.
When Kitty used the Black Vortex, her powers were augmented to a cosmic scale making her a god-like being. She can phase through any material of any density and can even phase a planet out of Thane's amber, whereas in her normal state it is an extremely difficult task to simply phase herself out of the amber. She can also apparently transverse between the planes of the multiverse and is immune to the effects of space. Her appearance can be changed but her natural form appears to be rather gaseous in look.
Other versions
In addition to her mainstream incarnation, Kitty Pryde has been depicted in other fictional universes.
Age of Apocalypse
In the Age of Apocalypse reality, Kitty grows up under harsh circumstances and her nature reflects it. She has short hair, tight clothes, and chain smokes cigarettes. Her parents are killed in the Chicago Cullings, and she is forcibly recruited into Apocalypse's army, but is later rescued by Colossus. Magneto puts Shadowcat under Weapon X's training, hoping to turn her into the X-Men's assassin, and she is given a set of retractable artificial claws around each wrist to better imitate her teacher's fighting style. After the fallout between Colossus and Magneto, Shadowcat sides with Colossus, whom she has married. Instead of leaving the fight against Apocalypse altogether, the couple become the teachers of Generation Next. The two submit their trainees to harsh situations, giving them little comfort despite the fact that Shadowcat is close to the age of her students.
Shadowcat assists the team in rescuing Illyana Rasputin from the Seattle Core, and, at Colossus' behest, abandons her students after Illyana is saved. She is killed by Colossus in his ruthless obsession to protect his sister, Illyana; coming between an enraged Colossus and his endangered sister, Shadowcat never believed he would harm her.
Days of Future Past
In the Days of Future Past timeline (Earth-811), Shadowcat goes by the name Kate Pryde. Kate attempts to go back in time to prevent the assassination of Senator Robert Kelly by Mystique and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. She succeeds, only to create a separate timeline where the events of her past still come to pass. After returning to her own time Kate helps Rachel Summers escape back to the timeline she just created. Captured by Sentinels, Kate escapes by phasing through her inhibitor collar and fell into a time warp, causing her to merge with the Sentinel that was scanning her, and arrives in the timeline Rachel is inhabiting. Kate's mind settles in a small, metal, off-spherical body and becomes known as Widget. After a few adventures in that timeline, mostly in company with her Earth-616 counterpart's team Excalibur, Kate regains her memory and returns to her original timeline where she is able to reprogram the ruling Sentinels to protect life, ending their tyranny.
Earth X
In Earth X it is revealed in the appendix of issue six that Kitty Pryde is killed saving Colossus while he could not shift into his metal form. Instead of phasing the bullet through her, she heroically takes the bullet and is killed.
Exiles
A version of Kitty Pryde codenamed Cat first appeared in Exiles #96. She is younger than her Earth-616 counterpart. She has the appearance and powers of the normal Shadowcat although she wears a different costume. Prior to her joining the Exiles, this version of Kitty had been recruited by Emma Frost as one of the core agents of the Hellfire Club's strike force. She helps Psylocke defeat Doom's soldiers who have invaded the Panoptichron. She helps retrieve Blink, Morph, and Sabretooth from being scattered across the multiverse. She works as a computer expert for the team and is a full member of the Exiles.
Cat's skill with using her powers means she is not tied to any dimension and can see through various realities, including those of the mind (for instance seeing the various personalities in Sage's mind as "ghosts" surrounding her). Her arrival in the Crystal Palace and connection to its computers has increased this, giving her the ability to "cascade" through different alternative versions of herself, altering her appearance and details of her powers. Amongst other versions, she has assumed the form of a Kitty Pryde with the appearance and powers of Tigra. During the New Exiles' last mission Cat faced off against Madame Hydra (Sue Storm) and killed her at the cost of her own life.
There has been another version of Kitty that appeared in the King Hyperion story arc (Exiles #38-40). She had survived an attack on the X-Mansion by the Sentinels. The Colossus from her universe had been killed in the attack but she had the same feelings towards Weapon X's Colossus even though he was not her Colossus. The two eventually fell in love with each other. Unfortunately this did not last since she died with Colossus when they were shot into the empty vacuum of space by Hyperion.
House of M
When the Scarlet Witch altered reality in the 616 Universe, creating the reality known as House of M where mutants were the dominant population, Kitty Pryde was a teacher in a public middle school in Cincinnati, Ohio. Like many of the heroes of Earth 616, she is reminded of the true reality by Layla Miller and recruited in the fight to restore reality.
Magik
In the limited series Magik (Illyana and Storm), an alternative reality Kitty renames herself "Cat" after she is mutated by the demonic sorcerer Belasco into a more feline form, with cat eyes, whiskers, a tail, and enhanced physical abilities and senses. Trapped in Belasco's Limbo, Cat takes a militant view towards defeating the sorcerer, eschewing the magic that her reality's Storm embraces, instead turning to skills in swordplay and physical combat. She tries to save the Illyana Rasputin of Earth-616 from corruption through magic by taking Illyana into the wilderness of Limbo and teaching the child to fight and survive. Like the Kitty Pryde of Earth-616 eventually would, Cat became Illyana's best friend, but more in the role of an older sister due to the difference in their ages.
Cat's plan goes awry when the pair's attempt to confront Belasco fails, at the cost of the life of an enslaved Nightcrawler; Illyana falls under Belasco's influence and Cat is further transformed towards a feline, with a semi-animalistic mind completely loyal to Belasco. Cat is eventually slain by Illyana when Belasco sets Cat upon his rebellious apprentice; facing death at Cat's hands and knowing that, deep down, a part of Kitty still exists and hates her enslavement, Illyana broke Cat's neck in self-defense.
Long after Illyana overthrows Belasco, escapes Limbo, and becomes a member of the junior X-Men team known as the New Mutants, Cat's remains are found by the team in Limbo's throne room. By then she had completely decomposed to a skeleton. Illyana, facing a rebellion of Limbo's demon population that threatened to overrun Earth, smashed Cat's skull in rage over the demonic taint that Belasco left on her soul and frustration over the horrible choice she had to make to kill Cat.
Marvel Zombies
Kitty is briefly shown in the background as a zombie in Ultimate Fantastic Four #23, despite her mutant phasing powers. She is also seen in Marvel Zombies: Dead Days, when zombie Alpha Flight attack the X-Men. This would appear to have been retconned, though, as of Marvel Zombies: Halloween, which depicts her and her son Peter with Colossus surviving for several years in an out of the way house farm, encountering zombies, but, fortunately, being rescued by Mephisto, who dispatched the remaining zombies.
The Earth-91126/Earth-Z Kitty is recruited by Earth-2149/Marvel Zombies Spider-Man to help him develop a cure for the zombie hunger, on the grounds that her powers mean that she would be in no danger from him if he should succumb to his zombie instincts, but she is later seemingly killed when the zombie Quasar holds her underwater until she is forced to become solid once more, allowing the infected Namor to eat her flesh (much to the rage of the zombie Wolverine, of Earth-2149).
Mutant X
Storm was taken by the vampire Dracula and unlike Earth 616, she does not return. Kitty goes off to battle her, either to save or kill her. Kitty slays several vampires in the way but Storm proves too much for her and Kitty becomes her unwilling slave for some time. She later shows up as the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club and seems to be none too happy with Storm. It's also hinted that she was engaged or going to be engaged to Colossus. Her ultimate fate at the end of the series is unknown.
Lightning Force
In the reality of Earth-597, an alternative universe where World War II was won by Nazi Germany, Kitty is forced to serve as Shadowcat alongside Nightcrawler, Meggan, and Hauptmann Englande as a member of the Lightning Force (a version of Excalibur), made a virtual slave because of her Jewish heritage. She leads a sad existence and is easily identified by her shaved head and the Star of David tattooed on her forehead. It is indicated, from her own statements and those made by her reality's counterpart of Moira MacTaggert, that this Shadowcat is a true ghost, raised from the dead by a combination of science and magic and bound to serve the Nazi regime. This Shadowcat had the added ability to disrupt life force with her phasing power, knocking her victims unconscious, much like how her counterpart in the "prime" Marvel Universe (Earth-616) can disrupt technology that she phases through. She is also able to alter her facial features to a "demonic" aspect when attacking enemies or else responding to aggressive, commanding behavior from her superiors.
Pirate Kitty
Kitty tells Illyana a bedtime story and casts herself as Pirate Kitty Pryde, captain of the Abdul Alhazred, who operated in a magical world. Unlike her mainstream counterpart, she did not have any mutant powers and wore a classic pirate outfit which also included her Star of David necklace. She was also sometimes known as Colleen. Kitty was good friends of her version of Colossus, the Bamfs (Nightcrawler), Windrider (Storm), the "Fiend-with-no-name" (later revealed to be named "Mean") (Wolverine) and Lockheed (an alternative version of the X-Jet). Kitty also helped her versions of Professor X and Cyclops capture and cure that universe's version of Dark Phoenix.
At first she was only a fairy tale character, but later it is revealed that her fairy tale is actually an alternative universe. (In fact, several members of this universe, the Bamfs, would later come to Earth-616 to cause trouble.) When Earth-616's Nightcrawler was temporarily stranded in her world, Kitty helped him defeat the sorcerer Shagreen and also encountered the Earth-616 versions of Illyana, Lockheed, and herself.
Professor W's X-Men
In the native universe of the Exiles member Nocturne, Kitty is a senior member of the X-Men led by Nightcrawler. She is a teacher and TJ refers to her as "Aunt Kate". During a fight with Apocalypse Kitty gets exposed to a machine that reverts her to a younger stage of her life when she had only been with the X-Men a few weeks. Nocturne helps Kitty fit into the school and becomes her best friend. She also proves useful in the fight against the Brotherhood led by Cyclops.
Ruins
Imprisoned alongside other mutants at a prison camp in Texas by President X, Kitty attempted to use her phasing powers to escape, only to get stuck halfway through her cell door, losing three feet of intestines in the process.
Secret Wars (2015)
During the Secret Wars storyline, a version of Kitty named Kitten resides in the wuxia-inspired K'un-L'un region of Battleworld. In this reality, Kitten is a martial artist who joins Callisto's band of outcasts after being expelled from her school for attempting a forbidden technique, a side effect of which left her intangible. Kitten and her fellow outcasts became pupils of Shang-Chi, the exiled son of Emperor Zheng Zu. Dubbing their new school The Lowest Caste, Shang-Chi represents the group as their master for the tournament deciding the next Emperor of K'un-L'un, hoping to usurp his father's tyrannical rule. Kitten accompanies Shang-Chi for each of his fights in the Thirteen Chambers. During his final fight with Zu, Shang-Chi uses Kitten's technique of intangibility, which leads to his eventual victory and replaces his father as the new Emperor of K'un-L'un.
Ultimate Marvel
The Ultimate version of Shadowcat (Kitty Pryde) first appears as a 14-year-old girl in Ultimate X-Men #21. She is also Jewish and wears the Star of David around her neck, but does not appear to possess the same genius IQ as her mainstream (Earth-616) counterpart.
Kitty's mother, worried about Kitty's mutation, seeks help from Professor Charles Xavier. Kitty becomes a student at Xavier's school, when her mother allows her to attend under the condition she does not take part in any X-Men missions, nor train in any "Danger Room" simulations. Kitty soon rebels against this and joins the X-Men as their youngest member. She idolizes Spider-Man and has a crush on him; she even dates Peter Parker for a time. After a fierce argument with Professor Xavier concerning Peter's secret identity, which his Aunt May had just found out about, Kitty leaves the X-Men and enrolls in Peter's school. Their relationship is strained after their romantic involvement (as superheroes) becomes publicly known, making it impossible for them to date anymore in their civilian identities, and eventually comes to an end when Peter realizes he cannot get over his feelings for Mary Jane. However, Kitty still retains strong feelings for him.
Following the disastrous flood triggered by Magneto and the subsequent ban of public use of mutant powers, Kitty assumes the identity of the Shroud. Kitty also discovers that she can also decrease the space between her atoms make herself super-dense, giving her both superhuman strength and durability. When the authorities see Kitty as a threat, she enters into a fierce rage and demonstrates these powers for the first time to her friends. She is strong and angry enough to punch Spider-Man several feet through the air. She eventually escapes and goes into hiding in the now abandoned Morlock Tunnel with Iceman and the Human Torch after Peter Parker's death.
Kitty makes an appearance in Ultimate Comics: X, locating Jimmy Hudson, who is revealed to be Wolverine's son. Kitty was charged by Logan before his death to locate Jimmy and reveal his true origins to him.
After the death of Spider-Man she formed new team of X-Men consisting of herself, Iceman and the Human Torch. They soon rescued the mutant Rogue from the mutant-hunting Nimrod robots, going on to recruit Jimmy Hudson into their group as well. After killing the mutant-hunting William Stryker, Kitty decided to leave New York for the Southwest along with Bobby, Rogue, and Jimmy (leaving only Johnny behind) in order to save the mutants there and defeat the Nimrods, now controlled by the deceased Stryker's consciousness.
Spider-Gwen
In the reality where Gwen Stacy is Spider-Woman, Kitty is an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Black Ops department, where she works closely with Wolverine to keep him in check and to help him fight his immortal curse. Like the Age of Apocalypse version, she also wields artificial claws on her wrists. It's revealed that she works with Logan out of guilt, as Stryker forced her to use her powers to subject Logan to the Weapon X experiment.
What If
In What if Phoenix Had Not Died, Kitty is obliterated by Dark Phoenix before she destroyed the Earth.
In What If the X-Men had Lost Inferno?, Kitty is one of the last eight remaining superheroes on the planet. She is slain by a demonic Wolverine, but her death makes Wolverine come to his senses and he fights against Baron Mordo, who had joined up with the demon hordes.
In What If... Wolverine: Enemy of the State, Kitty is the only hero left to kill a Hydra-programmed Wolverine after he has taken down the Marvel Universe. Kitty was the last remaining member of the team assembled to recapture Wolverine. The initial plan failed and Kitty was forced to phase her hand into Wolverine's brain. She then solidified her hand killing Wolverine instantly although she lost her hand in the process.
In What if Magneto and Professor X Had Formed The X-Men Together, Kitty is the tech guru at the Good Shepard clinic (That reality's version of the X-Mansion). She is very similar to her mainstream counterpart. But unlike the mainstream version this Kitty Pryde would wear different coloured wigs and cut her natural hair short. She also had trouble with her powers since she would phase herself through a solid object and accidentally leave her clothes behind. She was also friends with Lockheed although she only called him Dragon.
In What if Astonishing X-Men, Kitty is amongst the X-Men who fight a Phoenix powered Emma Frost. She phased Emma's heart from her chest but a Phoenix fire flares up from her body killing Kitty instantly. In the second story during the events of Astonishing X-Men #6-#12 Elixir had not been able to heal Kitty after being impaled and she dies.
In "What if the Dark Phoenix Rose Again", Kitty has Colossus "set up a fastball special" to help her phase into a Master Mold. She is killed after solidifying inside the Master Mold's head destroying it in the process.
In What if Storm Had the Power of the Phoenix, Kitty helps revive the 'real' Storm (the Phoenix being the cosmic entity in Storm's shape) by phasing inside her body and getting her internal organs working again.
X-Babies
An X-Baby version of Shadowcat appears briefly in the X-Babies one-shot comic. She is wearing her original costume and is younger than the other X-Babies. She is named as Shadowkitty rather than Shadowcat or Kitty Pryde. She also doesn't seem to have a strong bond with the X-Baby version of Lockheed.
X-Men Forever
In the X-Men Forever series, Kitty and Nightcrawler have left Excalibur and rejoined the X-Men after the events of X-Men #1-3. Of the X-Men, she undergoes the most drastic changes from the events of X-Men Forever #1. During the battle with Fabian Cortez, she phases through Wolverine while he is being affected by Cortez's power. This drives her powers haywire as well, and somehow she ends up with one of Wolverine's claws in her wrist. Claremont has also hinted in dialogue throughout the title so far that she may have also undergone psychological or psychic changes as a result of the event. From Forever #4 to the current issue, she is shown to be able to use the claw in the exact method Wolverine would manifest it, with no apparent ill effects (the mechanism for this has not yet been made clear) outside of excruciating pain. Because of the merger with Logan's DNA she has begun to develop a healing factor, slower than Wolverine's but it heals faster when she is intangible. She has also slightly enhanced senses, she also can produce a set of five retractable claws on her left hand like Sabretooth. She has also begun to take on Logan's personality and memories as well. And because of this she is beginning to wonder what part of her truly remains the same.
X-Men: Misfits
In the X-Men: Misfits original English language manga one-shot graphic novel from Marvel and DelRay, Kitty is the newest and only female student of the all-male Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters, which is now experimenting with having a co-ed student body. As the sole girl, she becomes the center of attention and attraction for the rest of the students. She becomes a member and the mascot of the elitist fraternity, The Hellfire Club, and has a short-lived romantic relationship with the school troublemaker Pyro.
X-Men: The End
In the X-Men: The End future, Kitty Pryde becomes the mayor of Chicago and then President of the United States. She has three children: her eldest daughter, named Meredith, and twins 10 years younger than Meredith, Sara and Doug, with an unnamed partner who died protecting her from an assassination attempt.
Miscellaneous
In Excalibur #103, we see many alternative versions of Shadowcat. Many of these variations have appeared in other comics, such as Age of Apocalypse, but there were other variations, including one of her as a Phalanx convert, a sex dominatrix, a homeless person, a nun, a version wearing a costume similar to Phantom Girl, and a normal person who owns an Olde Curiosity Shoppe.
In New Mutants #63 Illyana (Magik), along with Lockheed, gets trapped on an alien spaceship that has been invaded by a Brood Queen. On this ship the Brood Queen created clones of the X-Men, including Kitty. This one had the Ariel suit on, but it was green, instead of the typical blue. These X-Men are implanted with Brood eggs. Her memories were altered by the Brood Queen like the other X-Men, but eventually they rebel against her and are free. Illyana uses the soulsword to eliminate the Brood Eggs from their bodies. The X-Men stay on the ship; whether they are still on it is unknown.
During the Cross Time Caper storyline a few different appearances of Kitty appear. One was a princess who was gifted with magic abilities. She eventually married a short dashing prince (who had originally fallen in love with the mainstream version of Kitty). A second version was a crime boss who was betrayed and killed by her partner in crime Illiyana Rasputin. A third was from a world of sentient dinosaurs. She went by the name of Shadowcompsognathus.
Collected editions
Several of Kitty Pryde's earlier adventures were collected in paperback form.
In other media
Music
Kitty Pryde is referenced in Weezer's song "In the Garage" from their "Blue Album".
Television
Kitty Pryde appeared as Sprite in "The X-Men Adventure" episode of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, which guest-starred the X-Men. She was voiced by Melissa Sue Anderson. She also appeared in her short-lived "Ariel" costume in the X-Men group cameo at the end of the episode "The Education of a Superhero".
Kitty Pryde (voiced by Kath Soucie) was a viewpoint character in the animated television one-shot Pryde of the X-Men, as the newest member of the team. She is a new recruit of the team and is initially frightened of Nightcrawler, due to his demonic appearance. She and Nightcrawler later succeed in defeating Magneto. Once Nightcrawler seemingly dies as a result of having apparently sacrificed himself, Kitty begins to cry until discovering that he is alive and is met with positive relations by her teammates, except Wolverine. As the pilot was a failure, and the character had lost prominence in comics at the time, she was not used in the next X-Men TV series, not even in cameos. Jubilee replaced her as the young viewpoint character, and in the adaptations of stories that involved her.
In the animated series X-Men: Evolution, Shadowcat is a main character, who is shown as the teenybopper of the team and who has a romantic interest in Brotherhood member Lance Alvers. Shadowcat saves Wolverine in the season one episode "Grim Reminder", where she unintentionally stows away with Nightcrawler while on the Blackbird without the knowledge that he was beginning to pilot the jet. She is also shown to have developed a close friendship with Nightcrawler, despite the fact that she at first displayed a dislike for his appearance. Besides Nightcrawler, she is shown to have formed a friendship with Rogue and Spyke. Her initial dislike of his appearance changes after he is severely wounded by Rogue, while she and the rest of the X-Men tried to recruit her. In this series, she does not have Lockheed for a pet, but she is shown preferring to sleep with a stuffed dragon instead of a teddy bear. Though she has an on-and-off interest in the delinquent mutant boy Lance Alvers, early in the series she displays interest in Cyclops. After Rogue is recruited, she serves as her support in beginning a romantic relationship with Scott and develops a friendship with her, despite their differences. When Avalanche tries to join the X-Men in the season two episode "Joyride", she tries to help him and shows additional attraction to him as she grades him and the other members of the junior team. After he informs her that some members of the group have started a joyride on the Blackbird and helps her avert catastrophe, she staunchly defends him once he is accused by Cyclops of being responsible. When Avalanche starts to leave, Shadowcat gives him a brief kiss before his departure. Their relationship continues with the two of them going to a school dance, talking on the phone and going to the mall. Despite being with the Brotherhood, Avalanche tries to protect Kitty in the fight against the Scarlet Witch. In season 3, Kitty and Lance's relationship briefly ends after the Brotherhood and Mystique blow up the X Mansion and are in part responsible for the exposure of mutants. Kitty calls Lance a "hood" after he attacks the high school and he says "he will never be good enough for her". Both look sad at these comments. In the fourth season, the X-Men try to use her powers to damage one of Apocalypse's domes and fails, instead being electrocuted briefly. In the fiftieth episode of the series, entitled "Ghost of a Chance", she comes across Danielle Moonstar once she depicts herself in a dream sequence to her. Once she wakes out of it, she tries to and successfully finds her, becoming friends with the girl after learning she had been in suspended animation for two years. Prior to this, it is discovered that her fear is phasing repeatedly into the ground and going further without any control of where she is going. Shadowcat plays a key role in the defeat of Apocalypse and asks the Brotherhood for help. They come to her aid; as Lance and Kitty resume their romantic relationship. Of the six main X-Men from the first season of the series, she is one of the four that is still a member of the team in the future Charles Xavier saw while in the mind of Apocalypse. Shadowcat was voiced by Maggie Blue O'Hara.
Shadowcat appears in Wolverine and the X-Men, voiced by Danielle Judovits and was a student at the Xavier Institute before the destruction of the X-Mansion and disappearance of Professor X. When Wolverine reformed the X-Men to take down the Mutant Response Division and save the dismal future controlled by the Sentinels, Kitty was on her way to the "mutant paradise" Genosha. The X-Men came to re-recruit her and she immediately rejoined the team. Shadowcat appears as the youngest member of the team and she seems to have a crush on Iceman as she is jealous when his attention is taken by Emma Frost and is shown with a love-struck face when she lands on Bobby during a Danger Room training session, though she quickly moves away from him when Angel arrives. She seems to have formed a friendship with Tildie Soames after babysitting her in one episode. In the last episode of the series, she uses her powers to penetrate a Sentinel controlled by Magneto, of which Beast had difficulty with. Her design is inspired by the appearance of the character in the Astonishing X-Men comics, and her costume emulates the design with the appearance of the blue and yellow used on her costume. The shorts she wears are based on the appearances of the original X-Men, and her first appearance when she wore a variant of the uniform.
Shadowcat appears in The Super Hero Squad Show episode "And Lo...A Pilot Shall Come". She appears alongside Colossus at the unveiling of the Great Wall that separates Super Hero City from Villainville and helping citizens into the S.H.I.E.L.D. Shelters. In the episode "Mysterious Mayhem at Mutant Academy", she uses Lockheed to chase Reptil and the hypnotized X-Men out of the girls' bathroom.
Motion comics
Shadowcat appears in the Astonishing X-Men motion comic, voiced by Eileen Stevens and later by Laura Harris.
Film
In the film X-Men, she has a small cameo, played by Sumela Kay. She is referenced as the "girl in Illinois who can walk through walls" by Senator Kelly. She is shown in Xavier's class when Wolverine walks in; she returns for her books which she had left behind, grabs them, and phases through the door on her way out. Xavier responds with a cheerful "Bye, Kitty" while Wolverine looks on, startled.
In X2, she has a brief appearance played by Katie Stuart. She is shown phasing through walls and through people to escape William Stryker's military forces during their attack on the X-Mansion. Another scene shows her falling through her bed to avoid an assault. She shares a room with Siryn; in the novelization it is stated that this is because her phasing ability gives her partial protection from Siryn's scream. When the President of the United States asks Professor Xavier how he got the files he gave him, Xavier replies that he knows a little girl who can walk through walls.
In X-Men: The Last Stand, she is portrayed by a pre-transition Elliot Page, and has a central role. She serves as a rival to Rogue for the romantic attentions of Iceman, since their close friendship and their kiss (deleted scene) make Rogue increasingly jealous and frustrated. She also joins the X-Men in the battle on Alcatraz Island, breaking off from the battle to save Leech from the Juggernaut. In the novelization of the film, it is hinted that at some point Kitty had a romantic relationship with Colossus, but that it had long since run its course, although Colossus appears to still retain feelings towards her.
Page reprised the role in X-Men: Days of Future Past. Pryde is the prime facilitator because she has developed a new power. In this film, she can send the consciousness of another person back into his or her body in the past. At the beginning of the film, she has been using this ability to repeatedly send Bishop four days back in time whenever the Sentinels attack, thus; preventing her group from ever engaging them by having him warn the past team before they are detected. In order to prevent the Sentinels' creation, she sends Wolverine back to 1973 (chosen as the strain of sending someone else back that far would snap their mind, with Logan's healing factor the only thing that makes such a trip survivable for him) and was gravely injured when Wolverine becomes violent; due to provocation from events in 1973. After the timeline was successfully altered, Kitty is seen teaching a class at the X-Mansion with Colossus. In the film's alternate release, called The Rogue Cut, Kitty's injuries from sending Wolverine back to the past result in the X-Men rescuing Rogue to take over for her. Rogue absorbs Kitty's powers and takes over, stabilizing Wolverine and Kitty helps Magneto flee a Sentinel attack.
In January 2018, a Kitty Pryde solo movie was announced to be in development, with Tim Miller attached as the director and Brian Michael Bendis as the writer, but in March 2019, after Disney's purchase of 21st Century Fox, Fox executive Emma Watts described The New Mutants as the final film in the X-Men series, thus; ending the development of the Kitty Pryde film.
Video games
Kitty Pryde appears in Konami's 1992 X-Men video arcade game, as a non-playable character (NPC). In this game, she is not known as "Sprite"; instead, she plays the "damsel in distress" role as it is based on "Pryde of the X-Men". In the 2010 re-release of the game she is voiced by Mela Lee.
Shadowcat is a playable character in the game X-Men II: The Fall of the Mutants.
Shadowcat appears as an NPC in the X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse, voiced by Kim Mai Guest. She has special dialogue with Colossus (who she scolds for flirting with Scarlet Witch).
Shadowcat appears in X-Men: The Official Game, with Kim Mai Guest reprising her role.
Shadowcat is a playable character in Marvel Super Hero Squad Online, voiced by Tara Strong.
In X-Men: Destiny, Gambit mentions that the U-Men had captured Kitty and extracted bits of her power. Gambit obtains a vial of a substance which temporarily lets the character fall through the roof (if the player chose the correct option).
Kitty Pryde is a playable character in the Facebook game Marvel: Avengers Alliance.
Kitty Pryde is a playable character in the X-Men: Days of Future Past app game.
Kitty Pryde is a playable character in the online MMO Marvel Heroes, with Danielle Judovits reprising her role.
Kitty Pryde appears as a playable character in Marvel Future Fight.
Kitty Pryde appears as a playable character in Marvel Puzzle Quest.
Kitty Pryde appears as a playable character in Marvel Strike Force.
Novels
Kitty Pryde appears in the X-Men/Star Trek crossover novel Planet X. In it, she is examined by Geordi La Forge, who notes the similarities between her ability and the chroniton displacement he and Ro Laren experienced in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Next Phase".
Reception
Kitty Pryde has been well received as a comic book character and as a member of the X-Men. Wizard magazine put her at number #13 in 200 Greatest Comic Characters of All Time. She was the highest female comic character in the list beating rivals such as Wonder Woman, Buffy Summers, and She-Hulk. IGN ranked her as the 47th greatest comic book hero of all time stating that "as X-Men writers have often found it useful to introduce younger teen recruits to offset the experienced members of the team, Kitty Pryde set the standard when she debuted, and none have surpassed her". IGN rated Kitty Pryde #3 on its list of the Top 25 X-Men from the Past 40 Years describing her as the mutant everyman, the common girl turned superhero; IGN also stated that as her pet dragon, Lockheed, "became instantly attached to Kitty, [they] were hooked early on". Marvel.com ranked her as the tenth greatest X-Men member stating that "unquestionably, the dynamic of the X-Men shifted entirely when teenage whiz kid Kitty Pryde joined the team in the early 1980s"; Marvel.com also stated that even though Kitty has since blossomed into a young woman of considerable maturity and power, she remains the access point to the X-Men for countless readers. A later list on Marvel's website, ranking the top 50 X-Men characters, placed her in first place, citing the ease of identifying with her for the audience, and her development over the years.
Notes
References
External links
Kitty Pryde at Marvel.com
UncannyXmen.net Spotlight on Shadowcat
American superheroes
Characters created by Chris Claremont
Characters created by John Byrne (comics)
Comics characters introduced in 1980
Excalibur (comics)
Female characters in animation
Female characters in film
Female characters in television
Fictional American Jews in comics
Fictional bisexual females
Fictional characters from Illinois
Fictional characters who can turn intangible
Fictional dancers
Fictional female ninja
Fictional linguists
Fictional mayors
Fictional schoolteachers
Fictional secret agents and spies
Fictional women soldiers and warriors
Jewish superheroes
Marvel Comics female superheroes
Marvel Comics film characters
Marvel Comics LGBT superheroes
Marvel Comics martial artists
Marvel Comics mutants
S.H.I.E.L.D. agents
Teenage characters in comics
X-Men members | true | [
"D. K. (Dragoljub Kosta) or \"Gish\" Jovanovich (January 24, 1916 – November 12, 1983) was a Serbian-American helicopter designer, inventor, and pioneer in autogyro technology. Born in Yugoslavia (pre-Communist Kingdom of Yugoslavia), he subsequently moved to the United States, living first in Philadelphia and later in southern California.\n\nPiasecki and HERC\nJovanovich and Frank Kozloski founded the Helicopter Engineering Research Corporation (HERC) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1946. HERC was the predecessor of Jovair. Jovanovich and Kozloski previously worked for Piasecki Helicopter Corporation where Jovanovich's patented tandem rotary design was used on the Piasecki PV-3.\n\nThe first helicopter they designed was the HERC JOV-3. This was first flown in 1948. They used the Boulevard Airport (formerly William Penn Airport) as their base.\n\nMcCulloch\nIn 1949 Jovanovich and Kozloski transferred to the McCulloch Aircraft Corporation, the new helicopter and aircraft division of McCulloch Motors Corporation. The design principles of the JOV-3 were incorporated into the McCulloch MC-4, which first flew in March 1951. In 1952, the MC-4C, a modified MC-4, was acquired by the US Army in 1952 for testing, but was deemed underpowered and none were further ordered.\n\nHughes\nIn 1955 Jovanovich designed a rotor for Howard Hughes' Hughes 269. This was followed by hub blades for the three-blade light helicopter, the 1958 Del Mar DH-1 Whirlymite series, and the hub for the Hughes 500.\n\nJovair\n\nIn 1960 Jovanovich formed Jovair Corporation to continue development of the MC-4. A new version the Jovair Sedan 4E called the Jovairin was type approved by the FAA in March 1963. Bill Lear tried to spark interest in its production without success.\n\nIn 1968 McCulloch Corp fully acquired Jovair, renaming it McCulloch Aircraft Corp. The company moved its facilities from Culver City to El Segundo at this time with Jovanonich as its Vice Chairman.\n\nWith McCulloch Corporation funding, Jovanovich designed and developed an autogyro, the McCulloch J-2, that could take off from a residential driveway. Jovanovich had patented a similar concept in 1954. Development was slow because Jovair lacked staff and resources yet the first prototype flew in 1962. Flying Magazine's review of the J-2 was unflattering to both Jovanovich and the J-2. A retraction of the comments about Jovanovich was published three months later.\n\nAircraft designed by Jovanovich\n The tandem rotary on the Piasecki PV-3\n HERC JOV-3\n McCulloch MC-4\n The rotor blades on the Hughes 269\n Jovair Sedan 4E\n McCulloch J-2\n\nPatents \n Helicopter #USD168794 S (Publication Date: 1953)\n Means for connecting rotor blades to rotor bodies #US2672941 A (Publication Date: 1954)\n Damping means for blades of aircraft sustaining rotors #US 2696271 A (Publication Date: 1954)\n Rotor blade for helicopters #US 2712356 A (Publication Date: 1955)\n Pitch control means for aircraft sustaining rotors #US 2753004 A(Publication Date: 1956)\n Movement limiting means for blades of aircraft sustaining rotors #US 2742098 A (Publication Date: 1956)\n Helicopter Control Mechanism #US2856788 A (Publication Date: 1958)\n Convertiplane #US 2852207 A (Publication Date: 1958)\n Helicopter rotor blade #US2941603 A (Publication Date: 1960)\n Blade-to-hub connector for thrust producing rotor #US 2949967 A (Publication Date: 1960)\n Helicopter #US D191929 S (Publication Date: 1961)\n\nSee also \n McCulloch Aircraft Corporation\n Robert P. McCulloch\n\nReferences\n\nYugoslav emigrants to the United States\nAmerican people of Serbian descent\n1916 births\n1983 deaths\n20th-century American businesspeople",
"Usagi Yojimbo Book 26: Traitors of the Earth is the twenty-sixth graphic novel in the ongoing Usagi Yojimbo series created by cartoonist Stan Sakai. It was published by Dark Horse Comics in 2012, collecting stories previously published in Usagi Yojimbo (vol. 3) #117–123 and stories from Dark Horse Maverick 2001 #1 and MySpace Dark Horse Presents #35.\n\nThe single page story Groo VS. Usagi: Who Would Win? was originally published in the 38th annual Souvenir Book for the 2007 Comic-Con International: San Diego.\n\nTraitors of the Earth was published in trade paperback and limited edition hardcover (limited to 350 signed and numbered copies).\n\nPublication details\n\nTrade Paperback Edition \n\nPublication Date: July 4, 2012\n\nFormat: b&w, 200 pages; HC, 6\" x 9\"\n\nPrice: $16.99\n\nSigned & Numbered Limited Hardcover Edition \n\nPublication Date: July 4, 2012\n\nFormat: b&w, 200 pages; HC, 6\" x 9\"\n\nPrice: $59.99\n\nTable of Contents \n\n Introduction by Walt Simonson\n Usagi and the Kami of the Pond\n Cut the Plum\n Traitors of the Earth\n What the Little Thief Heard\t\n The Hidden Fortress\n A Place to Stay\n The Death of Lord Hikiji\n Story Notes\n Groo VS. Usagi: Who Would Win?\n Cover Gallery\n Author Bio\n\nForeign Language Editions\n\nUsagi Yojimbo 26: Zdrajcy ziemi \n\nPublisher: Egmont Polska Sp. z o.o.\n\nPublication Date: kwiecień 2013\n\nLanguage: Polish\n\nUsagi Yojimbo nº 26: Traidores de la Tierra \n\nPublisher: Planeta DeAgostini\n\nPublication Date: Febrero 2013\n\nLanguage: Spanish\n\nUsagi Yojimbo Tome 26 \n\nPublisher: Paquet\n\nPublication Date: Septembre 2015\n\nLanguage: French\n\nFormat: 12,5 x 18,5 cm\n\nThe Digest sized French editions of the Usagi Yojimbo books do not feature any of the individual compilation titles that are used for the original English editions, listed each book by volume number instead.\n\nReferences\n\n2013 graphic novels\nUsagi Yojimbo"
] |
[
"Kitty Pryde",
"Publication history",
"What was the first publication date?",
"The fictional Kitty Pryde first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980),"
] | C_98d6a9f0735942e3a427f07b743f5a4d_1 | How long was the publication? | 2 | How long was the publication of Kitty Pryde? | Kitty Pryde | Kitty Pryde was introduced into the X-Men title as the result of an editorial dictate that the book was supposed to depict a school for mutants. Uncanny X-Men artist John Byrne named Kitty Pryde after a classmate he met in art school, Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary in 1973. He had told Pryde he liked her name and asked for permission to use it, promising to name his first original comics character after her. Byrne drew the character to slightly resemble an adolescent Sigourney Weaver. The fictional Kitty Pryde first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980), by writer Chris Claremont and artist Byrne, as a highly intelligent 13-year-old girl. Claremont said several elements of the character's personality were derived from those of X-Men editor Louise Simonson's daughter, Julie. Claremont and Byrne made the new character a full-fledged X-Man in issue #139, where she was codenamed "Sprite". She was the main character in issues #141-142, the "Days of Future Past" storyline, where she is possessed by her older self, whose consciousness time travels to the past to prevent a mass extermination of mutants. The six-issue miniseries Kitty Pryde and Wolverine (1984-1985), written by Claremont, is a coming-of-age storyline in which she matures from a girl to a young woman, adopting the new name "Shadowcat". In the late '80s, she joined the British-based super team, Excalibur, where she remained for roughly ten years before coming back to the X-Men. In the early 2000s, she disappeared from the spotlight after semi-retiring from superhero work. She was featured in the 2002 mini-series Mekanix and came back to the main X-Men books in 2004 under the pen of Joss Whedon in Astonishing X-Men. She remained a part of the X-Men books until 2008 when she left again for roughly 2 years. After coming back, she was featured in Jason Aaron's Wolverine and the X-Men and Brian Michael Bendis' All-New X-Men books. In early 2015, she joined the Guardians of the Galaxy. After the Secret Wars event, she adopted her new alias, Star-Lord (first believed to be Star-Lady). Shadowcat's popularity had a profound effect on the real-life Kitty Pryde: the latter became so overwhelmed by attention from Shadowcat fans, she abbreviated her name to K.D. Pryde to avoid association with her fictional counterpart. She has since stated she has mixed feelings about her fame, saying she values Byrne's comics for their entertainment and artistic value, but wishes more people would appreciate her as more than just Shadowcat's namesake. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Katherine Anne "Kitty" Pryde is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics, commonly in association with the X-Men. The character first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980) and was co-created by writer-artist John Byrne and Chris Claremont.
A mutant, Pryde possesses a "phasing" ability that allows her, as well as objects or people she is in contact with, to become intangible. This power also disrupts any electrical field she passes through, and lets her simulate levitation.
The youngest to join the X-Men, she was first portrayed as a "kid sister" to many older members of the group, filling the role of literary foil to the more established characters. She occasionally used the codenames Sprite and Ariel, cycling through several uniforms until settling for her trademark black-and-gold costume. During the miniseries Kitty Pryde and Wolverine, she was renamed Shadowcat, the alias she would be most associated with, and shifted to a more mature depiction in her subsequent appearances. Pryde would eventually abandon her nickname, "Kitty", and switch to "Kate". She was one of the main cast of characters depicted in the original Excalibur title. After momentarily joining the Guardians of the Galaxy, she assumed her then-fiancé's superhero identity as the Star-Lord (Star-Lady). As of the series Marauders, she is now informally known as Captain Kate Pryde and the Red Queen of the Hellfire Trading Company.
In the X-Men film series, Kitty Pryde was initially portrayed by young actresses in cameos; Sumela Kay in X-Men (2000) and Katie Stuart in X2 (2003). Later, a pre-transition Elliot Page portrayed the character in X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) and X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) in full-length appearances. Pryde is ranked #47 in IGN's Top 100 Comic Book Heroes.
Publication history
Kitty Pryde was introduced into the X-Men title as the result of an editorial dictate that the book was supposed to depict a school for mutants. Uncanny X-Men artist John Byrne named Kitty Pryde after a classmate he met in art school, Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary in 1973. He had told Pryde he liked her name and asked for permission to use it, promising to name his first original comics character after her. Byrne drew the character to slightly resemble an adolescent Sigourney Weaver.
The fictional Kitty Pryde first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980), by writer Chris Claremont and artist Byrne, as a highly intelligent 13-year-old girl. Claremont said several elements of the character's personality were derived from those of X-Men editor Louise Simonson's daughter, Julie. Claremont and Byrne made the new character a full-fledged X-Man in issue #139, where she was codenamed "Sprite". She was the main character in issues #141–142, the "Days of Future Past" storyline, where she is possessed by her older self, whose consciousness time travels to the past to prevent a mass extermination of mutants. The six-issue miniseries Kitty Pryde and Wolverine (1984–1985), written by Claremont, is a coming-of-age storyline in which she matures from a girl to a young woman, adopting the new name "Shadowcat".
In the late 1980s, Kitty joined the British-based super team, Excalibur, where she remained for roughly ten years before coming back to the X-Men. In the early 2000s, she disappeared from the spotlight after semi-retiring from superhero work. She was featured in the 2002 mini-series Mekanix and came back to the main X-Men books in 2004 under the pen of Joss Whedon in Astonishing X-Men. She remained a part of the X-Men books until 2008 when she left again for roughly 2 years. After coming back, she was featured in Jason Aaron's Wolverine and the X-Men and Brian Michael Bendis' All-New X-Men books.
In early 2015, she joined the Guardians of the Galaxy. After the Secret Wars event, she adopted her new alias, Star-Lord (first believed to be Star-Lady).
In 2020, Kitty Pryde was revealed to be bisexual. Her co-creator, Chris Claremont, had always intended this to be the case, considering Rachel Summers as a possible love interest for Pryde. However, Claremont wasn't allowed to show this at the time due to censorship, as he revealed on the "Xplain the X-Men" podcast in 2016.
Shadowcat's popularity had a profound effect on the real-life Kitty Pryde: the latter became so overwhelmed by attention from Shadowcat fans, she abbreviated her name to K.D. Pryde to avoid association with her fictional counterpart. She has since stated she has mixed feelings about her fame, saying she values Byrne's comics for their entertainment and artistic value, but wishes more people would appreciate her as more than just Shadowcat's namesake.
Fictional character biography
Katherine Anne "Kitty" Pryde was born in Deerfield, Illinois, to Carmen and Theresa Pryde. She is an Ashkenazi Jewish-American and her paternal grandfather, Samuel Prydeman, was held in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. Kitty started to have headaches at age thirteen, signaling the emergence of her mutant powers. She was approached by both the X-Men's Charles Xavier and the Hellfire Club's White Queen, Emma Frost, both of whom hoped to recruit her for their respective causes. Kitty was unnerved by Frost, observing that the White Queen looked at her as if she were "something good to eat." She got along better with Xavier and the three X-Men who escorted him, quickly becoming friends with Ororo Munroe. Ororo told Kitty who she really was and about the X-Men, which made the teenager even more enthusiastic about attending Xavier's school.
Their conversation was cut short when they (along with Wolverine and Colossus) were attacked by armored mercenaries in the employ of Frost and the Hellfire Club. The X-Men defeated their assailants, but were subdued by the White Queen's telepathic powers immediately after. In the confusion, Kitty was separated from the X-Men, and not captured along with them. She managed to contact Cyclops, Phoenix, and Nightcrawler. With the help of Dazzler and Pryde, those X-Men rescued their teammates from the Hellfire Club.
The White Queen appeared to perish in the battle, which meant she was no longer competing with Xavier for the approval of Kitty's parents. Kitty's parents had not heard from her in more than a day, because during that time she was first being pursued by the Hellfire Club's men and then working with the X-Men to save their friends. All they knew was Kitty had left with Xavier's "students" to get a soda, there had been reports that the soda shop had been blown up, and Kitty had been missing since. Therefore, they were angry at Xavier when he finally returned with Kitty in tow. At first, it seemed like there was no chance of Kitty being allowed to attend the school and join the X-Men. Phoenix then used her considerable telepathic power to erase the memories of Kitty's parents and plant false ones, resulting in a complete shift in their attitude towards Xavier. Kitty was then allowed to enroll at Xavier's school with her parents' blessing, becoming the youngest member of the team.
Joining the X-Men
Kitty joined the X-Men, and assumed the costumed identity of Sprite. Early in her career as an X-Man, Kitty's adult self from an alternate future took possession of her body in the present to help X-Men thwart the assassination of Senator Robert Kelly by the second Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Kitty then singlehandedly defeated a N'Garai demon. Kitty also briefly attended the White Queen's Massachusetts Academy when her parents became convinced that she needed to be with students of her own age, but following a failed attempt to subdue the X-Men, Frost revoked Kitty's admission.
During her teen years, Kitty fostered a number of close relationships with others at the school and in the X-Men. She developed a crush on Colossus and became close friends with his little sister Illyana Rasputin. Initially uneasy around Nightcrawler and other mutants with physical deformities, Kitty finally overcame her fears and became close friends with him. Kitty also befriended Lockheed, a highly intelligent alien resembling a dragon, who followed her home after a mission in outer space. Lockheed is extremely loyal to Kitty, and the two of them share a psychic bond. Wolverine became something of a mentor to Kitty despite his usually gruff personality. Storm came to view Kitty as the daughter she never had.
Though Xavier has threatened to reassign Kitty to the New Mutants, a team of younger mutants he established in the absence of the X-Men, ever since the X-Men returned from outer space, she never ended up joining the group, who she derisively calls the "X-Babies". Kitty was later abducted by the Morlocks and nearly forced to wed Caliban. She was then abducted by the White Queen, but rescued by the New Mutants.
During this time, Kitty began to date Colossus, although this did not last long. Colossus developed feelings for an alien woman named Zsaji whom he met on the Beyonder's planet in the first Secret Wars. Colossus' feelings toward Zsaji were primarily a side effect of her own unique healing abilities, which she had used on him after he became injured. Regardless, Colossus' feelings were real and he returned to Earth consumed with grief after Zsaji's death. He admitted to Kitty that he loved Zsaji, which hurt her deeply and ended the budding romantic relationship. Kitty had made good friends with a local boy from Salem Central named Doug Ramsey around this time, but her feelings for him never went as deep as his for her, and they never actually dated, though they remained close, even more so after Doug's status as a mutant was revealed and he joined the New Mutants under the codename Cypher. They remained friends until his death some time later.
Ogun
During the 1984–1985 Kitty Pryde and Wolverine miniseries, Kitty is possessed by a demon, the ninja Ogun. Ogun psychically bestows upon Kitty a virtual lifetime of martial arts training. Kitty was brainwashed by Ogun into becoming a ninja assassin, and was sent to attack Wolverine. Kitty is able to resist Ogun's influence with Wolverine's help, and the two form a strong teacher/student bond, which helps them in vanquishing Ogun. Kitty returns to the X-Men, no longer the innocent girl they once knew, and officially adopts the codename Shadowcat.
Morlock Massacre
While trying to save Rogue, Kitty was badly injured by Harpoon's energy spear during the Mutant Massacre story arc, in the massacre of the Morlocks, with the result that she lost control of her power and was stuck in an intangible state and could not regain her solidity. She was rushed to Muir Island along with other surviving casualties of the Massacre to be tended to by Moira MacTaggert. MacTaggert was able to keep Kitty's condition from deteriorating to the point where she completely lost physical substance and ceased to exist, but was not able to do any more to help her.
At this time, Kitty's natural state was to be intangible. Where she once had to make a conscious effort to phase, she could now only maintain her solidity through an act of conscious will. The X-Men went to Reed Richards, Mister Fantastic of the Fantastic Four, for aid, but Richards initially refused because he was not sure he would be able to help.
Having nowhere else to go, the X-Men turned to Richards' enemy Doctor Doom. This created a moral dilemma for both the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, and both teams fought each other because the Fantastic Four were trying to stop the treatment while the X-Men were determined to save Kitty's life. In the end, both the personal crisis of the Fantastic Four and the life of Shadowcat were saved after Franklin Richards, with the help of Lockheed, brought both teams to their senses. Kitty has since recovered from this state and now has full control over her power again.
Excalibur
Among the others injured and brought to Muir Isle were Colossus and Nightcrawler, although Colossus left the United Kingdom shortly after being released from MacTaggert's care to join the rest of the X-Men on their mission to battle the Adversary. The X-Men sacrificed their lives to defeat the Adversary, the battle and their sacrifice was televised and broadcast across the world. The X-Men were resurrected later in the same issue, unknown to the world at large, but chose to keep a low profile and perpetuate the belief that they were still dead. This strategy was enforced to more effectively fight their enemies. This meant avoiding contact with friends and family, including Kitty. Thinking the X-Men were dead, Kitty and Nightcrawler joined Rachel Summers, Captain Britain, and Meggan to form the Britain-based team Excalibur. For a brief time, Kitty studied at St. Searle's School for Girls in Britain. During her time with Excalibur, Kitty developed a crush on Professor Alistaire Stuart which went unreciprocated since Alistaire was attracted to Rachel. Later, she was romantically involved with former Black Air agent Pete Wisdom. At some point Kitty was recruited by the international law enforcement agency S.H.I.E.L.D. to repair the computer system of their flying headquarters. Kitty discovered the problem was due to Ogun's spirit having infiltrated the computer system, and with the aid of Wolverine, she managed to purge Ogun's presence. During this time, Kitty was attracted to a S.H.I.E.L.D. intern her own age, and this made her begin to doubt her relationship with Wisdom. Soon after, she broke off their relationship.
Back to the X-Men
After Excalibur's dissolution, Shadowcat, Nightcrawler, and Colossus return to the X-Men. While returning, they faced a group of imposters following Cerebro, in the guise of Professor X. While tracking Mystique, she stumbles onto prophetic diaries that belonged to Irene Adler, a precognitive. During the six-month gap, Kitty visited Genosha. Whatever she experienced there is unknown (although presumably connected to her father, living on Genosha at the time), but it had a profound effect on her. She cut her hair and began to act rebelliously, also using one of Wolverine's bone claws broken off during battle as a weapon. Kitty remained with the X-Men for a while before leaving after the apparent death of Colossus. Trying to give herself a normal life, she attended the University of Chicago. During this time, her father was killed when Cassandra Nova’s Sentinels destroyed Genosha. Kitty later finds a recording of his death due to exploring footage of the attack. She is also kidnapped by William Stryker, but the X-Treme X-Men team helped her escape, and she assisted them on several missions.
At the start of Joss Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men, Kitty once again rejoins the X-Men, despite having extreme reservations about working with the former White Queen, given their history. This was the primary reason why Frost herself wanted Kitty on the team, as a sort of "safety" should Frost ever revert to type. Frost reasoned that the person who trusted her least would be most likely to spot such behavior. On one of the team's first missions, Shadowcat discovered Colossus was alive. After some initial awkwardness, Kitty and Colossus resumed dating.
Kitty Pryde appeared alongside Colossus in the "Blinded by the Light" arc in X-Men. They are the two X-Men left to look after the students while the rest of the X-Men leave for Mystique's home in Mississippi to check up on Rogue, during which they are ambushed by the Marauders. Kitty and Colossus, meanwhile, attempt to protect the students from a faction of the Marauders led by Exodus. It is revealed over the course of the story that Kitty, worried of the Destiny Diaries' safety, devised a plan with Cyclops and Emma Frost to hide them and have Emma wipe the location from her mind. The location could only be revealed by a code word spoken to Kitty. The arc concludes with a battle between Iceman and Cannonball against the Marauders for the diaries, during which they are destroyed by Gambit.
In the "Torn" arc, the latest incarnation of the Hellfire Club begin an assault on Xavier's School. Kitty fulfilled the role that Emma Frost envisioned, personally taking down Frost and imprisoning her, only to fall under a telepathic delusion created by Hellfire member Perfection, who claimed to be the true, unreformed Emma Frost. Under this delusion, Kitty was made to believe that she and Colossus had conceived a child, which was later taken away by the X-Men because its potential mutant abilities were supposedly dangerous. Kitty reacts in the delusion by attempting to rescue the child from a near-inescapable "box" in the depths of the school, unaware that in reality she is freeing an alien entity, Stuff, who contains the trapped consciousness of Cassandra Nova, the apparent ringleader of this new Hellfire Club. A newly awakened Cyclops revealed that the new Hellfire Club, including Perfection and Nova, are actually mental projections created by a piece of Cassandra Nova's consciousness; which became lodged in Emma's mind during the X-Men's last confrontation with her, playing on her survivor's guilt over the Genoshan massacre, and utilizing Emma's telepathy to both confound the X-Men and orchestrate her (Nova's) escape from the Stuff body. As Cyclops killed the mental projections, Emma tried to force Kitty to kill her to get rid of Nova. Undeterred, Cassandra Nova switched her focus to attempt to transfer her mind to Hisako Ichiki. It appears that Nova did not succeed, as the team was transported to S.W.O.R.D.'s air station en route to Ord's Breakworld for the "Unstoppable" arc that concludes Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men.
Breakworld
As the team prepares to end the confrontation with the Breakworld leader, the team splits up—with Kitty on the team appointed to stop the missile pointed at Earth. Kitty phases into the missile to disrupt its circuitry noting that it is composed of the same material as the rest of Breakworld, a material that is difficult and exhausting for her to phase through. After phasing for a mile into the missile, Kitty finds the center only to discover it empty. The missile is fired, causing Kitty to pass out inside of it as Beast discovers too late that due to its shape, trajectory, and lack of internal circuitry, the Breakworld's weapon is not a missile, but a bullet. As the bullet hurtles toward Earth, Kitty lies unconscious within it.
As the situation becomes increasingly dire, Emma establishes mental contact with Kitty, reassuring her that she will come out of this fine, though it eventually becomes clear to both that the situation will be grim. Kitty and Emma come to an understanding and reconciliation, Emma stating that she never wanted something like this to happen to her. Kitty then phases the bullet through Earth, but is trapped within. At the end of Giant-Size Astonishing X-Men, Scott Summers mentions that Doctor Strange, Reed Richards, and some "top men" tried to save her, but believe she has fused to the bullet, as it continues to hurtle through space. Whether she is alive or dead is unknown, though the X-Men consider her lost to them.
As a result of these events Kitty does not appear in the X-Men crossover event X-Men: Messiah Complex, since this takes place after the events of Giant-Size Astonishing X-Men. She is briefly mentioned in the aftermath of the Messiah Complex, by Colossus, Nightcrawler, and Wolverine, as the three of them discuss "losing her."
To cope with Kitty's loss, Colossus takes down a group of Russian criminals dealing in human trafficking, and gets a tattoo of the name 'Katya' on his chest. Emma begins having a recurring dream in which she hears a voice whom she believes is Kitty's trying to reach out to her.
It was later confirmed by Abigail Brand that Kitty Pryde was still alive within the bullet, but because the bullet's design would harden as time went on, it would become increasingly difficult to break the bullet open.
Return
After the X-Men move to the island of Utopia, Magneto arrives on the island professing his desire to join and support the X-Men in their effort to unite the world's remaining mutants. The X-Men reluctantly let him stay, remaining wary of him despite his efforts to gain their trust. In a final bid to gain their trust, Magneto focuses his powers, attempting to divert the interstellar path of the metal bullet Kitty is trapped in and bring her home to Earth. Meanwhile, inside the bullet, Kitty is revealed to still be alive. Unbeknownst to the others, Magneto had encountered the bullet earlier while attempting to regain his powers with the High Evolutionary and surmised that Kitty was inside. Despite this and the High Evolutionary's apparent ability to retrieve the bullet and Kitty, Magneto chose to focus on regaining his powers, secretly keeping tabs on the bullet until his decision to draw it back to Earth. During her time trapped inside the bullet, Kitty keeps herself and the bullet phased to avoid collisions with any inhabited objects in its path.
Magneto brings Kitty Pryde safely down to Earth by cracking the bullet in two and levitating Kitty to the ground. When she and Colossus try to touch, it is revealed that she is trapped in her intangible form, unable to speak, and the X-Men place her in a protective chamber similar to the one used for her following the events of the Mutant Massacre. How Kitty survived her time in the bullet is unclear to the X-Men's science team, where the X-Men discover that all her bodily functions halted. An analysis by Kavita Rao hypothesizes that Kitty created an intense muscle memory to keep herself and the bullet phased and has "forgotten" how to un-phase.
During a conversation with Colossus, with Emma Frost acting as the psi-conduit, Kitty picks up Emma's stray thoughts on killing the captive Sebastian Shaw, to prevent Namor from discovering she previously lied to him. While disgusted at Emma's intentions, Kitty offers a compromise. Due to her current ghost state, she is the perfect tool for making Shaw disappear.
In a storyline in Uncanny X-Men, the Breakworlders make their way to Earth. During the conflict between the Breakworlder Kr'uun and the X-Men, Kitty is slain and resurrected by Kr'uun's mate in an alien ritual, which results in her powers returning to normal.
Regenesis
Shortly thereafter, Kitty breaks up with Colossus, and decides to return with Wolverine to Westchester to open the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning. In Wolverine and the X-Men #4, she appears to be suddenly pregnant, but the pregnancy was revealed to be a Brood infestation, and it was swiftly dealt with by a team of X-Men. Since returning to Westchester, Kitty has shared several kisses with Iceman. During the events of Avengers vs. X-Men, Kitty does not take a side, but instead decides to stay at the school to work with the students. Once Bobby returned from working with the X-Men after realizing that the Phoenix had corrupted them, he and Kitty finally decide to go on a date.
All-New X-Men
After Beast brings the original five X-Men into the future to stop Cyclops in the present, Kitty volunteers to take responsibility for the temporally relocated X-Men while they work to undo this dark future. This soon puts her at odds with the rest of her team as they believed the original five should go back to their own time in order to prevent any damage to the space-time continuity. Eventually, this leads Kitty to take the decision of abandoning the school with the time-displaced X-Men and join Cyclops's X-Men at the New Xavier School. During the first few weeks at the New Xavier School, Jean Grey is abducted by the Shiar Empire to stand trial for her future self's crimes. Kitty and the time-displaced X-Men team up with the Guardians of the Galaxy and succeed in rescuing Jean from the Shiar. At the conclusion of the storyline, Kitty begins a long-distance, flirtatious relationship with Starlord, Peter Quill.
The Black Vortex
In the following weeks, Kitty's relationship with Peter Quill evolves more and more as they developed stronger feelings for each other every day. At one point, Quill gets captured during one of their dates and she has no option but to go to his rescue, despite her fear of space as a result of her being trapped on the giant space bullet. After rescuing Peter, she decides to stay in space with him. Then, Kitty convinces Peter to steal a powerful artifact called the Black Vortex from his father J'son. Soon, they find themselves being chased by J'son's assassination squad, the Slaughter Lords. In despair, they request the aid of the X-Men and the Guardians of the Galaxy to protect the Vortex. After a few of their own friends can't resist the temptation and submit to the Vortex, betray the team, and escape with the artifact; the team splits and Kitty stays in Spartax to help an orphanage. She is encased in amber after Thane (who was allied with J'son) freezes the whole planet along with the people inside it; but thanks to her phasing powers, she manages to get out of the amber. Then the Brood attacks Spartax, planning to use every encased person to lay eggs and create an army of Brood to start invading other planets and conquering them. Kitty feels the only way to stop them is by submitting to the Vortex herself as she's the only one who can resist the cosmic corruption. She reluctantly submits and becomes a being of unlimited power. After being reminded of the love between her and Peter Quill, she goes back and phases all the amber that encased Spartax, along with the Broods trying to infect the people, and sends them all to another dimension. Kitty doesn't give up the cosmic power but admits to Peter that she is afraid of it. Peter promises her that he will never abandon her no matter how much she changes. Then, Peter kneels and proposes marriage to Kitty. She, with tears in her eyes, accepts. Later when Star Lord is declared Emperor of Spartax she is told she will become the first lady of Spartax.
Guardians of the Galaxy
Kitty takes on the mantle of Star Lord and joins the Guardians of the Galaxy in Peter Quill's place so he can take on his royal duties. When Hala the Accuser massacres Spartax in an attempt to make Quill pay for J'son's actions against her people, she initially easily lays waste to the capitol and overpowers the Guardians. After the Guardians regroup and formulate a strategy to defeat her, Kitty manages to partially phase Hala into the ground so the rest of the Guardians can knock her out and separate her from her weapon. After Quill loses his title as king he and Kitty end up on a mission with the rest of the Guardians on a concentration camp prison planet owned by the Badoon after Gamora gave them information on it so they can free Angela. Once there, Kitty has a personal reaction upon seeing the prisoners and makes it her mission to liberate everyone there and defeat the captors, as it reminds her of Nazi concentration camps. After Quill gets captured and sentenced to death in an arena battle, Kitty finds and kills one of the Badoon leaders by phasing his heart out of his body. When Captain Marvel summons the Guardians to Earth to help her address Tony Stark, Kitty learns that Thanos is a prisoner on Earth and tries to convince Quill to tell Gamora. When fighting starts Kitty woefully realizes that some of her former students are on Tony Stark's side instead of fighting with Captain Marvel. During the battle the Guardians' ship was destroyed, effectively stranding them on Earth. After helping the Guardians stop Thanos from leading an invasion from the Negative Zone the Guardians are given a new ship; however, Kitty decides to stay on Earth and ends her time with the Guardians and Quill.
Leading the X-Men
Upon returning to Earth, Kitty hopes to finally regain a semblance of a normal life but ends up approached by Storm, who informs Kitty of everything the X-Men have gone through while Kitty was away. Storm announces to Kitty that she intends to step down as leader of the X-Men due to the guilt that she feels for leading the X-Men to war and offers Kitty her position. After touring X-Haven and seeing how much things have changed and how much things need to change for the better, Kitty agrees to lead the X-Men as long as Storm remains on the team. Her next act is to relocate the mansion from Limbo to Central Park, New York so the X-Men can refocus on being part of the world instead of fearing it under the belief that if the X-Men truly are to be seen as heroes, then they need to actually live in the world that they are trying to save instead of constantly worrying about their own survival.
Under Kitty's new leadership, the X-Men go through some small changes in order to shed their past history and make new names for themselves, such as convincing Rachel Summers to change her code name to Prestige and renaming the mansion as The Xavier Institute for Mutant Education and Outreach. Kitty learns first-hand how hard it is to balance leading the X-Men as well as managing the mansion when there are many political factors trying to deliberately get in the way of the X-Men. She also begins to have awkward one-on-one moments with Colossus; they try to remain friends, but given their long history their interactions swiftly become complicated. Kitty's first case as field leader of the X-Men sees her and her team taking on a new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. After discovering that an outspoken anti-mutant politician brainwashed this new Brotherhood to work for her to publicly discredit mutants, Kitty threatened to expose her if she continued exploiting mutants for her own personal gain.
Dawn of X
After Krakoa became a new sovereign nation for Mutants, Kitty Pryde, now going by Captain Kate Pryde, discovers she is the sole mutant who is, for unknown reasons, unable to use the various warp gates leading to Krakoa. It is implied that she has done something to anger Krakoa, but that restriction does not mean Kitty cannot use other means to reach the mutant homeland. She steals a boat and sets sail for the island. Kitty's time on Krakoa proves to be just as fruitless, as the island's natural resources (like flowers that grow into biome homes) are similarly prohibited to Kitty. Emma Frost comes asking Kitty to take up a special mission: taking a bigger boat out to serve as pirate captain on the X-Men's mission to liberate mutants trapped in oppressive countries that do not recognize mutant sovereignty, while also smuggling and supplying for Emma's Hellfire Trading Company the lifesaving drugs the X-Men provide to humans. Kate Pryde is later appointed the new Red Queen of the Hellfire Trading Company by Emma Frost, to the dismay of Sebastian Shaw. Seeing Pryde as an obstacle to his complete control of the Hellfire Corporation, Shaw began plotting against Kate and her crew. After taking notice how Emma became overprotective of the newly crowned Red Queen, Shaw realized that for the same reason she can't travel through Krakoa's gates nor read or understand the Krakoan language until Emma implanted it in her brain, the X-Men's Resurrection Protocols also won't apply to her, which means Kate cannot be resurrected if she died. He orchestrated a distraction by paying off human supremacists Homines Verendi to stage an attack on his own son. Once Kate was defenseless, Shaw emerged from below deck and ensnared Lockheed with a net gun, making him a helpless hostage. He then released Krakoan seeds at her feet, which wrapped around her and prevented her from using her powers. He then dropped her and Lockheed into the sea. While Lockheed was able to survive, Kate sank helplessly, and once her head dropped under the surface, she had no air left and drowned instantly. Her death is later confirmed by Bishop as he retrieves Kate's body, as it was also established that the Resurrection Protocols indeed do not apply to Kate, as the Five, for reasons unknown, cannot resurrect her. However, she is later resurrected, as Emma Frost realized that it was due to the nature of Kate's intangibility powers that her mindless body was unable to break out of the egg.
Powers and abilities
Kitty is a mutant with the ability to pass through solid matter by passing her atomic particles through the spaces between the atoms of the object through which she is moving. In this way she and the object through which she is passing can temporarily merge without interacting, and each is unharmed when Shadowcat has finished passing through the object. This process is called "phasing" or quantum tunneling and it renders her almost completely intangible to physical touch. Shadowcat passes through objects at the same speed at which she is moving before she enters them. Since she is unable to breathe while inside an object, she can only continuously phase through solid objects (as when she travels underground) as long as she can hold her breath. However, contrary depictions of the duration of her phasing ability have been presented, such as when she has phased miles within an object. The use of her abilities also interferes with any electrical systems as she passes through by disrupting the flow of electrons from atom to atom, including the bio-electric systems of living bodies if she concentrates in the right way. This typically causes machines to malfunction or be destroyed as she phases through them, and can induce shock and unconsciousness in living beings.
Using her power began as an optional ability, but for a period (over ten years of published comics, approximately two years in-continuity) Kitty existed in a naturally "phased" state, and had to consciously choose to become solid. Kitty has returned to her original form and is normally solid and must choose to use her power. While phasing, she does not physically walk on surfaces, but rather interacts with the molecules of air above them, allowing her to ascend and descend, causing her to seemingly walk on air. While phased, she is immune to most physical attacks, and has inconsistent showings of some resistance to telepathy. The density of some materials (such as adamantium) can prove deleterious to her phasing, causing her to be severely disoriented or experience pain if she tries to pass through them. Some energy attacks also prove problematic for Kitty. For example, an energy blast fired by Harpoon, a member of the Marauders, caused her to lose her ability to become fully tangible for months. Magic and magical beings can also harm her in her phased state, as demonstrated in a battle with a N'Garai demon whose claws left no visible marks, but caused Kitty severe pain as they passed through her intangible body.
Kitty can also extend her powers to phase other people and objects. She is able to phase at least six other people (or objects of similar mass) with her, so long as they establish and maintain physical contact with her. She can extend her phasing effect to her own clothing or any other object with mass up to that of a small truck, as long as she remains in contact with it. Kitty can also make objects intangible by maintaining contact with them. She has threatened to leave people phased into a wall, and used her power offensively to harm the Technarch Magus, and Danger.
Kitty's powers seem to have increased over the years. During an X-Treme X-Men story arc in which she is kidnapped by Reverend William Stryker, she phases out of sync with Earth's rotation to move from one place in the world (only east or west) to another seemingly instantaneously. At the climax of Astonishing X-Men, Kitty phases a 10 mi (16 km) long "bullet" composed of super-dense alien metals through the entire planet Earth. This feat caused her considerable strain, but she is unable to phase out of the bullet. Moreover, originally Kitty found it difficult or impossible to phase only part of her body at a time. In the Days of Future Past story arc, she is possessed by her older future self, allowing her to solidify only her shoulder while phasing the rest of her body through Destiny—a feat explicitly beyond the 13-year-old Kitty's abilities. By contrast, the Kitty Pryde of Joss Whedon's run can punch and kick someone standing on the other side of a wall, selectively phasing and unphasing body parts as necessary. She can even run and leap through an armed opponent, grabbing their weapon as she passes by, which presumably requires her to solidify only the surface area of the palms of her hands and then immediately phase both her palms and the weapon.
Besides her mutant powers, Kitty is a genius in the field of applied technology and computer science. She is highly talented in the design and use of computer hardware. She is a skilled pilot of piston and jet engine aircraft, and a competent pilot of certain advanced interstellar vehicles. She has previously shown a unique ability to wield the Soulsword and also be harmed by it. Since her possession by the ninja demon Ogun, she has been consistently shown to be an excellent hand-to-hand combatant, having since been endowed with a lifetime of training in the martial arts of Japanese ninja and samurai.
She is a professional-level dancer in both ballet and modern dance. She speaks fluent English, Japanese, Russian, and the royal and standard languages of the alien Shi'ar and Skrull, and has moderate expertise in Gaelic, Hebrew, and German.
Kitty also shares a mental/empathic connection with her pet dragon Lockheed; both she and the alien dragon can "sense" each other's presence at times and generally understand one another's thoughts and actions.
When Kitty used the Black Vortex, her powers were augmented to a cosmic scale making her a god-like being. She can phase through any material of any density and can even phase a planet out of Thane's amber, whereas in her normal state it is an extremely difficult task to simply phase herself out of the amber. She can also apparently transverse between the planes of the multiverse and is immune to the effects of space. Her appearance can be changed but her natural form appears to be rather gaseous in look.
Other versions
In addition to her mainstream incarnation, Kitty Pryde has been depicted in other fictional universes.
Age of Apocalypse
In the Age of Apocalypse reality, Kitty grows up under harsh circumstances and her nature reflects it. She has short hair, tight clothes, and chain smokes cigarettes. Her parents are killed in the Chicago Cullings, and she is forcibly recruited into Apocalypse's army, but is later rescued by Colossus. Magneto puts Shadowcat under Weapon X's training, hoping to turn her into the X-Men's assassin, and she is given a set of retractable artificial claws around each wrist to better imitate her teacher's fighting style. After the fallout between Colossus and Magneto, Shadowcat sides with Colossus, whom she has married. Instead of leaving the fight against Apocalypse altogether, the couple become the teachers of Generation Next. The two submit their trainees to harsh situations, giving them little comfort despite the fact that Shadowcat is close to the age of her students.
Shadowcat assists the team in rescuing Illyana Rasputin from the Seattle Core, and, at Colossus' behest, abandons her students after Illyana is saved. She is killed by Colossus in his ruthless obsession to protect his sister, Illyana; coming between an enraged Colossus and his endangered sister, Shadowcat never believed he would harm her.
Days of Future Past
In the Days of Future Past timeline (Earth-811), Shadowcat goes by the name Kate Pryde. Kate attempts to go back in time to prevent the assassination of Senator Robert Kelly by Mystique and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. She succeeds, only to create a separate timeline where the events of her past still come to pass. After returning to her own time Kate helps Rachel Summers escape back to the timeline she just created. Captured by Sentinels, Kate escapes by phasing through her inhibitor collar and fell into a time warp, causing her to merge with the Sentinel that was scanning her, and arrives in the timeline Rachel is inhabiting. Kate's mind settles in a small, metal, off-spherical body and becomes known as Widget. After a few adventures in that timeline, mostly in company with her Earth-616 counterpart's team Excalibur, Kate regains her memory and returns to her original timeline where she is able to reprogram the ruling Sentinels to protect life, ending their tyranny.
Earth X
In Earth X it is revealed in the appendix of issue six that Kitty Pryde is killed saving Colossus while he could not shift into his metal form. Instead of phasing the bullet through her, she heroically takes the bullet and is killed.
Exiles
A version of Kitty Pryde codenamed Cat first appeared in Exiles #96. She is younger than her Earth-616 counterpart. She has the appearance and powers of the normal Shadowcat although she wears a different costume. Prior to her joining the Exiles, this version of Kitty had been recruited by Emma Frost as one of the core agents of the Hellfire Club's strike force. She helps Psylocke defeat Doom's soldiers who have invaded the Panoptichron. She helps retrieve Blink, Morph, and Sabretooth from being scattered across the multiverse. She works as a computer expert for the team and is a full member of the Exiles.
Cat's skill with using her powers means she is not tied to any dimension and can see through various realities, including those of the mind (for instance seeing the various personalities in Sage's mind as "ghosts" surrounding her). Her arrival in the Crystal Palace and connection to its computers has increased this, giving her the ability to "cascade" through different alternative versions of herself, altering her appearance and details of her powers. Amongst other versions, she has assumed the form of a Kitty Pryde with the appearance and powers of Tigra. During the New Exiles' last mission Cat faced off against Madame Hydra (Sue Storm) and killed her at the cost of her own life.
There has been another version of Kitty that appeared in the King Hyperion story arc (Exiles #38-40). She had survived an attack on the X-Mansion by the Sentinels. The Colossus from her universe had been killed in the attack but she had the same feelings towards Weapon X's Colossus even though he was not her Colossus. The two eventually fell in love with each other. Unfortunately this did not last since she died with Colossus when they were shot into the empty vacuum of space by Hyperion.
House of M
When the Scarlet Witch altered reality in the 616 Universe, creating the reality known as House of M where mutants were the dominant population, Kitty Pryde was a teacher in a public middle school in Cincinnati, Ohio. Like many of the heroes of Earth 616, she is reminded of the true reality by Layla Miller and recruited in the fight to restore reality.
Magik
In the limited series Magik (Illyana and Storm), an alternative reality Kitty renames herself "Cat" after she is mutated by the demonic sorcerer Belasco into a more feline form, with cat eyes, whiskers, a tail, and enhanced physical abilities and senses. Trapped in Belasco's Limbo, Cat takes a militant view towards defeating the sorcerer, eschewing the magic that her reality's Storm embraces, instead turning to skills in swordplay and physical combat. She tries to save the Illyana Rasputin of Earth-616 from corruption through magic by taking Illyana into the wilderness of Limbo and teaching the child to fight and survive. Like the Kitty Pryde of Earth-616 eventually would, Cat became Illyana's best friend, but more in the role of an older sister due to the difference in their ages.
Cat's plan goes awry when the pair's attempt to confront Belasco fails, at the cost of the life of an enslaved Nightcrawler; Illyana falls under Belasco's influence and Cat is further transformed towards a feline, with a semi-animalistic mind completely loyal to Belasco. Cat is eventually slain by Illyana when Belasco sets Cat upon his rebellious apprentice; facing death at Cat's hands and knowing that, deep down, a part of Kitty still exists and hates her enslavement, Illyana broke Cat's neck in self-defense.
Long after Illyana overthrows Belasco, escapes Limbo, and becomes a member of the junior X-Men team known as the New Mutants, Cat's remains are found by the team in Limbo's throne room. By then she had completely decomposed to a skeleton. Illyana, facing a rebellion of Limbo's demon population that threatened to overrun Earth, smashed Cat's skull in rage over the demonic taint that Belasco left on her soul and frustration over the horrible choice she had to make to kill Cat.
Marvel Zombies
Kitty is briefly shown in the background as a zombie in Ultimate Fantastic Four #23, despite her mutant phasing powers. She is also seen in Marvel Zombies: Dead Days, when zombie Alpha Flight attack the X-Men. This would appear to have been retconned, though, as of Marvel Zombies: Halloween, which depicts her and her son Peter with Colossus surviving for several years in an out of the way house farm, encountering zombies, but, fortunately, being rescued by Mephisto, who dispatched the remaining zombies.
The Earth-91126/Earth-Z Kitty is recruited by Earth-2149/Marvel Zombies Spider-Man to help him develop a cure for the zombie hunger, on the grounds that her powers mean that she would be in no danger from him if he should succumb to his zombie instincts, but she is later seemingly killed when the zombie Quasar holds her underwater until she is forced to become solid once more, allowing the infected Namor to eat her flesh (much to the rage of the zombie Wolverine, of Earth-2149).
Mutant X
Storm was taken by the vampire Dracula and unlike Earth 616, she does not return. Kitty goes off to battle her, either to save or kill her. Kitty slays several vampires in the way but Storm proves too much for her and Kitty becomes her unwilling slave for some time. She later shows up as the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club and seems to be none too happy with Storm. It's also hinted that she was engaged or going to be engaged to Colossus. Her ultimate fate at the end of the series is unknown.
Lightning Force
In the reality of Earth-597, an alternative universe where World War II was won by Nazi Germany, Kitty is forced to serve as Shadowcat alongside Nightcrawler, Meggan, and Hauptmann Englande as a member of the Lightning Force (a version of Excalibur), made a virtual slave because of her Jewish heritage. She leads a sad existence and is easily identified by her shaved head and the Star of David tattooed on her forehead. It is indicated, from her own statements and those made by her reality's counterpart of Moira MacTaggert, that this Shadowcat is a true ghost, raised from the dead by a combination of science and magic and bound to serve the Nazi regime. This Shadowcat had the added ability to disrupt life force with her phasing power, knocking her victims unconscious, much like how her counterpart in the "prime" Marvel Universe (Earth-616) can disrupt technology that she phases through. She is also able to alter her facial features to a "demonic" aspect when attacking enemies or else responding to aggressive, commanding behavior from her superiors.
Pirate Kitty
Kitty tells Illyana a bedtime story and casts herself as Pirate Kitty Pryde, captain of the Abdul Alhazred, who operated in a magical world. Unlike her mainstream counterpart, she did not have any mutant powers and wore a classic pirate outfit which also included her Star of David necklace. She was also sometimes known as Colleen. Kitty was good friends of her version of Colossus, the Bamfs (Nightcrawler), Windrider (Storm), the "Fiend-with-no-name" (later revealed to be named "Mean") (Wolverine) and Lockheed (an alternative version of the X-Jet). Kitty also helped her versions of Professor X and Cyclops capture and cure that universe's version of Dark Phoenix.
At first she was only a fairy tale character, but later it is revealed that her fairy tale is actually an alternative universe. (In fact, several members of this universe, the Bamfs, would later come to Earth-616 to cause trouble.) When Earth-616's Nightcrawler was temporarily stranded in her world, Kitty helped him defeat the sorcerer Shagreen and also encountered the Earth-616 versions of Illyana, Lockheed, and herself.
Professor W's X-Men
In the native universe of the Exiles member Nocturne, Kitty is a senior member of the X-Men led by Nightcrawler. She is a teacher and TJ refers to her as "Aunt Kate". During a fight with Apocalypse Kitty gets exposed to a machine that reverts her to a younger stage of her life when she had only been with the X-Men a few weeks. Nocturne helps Kitty fit into the school and becomes her best friend. She also proves useful in the fight against the Brotherhood led by Cyclops.
Ruins
Imprisoned alongside other mutants at a prison camp in Texas by President X, Kitty attempted to use her phasing powers to escape, only to get stuck halfway through her cell door, losing three feet of intestines in the process.
Secret Wars (2015)
During the Secret Wars storyline, a version of Kitty named Kitten resides in the wuxia-inspired K'un-L'un region of Battleworld. In this reality, Kitten is a martial artist who joins Callisto's band of outcasts after being expelled from her school for attempting a forbidden technique, a side effect of which left her intangible. Kitten and her fellow outcasts became pupils of Shang-Chi, the exiled son of Emperor Zheng Zu. Dubbing their new school The Lowest Caste, Shang-Chi represents the group as their master for the tournament deciding the next Emperor of K'un-L'un, hoping to usurp his father's tyrannical rule. Kitten accompanies Shang-Chi for each of his fights in the Thirteen Chambers. During his final fight with Zu, Shang-Chi uses Kitten's technique of intangibility, which leads to his eventual victory and replaces his father as the new Emperor of K'un-L'un.
Ultimate Marvel
The Ultimate version of Shadowcat (Kitty Pryde) first appears as a 14-year-old girl in Ultimate X-Men #21. She is also Jewish and wears the Star of David around her neck, but does not appear to possess the same genius IQ as her mainstream (Earth-616) counterpart.
Kitty's mother, worried about Kitty's mutation, seeks help from Professor Charles Xavier. Kitty becomes a student at Xavier's school, when her mother allows her to attend under the condition she does not take part in any X-Men missions, nor train in any "Danger Room" simulations. Kitty soon rebels against this and joins the X-Men as their youngest member. She idolizes Spider-Man and has a crush on him; she even dates Peter Parker for a time. After a fierce argument with Professor Xavier concerning Peter's secret identity, which his Aunt May had just found out about, Kitty leaves the X-Men and enrolls in Peter's school. Their relationship is strained after their romantic involvement (as superheroes) becomes publicly known, making it impossible for them to date anymore in their civilian identities, and eventually comes to an end when Peter realizes he cannot get over his feelings for Mary Jane. However, Kitty still retains strong feelings for him.
Following the disastrous flood triggered by Magneto and the subsequent ban of public use of mutant powers, Kitty assumes the identity of the Shroud. Kitty also discovers that she can also decrease the space between her atoms make herself super-dense, giving her both superhuman strength and durability. When the authorities see Kitty as a threat, she enters into a fierce rage and demonstrates these powers for the first time to her friends. She is strong and angry enough to punch Spider-Man several feet through the air. She eventually escapes and goes into hiding in the now abandoned Morlock Tunnel with Iceman and the Human Torch after Peter Parker's death.
Kitty makes an appearance in Ultimate Comics: X, locating Jimmy Hudson, who is revealed to be Wolverine's son. Kitty was charged by Logan before his death to locate Jimmy and reveal his true origins to him.
After the death of Spider-Man she formed new team of X-Men consisting of herself, Iceman and the Human Torch. They soon rescued the mutant Rogue from the mutant-hunting Nimrod robots, going on to recruit Jimmy Hudson into their group as well. After killing the mutant-hunting William Stryker, Kitty decided to leave New York for the Southwest along with Bobby, Rogue, and Jimmy (leaving only Johnny behind) in order to save the mutants there and defeat the Nimrods, now controlled by the deceased Stryker's consciousness.
Spider-Gwen
In the reality where Gwen Stacy is Spider-Woman, Kitty is an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Black Ops department, where she works closely with Wolverine to keep him in check and to help him fight his immortal curse. Like the Age of Apocalypse version, she also wields artificial claws on her wrists. It's revealed that she works with Logan out of guilt, as Stryker forced her to use her powers to subject Logan to the Weapon X experiment.
What If
In What if Phoenix Had Not Died, Kitty is obliterated by Dark Phoenix before she destroyed the Earth.
In What If the X-Men had Lost Inferno?, Kitty is one of the last eight remaining superheroes on the planet. She is slain by a demonic Wolverine, but her death makes Wolverine come to his senses and he fights against Baron Mordo, who had joined up with the demon hordes.
In What If... Wolverine: Enemy of the State, Kitty is the only hero left to kill a Hydra-programmed Wolverine after he has taken down the Marvel Universe. Kitty was the last remaining member of the team assembled to recapture Wolverine. The initial plan failed and Kitty was forced to phase her hand into Wolverine's brain. She then solidified her hand killing Wolverine instantly although she lost her hand in the process.
In What if Magneto and Professor X Had Formed The X-Men Together, Kitty is the tech guru at the Good Shepard clinic (That reality's version of the X-Mansion). She is very similar to her mainstream counterpart. But unlike the mainstream version this Kitty Pryde would wear different coloured wigs and cut her natural hair short. She also had trouble with her powers since she would phase herself through a solid object and accidentally leave her clothes behind. She was also friends with Lockheed although she only called him Dragon.
In What if Astonishing X-Men, Kitty is amongst the X-Men who fight a Phoenix powered Emma Frost. She phased Emma's heart from her chest but a Phoenix fire flares up from her body killing Kitty instantly. In the second story during the events of Astonishing X-Men #6-#12 Elixir had not been able to heal Kitty after being impaled and she dies.
In "What if the Dark Phoenix Rose Again", Kitty has Colossus "set up a fastball special" to help her phase into a Master Mold. She is killed after solidifying inside the Master Mold's head destroying it in the process.
In What if Storm Had the Power of the Phoenix, Kitty helps revive the 'real' Storm (the Phoenix being the cosmic entity in Storm's shape) by phasing inside her body and getting her internal organs working again.
X-Babies
An X-Baby version of Shadowcat appears briefly in the X-Babies one-shot comic. She is wearing her original costume and is younger than the other X-Babies. She is named as Shadowkitty rather than Shadowcat or Kitty Pryde. She also doesn't seem to have a strong bond with the X-Baby version of Lockheed.
X-Men Forever
In the X-Men Forever series, Kitty and Nightcrawler have left Excalibur and rejoined the X-Men after the events of X-Men #1-3. Of the X-Men, she undergoes the most drastic changes from the events of X-Men Forever #1. During the battle with Fabian Cortez, she phases through Wolverine while he is being affected by Cortez's power. This drives her powers haywire as well, and somehow she ends up with one of Wolverine's claws in her wrist. Claremont has also hinted in dialogue throughout the title so far that she may have also undergone psychological or psychic changes as a result of the event. From Forever #4 to the current issue, she is shown to be able to use the claw in the exact method Wolverine would manifest it, with no apparent ill effects (the mechanism for this has not yet been made clear) outside of excruciating pain. Because of the merger with Logan's DNA she has begun to develop a healing factor, slower than Wolverine's but it heals faster when she is intangible. She has also slightly enhanced senses, she also can produce a set of five retractable claws on her left hand like Sabretooth. She has also begun to take on Logan's personality and memories as well. And because of this she is beginning to wonder what part of her truly remains the same.
X-Men: Misfits
In the X-Men: Misfits original English language manga one-shot graphic novel from Marvel and DelRay, Kitty is the newest and only female student of the all-male Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters, which is now experimenting with having a co-ed student body. As the sole girl, she becomes the center of attention and attraction for the rest of the students. She becomes a member and the mascot of the elitist fraternity, The Hellfire Club, and has a short-lived romantic relationship with the school troublemaker Pyro.
X-Men: The End
In the X-Men: The End future, Kitty Pryde becomes the mayor of Chicago and then President of the United States. She has three children: her eldest daughter, named Meredith, and twins 10 years younger than Meredith, Sara and Doug, with an unnamed partner who died protecting her from an assassination attempt.
Miscellaneous
In Excalibur #103, we see many alternative versions of Shadowcat. Many of these variations have appeared in other comics, such as Age of Apocalypse, but there were other variations, including one of her as a Phalanx convert, a sex dominatrix, a homeless person, a nun, a version wearing a costume similar to Phantom Girl, and a normal person who owns an Olde Curiosity Shoppe.
In New Mutants #63 Illyana (Magik), along with Lockheed, gets trapped on an alien spaceship that has been invaded by a Brood Queen. On this ship the Brood Queen created clones of the X-Men, including Kitty. This one had the Ariel suit on, but it was green, instead of the typical blue. These X-Men are implanted with Brood eggs. Her memories were altered by the Brood Queen like the other X-Men, but eventually they rebel against her and are free. Illyana uses the soulsword to eliminate the Brood Eggs from their bodies. The X-Men stay on the ship; whether they are still on it is unknown.
During the Cross Time Caper storyline a few different appearances of Kitty appear. One was a princess who was gifted with magic abilities. She eventually married a short dashing prince (who had originally fallen in love with the mainstream version of Kitty). A second version was a crime boss who was betrayed and killed by her partner in crime Illiyana Rasputin. A third was from a world of sentient dinosaurs. She went by the name of Shadowcompsognathus.
Collected editions
Several of Kitty Pryde's earlier adventures were collected in paperback form.
In other media
Music
Kitty Pryde is referenced in Weezer's song "In the Garage" from their "Blue Album".
Television
Kitty Pryde appeared as Sprite in "The X-Men Adventure" episode of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, which guest-starred the X-Men. She was voiced by Melissa Sue Anderson. She also appeared in her short-lived "Ariel" costume in the X-Men group cameo at the end of the episode "The Education of a Superhero".
Kitty Pryde (voiced by Kath Soucie) was a viewpoint character in the animated television one-shot Pryde of the X-Men, as the newest member of the team. She is a new recruit of the team and is initially frightened of Nightcrawler, due to his demonic appearance. She and Nightcrawler later succeed in defeating Magneto. Once Nightcrawler seemingly dies as a result of having apparently sacrificed himself, Kitty begins to cry until discovering that he is alive and is met with positive relations by her teammates, except Wolverine. As the pilot was a failure, and the character had lost prominence in comics at the time, she was not used in the next X-Men TV series, not even in cameos. Jubilee replaced her as the young viewpoint character, and in the adaptations of stories that involved her.
In the animated series X-Men: Evolution, Shadowcat is a main character, who is shown as the teenybopper of the team and who has a romantic interest in Brotherhood member Lance Alvers. Shadowcat saves Wolverine in the season one episode "Grim Reminder", where she unintentionally stows away with Nightcrawler while on the Blackbird without the knowledge that he was beginning to pilot the jet. She is also shown to have developed a close friendship with Nightcrawler, despite the fact that she at first displayed a dislike for his appearance. Besides Nightcrawler, she is shown to have formed a friendship with Rogue and Spyke. Her initial dislike of his appearance changes after he is severely wounded by Rogue, while she and the rest of the X-Men tried to recruit her. In this series, she does not have Lockheed for a pet, but she is shown preferring to sleep with a stuffed dragon instead of a teddy bear. Though she has an on-and-off interest in the delinquent mutant boy Lance Alvers, early in the series she displays interest in Cyclops. After Rogue is recruited, she serves as her support in beginning a romantic relationship with Scott and develops a friendship with her, despite their differences. When Avalanche tries to join the X-Men in the season two episode "Joyride", she tries to help him and shows additional attraction to him as she grades him and the other members of the junior team. After he informs her that some members of the group have started a joyride on the Blackbird and helps her avert catastrophe, she staunchly defends him once he is accused by Cyclops of being responsible. When Avalanche starts to leave, Shadowcat gives him a brief kiss before his departure. Their relationship continues with the two of them going to a school dance, talking on the phone and going to the mall. Despite being with the Brotherhood, Avalanche tries to protect Kitty in the fight against the Scarlet Witch. In season 3, Kitty and Lance's relationship briefly ends after the Brotherhood and Mystique blow up the X Mansion and are in part responsible for the exposure of mutants. Kitty calls Lance a "hood" after he attacks the high school and he says "he will never be good enough for her". Both look sad at these comments. In the fourth season, the X-Men try to use her powers to damage one of Apocalypse's domes and fails, instead being electrocuted briefly. In the fiftieth episode of the series, entitled "Ghost of a Chance", she comes across Danielle Moonstar once she depicts herself in a dream sequence to her. Once she wakes out of it, she tries to and successfully finds her, becoming friends with the girl after learning she had been in suspended animation for two years. Prior to this, it is discovered that her fear is phasing repeatedly into the ground and going further without any control of where she is going. Shadowcat plays a key role in the defeat of Apocalypse and asks the Brotherhood for help. They come to her aid; as Lance and Kitty resume their romantic relationship. Of the six main X-Men from the first season of the series, she is one of the four that is still a member of the team in the future Charles Xavier saw while in the mind of Apocalypse. Shadowcat was voiced by Maggie Blue O'Hara.
Shadowcat appears in Wolverine and the X-Men, voiced by Danielle Judovits and was a student at the Xavier Institute before the destruction of the X-Mansion and disappearance of Professor X. When Wolverine reformed the X-Men to take down the Mutant Response Division and save the dismal future controlled by the Sentinels, Kitty was on her way to the "mutant paradise" Genosha. The X-Men came to re-recruit her and she immediately rejoined the team. Shadowcat appears as the youngest member of the team and she seems to have a crush on Iceman as she is jealous when his attention is taken by Emma Frost and is shown with a love-struck face when she lands on Bobby during a Danger Room training session, though she quickly moves away from him when Angel arrives. She seems to have formed a friendship with Tildie Soames after babysitting her in one episode. In the last episode of the series, she uses her powers to penetrate a Sentinel controlled by Magneto, of which Beast had difficulty with. Her design is inspired by the appearance of the character in the Astonishing X-Men comics, and her costume emulates the design with the appearance of the blue and yellow used on her costume. The shorts she wears are based on the appearances of the original X-Men, and her first appearance when she wore a variant of the uniform.
Shadowcat appears in The Super Hero Squad Show episode "And Lo...A Pilot Shall Come". She appears alongside Colossus at the unveiling of the Great Wall that separates Super Hero City from Villainville and helping citizens into the S.H.I.E.L.D. Shelters. In the episode "Mysterious Mayhem at Mutant Academy", she uses Lockheed to chase Reptil and the hypnotized X-Men out of the girls' bathroom.
Motion comics
Shadowcat appears in the Astonishing X-Men motion comic, voiced by Eileen Stevens and later by Laura Harris.
Film
In the film X-Men, she has a small cameo, played by Sumela Kay. She is referenced as the "girl in Illinois who can walk through walls" by Senator Kelly. She is shown in Xavier's class when Wolverine walks in; she returns for her books which she had left behind, grabs them, and phases through the door on her way out. Xavier responds with a cheerful "Bye, Kitty" while Wolverine looks on, startled.
In X2, she has a brief appearance played by Katie Stuart. She is shown phasing through walls and through people to escape William Stryker's military forces during their attack on the X-Mansion. Another scene shows her falling through her bed to avoid an assault. She shares a room with Siryn; in the novelization it is stated that this is because her phasing ability gives her partial protection from Siryn's scream. When the President of the United States asks Professor Xavier how he got the files he gave him, Xavier replies that he knows a little girl who can walk through walls.
In X-Men: The Last Stand, she is portrayed by a pre-transition Elliot Page, and has a central role. She serves as a rival to Rogue for the romantic attentions of Iceman, since their close friendship and their kiss (deleted scene) make Rogue increasingly jealous and frustrated. She also joins the X-Men in the battle on Alcatraz Island, breaking off from the battle to save Leech from the Juggernaut. In the novelization of the film, it is hinted that at some point Kitty had a romantic relationship with Colossus, but that it had long since run its course, although Colossus appears to still retain feelings towards her.
Page reprised the role in X-Men: Days of Future Past. Pryde is the prime facilitator because she has developed a new power. In this film, she can send the consciousness of another person back into his or her body in the past. At the beginning of the film, she has been using this ability to repeatedly send Bishop four days back in time whenever the Sentinels attack, thus; preventing her group from ever engaging them by having him warn the past team before they are detected. In order to prevent the Sentinels' creation, she sends Wolverine back to 1973 (chosen as the strain of sending someone else back that far would snap their mind, with Logan's healing factor the only thing that makes such a trip survivable for him) and was gravely injured when Wolverine becomes violent; due to provocation from events in 1973. After the timeline was successfully altered, Kitty is seen teaching a class at the X-Mansion with Colossus. In the film's alternate release, called The Rogue Cut, Kitty's injuries from sending Wolverine back to the past result in the X-Men rescuing Rogue to take over for her. Rogue absorbs Kitty's powers and takes over, stabilizing Wolverine and Kitty helps Magneto flee a Sentinel attack.
In January 2018, a Kitty Pryde solo movie was announced to be in development, with Tim Miller attached as the director and Brian Michael Bendis as the writer, but in March 2019, after Disney's purchase of 21st Century Fox, Fox executive Emma Watts described The New Mutants as the final film in the X-Men series, thus; ending the development of the Kitty Pryde film.
Video games
Kitty Pryde appears in Konami's 1992 X-Men video arcade game, as a non-playable character (NPC). In this game, she is not known as "Sprite"; instead, she plays the "damsel in distress" role as it is based on "Pryde of the X-Men". In the 2010 re-release of the game she is voiced by Mela Lee.
Shadowcat is a playable character in the game X-Men II: The Fall of the Mutants.
Shadowcat appears as an NPC in the X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse, voiced by Kim Mai Guest. She has special dialogue with Colossus (who she scolds for flirting with Scarlet Witch).
Shadowcat appears in X-Men: The Official Game, with Kim Mai Guest reprising her role.
Shadowcat is a playable character in Marvel Super Hero Squad Online, voiced by Tara Strong.
In X-Men: Destiny, Gambit mentions that the U-Men had captured Kitty and extracted bits of her power. Gambit obtains a vial of a substance which temporarily lets the character fall through the roof (if the player chose the correct option).
Kitty Pryde is a playable character in the Facebook game Marvel: Avengers Alliance.
Kitty Pryde is a playable character in the X-Men: Days of Future Past app game.
Kitty Pryde is a playable character in the online MMO Marvel Heroes, with Danielle Judovits reprising her role.
Kitty Pryde appears as a playable character in Marvel Future Fight.
Kitty Pryde appears as a playable character in Marvel Puzzle Quest.
Kitty Pryde appears as a playable character in Marvel Strike Force.
Novels
Kitty Pryde appears in the X-Men/Star Trek crossover novel Planet X. In it, she is examined by Geordi La Forge, who notes the similarities between her ability and the chroniton displacement he and Ro Laren experienced in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Next Phase".
Reception
Kitty Pryde has been well received as a comic book character and as a member of the X-Men. Wizard magazine put her at number #13 in 200 Greatest Comic Characters of All Time. She was the highest female comic character in the list beating rivals such as Wonder Woman, Buffy Summers, and She-Hulk. IGN ranked her as the 47th greatest comic book hero of all time stating that "as X-Men writers have often found it useful to introduce younger teen recruits to offset the experienced members of the team, Kitty Pryde set the standard when she debuted, and none have surpassed her". IGN rated Kitty Pryde #3 on its list of the Top 25 X-Men from the Past 40 Years describing her as the mutant everyman, the common girl turned superhero; IGN also stated that as her pet dragon, Lockheed, "became instantly attached to Kitty, [they] were hooked early on". Marvel.com ranked her as the tenth greatest X-Men member stating that "unquestionably, the dynamic of the X-Men shifted entirely when teenage whiz kid Kitty Pryde joined the team in the early 1980s"; Marvel.com also stated that even though Kitty has since blossomed into a young woman of considerable maturity and power, she remains the access point to the X-Men for countless readers. A later list on Marvel's website, ranking the top 50 X-Men characters, placed her in first place, citing the ease of identifying with her for the audience, and her development over the years.
Notes
References
External links
Kitty Pryde at Marvel.com
UncannyXmen.net Spotlight on Shadowcat
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Teenage characters in comics
X-Men members | false | [
"PFIQ (Piercing Fans International Quarterly) was a magazine published by Jim Ward from 1977 to 1997. It was the first publication about body piercing. Ward pioneered the field of body piercing and operated The Gauntlet, which was the first commercial establishment to offer the service in the United States.\n\nHistory and profile\nThe first issue of the magazine appeared in October 1977. The first 14 issues of PFIQ were in black and white with single-color highlights in a few issues. From issue #15 on, the covers and centerfolds were in full color. The first issue was 16 pages long; by issue #31, PFIQ had grown to 32 pages. Page count continued to gradually increase. Issue #50, the final issue, contained 64 pages. All issues were 8½×11\" in size.\n\nOnly the first five issues were dated on the cover, though most of them included a copyright year. However, every issue was independently numbered. In spite of calling itself a quarterly, the publication was chronically late and the average number of issues per year, over the lifetime of PFIQ, was about 3.\n\nIssues #1 and #3 were reprinted in the 1980s. The reprints are not hard to distinguish from the originals. The original issue #1 was black and white with two spot colors; the reprint has only the purple on the cover. Issue #3 was a complete redesign and bears the words \"Revised Edition\" on the cover.\n\nTattoo Samy appeared in PFIQ #18 (1983) and #19 as the magazine’s first documented tongue piercing.\n\nPFIQ contained a wide variety of material, mostly about body piercing, but occasionally about other forms of body art and body modification. A long series of articles by Jim Ward, \"Pierce with a Pro,\" gave detailed information on how to perform many different piercings. Gauntlet also produced three \"how-to\" videos under the same title. Part 1 on male piercings appeared in 1988; part 2 covering female and unisex piercings was issued in 1994; part 3, an update of the first video came out in 1996.\n\nThe magazine contents also included interviews, accounts of piercings, letters from readers, book and video reviews, photographs, artwork, and fiction. PFIQ also contained advertising from a few businesses in closely related fields. Subscribers also received Pin Pals, a sheet of classified ads created to enable people with body piercings to meet each other.\n\nReception \nPFIQ was a controversial publication, due to its graphic portrayal of nudity and the piercing process. In some countries it was considered obscene, and confiscated by postal customs officials. It ceased publication in 1997 when Jim Ward sold Gauntlet. (Gauntlet failed under its new owner and closed in 1998.)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nCover of the first issue of PFIQ, October 1977\n\"The World’s First Piercing Magazine\", a history of PFIQ written by Jim Ward\n\nLifestyle magazines published in the United States\nBody piercing\nDefunct magazines published in the United States\nMagazines established in 1977\nMagazines disestablished in 1997\nMagazines published in Los Angeles",
"The Uhuru Times is an online Nigeria newspaper and published monthly printed paper in publication of Journal Communication Limited.\n\nThe newspaper was founded in 2007 by Wale Adebayo who was editor in The Punch newspaper with the head office in Ogun State. The newspaper is a full monthly colour publication like the New York Times and the print edition stop in 2015 due financial situation and return as daily online newspaper. The newspaper was a vision foundation that relies on Chief Obafemi Awolowo political philosophy about man place in society and how the political leaders behave or their best doing in leadership. The Newsline holds a yearly event awards on political leaders in how they use their leadership position.\n\nNotes\n\nExternal links \nofficial website\n\nOnline newspapers published in Nigeria\nDaily newspapers published in Nigeria\n2007 establishments"
] |
[
"Kitty Pryde",
"Publication history",
"What was the first publication date?",
"The fictional Kitty Pryde first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980),",
"How long was the publication?",
"I don't know."
] | C_98d6a9f0735942e3a427f07b743f5a4d_1 | Who introduced the character Kitty Pryde? | 3 | Who introduced the character Kitty Pryde in a publication? | Kitty Pryde | Kitty Pryde was introduced into the X-Men title as the result of an editorial dictate that the book was supposed to depict a school for mutants. Uncanny X-Men artist John Byrne named Kitty Pryde after a classmate he met in art school, Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary in 1973. He had told Pryde he liked her name and asked for permission to use it, promising to name his first original comics character after her. Byrne drew the character to slightly resemble an adolescent Sigourney Weaver. The fictional Kitty Pryde first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980), by writer Chris Claremont and artist Byrne, as a highly intelligent 13-year-old girl. Claremont said several elements of the character's personality were derived from those of X-Men editor Louise Simonson's daughter, Julie. Claremont and Byrne made the new character a full-fledged X-Man in issue #139, where she was codenamed "Sprite". She was the main character in issues #141-142, the "Days of Future Past" storyline, where she is possessed by her older self, whose consciousness time travels to the past to prevent a mass extermination of mutants. The six-issue miniseries Kitty Pryde and Wolverine (1984-1985), written by Claremont, is a coming-of-age storyline in which she matures from a girl to a young woman, adopting the new name "Shadowcat". In the late '80s, she joined the British-based super team, Excalibur, where she remained for roughly ten years before coming back to the X-Men. In the early 2000s, she disappeared from the spotlight after semi-retiring from superhero work. She was featured in the 2002 mini-series Mekanix and came back to the main X-Men books in 2004 under the pen of Joss Whedon in Astonishing X-Men. She remained a part of the X-Men books until 2008 when she left again for roughly 2 years. After coming back, she was featured in Jason Aaron's Wolverine and the X-Men and Brian Michael Bendis' All-New X-Men books. In early 2015, she joined the Guardians of the Galaxy. After the Secret Wars event, she adopted her new alias, Star-Lord (first believed to be Star-Lady). Shadowcat's popularity had a profound effect on the real-life Kitty Pryde: the latter became so overwhelmed by attention from Shadowcat fans, she abbreviated her name to K.D. Pryde to avoid association with her fictional counterpart. She has since stated she has mixed feelings about her fame, saying she values Byrne's comics for their entertainment and artistic value, but wishes more people would appreciate her as more than just Shadowcat's namesake. CANNOTANSWER | Uncanny X-Men artist John Byrne named Kitty Pryde after a classmate he met in art school, Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary in 1973. | Katherine Anne "Kitty" Pryde is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics, commonly in association with the X-Men. The character first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980) and was co-created by writer-artist John Byrne and Chris Claremont.
A mutant, Pryde possesses a "phasing" ability that allows her, as well as objects or people she is in contact with, to become intangible. This power also disrupts any electrical field she passes through, and lets her simulate levitation.
The youngest to join the X-Men, she was first portrayed as a "kid sister" to many older members of the group, filling the role of literary foil to the more established characters. She occasionally used the codenames Sprite and Ariel, cycling through several uniforms until settling for her trademark black-and-gold costume. During the miniseries Kitty Pryde and Wolverine, she was renamed Shadowcat, the alias she would be most associated with, and shifted to a more mature depiction in her subsequent appearances. Pryde would eventually abandon her nickname, "Kitty", and switch to "Kate". She was one of the main cast of characters depicted in the original Excalibur title. After momentarily joining the Guardians of the Galaxy, she assumed her then-fiancé's superhero identity as the Star-Lord (Star-Lady). As of the series Marauders, she is now informally known as Captain Kate Pryde and the Red Queen of the Hellfire Trading Company.
In the X-Men film series, Kitty Pryde was initially portrayed by young actresses in cameos; Sumela Kay in X-Men (2000) and Katie Stuart in X2 (2003). Later, a pre-transition Elliot Page portrayed the character in X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) and X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) in full-length appearances. Pryde is ranked #47 in IGN's Top 100 Comic Book Heroes.
Publication history
Kitty Pryde was introduced into the X-Men title as the result of an editorial dictate that the book was supposed to depict a school for mutants. Uncanny X-Men artist John Byrne named Kitty Pryde after a classmate he met in art school, Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary in 1973. He had told Pryde he liked her name and asked for permission to use it, promising to name his first original comics character after her. Byrne drew the character to slightly resemble an adolescent Sigourney Weaver.
The fictional Kitty Pryde first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980), by writer Chris Claremont and artist Byrne, as a highly intelligent 13-year-old girl. Claremont said several elements of the character's personality were derived from those of X-Men editor Louise Simonson's daughter, Julie. Claremont and Byrne made the new character a full-fledged X-Man in issue #139, where she was codenamed "Sprite". She was the main character in issues #141–142, the "Days of Future Past" storyline, where she is possessed by her older self, whose consciousness time travels to the past to prevent a mass extermination of mutants. The six-issue miniseries Kitty Pryde and Wolverine (1984–1985), written by Claremont, is a coming-of-age storyline in which she matures from a girl to a young woman, adopting the new name "Shadowcat".
In the late 1980s, Kitty joined the British-based super team, Excalibur, where she remained for roughly ten years before coming back to the X-Men. In the early 2000s, she disappeared from the spotlight after semi-retiring from superhero work. She was featured in the 2002 mini-series Mekanix and came back to the main X-Men books in 2004 under the pen of Joss Whedon in Astonishing X-Men. She remained a part of the X-Men books until 2008 when she left again for roughly 2 years. After coming back, she was featured in Jason Aaron's Wolverine and the X-Men and Brian Michael Bendis' All-New X-Men books.
In early 2015, she joined the Guardians of the Galaxy. After the Secret Wars event, she adopted her new alias, Star-Lord (first believed to be Star-Lady).
In 2020, Kitty Pryde was revealed to be bisexual. Her co-creator, Chris Claremont, had always intended this to be the case, considering Rachel Summers as a possible love interest for Pryde. However, Claremont wasn't allowed to show this at the time due to censorship, as he revealed on the "Xplain the X-Men" podcast in 2016.
Shadowcat's popularity had a profound effect on the real-life Kitty Pryde: the latter became so overwhelmed by attention from Shadowcat fans, she abbreviated her name to K.D. Pryde to avoid association with her fictional counterpart. She has since stated she has mixed feelings about her fame, saying she values Byrne's comics for their entertainment and artistic value, but wishes more people would appreciate her as more than just Shadowcat's namesake.
Fictional character biography
Katherine Anne "Kitty" Pryde was born in Deerfield, Illinois, to Carmen and Theresa Pryde. She is an Ashkenazi Jewish-American and her paternal grandfather, Samuel Prydeman, was held in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. Kitty started to have headaches at age thirteen, signaling the emergence of her mutant powers. She was approached by both the X-Men's Charles Xavier and the Hellfire Club's White Queen, Emma Frost, both of whom hoped to recruit her for their respective causes. Kitty was unnerved by Frost, observing that the White Queen looked at her as if she were "something good to eat." She got along better with Xavier and the three X-Men who escorted him, quickly becoming friends with Ororo Munroe. Ororo told Kitty who she really was and about the X-Men, which made the teenager even more enthusiastic about attending Xavier's school.
Their conversation was cut short when they (along with Wolverine and Colossus) were attacked by armored mercenaries in the employ of Frost and the Hellfire Club. The X-Men defeated their assailants, but were subdued by the White Queen's telepathic powers immediately after. In the confusion, Kitty was separated from the X-Men, and not captured along with them. She managed to contact Cyclops, Phoenix, and Nightcrawler. With the help of Dazzler and Pryde, those X-Men rescued their teammates from the Hellfire Club.
The White Queen appeared to perish in the battle, which meant she was no longer competing with Xavier for the approval of Kitty's parents. Kitty's parents had not heard from her in more than a day, because during that time she was first being pursued by the Hellfire Club's men and then working with the X-Men to save their friends. All they knew was Kitty had left with Xavier's "students" to get a soda, there had been reports that the soda shop had been blown up, and Kitty had been missing since. Therefore, they were angry at Xavier when he finally returned with Kitty in tow. At first, it seemed like there was no chance of Kitty being allowed to attend the school and join the X-Men. Phoenix then used her considerable telepathic power to erase the memories of Kitty's parents and plant false ones, resulting in a complete shift in their attitude towards Xavier. Kitty was then allowed to enroll at Xavier's school with her parents' blessing, becoming the youngest member of the team.
Joining the X-Men
Kitty joined the X-Men, and assumed the costumed identity of Sprite. Early in her career as an X-Man, Kitty's adult self from an alternate future took possession of her body in the present to help X-Men thwart the assassination of Senator Robert Kelly by the second Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Kitty then singlehandedly defeated a N'Garai demon. Kitty also briefly attended the White Queen's Massachusetts Academy when her parents became convinced that she needed to be with students of her own age, but following a failed attempt to subdue the X-Men, Frost revoked Kitty's admission.
During her teen years, Kitty fostered a number of close relationships with others at the school and in the X-Men. She developed a crush on Colossus and became close friends with his little sister Illyana Rasputin. Initially uneasy around Nightcrawler and other mutants with physical deformities, Kitty finally overcame her fears and became close friends with him. Kitty also befriended Lockheed, a highly intelligent alien resembling a dragon, who followed her home after a mission in outer space. Lockheed is extremely loyal to Kitty, and the two of them share a psychic bond. Wolverine became something of a mentor to Kitty despite his usually gruff personality. Storm came to view Kitty as the daughter she never had.
Though Xavier has threatened to reassign Kitty to the New Mutants, a team of younger mutants he established in the absence of the X-Men, ever since the X-Men returned from outer space, she never ended up joining the group, who she derisively calls the "X-Babies". Kitty was later abducted by the Morlocks and nearly forced to wed Caliban. She was then abducted by the White Queen, but rescued by the New Mutants.
During this time, Kitty began to date Colossus, although this did not last long. Colossus developed feelings for an alien woman named Zsaji whom he met on the Beyonder's planet in the first Secret Wars. Colossus' feelings toward Zsaji were primarily a side effect of her own unique healing abilities, which she had used on him after he became injured. Regardless, Colossus' feelings were real and he returned to Earth consumed with grief after Zsaji's death. He admitted to Kitty that he loved Zsaji, which hurt her deeply and ended the budding romantic relationship. Kitty had made good friends with a local boy from Salem Central named Doug Ramsey around this time, but her feelings for him never went as deep as his for her, and they never actually dated, though they remained close, even more so after Doug's status as a mutant was revealed and he joined the New Mutants under the codename Cypher. They remained friends until his death some time later.
Ogun
During the 1984–1985 Kitty Pryde and Wolverine miniseries, Kitty is possessed by a demon, the ninja Ogun. Ogun psychically bestows upon Kitty a virtual lifetime of martial arts training. Kitty was brainwashed by Ogun into becoming a ninja assassin, and was sent to attack Wolverine. Kitty is able to resist Ogun's influence with Wolverine's help, and the two form a strong teacher/student bond, which helps them in vanquishing Ogun. Kitty returns to the X-Men, no longer the innocent girl they once knew, and officially adopts the codename Shadowcat.
Morlock Massacre
While trying to save Rogue, Kitty was badly injured by Harpoon's energy spear during the Mutant Massacre story arc, in the massacre of the Morlocks, with the result that she lost control of her power and was stuck in an intangible state and could not regain her solidity. She was rushed to Muir Island along with other surviving casualties of the Massacre to be tended to by Moira MacTaggert. MacTaggert was able to keep Kitty's condition from deteriorating to the point where she completely lost physical substance and ceased to exist, but was not able to do any more to help her.
At this time, Kitty's natural state was to be intangible. Where she once had to make a conscious effort to phase, she could now only maintain her solidity through an act of conscious will. The X-Men went to Reed Richards, Mister Fantastic of the Fantastic Four, for aid, but Richards initially refused because he was not sure he would be able to help.
Having nowhere else to go, the X-Men turned to Richards' enemy Doctor Doom. This created a moral dilemma for both the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, and both teams fought each other because the Fantastic Four were trying to stop the treatment while the X-Men were determined to save Kitty's life. In the end, both the personal crisis of the Fantastic Four and the life of Shadowcat were saved after Franklin Richards, with the help of Lockheed, brought both teams to their senses. Kitty has since recovered from this state and now has full control over her power again.
Excalibur
Among the others injured and brought to Muir Isle were Colossus and Nightcrawler, although Colossus left the United Kingdom shortly after being released from MacTaggert's care to join the rest of the X-Men on their mission to battle the Adversary. The X-Men sacrificed their lives to defeat the Adversary, the battle and their sacrifice was televised and broadcast across the world. The X-Men were resurrected later in the same issue, unknown to the world at large, but chose to keep a low profile and perpetuate the belief that they were still dead. This strategy was enforced to more effectively fight their enemies. This meant avoiding contact with friends and family, including Kitty. Thinking the X-Men were dead, Kitty and Nightcrawler joined Rachel Summers, Captain Britain, and Meggan to form the Britain-based team Excalibur. For a brief time, Kitty studied at St. Searle's School for Girls in Britain. During her time with Excalibur, Kitty developed a crush on Professor Alistaire Stuart which went unreciprocated since Alistaire was attracted to Rachel. Later, she was romantically involved with former Black Air agent Pete Wisdom. At some point Kitty was recruited by the international law enforcement agency S.H.I.E.L.D. to repair the computer system of their flying headquarters. Kitty discovered the problem was due to Ogun's spirit having infiltrated the computer system, and with the aid of Wolverine, she managed to purge Ogun's presence. During this time, Kitty was attracted to a S.H.I.E.L.D. intern her own age, and this made her begin to doubt her relationship with Wisdom. Soon after, she broke off their relationship.
Back to the X-Men
After Excalibur's dissolution, Shadowcat, Nightcrawler, and Colossus return to the X-Men. While returning, they faced a group of imposters following Cerebro, in the guise of Professor X. While tracking Mystique, she stumbles onto prophetic diaries that belonged to Irene Adler, a precognitive. During the six-month gap, Kitty visited Genosha. Whatever she experienced there is unknown (although presumably connected to her father, living on Genosha at the time), but it had a profound effect on her. She cut her hair and began to act rebelliously, also using one of Wolverine's bone claws broken off during battle as a weapon. Kitty remained with the X-Men for a while before leaving after the apparent death of Colossus. Trying to give herself a normal life, she attended the University of Chicago. During this time, her father was killed when Cassandra Nova’s Sentinels destroyed Genosha. Kitty later finds a recording of his death due to exploring footage of the attack. She is also kidnapped by William Stryker, but the X-Treme X-Men team helped her escape, and she assisted them on several missions.
At the start of Joss Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men, Kitty once again rejoins the X-Men, despite having extreme reservations about working with the former White Queen, given their history. This was the primary reason why Frost herself wanted Kitty on the team, as a sort of "safety" should Frost ever revert to type. Frost reasoned that the person who trusted her least would be most likely to spot such behavior. On one of the team's first missions, Shadowcat discovered Colossus was alive. After some initial awkwardness, Kitty and Colossus resumed dating.
Kitty Pryde appeared alongside Colossus in the "Blinded by the Light" arc in X-Men. They are the two X-Men left to look after the students while the rest of the X-Men leave for Mystique's home in Mississippi to check up on Rogue, during which they are ambushed by the Marauders. Kitty and Colossus, meanwhile, attempt to protect the students from a faction of the Marauders led by Exodus. It is revealed over the course of the story that Kitty, worried of the Destiny Diaries' safety, devised a plan with Cyclops and Emma Frost to hide them and have Emma wipe the location from her mind. The location could only be revealed by a code word spoken to Kitty. The arc concludes with a battle between Iceman and Cannonball against the Marauders for the diaries, during which they are destroyed by Gambit.
In the "Torn" arc, the latest incarnation of the Hellfire Club begin an assault on Xavier's School. Kitty fulfilled the role that Emma Frost envisioned, personally taking down Frost and imprisoning her, only to fall under a telepathic delusion created by Hellfire member Perfection, who claimed to be the true, unreformed Emma Frost. Under this delusion, Kitty was made to believe that she and Colossus had conceived a child, which was later taken away by the X-Men because its potential mutant abilities were supposedly dangerous. Kitty reacts in the delusion by attempting to rescue the child from a near-inescapable "box" in the depths of the school, unaware that in reality she is freeing an alien entity, Stuff, who contains the trapped consciousness of Cassandra Nova, the apparent ringleader of this new Hellfire Club. A newly awakened Cyclops revealed that the new Hellfire Club, including Perfection and Nova, are actually mental projections created by a piece of Cassandra Nova's consciousness; which became lodged in Emma's mind during the X-Men's last confrontation with her, playing on her survivor's guilt over the Genoshan massacre, and utilizing Emma's telepathy to both confound the X-Men and orchestrate her (Nova's) escape from the Stuff body. As Cyclops killed the mental projections, Emma tried to force Kitty to kill her to get rid of Nova. Undeterred, Cassandra Nova switched her focus to attempt to transfer her mind to Hisako Ichiki. It appears that Nova did not succeed, as the team was transported to S.W.O.R.D.'s air station en route to Ord's Breakworld for the "Unstoppable" arc that concludes Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men.
Breakworld
As the team prepares to end the confrontation with the Breakworld leader, the team splits up—with Kitty on the team appointed to stop the missile pointed at Earth. Kitty phases into the missile to disrupt its circuitry noting that it is composed of the same material as the rest of Breakworld, a material that is difficult and exhausting for her to phase through. After phasing for a mile into the missile, Kitty finds the center only to discover it empty. The missile is fired, causing Kitty to pass out inside of it as Beast discovers too late that due to its shape, trajectory, and lack of internal circuitry, the Breakworld's weapon is not a missile, but a bullet. As the bullet hurtles toward Earth, Kitty lies unconscious within it.
As the situation becomes increasingly dire, Emma establishes mental contact with Kitty, reassuring her that she will come out of this fine, though it eventually becomes clear to both that the situation will be grim. Kitty and Emma come to an understanding and reconciliation, Emma stating that she never wanted something like this to happen to her. Kitty then phases the bullet through Earth, but is trapped within. At the end of Giant-Size Astonishing X-Men, Scott Summers mentions that Doctor Strange, Reed Richards, and some "top men" tried to save her, but believe she has fused to the bullet, as it continues to hurtle through space. Whether she is alive or dead is unknown, though the X-Men consider her lost to them.
As a result of these events Kitty does not appear in the X-Men crossover event X-Men: Messiah Complex, since this takes place after the events of Giant-Size Astonishing X-Men. She is briefly mentioned in the aftermath of the Messiah Complex, by Colossus, Nightcrawler, and Wolverine, as the three of them discuss "losing her."
To cope with Kitty's loss, Colossus takes down a group of Russian criminals dealing in human trafficking, and gets a tattoo of the name 'Katya' on his chest. Emma begins having a recurring dream in which she hears a voice whom she believes is Kitty's trying to reach out to her.
It was later confirmed by Abigail Brand that Kitty Pryde was still alive within the bullet, but because the bullet's design would harden as time went on, it would become increasingly difficult to break the bullet open.
Return
After the X-Men move to the island of Utopia, Magneto arrives on the island professing his desire to join and support the X-Men in their effort to unite the world's remaining mutants. The X-Men reluctantly let him stay, remaining wary of him despite his efforts to gain their trust. In a final bid to gain their trust, Magneto focuses his powers, attempting to divert the interstellar path of the metal bullet Kitty is trapped in and bring her home to Earth. Meanwhile, inside the bullet, Kitty is revealed to still be alive. Unbeknownst to the others, Magneto had encountered the bullet earlier while attempting to regain his powers with the High Evolutionary and surmised that Kitty was inside. Despite this and the High Evolutionary's apparent ability to retrieve the bullet and Kitty, Magneto chose to focus on regaining his powers, secretly keeping tabs on the bullet until his decision to draw it back to Earth. During her time trapped inside the bullet, Kitty keeps herself and the bullet phased to avoid collisions with any inhabited objects in its path.
Magneto brings Kitty Pryde safely down to Earth by cracking the bullet in two and levitating Kitty to the ground. When she and Colossus try to touch, it is revealed that she is trapped in her intangible form, unable to speak, and the X-Men place her in a protective chamber similar to the one used for her following the events of the Mutant Massacre. How Kitty survived her time in the bullet is unclear to the X-Men's science team, where the X-Men discover that all her bodily functions halted. An analysis by Kavita Rao hypothesizes that Kitty created an intense muscle memory to keep herself and the bullet phased and has "forgotten" how to un-phase.
During a conversation with Colossus, with Emma Frost acting as the psi-conduit, Kitty picks up Emma's stray thoughts on killing the captive Sebastian Shaw, to prevent Namor from discovering she previously lied to him. While disgusted at Emma's intentions, Kitty offers a compromise. Due to her current ghost state, she is the perfect tool for making Shaw disappear.
In a storyline in Uncanny X-Men, the Breakworlders make their way to Earth. During the conflict between the Breakworlder Kr'uun and the X-Men, Kitty is slain and resurrected by Kr'uun's mate in an alien ritual, which results in her powers returning to normal.
Regenesis
Shortly thereafter, Kitty breaks up with Colossus, and decides to return with Wolverine to Westchester to open the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning. In Wolverine and the X-Men #4, she appears to be suddenly pregnant, but the pregnancy was revealed to be a Brood infestation, and it was swiftly dealt with by a team of X-Men. Since returning to Westchester, Kitty has shared several kisses with Iceman. During the events of Avengers vs. X-Men, Kitty does not take a side, but instead decides to stay at the school to work with the students. Once Bobby returned from working with the X-Men after realizing that the Phoenix had corrupted them, he and Kitty finally decide to go on a date.
All-New X-Men
After Beast brings the original five X-Men into the future to stop Cyclops in the present, Kitty volunteers to take responsibility for the temporally relocated X-Men while they work to undo this dark future. This soon puts her at odds with the rest of her team as they believed the original five should go back to their own time in order to prevent any damage to the space-time continuity. Eventually, this leads Kitty to take the decision of abandoning the school with the time-displaced X-Men and join Cyclops's X-Men at the New Xavier School. During the first few weeks at the New Xavier School, Jean Grey is abducted by the Shiar Empire to stand trial for her future self's crimes. Kitty and the time-displaced X-Men team up with the Guardians of the Galaxy and succeed in rescuing Jean from the Shiar. At the conclusion of the storyline, Kitty begins a long-distance, flirtatious relationship with Starlord, Peter Quill.
The Black Vortex
In the following weeks, Kitty's relationship with Peter Quill evolves more and more as they developed stronger feelings for each other every day. At one point, Quill gets captured during one of their dates and she has no option but to go to his rescue, despite her fear of space as a result of her being trapped on the giant space bullet. After rescuing Peter, she decides to stay in space with him. Then, Kitty convinces Peter to steal a powerful artifact called the Black Vortex from his father J'son. Soon, they find themselves being chased by J'son's assassination squad, the Slaughter Lords. In despair, they request the aid of the X-Men and the Guardians of the Galaxy to protect the Vortex. After a few of their own friends can't resist the temptation and submit to the Vortex, betray the team, and escape with the artifact; the team splits and Kitty stays in Spartax to help an orphanage. She is encased in amber after Thane (who was allied with J'son) freezes the whole planet along with the people inside it; but thanks to her phasing powers, she manages to get out of the amber. Then the Brood attacks Spartax, planning to use every encased person to lay eggs and create an army of Brood to start invading other planets and conquering them. Kitty feels the only way to stop them is by submitting to the Vortex herself as she's the only one who can resist the cosmic corruption. She reluctantly submits and becomes a being of unlimited power. After being reminded of the love between her and Peter Quill, she goes back and phases all the amber that encased Spartax, along with the Broods trying to infect the people, and sends them all to another dimension. Kitty doesn't give up the cosmic power but admits to Peter that she is afraid of it. Peter promises her that he will never abandon her no matter how much she changes. Then, Peter kneels and proposes marriage to Kitty. She, with tears in her eyes, accepts. Later when Star Lord is declared Emperor of Spartax she is told she will become the first lady of Spartax.
Guardians of the Galaxy
Kitty takes on the mantle of Star Lord and joins the Guardians of the Galaxy in Peter Quill's place so he can take on his royal duties. When Hala the Accuser massacres Spartax in an attempt to make Quill pay for J'son's actions against her people, she initially easily lays waste to the capitol and overpowers the Guardians. After the Guardians regroup and formulate a strategy to defeat her, Kitty manages to partially phase Hala into the ground so the rest of the Guardians can knock her out and separate her from her weapon. After Quill loses his title as king he and Kitty end up on a mission with the rest of the Guardians on a concentration camp prison planet owned by the Badoon after Gamora gave them information on it so they can free Angela. Once there, Kitty has a personal reaction upon seeing the prisoners and makes it her mission to liberate everyone there and defeat the captors, as it reminds her of Nazi concentration camps. After Quill gets captured and sentenced to death in an arena battle, Kitty finds and kills one of the Badoon leaders by phasing his heart out of his body. When Captain Marvel summons the Guardians to Earth to help her address Tony Stark, Kitty learns that Thanos is a prisoner on Earth and tries to convince Quill to tell Gamora. When fighting starts Kitty woefully realizes that some of her former students are on Tony Stark's side instead of fighting with Captain Marvel. During the battle the Guardians' ship was destroyed, effectively stranding them on Earth. After helping the Guardians stop Thanos from leading an invasion from the Negative Zone the Guardians are given a new ship; however, Kitty decides to stay on Earth and ends her time with the Guardians and Quill.
Leading the X-Men
Upon returning to Earth, Kitty hopes to finally regain a semblance of a normal life but ends up approached by Storm, who informs Kitty of everything the X-Men have gone through while Kitty was away. Storm announces to Kitty that she intends to step down as leader of the X-Men due to the guilt that she feels for leading the X-Men to war and offers Kitty her position. After touring X-Haven and seeing how much things have changed and how much things need to change for the better, Kitty agrees to lead the X-Men as long as Storm remains on the team. Her next act is to relocate the mansion from Limbo to Central Park, New York so the X-Men can refocus on being part of the world instead of fearing it under the belief that if the X-Men truly are to be seen as heroes, then they need to actually live in the world that they are trying to save instead of constantly worrying about their own survival.
Under Kitty's new leadership, the X-Men go through some small changes in order to shed their past history and make new names for themselves, such as convincing Rachel Summers to change her code name to Prestige and renaming the mansion as The Xavier Institute for Mutant Education and Outreach. Kitty learns first-hand how hard it is to balance leading the X-Men as well as managing the mansion when there are many political factors trying to deliberately get in the way of the X-Men. She also begins to have awkward one-on-one moments with Colossus; they try to remain friends, but given their long history their interactions swiftly become complicated. Kitty's first case as field leader of the X-Men sees her and her team taking on a new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. After discovering that an outspoken anti-mutant politician brainwashed this new Brotherhood to work for her to publicly discredit mutants, Kitty threatened to expose her if she continued exploiting mutants for her own personal gain.
Dawn of X
After Krakoa became a new sovereign nation for Mutants, Kitty Pryde, now going by Captain Kate Pryde, discovers she is the sole mutant who is, for unknown reasons, unable to use the various warp gates leading to Krakoa. It is implied that she has done something to anger Krakoa, but that restriction does not mean Kitty cannot use other means to reach the mutant homeland. She steals a boat and sets sail for the island. Kitty's time on Krakoa proves to be just as fruitless, as the island's natural resources (like flowers that grow into biome homes) are similarly prohibited to Kitty. Emma Frost comes asking Kitty to take up a special mission: taking a bigger boat out to serve as pirate captain on the X-Men's mission to liberate mutants trapped in oppressive countries that do not recognize mutant sovereignty, while also smuggling and supplying for Emma's Hellfire Trading Company the lifesaving drugs the X-Men provide to humans. Kate Pryde is later appointed the new Red Queen of the Hellfire Trading Company by Emma Frost, to the dismay of Sebastian Shaw. Seeing Pryde as an obstacle to his complete control of the Hellfire Corporation, Shaw began plotting against Kate and her crew. After taking notice how Emma became overprotective of the newly crowned Red Queen, Shaw realized that for the same reason she can't travel through Krakoa's gates nor read or understand the Krakoan language until Emma implanted it in her brain, the X-Men's Resurrection Protocols also won't apply to her, which means Kate cannot be resurrected if she died. He orchestrated a distraction by paying off human supremacists Homines Verendi to stage an attack on his own son. Once Kate was defenseless, Shaw emerged from below deck and ensnared Lockheed with a net gun, making him a helpless hostage. He then released Krakoan seeds at her feet, which wrapped around her and prevented her from using her powers. He then dropped her and Lockheed into the sea. While Lockheed was able to survive, Kate sank helplessly, and once her head dropped under the surface, she had no air left and drowned instantly. Her death is later confirmed by Bishop as he retrieves Kate's body, as it was also established that the Resurrection Protocols indeed do not apply to Kate, as the Five, for reasons unknown, cannot resurrect her. However, she is later resurrected, as Emma Frost realized that it was due to the nature of Kate's intangibility powers that her mindless body was unable to break out of the egg.
Powers and abilities
Kitty is a mutant with the ability to pass through solid matter by passing her atomic particles through the spaces between the atoms of the object through which she is moving. In this way she and the object through which she is passing can temporarily merge without interacting, and each is unharmed when Shadowcat has finished passing through the object. This process is called "phasing" or quantum tunneling and it renders her almost completely intangible to physical touch. Shadowcat passes through objects at the same speed at which she is moving before she enters them. Since she is unable to breathe while inside an object, she can only continuously phase through solid objects (as when she travels underground) as long as she can hold her breath. However, contrary depictions of the duration of her phasing ability have been presented, such as when she has phased miles within an object. The use of her abilities also interferes with any electrical systems as she passes through by disrupting the flow of electrons from atom to atom, including the bio-electric systems of living bodies if she concentrates in the right way. This typically causes machines to malfunction or be destroyed as she phases through them, and can induce shock and unconsciousness in living beings.
Using her power began as an optional ability, but for a period (over ten years of published comics, approximately two years in-continuity) Kitty existed in a naturally "phased" state, and had to consciously choose to become solid. Kitty has returned to her original form and is normally solid and must choose to use her power. While phasing, she does not physically walk on surfaces, but rather interacts with the molecules of air above them, allowing her to ascend and descend, causing her to seemingly walk on air. While phased, she is immune to most physical attacks, and has inconsistent showings of some resistance to telepathy. The density of some materials (such as adamantium) can prove deleterious to her phasing, causing her to be severely disoriented or experience pain if she tries to pass through them. Some energy attacks also prove problematic for Kitty. For example, an energy blast fired by Harpoon, a member of the Marauders, caused her to lose her ability to become fully tangible for months. Magic and magical beings can also harm her in her phased state, as demonstrated in a battle with a N'Garai demon whose claws left no visible marks, but caused Kitty severe pain as they passed through her intangible body.
Kitty can also extend her powers to phase other people and objects. She is able to phase at least six other people (or objects of similar mass) with her, so long as they establish and maintain physical contact with her. She can extend her phasing effect to her own clothing or any other object with mass up to that of a small truck, as long as she remains in contact with it. Kitty can also make objects intangible by maintaining contact with them. She has threatened to leave people phased into a wall, and used her power offensively to harm the Technarch Magus, and Danger.
Kitty's powers seem to have increased over the years. During an X-Treme X-Men story arc in which she is kidnapped by Reverend William Stryker, she phases out of sync with Earth's rotation to move from one place in the world (only east or west) to another seemingly instantaneously. At the climax of Astonishing X-Men, Kitty phases a 10 mi (16 km) long "bullet" composed of super-dense alien metals through the entire planet Earth. This feat caused her considerable strain, but she is unable to phase out of the bullet. Moreover, originally Kitty found it difficult or impossible to phase only part of her body at a time. In the Days of Future Past story arc, she is possessed by her older future self, allowing her to solidify only her shoulder while phasing the rest of her body through Destiny—a feat explicitly beyond the 13-year-old Kitty's abilities. By contrast, the Kitty Pryde of Joss Whedon's run can punch and kick someone standing on the other side of a wall, selectively phasing and unphasing body parts as necessary. She can even run and leap through an armed opponent, grabbing their weapon as she passes by, which presumably requires her to solidify only the surface area of the palms of her hands and then immediately phase both her palms and the weapon.
Besides her mutant powers, Kitty is a genius in the field of applied technology and computer science. She is highly talented in the design and use of computer hardware. She is a skilled pilot of piston and jet engine aircraft, and a competent pilot of certain advanced interstellar vehicles. She has previously shown a unique ability to wield the Soulsword and also be harmed by it. Since her possession by the ninja demon Ogun, she has been consistently shown to be an excellent hand-to-hand combatant, having since been endowed with a lifetime of training in the martial arts of Japanese ninja and samurai.
She is a professional-level dancer in both ballet and modern dance. She speaks fluent English, Japanese, Russian, and the royal and standard languages of the alien Shi'ar and Skrull, and has moderate expertise in Gaelic, Hebrew, and German.
Kitty also shares a mental/empathic connection with her pet dragon Lockheed; both she and the alien dragon can "sense" each other's presence at times and generally understand one another's thoughts and actions.
When Kitty used the Black Vortex, her powers were augmented to a cosmic scale making her a god-like being. She can phase through any material of any density and can even phase a planet out of Thane's amber, whereas in her normal state it is an extremely difficult task to simply phase herself out of the amber. She can also apparently transverse between the planes of the multiverse and is immune to the effects of space. Her appearance can be changed but her natural form appears to be rather gaseous in look.
Other versions
In addition to her mainstream incarnation, Kitty Pryde has been depicted in other fictional universes.
Age of Apocalypse
In the Age of Apocalypse reality, Kitty grows up under harsh circumstances and her nature reflects it. She has short hair, tight clothes, and chain smokes cigarettes. Her parents are killed in the Chicago Cullings, and she is forcibly recruited into Apocalypse's army, but is later rescued by Colossus. Magneto puts Shadowcat under Weapon X's training, hoping to turn her into the X-Men's assassin, and she is given a set of retractable artificial claws around each wrist to better imitate her teacher's fighting style. After the fallout between Colossus and Magneto, Shadowcat sides with Colossus, whom she has married. Instead of leaving the fight against Apocalypse altogether, the couple become the teachers of Generation Next. The two submit their trainees to harsh situations, giving them little comfort despite the fact that Shadowcat is close to the age of her students.
Shadowcat assists the team in rescuing Illyana Rasputin from the Seattle Core, and, at Colossus' behest, abandons her students after Illyana is saved. She is killed by Colossus in his ruthless obsession to protect his sister, Illyana; coming between an enraged Colossus and his endangered sister, Shadowcat never believed he would harm her.
Days of Future Past
In the Days of Future Past timeline (Earth-811), Shadowcat goes by the name Kate Pryde. Kate attempts to go back in time to prevent the assassination of Senator Robert Kelly by Mystique and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. She succeeds, only to create a separate timeline where the events of her past still come to pass. After returning to her own time Kate helps Rachel Summers escape back to the timeline she just created. Captured by Sentinels, Kate escapes by phasing through her inhibitor collar and fell into a time warp, causing her to merge with the Sentinel that was scanning her, and arrives in the timeline Rachel is inhabiting. Kate's mind settles in a small, metal, off-spherical body and becomes known as Widget. After a few adventures in that timeline, mostly in company with her Earth-616 counterpart's team Excalibur, Kate regains her memory and returns to her original timeline where she is able to reprogram the ruling Sentinels to protect life, ending their tyranny.
Earth X
In Earth X it is revealed in the appendix of issue six that Kitty Pryde is killed saving Colossus while he could not shift into his metal form. Instead of phasing the bullet through her, she heroically takes the bullet and is killed.
Exiles
A version of Kitty Pryde codenamed Cat first appeared in Exiles #96. She is younger than her Earth-616 counterpart. She has the appearance and powers of the normal Shadowcat although she wears a different costume. Prior to her joining the Exiles, this version of Kitty had been recruited by Emma Frost as one of the core agents of the Hellfire Club's strike force. She helps Psylocke defeat Doom's soldiers who have invaded the Panoptichron. She helps retrieve Blink, Morph, and Sabretooth from being scattered across the multiverse. She works as a computer expert for the team and is a full member of the Exiles.
Cat's skill with using her powers means she is not tied to any dimension and can see through various realities, including those of the mind (for instance seeing the various personalities in Sage's mind as "ghosts" surrounding her). Her arrival in the Crystal Palace and connection to its computers has increased this, giving her the ability to "cascade" through different alternative versions of herself, altering her appearance and details of her powers. Amongst other versions, she has assumed the form of a Kitty Pryde with the appearance and powers of Tigra. During the New Exiles' last mission Cat faced off against Madame Hydra (Sue Storm) and killed her at the cost of her own life.
There has been another version of Kitty that appeared in the King Hyperion story arc (Exiles #38-40). She had survived an attack on the X-Mansion by the Sentinels. The Colossus from her universe had been killed in the attack but she had the same feelings towards Weapon X's Colossus even though he was not her Colossus. The two eventually fell in love with each other. Unfortunately this did not last since she died with Colossus when they were shot into the empty vacuum of space by Hyperion.
House of M
When the Scarlet Witch altered reality in the 616 Universe, creating the reality known as House of M where mutants were the dominant population, Kitty Pryde was a teacher in a public middle school in Cincinnati, Ohio. Like many of the heroes of Earth 616, she is reminded of the true reality by Layla Miller and recruited in the fight to restore reality.
Magik
In the limited series Magik (Illyana and Storm), an alternative reality Kitty renames herself "Cat" after she is mutated by the demonic sorcerer Belasco into a more feline form, with cat eyes, whiskers, a tail, and enhanced physical abilities and senses. Trapped in Belasco's Limbo, Cat takes a militant view towards defeating the sorcerer, eschewing the magic that her reality's Storm embraces, instead turning to skills in swordplay and physical combat. She tries to save the Illyana Rasputin of Earth-616 from corruption through magic by taking Illyana into the wilderness of Limbo and teaching the child to fight and survive. Like the Kitty Pryde of Earth-616 eventually would, Cat became Illyana's best friend, but more in the role of an older sister due to the difference in their ages.
Cat's plan goes awry when the pair's attempt to confront Belasco fails, at the cost of the life of an enslaved Nightcrawler; Illyana falls under Belasco's influence and Cat is further transformed towards a feline, with a semi-animalistic mind completely loyal to Belasco. Cat is eventually slain by Illyana when Belasco sets Cat upon his rebellious apprentice; facing death at Cat's hands and knowing that, deep down, a part of Kitty still exists and hates her enslavement, Illyana broke Cat's neck in self-defense.
Long after Illyana overthrows Belasco, escapes Limbo, and becomes a member of the junior X-Men team known as the New Mutants, Cat's remains are found by the team in Limbo's throne room. By then she had completely decomposed to a skeleton. Illyana, facing a rebellion of Limbo's demon population that threatened to overrun Earth, smashed Cat's skull in rage over the demonic taint that Belasco left on her soul and frustration over the horrible choice she had to make to kill Cat.
Marvel Zombies
Kitty is briefly shown in the background as a zombie in Ultimate Fantastic Four #23, despite her mutant phasing powers. She is also seen in Marvel Zombies: Dead Days, when zombie Alpha Flight attack the X-Men. This would appear to have been retconned, though, as of Marvel Zombies: Halloween, which depicts her and her son Peter with Colossus surviving for several years in an out of the way house farm, encountering zombies, but, fortunately, being rescued by Mephisto, who dispatched the remaining zombies.
The Earth-91126/Earth-Z Kitty is recruited by Earth-2149/Marvel Zombies Spider-Man to help him develop a cure for the zombie hunger, on the grounds that her powers mean that she would be in no danger from him if he should succumb to his zombie instincts, but she is later seemingly killed when the zombie Quasar holds her underwater until she is forced to become solid once more, allowing the infected Namor to eat her flesh (much to the rage of the zombie Wolverine, of Earth-2149).
Mutant X
Storm was taken by the vampire Dracula and unlike Earth 616, she does not return. Kitty goes off to battle her, either to save or kill her. Kitty slays several vampires in the way but Storm proves too much for her and Kitty becomes her unwilling slave for some time. She later shows up as the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club and seems to be none too happy with Storm. It's also hinted that she was engaged or going to be engaged to Colossus. Her ultimate fate at the end of the series is unknown.
Lightning Force
In the reality of Earth-597, an alternative universe where World War II was won by Nazi Germany, Kitty is forced to serve as Shadowcat alongside Nightcrawler, Meggan, and Hauptmann Englande as a member of the Lightning Force (a version of Excalibur), made a virtual slave because of her Jewish heritage. She leads a sad existence and is easily identified by her shaved head and the Star of David tattooed on her forehead. It is indicated, from her own statements and those made by her reality's counterpart of Moira MacTaggert, that this Shadowcat is a true ghost, raised from the dead by a combination of science and magic and bound to serve the Nazi regime. This Shadowcat had the added ability to disrupt life force with her phasing power, knocking her victims unconscious, much like how her counterpart in the "prime" Marvel Universe (Earth-616) can disrupt technology that she phases through. She is also able to alter her facial features to a "demonic" aspect when attacking enemies or else responding to aggressive, commanding behavior from her superiors.
Pirate Kitty
Kitty tells Illyana a bedtime story and casts herself as Pirate Kitty Pryde, captain of the Abdul Alhazred, who operated in a magical world. Unlike her mainstream counterpart, she did not have any mutant powers and wore a classic pirate outfit which also included her Star of David necklace. She was also sometimes known as Colleen. Kitty was good friends of her version of Colossus, the Bamfs (Nightcrawler), Windrider (Storm), the "Fiend-with-no-name" (later revealed to be named "Mean") (Wolverine) and Lockheed (an alternative version of the X-Jet). Kitty also helped her versions of Professor X and Cyclops capture and cure that universe's version of Dark Phoenix.
At first she was only a fairy tale character, but later it is revealed that her fairy tale is actually an alternative universe. (In fact, several members of this universe, the Bamfs, would later come to Earth-616 to cause trouble.) When Earth-616's Nightcrawler was temporarily stranded in her world, Kitty helped him defeat the sorcerer Shagreen and also encountered the Earth-616 versions of Illyana, Lockheed, and herself.
Professor W's X-Men
In the native universe of the Exiles member Nocturne, Kitty is a senior member of the X-Men led by Nightcrawler. She is a teacher and TJ refers to her as "Aunt Kate". During a fight with Apocalypse Kitty gets exposed to a machine that reverts her to a younger stage of her life when she had only been with the X-Men a few weeks. Nocturne helps Kitty fit into the school and becomes her best friend. She also proves useful in the fight against the Brotherhood led by Cyclops.
Ruins
Imprisoned alongside other mutants at a prison camp in Texas by President X, Kitty attempted to use her phasing powers to escape, only to get stuck halfway through her cell door, losing three feet of intestines in the process.
Secret Wars (2015)
During the Secret Wars storyline, a version of Kitty named Kitten resides in the wuxia-inspired K'un-L'un region of Battleworld. In this reality, Kitten is a martial artist who joins Callisto's band of outcasts after being expelled from her school for attempting a forbidden technique, a side effect of which left her intangible. Kitten and her fellow outcasts became pupils of Shang-Chi, the exiled son of Emperor Zheng Zu. Dubbing their new school The Lowest Caste, Shang-Chi represents the group as their master for the tournament deciding the next Emperor of K'un-L'un, hoping to usurp his father's tyrannical rule. Kitten accompanies Shang-Chi for each of his fights in the Thirteen Chambers. During his final fight with Zu, Shang-Chi uses Kitten's technique of intangibility, which leads to his eventual victory and replaces his father as the new Emperor of K'un-L'un.
Ultimate Marvel
The Ultimate version of Shadowcat (Kitty Pryde) first appears as a 14-year-old girl in Ultimate X-Men #21. She is also Jewish and wears the Star of David around her neck, but does not appear to possess the same genius IQ as her mainstream (Earth-616) counterpart.
Kitty's mother, worried about Kitty's mutation, seeks help from Professor Charles Xavier. Kitty becomes a student at Xavier's school, when her mother allows her to attend under the condition she does not take part in any X-Men missions, nor train in any "Danger Room" simulations. Kitty soon rebels against this and joins the X-Men as their youngest member. She idolizes Spider-Man and has a crush on him; she even dates Peter Parker for a time. After a fierce argument with Professor Xavier concerning Peter's secret identity, which his Aunt May had just found out about, Kitty leaves the X-Men and enrolls in Peter's school. Their relationship is strained after their romantic involvement (as superheroes) becomes publicly known, making it impossible for them to date anymore in their civilian identities, and eventually comes to an end when Peter realizes he cannot get over his feelings for Mary Jane. However, Kitty still retains strong feelings for him.
Following the disastrous flood triggered by Magneto and the subsequent ban of public use of mutant powers, Kitty assumes the identity of the Shroud. Kitty also discovers that she can also decrease the space between her atoms make herself super-dense, giving her both superhuman strength and durability. When the authorities see Kitty as a threat, she enters into a fierce rage and demonstrates these powers for the first time to her friends. She is strong and angry enough to punch Spider-Man several feet through the air. She eventually escapes and goes into hiding in the now abandoned Morlock Tunnel with Iceman and the Human Torch after Peter Parker's death.
Kitty makes an appearance in Ultimate Comics: X, locating Jimmy Hudson, who is revealed to be Wolverine's son. Kitty was charged by Logan before his death to locate Jimmy and reveal his true origins to him.
After the death of Spider-Man she formed new team of X-Men consisting of herself, Iceman and the Human Torch. They soon rescued the mutant Rogue from the mutant-hunting Nimrod robots, going on to recruit Jimmy Hudson into their group as well. After killing the mutant-hunting William Stryker, Kitty decided to leave New York for the Southwest along with Bobby, Rogue, and Jimmy (leaving only Johnny behind) in order to save the mutants there and defeat the Nimrods, now controlled by the deceased Stryker's consciousness.
Spider-Gwen
In the reality where Gwen Stacy is Spider-Woman, Kitty is an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Black Ops department, where she works closely with Wolverine to keep him in check and to help him fight his immortal curse. Like the Age of Apocalypse version, she also wields artificial claws on her wrists. It's revealed that she works with Logan out of guilt, as Stryker forced her to use her powers to subject Logan to the Weapon X experiment.
What If
In What if Phoenix Had Not Died, Kitty is obliterated by Dark Phoenix before she destroyed the Earth.
In What If the X-Men had Lost Inferno?, Kitty is one of the last eight remaining superheroes on the planet. She is slain by a demonic Wolverine, but her death makes Wolverine come to his senses and he fights against Baron Mordo, who had joined up with the demon hordes.
In What If... Wolverine: Enemy of the State, Kitty is the only hero left to kill a Hydra-programmed Wolverine after he has taken down the Marvel Universe. Kitty was the last remaining member of the team assembled to recapture Wolverine. The initial plan failed and Kitty was forced to phase her hand into Wolverine's brain. She then solidified her hand killing Wolverine instantly although she lost her hand in the process.
In What if Magneto and Professor X Had Formed The X-Men Together, Kitty is the tech guru at the Good Shepard clinic (That reality's version of the X-Mansion). She is very similar to her mainstream counterpart. But unlike the mainstream version this Kitty Pryde would wear different coloured wigs and cut her natural hair short. She also had trouble with her powers since she would phase herself through a solid object and accidentally leave her clothes behind. She was also friends with Lockheed although she only called him Dragon.
In What if Astonishing X-Men, Kitty is amongst the X-Men who fight a Phoenix powered Emma Frost. She phased Emma's heart from her chest but a Phoenix fire flares up from her body killing Kitty instantly. In the second story during the events of Astonishing X-Men #6-#12 Elixir had not been able to heal Kitty after being impaled and she dies.
In "What if the Dark Phoenix Rose Again", Kitty has Colossus "set up a fastball special" to help her phase into a Master Mold. She is killed after solidifying inside the Master Mold's head destroying it in the process.
In What if Storm Had the Power of the Phoenix, Kitty helps revive the 'real' Storm (the Phoenix being the cosmic entity in Storm's shape) by phasing inside her body and getting her internal organs working again.
X-Babies
An X-Baby version of Shadowcat appears briefly in the X-Babies one-shot comic. She is wearing her original costume and is younger than the other X-Babies. She is named as Shadowkitty rather than Shadowcat or Kitty Pryde. She also doesn't seem to have a strong bond with the X-Baby version of Lockheed.
X-Men Forever
In the X-Men Forever series, Kitty and Nightcrawler have left Excalibur and rejoined the X-Men after the events of X-Men #1-3. Of the X-Men, she undergoes the most drastic changes from the events of X-Men Forever #1. During the battle with Fabian Cortez, she phases through Wolverine while he is being affected by Cortez's power. This drives her powers haywire as well, and somehow she ends up with one of Wolverine's claws in her wrist. Claremont has also hinted in dialogue throughout the title so far that she may have also undergone psychological or psychic changes as a result of the event. From Forever #4 to the current issue, she is shown to be able to use the claw in the exact method Wolverine would manifest it, with no apparent ill effects (the mechanism for this has not yet been made clear) outside of excruciating pain. Because of the merger with Logan's DNA she has begun to develop a healing factor, slower than Wolverine's but it heals faster when she is intangible. She has also slightly enhanced senses, she also can produce a set of five retractable claws on her left hand like Sabretooth. She has also begun to take on Logan's personality and memories as well. And because of this she is beginning to wonder what part of her truly remains the same.
X-Men: Misfits
In the X-Men: Misfits original English language manga one-shot graphic novel from Marvel and DelRay, Kitty is the newest and only female student of the all-male Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters, which is now experimenting with having a co-ed student body. As the sole girl, she becomes the center of attention and attraction for the rest of the students. She becomes a member and the mascot of the elitist fraternity, The Hellfire Club, and has a short-lived romantic relationship with the school troublemaker Pyro.
X-Men: The End
In the X-Men: The End future, Kitty Pryde becomes the mayor of Chicago and then President of the United States. She has three children: her eldest daughter, named Meredith, and twins 10 years younger than Meredith, Sara and Doug, with an unnamed partner who died protecting her from an assassination attempt.
Miscellaneous
In Excalibur #103, we see many alternative versions of Shadowcat. Many of these variations have appeared in other comics, such as Age of Apocalypse, but there were other variations, including one of her as a Phalanx convert, a sex dominatrix, a homeless person, a nun, a version wearing a costume similar to Phantom Girl, and a normal person who owns an Olde Curiosity Shoppe.
In New Mutants #63 Illyana (Magik), along with Lockheed, gets trapped on an alien spaceship that has been invaded by a Brood Queen. On this ship the Brood Queen created clones of the X-Men, including Kitty. This one had the Ariel suit on, but it was green, instead of the typical blue. These X-Men are implanted with Brood eggs. Her memories were altered by the Brood Queen like the other X-Men, but eventually they rebel against her and are free. Illyana uses the soulsword to eliminate the Brood Eggs from their bodies. The X-Men stay on the ship; whether they are still on it is unknown.
During the Cross Time Caper storyline a few different appearances of Kitty appear. One was a princess who was gifted with magic abilities. She eventually married a short dashing prince (who had originally fallen in love with the mainstream version of Kitty). A second version was a crime boss who was betrayed and killed by her partner in crime Illiyana Rasputin. A third was from a world of sentient dinosaurs. She went by the name of Shadowcompsognathus.
Collected editions
Several of Kitty Pryde's earlier adventures were collected in paperback form.
In other media
Music
Kitty Pryde is referenced in Weezer's song "In the Garage" from their "Blue Album".
Television
Kitty Pryde appeared as Sprite in "The X-Men Adventure" episode of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, which guest-starred the X-Men. She was voiced by Melissa Sue Anderson. She also appeared in her short-lived "Ariel" costume in the X-Men group cameo at the end of the episode "The Education of a Superhero".
Kitty Pryde (voiced by Kath Soucie) was a viewpoint character in the animated television one-shot Pryde of the X-Men, as the newest member of the team. She is a new recruit of the team and is initially frightened of Nightcrawler, due to his demonic appearance. She and Nightcrawler later succeed in defeating Magneto. Once Nightcrawler seemingly dies as a result of having apparently sacrificed himself, Kitty begins to cry until discovering that he is alive and is met with positive relations by her teammates, except Wolverine. As the pilot was a failure, and the character had lost prominence in comics at the time, she was not used in the next X-Men TV series, not even in cameos. Jubilee replaced her as the young viewpoint character, and in the adaptations of stories that involved her.
In the animated series X-Men: Evolution, Shadowcat is a main character, who is shown as the teenybopper of the team and who has a romantic interest in Brotherhood member Lance Alvers. Shadowcat saves Wolverine in the season one episode "Grim Reminder", where she unintentionally stows away with Nightcrawler while on the Blackbird without the knowledge that he was beginning to pilot the jet. She is also shown to have developed a close friendship with Nightcrawler, despite the fact that she at first displayed a dislike for his appearance. Besides Nightcrawler, she is shown to have formed a friendship with Rogue and Spyke. Her initial dislike of his appearance changes after he is severely wounded by Rogue, while she and the rest of the X-Men tried to recruit her. In this series, she does not have Lockheed for a pet, but she is shown preferring to sleep with a stuffed dragon instead of a teddy bear. Though she has an on-and-off interest in the delinquent mutant boy Lance Alvers, early in the series she displays interest in Cyclops. After Rogue is recruited, she serves as her support in beginning a romantic relationship with Scott and develops a friendship with her, despite their differences. When Avalanche tries to join the X-Men in the season two episode "Joyride", she tries to help him and shows additional attraction to him as she grades him and the other members of the junior team. After he informs her that some members of the group have started a joyride on the Blackbird and helps her avert catastrophe, she staunchly defends him once he is accused by Cyclops of being responsible. When Avalanche starts to leave, Shadowcat gives him a brief kiss before his departure. Their relationship continues with the two of them going to a school dance, talking on the phone and going to the mall. Despite being with the Brotherhood, Avalanche tries to protect Kitty in the fight against the Scarlet Witch. In season 3, Kitty and Lance's relationship briefly ends after the Brotherhood and Mystique blow up the X Mansion and are in part responsible for the exposure of mutants. Kitty calls Lance a "hood" after he attacks the high school and he says "he will never be good enough for her". Both look sad at these comments. In the fourth season, the X-Men try to use her powers to damage one of Apocalypse's domes and fails, instead being electrocuted briefly. In the fiftieth episode of the series, entitled "Ghost of a Chance", she comes across Danielle Moonstar once she depicts herself in a dream sequence to her. Once she wakes out of it, she tries to and successfully finds her, becoming friends with the girl after learning she had been in suspended animation for two years. Prior to this, it is discovered that her fear is phasing repeatedly into the ground and going further without any control of where she is going. Shadowcat plays a key role in the defeat of Apocalypse and asks the Brotherhood for help. They come to her aid; as Lance and Kitty resume their romantic relationship. Of the six main X-Men from the first season of the series, she is one of the four that is still a member of the team in the future Charles Xavier saw while in the mind of Apocalypse. Shadowcat was voiced by Maggie Blue O'Hara.
Shadowcat appears in Wolverine and the X-Men, voiced by Danielle Judovits and was a student at the Xavier Institute before the destruction of the X-Mansion and disappearance of Professor X. When Wolverine reformed the X-Men to take down the Mutant Response Division and save the dismal future controlled by the Sentinels, Kitty was on her way to the "mutant paradise" Genosha. The X-Men came to re-recruit her and she immediately rejoined the team. Shadowcat appears as the youngest member of the team and she seems to have a crush on Iceman as she is jealous when his attention is taken by Emma Frost and is shown with a love-struck face when she lands on Bobby during a Danger Room training session, though she quickly moves away from him when Angel arrives. She seems to have formed a friendship with Tildie Soames after babysitting her in one episode. In the last episode of the series, she uses her powers to penetrate a Sentinel controlled by Magneto, of which Beast had difficulty with. Her design is inspired by the appearance of the character in the Astonishing X-Men comics, and her costume emulates the design with the appearance of the blue and yellow used on her costume. The shorts she wears are based on the appearances of the original X-Men, and her first appearance when she wore a variant of the uniform.
Shadowcat appears in The Super Hero Squad Show episode "And Lo...A Pilot Shall Come". She appears alongside Colossus at the unveiling of the Great Wall that separates Super Hero City from Villainville and helping citizens into the S.H.I.E.L.D. Shelters. In the episode "Mysterious Mayhem at Mutant Academy", she uses Lockheed to chase Reptil and the hypnotized X-Men out of the girls' bathroom.
Motion comics
Shadowcat appears in the Astonishing X-Men motion comic, voiced by Eileen Stevens and later by Laura Harris.
Film
In the film X-Men, she has a small cameo, played by Sumela Kay. She is referenced as the "girl in Illinois who can walk through walls" by Senator Kelly. She is shown in Xavier's class when Wolverine walks in; she returns for her books which she had left behind, grabs them, and phases through the door on her way out. Xavier responds with a cheerful "Bye, Kitty" while Wolverine looks on, startled.
In X2, she has a brief appearance played by Katie Stuart. She is shown phasing through walls and through people to escape William Stryker's military forces during their attack on the X-Mansion. Another scene shows her falling through her bed to avoid an assault. She shares a room with Siryn; in the novelization it is stated that this is because her phasing ability gives her partial protection from Siryn's scream. When the President of the United States asks Professor Xavier how he got the files he gave him, Xavier replies that he knows a little girl who can walk through walls.
In X-Men: The Last Stand, she is portrayed by a pre-transition Elliot Page, and has a central role. She serves as a rival to Rogue for the romantic attentions of Iceman, since their close friendship and their kiss (deleted scene) make Rogue increasingly jealous and frustrated. She also joins the X-Men in the battle on Alcatraz Island, breaking off from the battle to save Leech from the Juggernaut. In the novelization of the film, it is hinted that at some point Kitty had a romantic relationship with Colossus, but that it had long since run its course, although Colossus appears to still retain feelings towards her.
Page reprised the role in X-Men: Days of Future Past. Pryde is the prime facilitator because she has developed a new power. In this film, she can send the consciousness of another person back into his or her body in the past. At the beginning of the film, she has been using this ability to repeatedly send Bishop four days back in time whenever the Sentinels attack, thus; preventing her group from ever engaging them by having him warn the past team before they are detected. In order to prevent the Sentinels' creation, she sends Wolverine back to 1973 (chosen as the strain of sending someone else back that far would snap their mind, with Logan's healing factor the only thing that makes such a trip survivable for him) and was gravely injured when Wolverine becomes violent; due to provocation from events in 1973. After the timeline was successfully altered, Kitty is seen teaching a class at the X-Mansion with Colossus. In the film's alternate release, called The Rogue Cut, Kitty's injuries from sending Wolverine back to the past result in the X-Men rescuing Rogue to take over for her. Rogue absorbs Kitty's powers and takes over, stabilizing Wolverine and Kitty helps Magneto flee a Sentinel attack.
In January 2018, a Kitty Pryde solo movie was announced to be in development, with Tim Miller attached as the director and Brian Michael Bendis as the writer, but in March 2019, after Disney's purchase of 21st Century Fox, Fox executive Emma Watts described The New Mutants as the final film in the X-Men series, thus; ending the development of the Kitty Pryde film.
Video games
Kitty Pryde appears in Konami's 1992 X-Men video arcade game, as a non-playable character (NPC). In this game, she is not known as "Sprite"; instead, she plays the "damsel in distress" role as it is based on "Pryde of the X-Men". In the 2010 re-release of the game she is voiced by Mela Lee.
Shadowcat is a playable character in the game X-Men II: The Fall of the Mutants.
Shadowcat appears as an NPC in the X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse, voiced by Kim Mai Guest. She has special dialogue with Colossus (who she scolds for flirting with Scarlet Witch).
Shadowcat appears in X-Men: The Official Game, with Kim Mai Guest reprising her role.
Shadowcat is a playable character in Marvel Super Hero Squad Online, voiced by Tara Strong.
In X-Men: Destiny, Gambit mentions that the U-Men had captured Kitty and extracted bits of her power. Gambit obtains a vial of a substance which temporarily lets the character fall through the roof (if the player chose the correct option).
Kitty Pryde is a playable character in the Facebook game Marvel: Avengers Alliance.
Kitty Pryde is a playable character in the X-Men: Days of Future Past app game.
Kitty Pryde is a playable character in the online MMO Marvel Heroes, with Danielle Judovits reprising her role.
Kitty Pryde appears as a playable character in Marvel Future Fight.
Kitty Pryde appears as a playable character in Marvel Puzzle Quest.
Kitty Pryde appears as a playable character in Marvel Strike Force.
Novels
Kitty Pryde appears in the X-Men/Star Trek crossover novel Planet X. In it, she is examined by Geordi La Forge, who notes the similarities between her ability and the chroniton displacement he and Ro Laren experienced in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Next Phase".
Reception
Kitty Pryde has been well received as a comic book character and as a member of the X-Men. Wizard magazine put her at number #13 in 200 Greatest Comic Characters of All Time. She was the highest female comic character in the list beating rivals such as Wonder Woman, Buffy Summers, and She-Hulk. IGN ranked her as the 47th greatest comic book hero of all time stating that "as X-Men writers have often found it useful to introduce younger teen recruits to offset the experienced members of the team, Kitty Pryde set the standard when she debuted, and none have surpassed her". IGN rated Kitty Pryde #3 on its list of the Top 25 X-Men from the Past 40 Years describing her as the mutant everyman, the common girl turned superhero; IGN also stated that as her pet dragon, Lockheed, "became instantly attached to Kitty, [they] were hooked early on". Marvel.com ranked her as the tenth greatest X-Men member stating that "unquestionably, the dynamic of the X-Men shifted entirely when teenage whiz kid Kitty Pryde joined the team in the early 1980s"; Marvel.com also stated that even though Kitty has since blossomed into a young woman of considerable maturity and power, she remains the access point to the X-Men for countless readers. A later list on Marvel's website, ranking the top 50 X-Men characters, placed her in first place, citing the ease of identifying with her for the audience, and her development over the years.
Notes
References
External links
Kitty Pryde at Marvel.com
UncannyXmen.net Spotlight on Shadowcat
American superheroes
Characters created by Chris Claremont
Characters created by John Byrne (comics)
Comics characters introduced in 1980
Excalibur (comics)
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Female characters in film
Female characters in television
Fictional American Jews in comics
Fictional bisexual females
Fictional characters from Illinois
Fictional characters who can turn intangible
Fictional dancers
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Fictional women soldiers and warriors
Jewish superheroes
Marvel Comics female superheroes
Marvel Comics film characters
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Teenage characters in comics
X-Men members | true | [
"Kitty Pryde and Wolverine is a six-issue comic book limited series written by Chris Claremont and illustrated by Al Milgrom, and published by Marvel Comics between November 1984 and April 1985.\n\nA spin-off of the series Uncanny X-Men, it chronicles a Japanese adventure of two of the most popular X-Men of the time, Kitty Pryde and Wolverine.\n\nPublication history\nIn the introductory pages of the hardcover edition of Kitty Pryde and Wolverine (published 2008), Milgrom explains that the mini-series was powered by three main ideas. Firstly, Wolverine was the \"hottest property around\" that the X-Men franchise had, so stories with him would sell well. Secondly, Kitty Pryde was \"Chris' [Claremont] baby\", and Claremont was eager to develop this character further. Thirdly, Milgrom himself saw this as a unique chance to work with Marvel Comics legend Claremont.<ref name=editorial>Kitty Pryde and Wolverine, hardcover edition (2008), \"Introduction with Al Milgrom\"</ref>\n\nClaremont then wrote a story in which he could bring in new angles on the two characters. Kitty Pryde — previously little more than a sweet and innocent \"kid sister\" for the older X-Men, a literary foil to provide light-hearted moments — was portrayed as troubled with \"teenager self-doubt and self-deprecation\", \"searching for her very soul\" and going through the coming of age. Wolverine was put into the honor-driven, mystical Japanese culture, in which he was no longer the X-Men's campy hardman but \"grim and gritty\".\n\nTo express the atypically dark and personal story, Milgrom also adapted his drawing style, using bolder, darker and more dynamic strokes. In the end, he was very satisfied with the project.\n\nIn six issues, writer Chris Claremont takes Kitty Pryde fresh from her breakup with Colossus in Uncanny X-Men #183 and puts her through a trial of fire in which she confronts her inner demons and emerges victorious. Claremont also plays off the contrast between Kitty and the battle-hardened Wolverine, and the two very different characters establish a platonic, brother-and-sister-like rapport (beginning a tradition of sorts for Wolverine and young female sidekicks). A testament to his newfound esteem for her character, Wolverine would even consider Kitty as a potential leader for the X-Men, were it not for her sheer youth, in later issues of the regular series.Kitty Pryde and Wolverine is also responsible for establishing Kitty's superhero image, finally settling on a costume which she would wear into the early 1990s, and choosing the codename \"Shadowcat\" (having previously flitted between \"Ariel\" and \"Sprite\"), which she took on after this adventure and has held on until today.\n\nPlot summary\nKitty Pryde's father Carmen has run into trouble with the Japanese Yakuza. In order to help him, Kitty follows him on a business trip but is captured by mob boss Shigematsu and the evil ninja Ogun, who brainwashes her into becoming a deadly ninja assassin. After she has perfected her skills, Ogun orders her to kill Wolverine, Ogun's former student, who has come to Japan to look for Kitty. \n\nA masked Kitty almost kills Wolverine, before she is knocked out by Logan's friend Yukio and comes to her senses. Terrified at having been turned into a killing machine, Kitty wants to flee, but Logan challenges her to overcome her conditioning by focusing on her inner strength. When Kitty, Yukio and Logan vanquish their opponents, Kitty has the chance to kill Ogun. But she balks, stating she cannot do it. For Wolverine, it is the proof that she is truly herself again. When Ogun tries to kill her, Wolverine impales him on his claws. Carmen Pryde exposes Shigematsu's schemes, turning himself in, and they return to the United States.\n\nCollected editions\nThe story was reprinted several times; once in Wolverine And Gambit (issues 62 to 68), then later in June 2008 (in premiere hardback form, ), in 2009's Wolverine Omnibus Volume 1, and also as part of the Marvel's Mightiest Heroes partworks series, in issue No. 117, simply titled Kitty Pryde''.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n Kitty Pryde and Wolverine plot summaries and covers @ uncannyxmen.net\n\nComics by Chris Claremont\nWolverine (comics) titles",
"Pryde is an obsolete spelling of the English word pride now most frequently encountered as a surname.\n\nNotable people with the name include:\n Bob Pryde (1913–98), Scottish soccer player\n David Pryde (1913–87), Scottish soccer player\n David Johnstone Pryde (1890—1959), Scottish Labour politician\n Duncan Pryde (1937–97), Canadian hunter, trapper, lexicographer and politician\n James Pryde (1866–1941), Scottish artist working mainly in graphics\n Josephine Pryde (born 1967), English artist\n Mabel Pryde (1871–1918), Scots-born English artist\n Peggy Pryde (1867–1943), British music hall performer\n Susy Pryde (born 1973), New Zealand cyclist\n\nBusiness\n Neil Pryde Ltd (Pryde Group), Company designing water sport equipment\n\nFictional\n Kitty Pryde, otherwise Katherine Pryde, Marvel Comics Superhero\n Allegiant General Pryde, Star Wars First Order character\n\nSee also\n Pride (surname)\n Pryde Henry Teves, Filipino politician"
] |
[
"Kitty Pryde",
"Publication history",
"What was the first publication date?",
"The fictional Kitty Pryde first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980),",
"How long was the publication?",
"I don't know.",
"Who introduced the character Kitty Pryde?",
"Uncanny X-Men artist John Byrne named Kitty Pryde after a classmate he met in art school, Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary in 1973."
] | C_98d6a9f0735942e3a427f07b743f5a4d_1 | What is the story behind the name Kitty Pryde? | 4 | What is the story John Byrne created behind the name Kitty Pryde? | Kitty Pryde | Kitty Pryde was introduced into the X-Men title as the result of an editorial dictate that the book was supposed to depict a school for mutants. Uncanny X-Men artist John Byrne named Kitty Pryde after a classmate he met in art school, Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary in 1973. He had told Pryde he liked her name and asked for permission to use it, promising to name his first original comics character after her. Byrne drew the character to slightly resemble an adolescent Sigourney Weaver. The fictional Kitty Pryde first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980), by writer Chris Claremont and artist Byrne, as a highly intelligent 13-year-old girl. Claremont said several elements of the character's personality were derived from those of X-Men editor Louise Simonson's daughter, Julie. Claremont and Byrne made the new character a full-fledged X-Man in issue #139, where she was codenamed "Sprite". She was the main character in issues #141-142, the "Days of Future Past" storyline, where she is possessed by her older self, whose consciousness time travels to the past to prevent a mass extermination of mutants. The six-issue miniseries Kitty Pryde and Wolverine (1984-1985), written by Claremont, is a coming-of-age storyline in which she matures from a girl to a young woman, adopting the new name "Shadowcat". In the late '80s, she joined the British-based super team, Excalibur, where she remained for roughly ten years before coming back to the X-Men. In the early 2000s, she disappeared from the spotlight after semi-retiring from superhero work. She was featured in the 2002 mini-series Mekanix and came back to the main X-Men books in 2004 under the pen of Joss Whedon in Astonishing X-Men. She remained a part of the X-Men books until 2008 when she left again for roughly 2 years. After coming back, she was featured in Jason Aaron's Wolverine and the X-Men and Brian Michael Bendis' All-New X-Men books. In early 2015, she joined the Guardians of the Galaxy. After the Secret Wars event, she adopted her new alias, Star-Lord (first believed to be Star-Lady). Shadowcat's popularity had a profound effect on the real-life Kitty Pryde: the latter became so overwhelmed by attention from Shadowcat fans, she abbreviated her name to K.D. Pryde to avoid association with her fictional counterpart. She has since stated she has mixed feelings about her fame, saying she values Byrne's comics for their entertainment and artistic value, but wishes more people would appreciate her as more than just Shadowcat's namesake. CANNOTANSWER | He had told Pryde he liked her name and asked for permission to use it, promising to name his first original comics character after her. | Katherine Anne "Kitty" Pryde is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics, commonly in association with the X-Men. The character first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980) and was co-created by writer-artist John Byrne and Chris Claremont.
A mutant, Pryde possesses a "phasing" ability that allows her, as well as objects or people she is in contact with, to become intangible. This power also disrupts any electrical field she passes through, and lets her simulate levitation.
The youngest to join the X-Men, she was first portrayed as a "kid sister" to many older members of the group, filling the role of literary foil to the more established characters. She occasionally used the codenames Sprite and Ariel, cycling through several uniforms until settling for her trademark black-and-gold costume. During the miniseries Kitty Pryde and Wolverine, she was renamed Shadowcat, the alias she would be most associated with, and shifted to a more mature depiction in her subsequent appearances. Pryde would eventually abandon her nickname, "Kitty", and switch to "Kate". She was one of the main cast of characters depicted in the original Excalibur title. After momentarily joining the Guardians of the Galaxy, she assumed her then-fiancé's superhero identity as the Star-Lord (Star-Lady). As of the series Marauders, she is now informally known as Captain Kate Pryde and the Red Queen of the Hellfire Trading Company.
In the X-Men film series, Kitty Pryde was initially portrayed by young actresses in cameos; Sumela Kay in X-Men (2000) and Katie Stuart in X2 (2003). Later, a pre-transition Elliot Page portrayed the character in X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) and X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) in full-length appearances. Pryde is ranked #47 in IGN's Top 100 Comic Book Heroes.
Publication history
Kitty Pryde was introduced into the X-Men title as the result of an editorial dictate that the book was supposed to depict a school for mutants. Uncanny X-Men artist John Byrne named Kitty Pryde after a classmate he met in art school, Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary in 1973. He had told Pryde he liked her name and asked for permission to use it, promising to name his first original comics character after her. Byrne drew the character to slightly resemble an adolescent Sigourney Weaver.
The fictional Kitty Pryde first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980), by writer Chris Claremont and artist Byrne, as a highly intelligent 13-year-old girl. Claremont said several elements of the character's personality were derived from those of X-Men editor Louise Simonson's daughter, Julie. Claremont and Byrne made the new character a full-fledged X-Man in issue #139, where she was codenamed "Sprite". She was the main character in issues #141–142, the "Days of Future Past" storyline, where she is possessed by her older self, whose consciousness time travels to the past to prevent a mass extermination of mutants. The six-issue miniseries Kitty Pryde and Wolverine (1984–1985), written by Claremont, is a coming-of-age storyline in which she matures from a girl to a young woman, adopting the new name "Shadowcat".
In the late 1980s, Kitty joined the British-based super team, Excalibur, where she remained for roughly ten years before coming back to the X-Men. In the early 2000s, she disappeared from the spotlight after semi-retiring from superhero work. She was featured in the 2002 mini-series Mekanix and came back to the main X-Men books in 2004 under the pen of Joss Whedon in Astonishing X-Men. She remained a part of the X-Men books until 2008 when she left again for roughly 2 years. After coming back, she was featured in Jason Aaron's Wolverine and the X-Men and Brian Michael Bendis' All-New X-Men books.
In early 2015, she joined the Guardians of the Galaxy. After the Secret Wars event, she adopted her new alias, Star-Lord (first believed to be Star-Lady).
In 2020, Kitty Pryde was revealed to be bisexual. Her co-creator, Chris Claremont, had always intended this to be the case, considering Rachel Summers as a possible love interest for Pryde. However, Claremont wasn't allowed to show this at the time due to censorship, as he revealed on the "Xplain the X-Men" podcast in 2016.
Shadowcat's popularity had a profound effect on the real-life Kitty Pryde: the latter became so overwhelmed by attention from Shadowcat fans, she abbreviated her name to K.D. Pryde to avoid association with her fictional counterpart. She has since stated she has mixed feelings about her fame, saying she values Byrne's comics for their entertainment and artistic value, but wishes more people would appreciate her as more than just Shadowcat's namesake.
Fictional character biography
Katherine Anne "Kitty" Pryde was born in Deerfield, Illinois, to Carmen and Theresa Pryde. She is an Ashkenazi Jewish-American and her paternal grandfather, Samuel Prydeman, was held in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. Kitty started to have headaches at age thirteen, signaling the emergence of her mutant powers. She was approached by both the X-Men's Charles Xavier and the Hellfire Club's White Queen, Emma Frost, both of whom hoped to recruit her for their respective causes. Kitty was unnerved by Frost, observing that the White Queen looked at her as if she were "something good to eat." She got along better with Xavier and the three X-Men who escorted him, quickly becoming friends with Ororo Munroe. Ororo told Kitty who she really was and about the X-Men, which made the teenager even more enthusiastic about attending Xavier's school.
Their conversation was cut short when they (along with Wolverine and Colossus) were attacked by armored mercenaries in the employ of Frost and the Hellfire Club. The X-Men defeated their assailants, but were subdued by the White Queen's telepathic powers immediately after. In the confusion, Kitty was separated from the X-Men, and not captured along with them. She managed to contact Cyclops, Phoenix, and Nightcrawler. With the help of Dazzler and Pryde, those X-Men rescued their teammates from the Hellfire Club.
The White Queen appeared to perish in the battle, which meant she was no longer competing with Xavier for the approval of Kitty's parents. Kitty's parents had not heard from her in more than a day, because during that time she was first being pursued by the Hellfire Club's men and then working with the X-Men to save their friends. All they knew was Kitty had left with Xavier's "students" to get a soda, there had been reports that the soda shop had been blown up, and Kitty had been missing since. Therefore, they were angry at Xavier when he finally returned with Kitty in tow. At first, it seemed like there was no chance of Kitty being allowed to attend the school and join the X-Men. Phoenix then used her considerable telepathic power to erase the memories of Kitty's parents and plant false ones, resulting in a complete shift in their attitude towards Xavier. Kitty was then allowed to enroll at Xavier's school with her parents' blessing, becoming the youngest member of the team.
Joining the X-Men
Kitty joined the X-Men, and assumed the costumed identity of Sprite. Early in her career as an X-Man, Kitty's adult self from an alternate future took possession of her body in the present to help X-Men thwart the assassination of Senator Robert Kelly by the second Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Kitty then singlehandedly defeated a N'Garai demon. Kitty also briefly attended the White Queen's Massachusetts Academy when her parents became convinced that she needed to be with students of her own age, but following a failed attempt to subdue the X-Men, Frost revoked Kitty's admission.
During her teen years, Kitty fostered a number of close relationships with others at the school and in the X-Men. She developed a crush on Colossus and became close friends with his little sister Illyana Rasputin. Initially uneasy around Nightcrawler and other mutants with physical deformities, Kitty finally overcame her fears and became close friends with him. Kitty also befriended Lockheed, a highly intelligent alien resembling a dragon, who followed her home after a mission in outer space. Lockheed is extremely loyal to Kitty, and the two of them share a psychic bond. Wolverine became something of a mentor to Kitty despite his usually gruff personality. Storm came to view Kitty as the daughter she never had.
Though Xavier has threatened to reassign Kitty to the New Mutants, a team of younger mutants he established in the absence of the X-Men, ever since the X-Men returned from outer space, she never ended up joining the group, who she derisively calls the "X-Babies". Kitty was later abducted by the Morlocks and nearly forced to wed Caliban. She was then abducted by the White Queen, but rescued by the New Mutants.
During this time, Kitty began to date Colossus, although this did not last long. Colossus developed feelings for an alien woman named Zsaji whom he met on the Beyonder's planet in the first Secret Wars. Colossus' feelings toward Zsaji were primarily a side effect of her own unique healing abilities, which she had used on him after he became injured. Regardless, Colossus' feelings were real and he returned to Earth consumed with grief after Zsaji's death. He admitted to Kitty that he loved Zsaji, which hurt her deeply and ended the budding romantic relationship. Kitty had made good friends with a local boy from Salem Central named Doug Ramsey around this time, but her feelings for him never went as deep as his for her, and they never actually dated, though they remained close, even more so after Doug's status as a mutant was revealed and he joined the New Mutants under the codename Cypher. They remained friends until his death some time later.
Ogun
During the 1984–1985 Kitty Pryde and Wolverine miniseries, Kitty is possessed by a demon, the ninja Ogun. Ogun psychically bestows upon Kitty a virtual lifetime of martial arts training. Kitty was brainwashed by Ogun into becoming a ninja assassin, and was sent to attack Wolverine. Kitty is able to resist Ogun's influence with Wolverine's help, and the two form a strong teacher/student bond, which helps them in vanquishing Ogun. Kitty returns to the X-Men, no longer the innocent girl they once knew, and officially adopts the codename Shadowcat.
Morlock Massacre
While trying to save Rogue, Kitty was badly injured by Harpoon's energy spear during the Mutant Massacre story arc, in the massacre of the Morlocks, with the result that she lost control of her power and was stuck in an intangible state and could not regain her solidity. She was rushed to Muir Island along with other surviving casualties of the Massacre to be tended to by Moira MacTaggert. MacTaggert was able to keep Kitty's condition from deteriorating to the point where she completely lost physical substance and ceased to exist, but was not able to do any more to help her.
At this time, Kitty's natural state was to be intangible. Where she once had to make a conscious effort to phase, she could now only maintain her solidity through an act of conscious will. The X-Men went to Reed Richards, Mister Fantastic of the Fantastic Four, for aid, but Richards initially refused because he was not sure he would be able to help.
Having nowhere else to go, the X-Men turned to Richards' enemy Doctor Doom. This created a moral dilemma for both the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, and both teams fought each other because the Fantastic Four were trying to stop the treatment while the X-Men were determined to save Kitty's life. In the end, both the personal crisis of the Fantastic Four and the life of Shadowcat were saved after Franklin Richards, with the help of Lockheed, brought both teams to their senses. Kitty has since recovered from this state and now has full control over her power again.
Excalibur
Among the others injured and brought to Muir Isle were Colossus and Nightcrawler, although Colossus left the United Kingdom shortly after being released from MacTaggert's care to join the rest of the X-Men on their mission to battle the Adversary. The X-Men sacrificed their lives to defeat the Adversary, the battle and their sacrifice was televised and broadcast across the world. The X-Men were resurrected later in the same issue, unknown to the world at large, but chose to keep a low profile and perpetuate the belief that they were still dead. This strategy was enforced to more effectively fight their enemies. This meant avoiding contact with friends and family, including Kitty. Thinking the X-Men were dead, Kitty and Nightcrawler joined Rachel Summers, Captain Britain, and Meggan to form the Britain-based team Excalibur. For a brief time, Kitty studied at St. Searle's School for Girls in Britain. During her time with Excalibur, Kitty developed a crush on Professor Alistaire Stuart which went unreciprocated since Alistaire was attracted to Rachel. Later, she was romantically involved with former Black Air agent Pete Wisdom. At some point Kitty was recruited by the international law enforcement agency S.H.I.E.L.D. to repair the computer system of their flying headquarters. Kitty discovered the problem was due to Ogun's spirit having infiltrated the computer system, and with the aid of Wolverine, she managed to purge Ogun's presence. During this time, Kitty was attracted to a S.H.I.E.L.D. intern her own age, and this made her begin to doubt her relationship with Wisdom. Soon after, she broke off their relationship.
Back to the X-Men
After Excalibur's dissolution, Shadowcat, Nightcrawler, and Colossus return to the X-Men. While returning, they faced a group of imposters following Cerebro, in the guise of Professor X. While tracking Mystique, she stumbles onto prophetic diaries that belonged to Irene Adler, a precognitive. During the six-month gap, Kitty visited Genosha. Whatever she experienced there is unknown (although presumably connected to her father, living on Genosha at the time), but it had a profound effect on her. She cut her hair and began to act rebelliously, also using one of Wolverine's bone claws broken off during battle as a weapon. Kitty remained with the X-Men for a while before leaving after the apparent death of Colossus. Trying to give herself a normal life, she attended the University of Chicago. During this time, her father was killed when Cassandra Nova’s Sentinels destroyed Genosha. Kitty later finds a recording of his death due to exploring footage of the attack. She is also kidnapped by William Stryker, but the X-Treme X-Men team helped her escape, and she assisted them on several missions.
At the start of Joss Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men, Kitty once again rejoins the X-Men, despite having extreme reservations about working with the former White Queen, given their history. This was the primary reason why Frost herself wanted Kitty on the team, as a sort of "safety" should Frost ever revert to type. Frost reasoned that the person who trusted her least would be most likely to spot such behavior. On one of the team's first missions, Shadowcat discovered Colossus was alive. After some initial awkwardness, Kitty and Colossus resumed dating.
Kitty Pryde appeared alongside Colossus in the "Blinded by the Light" arc in X-Men. They are the two X-Men left to look after the students while the rest of the X-Men leave for Mystique's home in Mississippi to check up on Rogue, during which they are ambushed by the Marauders. Kitty and Colossus, meanwhile, attempt to protect the students from a faction of the Marauders led by Exodus. It is revealed over the course of the story that Kitty, worried of the Destiny Diaries' safety, devised a plan with Cyclops and Emma Frost to hide them and have Emma wipe the location from her mind. The location could only be revealed by a code word spoken to Kitty. The arc concludes with a battle between Iceman and Cannonball against the Marauders for the diaries, during which they are destroyed by Gambit.
In the "Torn" arc, the latest incarnation of the Hellfire Club begin an assault on Xavier's School. Kitty fulfilled the role that Emma Frost envisioned, personally taking down Frost and imprisoning her, only to fall under a telepathic delusion created by Hellfire member Perfection, who claimed to be the true, unreformed Emma Frost. Under this delusion, Kitty was made to believe that she and Colossus had conceived a child, which was later taken away by the X-Men because its potential mutant abilities were supposedly dangerous. Kitty reacts in the delusion by attempting to rescue the child from a near-inescapable "box" in the depths of the school, unaware that in reality she is freeing an alien entity, Stuff, who contains the trapped consciousness of Cassandra Nova, the apparent ringleader of this new Hellfire Club. A newly awakened Cyclops revealed that the new Hellfire Club, including Perfection and Nova, are actually mental projections created by a piece of Cassandra Nova's consciousness; which became lodged in Emma's mind during the X-Men's last confrontation with her, playing on her survivor's guilt over the Genoshan massacre, and utilizing Emma's telepathy to both confound the X-Men and orchestrate her (Nova's) escape from the Stuff body. As Cyclops killed the mental projections, Emma tried to force Kitty to kill her to get rid of Nova. Undeterred, Cassandra Nova switched her focus to attempt to transfer her mind to Hisako Ichiki. It appears that Nova did not succeed, as the team was transported to S.W.O.R.D.'s air station en route to Ord's Breakworld for the "Unstoppable" arc that concludes Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men.
Breakworld
As the team prepares to end the confrontation with the Breakworld leader, the team splits up—with Kitty on the team appointed to stop the missile pointed at Earth. Kitty phases into the missile to disrupt its circuitry noting that it is composed of the same material as the rest of Breakworld, a material that is difficult and exhausting for her to phase through. After phasing for a mile into the missile, Kitty finds the center only to discover it empty. The missile is fired, causing Kitty to pass out inside of it as Beast discovers too late that due to its shape, trajectory, and lack of internal circuitry, the Breakworld's weapon is not a missile, but a bullet. As the bullet hurtles toward Earth, Kitty lies unconscious within it.
As the situation becomes increasingly dire, Emma establishes mental contact with Kitty, reassuring her that she will come out of this fine, though it eventually becomes clear to both that the situation will be grim. Kitty and Emma come to an understanding and reconciliation, Emma stating that she never wanted something like this to happen to her. Kitty then phases the bullet through Earth, but is trapped within. At the end of Giant-Size Astonishing X-Men, Scott Summers mentions that Doctor Strange, Reed Richards, and some "top men" tried to save her, but believe she has fused to the bullet, as it continues to hurtle through space. Whether she is alive or dead is unknown, though the X-Men consider her lost to them.
As a result of these events Kitty does not appear in the X-Men crossover event X-Men: Messiah Complex, since this takes place after the events of Giant-Size Astonishing X-Men. She is briefly mentioned in the aftermath of the Messiah Complex, by Colossus, Nightcrawler, and Wolverine, as the three of them discuss "losing her."
To cope with Kitty's loss, Colossus takes down a group of Russian criminals dealing in human trafficking, and gets a tattoo of the name 'Katya' on his chest. Emma begins having a recurring dream in which she hears a voice whom she believes is Kitty's trying to reach out to her.
It was later confirmed by Abigail Brand that Kitty Pryde was still alive within the bullet, but because the bullet's design would harden as time went on, it would become increasingly difficult to break the bullet open.
Return
After the X-Men move to the island of Utopia, Magneto arrives on the island professing his desire to join and support the X-Men in their effort to unite the world's remaining mutants. The X-Men reluctantly let him stay, remaining wary of him despite his efforts to gain their trust. In a final bid to gain their trust, Magneto focuses his powers, attempting to divert the interstellar path of the metal bullet Kitty is trapped in and bring her home to Earth. Meanwhile, inside the bullet, Kitty is revealed to still be alive. Unbeknownst to the others, Magneto had encountered the bullet earlier while attempting to regain his powers with the High Evolutionary and surmised that Kitty was inside. Despite this and the High Evolutionary's apparent ability to retrieve the bullet and Kitty, Magneto chose to focus on regaining his powers, secretly keeping tabs on the bullet until his decision to draw it back to Earth. During her time trapped inside the bullet, Kitty keeps herself and the bullet phased to avoid collisions with any inhabited objects in its path.
Magneto brings Kitty Pryde safely down to Earth by cracking the bullet in two and levitating Kitty to the ground. When she and Colossus try to touch, it is revealed that she is trapped in her intangible form, unable to speak, and the X-Men place her in a protective chamber similar to the one used for her following the events of the Mutant Massacre. How Kitty survived her time in the bullet is unclear to the X-Men's science team, where the X-Men discover that all her bodily functions halted. An analysis by Kavita Rao hypothesizes that Kitty created an intense muscle memory to keep herself and the bullet phased and has "forgotten" how to un-phase.
During a conversation with Colossus, with Emma Frost acting as the psi-conduit, Kitty picks up Emma's stray thoughts on killing the captive Sebastian Shaw, to prevent Namor from discovering she previously lied to him. While disgusted at Emma's intentions, Kitty offers a compromise. Due to her current ghost state, she is the perfect tool for making Shaw disappear.
In a storyline in Uncanny X-Men, the Breakworlders make their way to Earth. During the conflict between the Breakworlder Kr'uun and the X-Men, Kitty is slain and resurrected by Kr'uun's mate in an alien ritual, which results in her powers returning to normal.
Regenesis
Shortly thereafter, Kitty breaks up with Colossus, and decides to return with Wolverine to Westchester to open the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning. In Wolverine and the X-Men #4, she appears to be suddenly pregnant, but the pregnancy was revealed to be a Brood infestation, and it was swiftly dealt with by a team of X-Men. Since returning to Westchester, Kitty has shared several kisses with Iceman. During the events of Avengers vs. X-Men, Kitty does not take a side, but instead decides to stay at the school to work with the students. Once Bobby returned from working with the X-Men after realizing that the Phoenix had corrupted them, he and Kitty finally decide to go on a date.
All-New X-Men
After Beast brings the original five X-Men into the future to stop Cyclops in the present, Kitty volunteers to take responsibility for the temporally relocated X-Men while they work to undo this dark future. This soon puts her at odds with the rest of her team as they believed the original five should go back to their own time in order to prevent any damage to the space-time continuity. Eventually, this leads Kitty to take the decision of abandoning the school with the time-displaced X-Men and join Cyclops's X-Men at the New Xavier School. During the first few weeks at the New Xavier School, Jean Grey is abducted by the Shiar Empire to stand trial for her future self's crimes. Kitty and the time-displaced X-Men team up with the Guardians of the Galaxy and succeed in rescuing Jean from the Shiar. At the conclusion of the storyline, Kitty begins a long-distance, flirtatious relationship with Starlord, Peter Quill.
The Black Vortex
In the following weeks, Kitty's relationship with Peter Quill evolves more and more as they developed stronger feelings for each other every day. At one point, Quill gets captured during one of their dates and she has no option but to go to his rescue, despite her fear of space as a result of her being trapped on the giant space bullet. After rescuing Peter, she decides to stay in space with him. Then, Kitty convinces Peter to steal a powerful artifact called the Black Vortex from his father J'son. Soon, they find themselves being chased by J'son's assassination squad, the Slaughter Lords. In despair, they request the aid of the X-Men and the Guardians of the Galaxy to protect the Vortex. After a few of their own friends can't resist the temptation and submit to the Vortex, betray the team, and escape with the artifact; the team splits and Kitty stays in Spartax to help an orphanage. She is encased in amber after Thane (who was allied with J'son) freezes the whole planet along with the people inside it; but thanks to her phasing powers, she manages to get out of the amber. Then the Brood attacks Spartax, planning to use every encased person to lay eggs and create an army of Brood to start invading other planets and conquering them. Kitty feels the only way to stop them is by submitting to the Vortex herself as she's the only one who can resist the cosmic corruption. She reluctantly submits and becomes a being of unlimited power. After being reminded of the love between her and Peter Quill, she goes back and phases all the amber that encased Spartax, along with the Broods trying to infect the people, and sends them all to another dimension. Kitty doesn't give up the cosmic power but admits to Peter that she is afraid of it. Peter promises her that he will never abandon her no matter how much she changes. Then, Peter kneels and proposes marriage to Kitty. She, with tears in her eyes, accepts. Later when Star Lord is declared Emperor of Spartax she is told she will become the first lady of Spartax.
Guardians of the Galaxy
Kitty takes on the mantle of Star Lord and joins the Guardians of the Galaxy in Peter Quill's place so he can take on his royal duties. When Hala the Accuser massacres Spartax in an attempt to make Quill pay for J'son's actions against her people, she initially easily lays waste to the capitol and overpowers the Guardians. After the Guardians regroup and formulate a strategy to defeat her, Kitty manages to partially phase Hala into the ground so the rest of the Guardians can knock her out and separate her from her weapon. After Quill loses his title as king he and Kitty end up on a mission with the rest of the Guardians on a concentration camp prison planet owned by the Badoon after Gamora gave them information on it so they can free Angela. Once there, Kitty has a personal reaction upon seeing the prisoners and makes it her mission to liberate everyone there and defeat the captors, as it reminds her of Nazi concentration camps. After Quill gets captured and sentenced to death in an arena battle, Kitty finds and kills one of the Badoon leaders by phasing his heart out of his body. When Captain Marvel summons the Guardians to Earth to help her address Tony Stark, Kitty learns that Thanos is a prisoner on Earth and tries to convince Quill to tell Gamora. When fighting starts Kitty woefully realizes that some of her former students are on Tony Stark's side instead of fighting with Captain Marvel. During the battle the Guardians' ship was destroyed, effectively stranding them on Earth. After helping the Guardians stop Thanos from leading an invasion from the Negative Zone the Guardians are given a new ship; however, Kitty decides to stay on Earth and ends her time with the Guardians and Quill.
Leading the X-Men
Upon returning to Earth, Kitty hopes to finally regain a semblance of a normal life but ends up approached by Storm, who informs Kitty of everything the X-Men have gone through while Kitty was away. Storm announces to Kitty that she intends to step down as leader of the X-Men due to the guilt that she feels for leading the X-Men to war and offers Kitty her position. After touring X-Haven and seeing how much things have changed and how much things need to change for the better, Kitty agrees to lead the X-Men as long as Storm remains on the team. Her next act is to relocate the mansion from Limbo to Central Park, New York so the X-Men can refocus on being part of the world instead of fearing it under the belief that if the X-Men truly are to be seen as heroes, then they need to actually live in the world that they are trying to save instead of constantly worrying about their own survival.
Under Kitty's new leadership, the X-Men go through some small changes in order to shed their past history and make new names for themselves, such as convincing Rachel Summers to change her code name to Prestige and renaming the mansion as The Xavier Institute for Mutant Education and Outreach. Kitty learns first-hand how hard it is to balance leading the X-Men as well as managing the mansion when there are many political factors trying to deliberately get in the way of the X-Men. She also begins to have awkward one-on-one moments with Colossus; they try to remain friends, but given their long history their interactions swiftly become complicated. Kitty's first case as field leader of the X-Men sees her and her team taking on a new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. After discovering that an outspoken anti-mutant politician brainwashed this new Brotherhood to work for her to publicly discredit mutants, Kitty threatened to expose her if she continued exploiting mutants for her own personal gain.
Dawn of X
After Krakoa became a new sovereign nation for Mutants, Kitty Pryde, now going by Captain Kate Pryde, discovers she is the sole mutant who is, for unknown reasons, unable to use the various warp gates leading to Krakoa. It is implied that she has done something to anger Krakoa, but that restriction does not mean Kitty cannot use other means to reach the mutant homeland. She steals a boat and sets sail for the island. Kitty's time on Krakoa proves to be just as fruitless, as the island's natural resources (like flowers that grow into biome homes) are similarly prohibited to Kitty. Emma Frost comes asking Kitty to take up a special mission: taking a bigger boat out to serve as pirate captain on the X-Men's mission to liberate mutants trapped in oppressive countries that do not recognize mutant sovereignty, while also smuggling and supplying for Emma's Hellfire Trading Company the lifesaving drugs the X-Men provide to humans. Kate Pryde is later appointed the new Red Queen of the Hellfire Trading Company by Emma Frost, to the dismay of Sebastian Shaw. Seeing Pryde as an obstacle to his complete control of the Hellfire Corporation, Shaw began plotting against Kate and her crew. After taking notice how Emma became overprotective of the newly crowned Red Queen, Shaw realized that for the same reason she can't travel through Krakoa's gates nor read or understand the Krakoan language until Emma implanted it in her brain, the X-Men's Resurrection Protocols also won't apply to her, which means Kate cannot be resurrected if she died. He orchestrated a distraction by paying off human supremacists Homines Verendi to stage an attack on his own son. Once Kate was defenseless, Shaw emerged from below deck and ensnared Lockheed with a net gun, making him a helpless hostage. He then released Krakoan seeds at her feet, which wrapped around her and prevented her from using her powers. He then dropped her and Lockheed into the sea. While Lockheed was able to survive, Kate sank helplessly, and once her head dropped under the surface, she had no air left and drowned instantly. Her death is later confirmed by Bishop as he retrieves Kate's body, as it was also established that the Resurrection Protocols indeed do not apply to Kate, as the Five, for reasons unknown, cannot resurrect her. However, she is later resurrected, as Emma Frost realized that it was due to the nature of Kate's intangibility powers that her mindless body was unable to break out of the egg.
Powers and abilities
Kitty is a mutant with the ability to pass through solid matter by passing her atomic particles through the spaces between the atoms of the object through which she is moving. In this way she and the object through which she is passing can temporarily merge without interacting, and each is unharmed when Shadowcat has finished passing through the object. This process is called "phasing" or quantum tunneling and it renders her almost completely intangible to physical touch. Shadowcat passes through objects at the same speed at which she is moving before she enters them. Since she is unable to breathe while inside an object, she can only continuously phase through solid objects (as when she travels underground) as long as she can hold her breath. However, contrary depictions of the duration of her phasing ability have been presented, such as when she has phased miles within an object. The use of her abilities also interferes with any electrical systems as she passes through by disrupting the flow of electrons from atom to atom, including the bio-electric systems of living bodies if she concentrates in the right way. This typically causes machines to malfunction or be destroyed as she phases through them, and can induce shock and unconsciousness in living beings.
Using her power began as an optional ability, but for a period (over ten years of published comics, approximately two years in-continuity) Kitty existed in a naturally "phased" state, and had to consciously choose to become solid. Kitty has returned to her original form and is normally solid and must choose to use her power. While phasing, she does not physically walk on surfaces, but rather interacts with the molecules of air above them, allowing her to ascend and descend, causing her to seemingly walk on air. While phased, she is immune to most physical attacks, and has inconsistent showings of some resistance to telepathy. The density of some materials (such as adamantium) can prove deleterious to her phasing, causing her to be severely disoriented or experience pain if she tries to pass through them. Some energy attacks also prove problematic for Kitty. For example, an energy blast fired by Harpoon, a member of the Marauders, caused her to lose her ability to become fully tangible for months. Magic and magical beings can also harm her in her phased state, as demonstrated in a battle with a N'Garai demon whose claws left no visible marks, but caused Kitty severe pain as they passed through her intangible body.
Kitty can also extend her powers to phase other people and objects. She is able to phase at least six other people (or objects of similar mass) with her, so long as they establish and maintain physical contact with her. She can extend her phasing effect to her own clothing or any other object with mass up to that of a small truck, as long as she remains in contact with it. Kitty can also make objects intangible by maintaining contact with them. She has threatened to leave people phased into a wall, and used her power offensively to harm the Technarch Magus, and Danger.
Kitty's powers seem to have increased over the years. During an X-Treme X-Men story arc in which she is kidnapped by Reverend William Stryker, she phases out of sync with Earth's rotation to move from one place in the world (only east or west) to another seemingly instantaneously. At the climax of Astonishing X-Men, Kitty phases a 10 mi (16 km) long "bullet" composed of super-dense alien metals through the entire planet Earth. This feat caused her considerable strain, but she is unable to phase out of the bullet. Moreover, originally Kitty found it difficult or impossible to phase only part of her body at a time. In the Days of Future Past story arc, she is possessed by her older future self, allowing her to solidify only her shoulder while phasing the rest of her body through Destiny—a feat explicitly beyond the 13-year-old Kitty's abilities. By contrast, the Kitty Pryde of Joss Whedon's run can punch and kick someone standing on the other side of a wall, selectively phasing and unphasing body parts as necessary. She can even run and leap through an armed opponent, grabbing their weapon as she passes by, which presumably requires her to solidify only the surface area of the palms of her hands and then immediately phase both her palms and the weapon.
Besides her mutant powers, Kitty is a genius in the field of applied technology and computer science. She is highly talented in the design and use of computer hardware. She is a skilled pilot of piston and jet engine aircraft, and a competent pilot of certain advanced interstellar vehicles. She has previously shown a unique ability to wield the Soulsword and also be harmed by it. Since her possession by the ninja demon Ogun, she has been consistently shown to be an excellent hand-to-hand combatant, having since been endowed with a lifetime of training in the martial arts of Japanese ninja and samurai.
She is a professional-level dancer in both ballet and modern dance. She speaks fluent English, Japanese, Russian, and the royal and standard languages of the alien Shi'ar and Skrull, and has moderate expertise in Gaelic, Hebrew, and German.
Kitty also shares a mental/empathic connection with her pet dragon Lockheed; both she and the alien dragon can "sense" each other's presence at times and generally understand one another's thoughts and actions.
When Kitty used the Black Vortex, her powers were augmented to a cosmic scale making her a god-like being. She can phase through any material of any density and can even phase a planet out of Thane's amber, whereas in her normal state it is an extremely difficult task to simply phase herself out of the amber. She can also apparently transverse between the planes of the multiverse and is immune to the effects of space. Her appearance can be changed but her natural form appears to be rather gaseous in look.
Other versions
In addition to her mainstream incarnation, Kitty Pryde has been depicted in other fictional universes.
Age of Apocalypse
In the Age of Apocalypse reality, Kitty grows up under harsh circumstances and her nature reflects it. She has short hair, tight clothes, and chain smokes cigarettes. Her parents are killed in the Chicago Cullings, and she is forcibly recruited into Apocalypse's army, but is later rescued by Colossus. Magneto puts Shadowcat under Weapon X's training, hoping to turn her into the X-Men's assassin, and she is given a set of retractable artificial claws around each wrist to better imitate her teacher's fighting style. After the fallout between Colossus and Magneto, Shadowcat sides with Colossus, whom she has married. Instead of leaving the fight against Apocalypse altogether, the couple become the teachers of Generation Next. The two submit their trainees to harsh situations, giving them little comfort despite the fact that Shadowcat is close to the age of her students.
Shadowcat assists the team in rescuing Illyana Rasputin from the Seattle Core, and, at Colossus' behest, abandons her students after Illyana is saved. She is killed by Colossus in his ruthless obsession to protect his sister, Illyana; coming between an enraged Colossus and his endangered sister, Shadowcat never believed he would harm her.
Days of Future Past
In the Days of Future Past timeline (Earth-811), Shadowcat goes by the name Kate Pryde. Kate attempts to go back in time to prevent the assassination of Senator Robert Kelly by Mystique and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. She succeeds, only to create a separate timeline where the events of her past still come to pass. After returning to her own time Kate helps Rachel Summers escape back to the timeline she just created. Captured by Sentinels, Kate escapes by phasing through her inhibitor collar and fell into a time warp, causing her to merge with the Sentinel that was scanning her, and arrives in the timeline Rachel is inhabiting. Kate's mind settles in a small, metal, off-spherical body and becomes known as Widget. After a few adventures in that timeline, mostly in company with her Earth-616 counterpart's team Excalibur, Kate regains her memory and returns to her original timeline where she is able to reprogram the ruling Sentinels to protect life, ending their tyranny.
Earth X
In Earth X it is revealed in the appendix of issue six that Kitty Pryde is killed saving Colossus while he could not shift into his metal form. Instead of phasing the bullet through her, she heroically takes the bullet and is killed.
Exiles
A version of Kitty Pryde codenamed Cat first appeared in Exiles #96. She is younger than her Earth-616 counterpart. She has the appearance and powers of the normal Shadowcat although she wears a different costume. Prior to her joining the Exiles, this version of Kitty had been recruited by Emma Frost as one of the core agents of the Hellfire Club's strike force. She helps Psylocke defeat Doom's soldiers who have invaded the Panoptichron. She helps retrieve Blink, Morph, and Sabretooth from being scattered across the multiverse. She works as a computer expert for the team and is a full member of the Exiles.
Cat's skill with using her powers means she is not tied to any dimension and can see through various realities, including those of the mind (for instance seeing the various personalities in Sage's mind as "ghosts" surrounding her). Her arrival in the Crystal Palace and connection to its computers has increased this, giving her the ability to "cascade" through different alternative versions of herself, altering her appearance and details of her powers. Amongst other versions, she has assumed the form of a Kitty Pryde with the appearance and powers of Tigra. During the New Exiles' last mission Cat faced off against Madame Hydra (Sue Storm) and killed her at the cost of her own life.
There has been another version of Kitty that appeared in the King Hyperion story arc (Exiles #38-40). She had survived an attack on the X-Mansion by the Sentinels. The Colossus from her universe had been killed in the attack but she had the same feelings towards Weapon X's Colossus even though he was not her Colossus. The two eventually fell in love with each other. Unfortunately this did not last since she died with Colossus when they were shot into the empty vacuum of space by Hyperion.
House of M
When the Scarlet Witch altered reality in the 616 Universe, creating the reality known as House of M where mutants were the dominant population, Kitty Pryde was a teacher in a public middle school in Cincinnati, Ohio. Like many of the heroes of Earth 616, she is reminded of the true reality by Layla Miller and recruited in the fight to restore reality.
Magik
In the limited series Magik (Illyana and Storm), an alternative reality Kitty renames herself "Cat" after she is mutated by the demonic sorcerer Belasco into a more feline form, with cat eyes, whiskers, a tail, and enhanced physical abilities and senses. Trapped in Belasco's Limbo, Cat takes a militant view towards defeating the sorcerer, eschewing the magic that her reality's Storm embraces, instead turning to skills in swordplay and physical combat. She tries to save the Illyana Rasputin of Earth-616 from corruption through magic by taking Illyana into the wilderness of Limbo and teaching the child to fight and survive. Like the Kitty Pryde of Earth-616 eventually would, Cat became Illyana's best friend, but more in the role of an older sister due to the difference in their ages.
Cat's plan goes awry when the pair's attempt to confront Belasco fails, at the cost of the life of an enslaved Nightcrawler; Illyana falls under Belasco's influence and Cat is further transformed towards a feline, with a semi-animalistic mind completely loyal to Belasco. Cat is eventually slain by Illyana when Belasco sets Cat upon his rebellious apprentice; facing death at Cat's hands and knowing that, deep down, a part of Kitty still exists and hates her enslavement, Illyana broke Cat's neck in self-defense.
Long after Illyana overthrows Belasco, escapes Limbo, and becomes a member of the junior X-Men team known as the New Mutants, Cat's remains are found by the team in Limbo's throne room. By then she had completely decomposed to a skeleton. Illyana, facing a rebellion of Limbo's demon population that threatened to overrun Earth, smashed Cat's skull in rage over the demonic taint that Belasco left on her soul and frustration over the horrible choice she had to make to kill Cat.
Marvel Zombies
Kitty is briefly shown in the background as a zombie in Ultimate Fantastic Four #23, despite her mutant phasing powers. She is also seen in Marvel Zombies: Dead Days, when zombie Alpha Flight attack the X-Men. This would appear to have been retconned, though, as of Marvel Zombies: Halloween, which depicts her and her son Peter with Colossus surviving for several years in an out of the way house farm, encountering zombies, but, fortunately, being rescued by Mephisto, who dispatched the remaining zombies.
The Earth-91126/Earth-Z Kitty is recruited by Earth-2149/Marvel Zombies Spider-Man to help him develop a cure for the zombie hunger, on the grounds that her powers mean that she would be in no danger from him if he should succumb to his zombie instincts, but she is later seemingly killed when the zombie Quasar holds her underwater until she is forced to become solid once more, allowing the infected Namor to eat her flesh (much to the rage of the zombie Wolverine, of Earth-2149).
Mutant X
Storm was taken by the vampire Dracula and unlike Earth 616, she does not return. Kitty goes off to battle her, either to save or kill her. Kitty slays several vampires in the way but Storm proves too much for her and Kitty becomes her unwilling slave for some time. She later shows up as the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club and seems to be none too happy with Storm. It's also hinted that she was engaged or going to be engaged to Colossus. Her ultimate fate at the end of the series is unknown.
Lightning Force
In the reality of Earth-597, an alternative universe where World War II was won by Nazi Germany, Kitty is forced to serve as Shadowcat alongside Nightcrawler, Meggan, and Hauptmann Englande as a member of the Lightning Force (a version of Excalibur), made a virtual slave because of her Jewish heritage. She leads a sad existence and is easily identified by her shaved head and the Star of David tattooed on her forehead. It is indicated, from her own statements and those made by her reality's counterpart of Moira MacTaggert, that this Shadowcat is a true ghost, raised from the dead by a combination of science and magic and bound to serve the Nazi regime. This Shadowcat had the added ability to disrupt life force with her phasing power, knocking her victims unconscious, much like how her counterpart in the "prime" Marvel Universe (Earth-616) can disrupt technology that she phases through. She is also able to alter her facial features to a "demonic" aspect when attacking enemies or else responding to aggressive, commanding behavior from her superiors.
Pirate Kitty
Kitty tells Illyana a bedtime story and casts herself as Pirate Kitty Pryde, captain of the Abdul Alhazred, who operated in a magical world. Unlike her mainstream counterpart, she did not have any mutant powers and wore a classic pirate outfit which also included her Star of David necklace. She was also sometimes known as Colleen. Kitty was good friends of her version of Colossus, the Bamfs (Nightcrawler), Windrider (Storm), the "Fiend-with-no-name" (later revealed to be named "Mean") (Wolverine) and Lockheed (an alternative version of the X-Jet). Kitty also helped her versions of Professor X and Cyclops capture and cure that universe's version of Dark Phoenix.
At first she was only a fairy tale character, but later it is revealed that her fairy tale is actually an alternative universe. (In fact, several members of this universe, the Bamfs, would later come to Earth-616 to cause trouble.) When Earth-616's Nightcrawler was temporarily stranded in her world, Kitty helped him defeat the sorcerer Shagreen and also encountered the Earth-616 versions of Illyana, Lockheed, and herself.
Professor W's X-Men
In the native universe of the Exiles member Nocturne, Kitty is a senior member of the X-Men led by Nightcrawler. She is a teacher and TJ refers to her as "Aunt Kate". During a fight with Apocalypse Kitty gets exposed to a machine that reverts her to a younger stage of her life when she had only been with the X-Men a few weeks. Nocturne helps Kitty fit into the school and becomes her best friend. She also proves useful in the fight against the Brotherhood led by Cyclops.
Ruins
Imprisoned alongside other mutants at a prison camp in Texas by President X, Kitty attempted to use her phasing powers to escape, only to get stuck halfway through her cell door, losing three feet of intestines in the process.
Secret Wars (2015)
During the Secret Wars storyline, a version of Kitty named Kitten resides in the wuxia-inspired K'un-L'un region of Battleworld. In this reality, Kitten is a martial artist who joins Callisto's band of outcasts after being expelled from her school for attempting a forbidden technique, a side effect of which left her intangible. Kitten and her fellow outcasts became pupils of Shang-Chi, the exiled son of Emperor Zheng Zu. Dubbing their new school The Lowest Caste, Shang-Chi represents the group as their master for the tournament deciding the next Emperor of K'un-L'un, hoping to usurp his father's tyrannical rule. Kitten accompanies Shang-Chi for each of his fights in the Thirteen Chambers. During his final fight with Zu, Shang-Chi uses Kitten's technique of intangibility, which leads to his eventual victory and replaces his father as the new Emperor of K'un-L'un.
Ultimate Marvel
The Ultimate version of Shadowcat (Kitty Pryde) first appears as a 14-year-old girl in Ultimate X-Men #21. She is also Jewish and wears the Star of David around her neck, but does not appear to possess the same genius IQ as her mainstream (Earth-616) counterpart.
Kitty's mother, worried about Kitty's mutation, seeks help from Professor Charles Xavier. Kitty becomes a student at Xavier's school, when her mother allows her to attend under the condition she does not take part in any X-Men missions, nor train in any "Danger Room" simulations. Kitty soon rebels against this and joins the X-Men as their youngest member. She idolizes Spider-Man and has a crush on him; she even dates Peter Parker for a time. After a fierce argument with Professor Xavier concerning Peter's secret identity, which his Aunt May had just found out about, Kitty leaves the X-Men and enrolls in Peter's school. Their relationship is strained after their romantic involvement (as superheroes) becomes publicly known, making it impossible for them to date anymore in their civilian identities, and eventually comes to an end when Peter realizes he cannot get over his feelings for Mary Jane. However, Kitty still retains strong feelings for him.
Following the disastrous flood triggered by Magneto and the subsequent ban of public use of mutant powers, Kitty assumes the identity of the Shroud. Kitty also discovers that she can also decrease the space between her atoms make herself super-dense, giving her both superhuman strength and durability. When the authorities see Kitty as a threat, she enters into a fierce rage and demonstrates these powers for the first time to her friends. She is strong and angry enough to punch Spider-Man several feet through the air. She eventually escapes and goes into hiding in the now abandoned Morlock Tunnel with Iceman and the Human Torch after Peter Parker's death.
Kitty makes an appearance in Ultimate Comics: X, locating Jimmy Hudson, who is revealed to be Wolverine's son. Kitty was charged by Logan before his death to locate Jimmy and reveal his true origins to him.
After the death of Spider-Man she formed new team of X-Men consisting of herself, Iceman and the Human Torch. They soon rescued the mutant Rogue from the mutant-hunting Nimrod robots, going on to recruit Jimmy Hudson into their group as well. After killing the mutant-hunting William Stryker, Kitty decided to leave New York for the Southwest along with Bobby, Rogue, and Jimmy (leaving only Johnny behind) in order to save the mutants there and defeat the Nimrods, now controlled by the deceased Stryker's consciousness.
Spider-Gwen
In the reality where Gwen Stacy is Spider-Woman, Kitty is an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Black Ops department, where she works closely with Wolverine to keep him in check and to help him fight his immortal curse. Like the Age of Apocalypse version, she also wields artificial claws on her wrists. It's revealed that she works with Logan out of guilt, as Stryker forced her to use her powers to subject Logan to the Weapon X experiment.
What If
In What if Phoenix Had Not Died, Kitty is obliterated by Dark Phoenix before she destroyed the Earth.
In What If the X-Men had Lost Inferno?, Kitty is one of the last eight remaining superheroes on the planet. She is slain by a demonic Wolverine, but her death makes Wolverine come to his senses and he fights against Baron Mordo, who had joined up with the demon hordes.
In What If... Wolverine: Enemy of the State, Kitty is the only hero left to kill a Hydra-programmed Wolverine after he has taken down the Marvel Universe. Kitty was the last remaining member of the team assembled to recapture Wolverine. The initial plan failed and Kitty was forced to phase her hand into Wolverine's brain. She then solidified her hand killing Wolverine instantly although she lost her hand in the process.
In What if Magneto and Professor X Had Formed The X-Men Together, Kitty is the tech guru at the Good Shepard clinic (That reality's version of the X-Mansion). She is very similar to her mainstream counterpart. But unlike the mainstream version this Kitty Pryde would wear different coloured wigs and cut her natural hair short. She also had trouble with her powers since she would phase herself through a solid object and accidentally leave her clothes behind. She was also friends with Lockheed although she only called him Dragon.
In What if Astonishing X-Men, Kitty is amongst the X-Men who fight a Phoenix powered Emma Frost. She phased Emma's heart from her chest but a Phoenix fire flares up from her body killing Kitty instantly. In the second story during the events of Astonishing X-Men #6-#12 Elixir had not been able to heal Kitty after being impaled and she dies.
In "What if the Dark Phoenix Rose Again", Kitty has Colossus "set up a fastball special" to help her phase into a Master Mold. She is killed after solidifying inside the Master Mold's head destroying it in the process.
In What if Storm Had the Power of the Phoenix, Kitty helps revive the 'real' Storm (the Phoenix being the cosmic entity in Storm's shape) by phasing inside her body and getting her internal organs working again.
X-Babies
An X-Baby version of Shadowcat appears briefly in the X-Babies one-shot comic. She is wearing her original costume and is younger than the other X-Babies. She is named as Shadowkitty rather than Shadowcat or Kitty Pryde. She also doesn't seem to have a strong bond with the X-Baby version of Lockheed.
X-Men Forever
In the X-Men Forever series, Kitty and Nightcrawler have left Excalibur and rejoined the X-Men after the events of X-Men #1-3. Of the X-Men, she undergoes the most drastic changes from the events of X-Men Forever #1. During the battle with Fabian Cortez, she phases through Wolverine while he is being affected by Cortez's power. This drives her powers haywire as well, and somehow she ends up with one of Wolverine's claws in her wrist. Claremont has also hinted in dialogue throughout the title so far that she may have also undergone psychological or psychic changes as a result of the event. From Forever #4 to the current issue, she is shown to be able to use the claw in the exact method Wolverine would manifest it, with no apparent ill effects (the mechanism for this has not yet been made clear) outside of excruciating pain. Because of the merger with Logan's DNA she has begun to develop a healing factor, slower than Wolverine's but it heals faster when she is intangible. She has also slightly enhanced senses, she also can produce a set of five retractable claws on her left hand like Sabretooth. She has also begun to take on Logan's personality and memories as well. And because of this she is beginning to wonder what part of her truly remains the same.
X-Men: Misfits
In the X-Men: Misfits original English language manga one-shot graphic novel from Marvel and DelRay, Kitty is the newest and only female student of the all-male Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters, which is now experimenting with having a co-ed student body. As the sole girl, she becomes the center of attention and attraction for the rest of the students. She becomes a member and the mascot of the elitist fraternity, The Hellfire Club, and has a short-lived romantic relationship with the school troublemaker Pyro.
X-Men: The End
In the X-Men: The End future, Kitty Pryde becomes the mayor of Chicago and then President of the United States. She has three children: her eldest daughter, named Meredith, and twins 10 years younger than Meredith, Sara and Doug, with an unnamed partner who died protecting her from an assassination attempt.
Miscellaneous
In Excalibur #103, we see many alternative versions of Shadowcat. Many of these variations have appeared in other comics, such as Age of Apocalypse, but there were other variations, including one of her as a Phalanx convert, a sex dominatrix, a homeless person, a nun, a version wearing a costume similar to Phantom Girl, and a normal person who owns an Olde Curiosity Shoppe.
In New Mutants #63 Illyana (Magik), along with Lockheed, gets trapped on an alien spaceship that has been invaded by a Brood Queen. On this ship the Brood Queen created clones of the X-Men, including Kitty. This one had the Ariel suit on, but it was green, instead of the typical blue. These X-Men are implanted with Brood eggs. Her memories were altered by the Brood Queen like the other X-Men, but eventually they rebel against her and are free. Illyana uses the soulsword to eliminate the Brood Eggs from their bodies. The X-Men stay on the ship; whether they are still on it is unknown.
During the Cross Time Caper storyline a few different appearances of Kitty appear. One was a princess who was gifted with magic abilities. She eventually married a short dashing prince (who had originally fallen in love with the mainstream version of Kitty). A second version was a crime boss who was betrayed and killed by her partner in crime Illiyana Rasputin. A third was from a world of sentient dinosaurs. She went by the name of Shadowcompsognathus.
Collected editions
Several of Kitty Pryde's earlier adventures were collected in paperback form.
In other media
Music
Kitty Pryde is referenced in Weezer's song "In the Garage" from their "Blue Album".
Television
Kitty Pryde appeared as Sprite in "The X-Men Adventure" episode of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, which guest-starred the X-Men. She was voiced by Melissa Sue Anderson. She also appeared in her short-lived "Ariel" costume in the X-Men group cameo at the end of the episode "The Education of a Superhero".
Kitty Pryde (voiced by Kath Soucie) was a viewpoint character in the animated television one-shot Pryde of the X-Men, as the newest member of the team. She is a new recruit of the team and is initially frightened of Nightcrawler, due to his demonic appearance. She and Nightcrawler later succeed in defeating Magneto. Once Nightcrawler seemingly dies as a result of having apparently sacrificed himself, Kitty begins to cry until discovering that he is alive and is met with positive relations by her teammates, except Wolverine. As the pilot was a failure, and the character had lost prominence in comics at the time, she was not used in the next X-Men TV series, not even in cameos. Jubilee replaced her as the young viewpoint character, and in the adaptations of stories that involved her.
In the animated series X-Men: Evolution, Shadowcat is a main character, who is shown as the teenybopper of the team and who has a romantic interest in Brotherhood member Lance Alvers. Shadowcat saves Wolverine in the season one episode "Grim Reminder", where she unintentionally stows away with Nightcrawler while on the Blackbird without the knowledge that he was beginning to pilot the jet. She is also shown to have developed a close friendship with Nightcrawler, despite the fact that she at first displayed a dislike for his appearance. Besides Nightcrawler, she is shown to have formed a friendship with Rogue and Spyke. Her initial dislike of his appearance changes after he is severely wounded by Rogue, while she and the rest of the X-Men tried to recruit her. In this series, she does not have Lockheed for a pet, but she is shown preferring to sleep with a stuffed dragon instead of a teddy bear. Though she has an on-and-off interest in the delinquent mutant boy Lance Alvers, early in the series she displays interest in Cyclops. After Rogue is recruited, she serves as her support in beginning a romantic relationship with Scott and develops a friendship with her, despite their differences. When Avalanche tries to join the X-Men in the season two episode "Joyride", she tries to help him and shows additional attraction to him as she grades him and the other members of the junior team. After he informs her that some members of the group have started a joyride on the Blackbird and helps her avert catastrophe, she staunchly defends him once he is accused by Cyclops of being responsible. When Avalanche starts to leave, Shadowcat gives him a brief kiss before his departure. Their relationship continues with the two of them going to a school dance, talking on the phone and going to the mall. Despite being with the Brotherhood, Avalanche tries to protect Kitty in the fight against the Scarlet Witch. In season 3, Kitty and Lance's relationship briefly ends after the Brotherhood and Mystique blow up the X Mansion and are in part responsible for the exposure of mutants. Kitty calls Lance a "hood" after he attacks the high school and he says "he will never be good enough for her". Both look sad at these comments. In the fourth season, the X-Men try to use her powers to damage one of Apocalypse's domes and fails, instead being electrocuted briefly. In the fiftieth episode of the series, entitled "Ghost of a Chance", she comes across Danielle Moonstar once she depicts herself in a dream sequence to her. Once she wakes out of it, she tries to and successfully finds her, becoming friends with the girl after learning she had been in suspended animation for two years. Prior to this, it is discovered that her fear is phasing repeatedly into the ground and going further without any control of where she is going. Shadowcat plays a key role in the defeat of Apocalypse and asks the Brotherhood for help. They come to her aid; as Lance and Kitty resume their romantic relationship. Of the six main X-Men from the first season of the series, she is one of the four that is still a member of the team in the future Charles Xavier saw while in the mind of Apocalypse. Shadowcat was voiced by Maggie Blue O'Hara.
Shadowcat appears in Wolverine and the X-Men, voiced by Danielle Judovits and was a student at the Xavier Institute before the destruction of the X-Mansion and disappearance of Professor X. When Wolverine reformed the X-Men to take down the Mutant Response Division and save the dismal future controlled by the Sentinels, Kitty was on her way to the "mutant paradise" Genosha. The X-Men came to re-recruit her and she immediately rejoined the team. Shadowcat appears as the youngest member of the team and she seems to have a crush on Iceman as she is jealous when his attention is taken by Emma Frost and is shown with a love-struck face when she lands on Bobby during a Danger Room training session, though she quickly moves away from him when Angel arrives. She seems to have formed a friendship with Tildie Soames after babysitting her in one episode. In the last episode of the series, she uses her powers to penetrate a Sentinel controlled by Magneto, of which Beast had difficulty with. Her design is inspired by the appearance of the character in the Astonishing X-Men comics, and her costume emulates the design with the appearance of the blue and yellow used on her costume. The shorts she wears are based on the appearances of the original X-Men, and her first appearance when she wore a variant of the uniform.
Shadowcat appears in The Super Hero Squad Show episode "And Lo...A Pilot Shall Come". She appears alongside Colossus at the unveiling of the Great Wall that separates Super Hero City from Villainville and helping citizens into the S.H.I.E.L.D. Shelters. In the episode "Mysterious Mayhem at Mutant Academy", she uses Lockheed to chase Reptil and the hypnotized X-Men out of the girls' bathroom.
Motion comics
Shadowcat appears in the Astonishing X-Men motion comic, voiced by Eileen Stevens and later by Laura Harris.
Film
In the film X-Men, she has a small cameo, played by Sumela Kay. She is referenced as the "girl in Illinois who can walk through walls" by Senator Kelly. She is shown in Xavier's class when Wolverine walks in; she returns for her books which she had left behind, grabs them, and phases through the door on her way out. Xavier responds with a cheerful "Bye, Kitty" while Wolverine looks on, startled.
In X2, she has a brief appearance played by Katie Stuart. She is shown phasing through walls and through people to escape William Stryker's military forces during their attack on the X-Mansion. Another scene shows her falling through her bed to avoid an assault. She shares a room with Siryn; in the novelization it is stated that this is because her phasing ability gives her partial protection from Siryn's scream. When the President of the United States asks Professor Xavier how he got the files he gave him, Xavier replies that he knows a little girl who can walk through walls.
In X-Men: The Last Stand, she is portrayed by a pre-transition Elliot Page, and has a central role. She serves as a rival to Rogue for the romantic attentions of Iceman, since their close friendship and their kiss (deleted scene) make Rogue increasingly jealous and frustrated. She also joins the X-Men in the battle on Alcatraz Island, breaking off from the battle to save Leech from the Juggernaut. In the novelization of the film, it is hinted that at some point Kitty had a romantic relationship with Colossus, but that it had long since run its course, although Colossus appears to still retain feelings towards her.
Page reprised the role in X-Men: Days of Future Past. Pryde is the prime facilitator because she has developed a new power. In this film, she can send the consciousness of another person back into his or her body in the past. At the beginning of the film, she has been using this ability to repeatedly send Bishop four days back in time whenever the Sentinels attack, thus; preventing her group from ever engaging them by having him warn the past team before they are detected. In order to prevent the Sentinels' creation, she sends Wolverine back to 1973 (chosen as the strain of sending someone else back that far would snap their mind, with Logan's healing factor the only thing that makes such a trip survivable for him) and was gravely injured when Wolverine becomes violent; due to provocation from events in 1973. After the timeline was successfully altered, Kitty is seen teaching a class at the X-Mansion with Colossus. In the film's alternate release, called The Rogue Cut, Kitty's injuries from sending Wolverine back to the past result in the X-Men rescuing Rogue to take over for her. Rogue absorbs Kitty's powers and takes over, stabilizing Wolverine and Kitty helps Magneto flee a Sentinel attack.
In January 2018, a Kitty Pryde solo movie was announced to be in development, with Tim Miller attached as the director and Brian Michael Bendis as the writer, but in March 2019, after Disney's purchase of 21st Century Fox, Fox executive Emma Watts described The New Mutants as the final film in the X-Men series, thus; ending the development of the Kitty Pryde film.
Video games
Kitty Pryde appears in Konami's 1992 X-Men video arcade game, as a non-playable character (NPC). In this game, she is not known as "Sprite"; instead, she plays the "damsel in distress" role as it is based on "Pryde of the X-Men". In the 2010 re-release of the game she is voiced by Mela Lee.
Shadowcat is a playable character in the game X-Men II: The Fall of the Mutants.
Shadowcat appears as an NPC in the X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse, voiced by Kim Mai Guest. She has special dialogue with Colossus (who she scolds for flirting with Scarlet Witch).
Shadowcat appears in X-Men: The Official Game, with Kim Mai Guest reprising her role.
Shadowcat is a playable character in Marvel Super Hero Squad Online, voiced by Tara Strong.
In X-Men: Destiny, Gambit mentions that the U-Men had captured Kitty and extracted bits of her power. Gambit obtains a vial of a substance which temporarily lets the character fall through the roof (if the player chose the correct option).
Kitty Pryde is a playable character in the Facebook game Marvel: Avengers Alliance.
Kitty Pryde is a playable character in the X-Men: Days of Future Past app game.
Kitty Pryde is a playable character in the online MMO Marvel Heroes, with Danielle Judovits reprising her role.
Kitty Pryde appears as a playable character in Marvel Future Fight.
Kitty Pryde appears as a playable character in Marvel Puzzle Quest.
Kitty Pryde appears as a playable character in Marvel Strike Force.
Novels
Kitty Pryde appears in the X-Men/Star Trek crossover novel Planet X. In it, she is examined by Geordi La Forge, who notes the similarities between her ability and the chroniton displacement he and Ro Laren experienced in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Next Phase".
Reception
Kitty Pryde has been well received as a comic book character and as a member of the X-Men. Wizard magazine put her at number #13 in 200 Greatest Comic Characters of All Time. She was the highest female comic character in the list beating rivals such as Wonder Woman, Buffy Summers, and She-Hulk. IGN ranked her as the 47th greatest comic book hero of all time stating that "as X-Men writers have often found it useful to introduce younger teen recruits to offset the experienced members of the team, Kitty Pryde set the standard when she debuted, and none have surpassed her". IGN rated Kitty Pryde #3 on its list of the Top 25 X-Men from the Past 40 Years describing her as the mutant everyman, the common girl turned superhero; IGN also stated that as her pet dragon, Lockheed, "became instantly attached to Kitty, [they] were hooked early on". Marvel.com ranked her as the tenth greatest X-Men member stating that "unquestionably, the dynamic of the X-Men shifted entirely when teenage whiz kid Kitty Pryde joined the team in the early 1980s"; Marvel.com also stated that even though Kitty has since blossomed into a young woman of considerable maturity and power, she remains the access point to the X-Men for countless readers. A later list on Marvel's website, ranking the top 50 X-Men characters, placed her in first place, citing the ease of identifying with her for the audience, and her development over the years.
Notes
References
External links
Kitty Pryde at Marvel.com
UncannyXmen.net Spotlight on Shadowcat
American superheroes
Characters created by Chris Claremont
Characters created by John Byrne (comics)
Comics characters introduced in 1980
Excalibur (comics)
Female characters in animation
Female characters in film
Female characters in television
Fictional American Jews in comics
Fictional bisexual females
Fictional characters from Illinois
Fictional characters who can turn intangible
Fictional dancers
Fictional female ninja
Fictional linguists
Fictional mayors
Fictional schoolteachers
Fictional secret agents and spies
Fictional women soldiers and warriors
Jewish superheroes
Marvel Comics female superheroes
Marvel Comics film characters
Marvel Comics LGBT superheroes
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S.H.I.E.L.D. agents
Teenage characters in comics
X-Men members | true | [
"Kitty Pryde and Wolverine is a six-issue comic book limited series written by Chris Claremont and illustrated by Al Milgrom, and published by Marvel Comics between November 1984 and April 1985.\n\nA spin-off of the series Uncanny X-Men, it chronicles a Japanese adventure of two of the most popular X-Men of the time, Kitty Pryde and Wolverine.\n\nPublication history\nIn the introductory pages of the hardcover edition of Kitty Pryde and Wolverine (published 2008), Milgrom explains that the mini-series was powered by three main ideas. Firstly, Wolverine was the \"hottest property around\" that the X-Men franchise had, so stories with him would sell well. Secondly, Kitty Pryde was \"Chris' [Claremont] baby\", and Claremont was eager to develop this character further. Thirdly, Milgrom himself saw this as a unique chance to work with Marvel Comics legend Claremont.<ref name=editorial>Kitty Pryde and Wolverine, hardcover edition (2008), \"Introduction with Al Milgrom\"</ref>\n\nClaremont then wrote a story in which he could bring in new angles on the two characters. Kitty Pryde — previously little more than a sweet and innocent \"kid sister\" for the older X-Men, a literary foil to provide light-hearted moments — was portrayed as troubled with \"teenager self-doubt and self-deprecation\", \"searching for her very soul\" and going through the coming of age. Wolverine was put into the honor-driven, mystical Japanese culture, in which he was no longer the X-Men's campy hardman but \"grim and gritty\".\n\nTo express the atypically dark and personal story, Milgrom also adapted his drawing style, using bolder, darker and more dynamic strokes. In the end, he was very satisfied with the project.\n\nIn six issues, writer Chris Claremont takes Kitty Pryde fresh from her breakup with Colossus in Uncanny X-Men #183 and puts her through a trial of fire in which she confronts her inner demons and emerges victorious. Claremont also plays off the contrast between Kitty and the battle-hardened Wolverine, and the two very different characters establish a platonic, brother-and-sister-like rapport (beginning a tradition of sorts for Wolverine and young female sidekicks). A testament to his newfound esteem for her character, Wolverine would even consider Kitty as a potential leader for the X-Men, were it not for her sheer youth, in later issues of the regular series.Kitty Pryde and Wolverine is also responsible for establishing Kitty's superhero image, finally settling on a costume which she would wear into the early 1990s, and choosing the codename \"Shadowcat\" (having previously flitted between \"Ariel\" and \"Sprite\"), which she took on after this adventure and has held on until today.\n\nPlot summary\nKitty Pryde's father Carmen has run into trouble with the Japanese Yakuza. In order to help him, Kitty follows him on a business trip but is captured by mob boss Shigematsu and the evil ninja Ogun, who brainwashes her into becoming a deadly ninja assassin. After she has perfected her skills, Ogun orders her to kill Wolverine, Ogun's former student, who has come to Japan to look for Kitty. \n\nA masked Kitty almost kills Wolverine, before she is knocked out by Logan's friend Yukio and comes to her senses. Terrified at having been turned into a killing machine, Kitty wants to flee, but Logan challenges her to overcome her conditioning by focusing on her inner strength. When Kitty, Yukio and Logan vanquish their opponents, Kitty has the chance to kill Ogun. But she balks, stating she cannot do it. For Wolverine, it is the proof that she is truly herself again. When Ogun tries to kill her, Wolverine impales him on his claws. Carmen Pryde exposes Shigematsu's schemes, turning himself in, and they return to the United States.\n\nCollected editions\nThe story was reprinted several times; once in Wolverine And Gambit (issues 62 to 68), then later in June 2008 (in premiere hardback form, ), in 2009's Wolverine Omnibus Volume 1, and also as part of the Marvel's Mightiest Heroes partworks series, in issue No. 117, simply titled Kitty Pryde''.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n Kitty Pryde and Wolverine plot summaries and covers @ uncannyxmen.net\n\nComics by Chris Claremont\nWolverine (comics) titles",
"Kitty Pryde, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. is a comic book limited series published by Marvel Comics. The series was written by Larry Hama.\n\nPublication history \nThe series began publication in 1997 and ended in 1998.\n\n\"The Calling\" (December, 1997)\n\"The Mission\" (January, 1998)\n\"Pryde Goeth Before a Fall\" (February, 1998)\n\nPlot \nKitty Pryde is called in by S.H.I.E.L.D. to investigate a virus infection in the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier's computer, only to discover that it is her old nemesis, Ogun.\n\nThe series also features Wolverine as a secondary character and there is information revealed about his past such as that he used to work for the Puzzle Palace with Nick Fury during the Cold War. (The Puzzle Palace was the nickname for the National Security Agency (NSA), the cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States that was founded in 1952.) We also see Logan meet a very young Carol Danvers, for the first time in the past.\n\nReception \nCharlie Jane Anders of io9.gizmodo believes the series would be a good series to adapt into the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. television series and ranked it at sixth place on her list.\n\nSee also \n 1997 in comics\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n Kitty Pryde, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. at the Comic Book DB\n \n\nS.H.I.E.L.D. titles\nX-Men titles"
] |
[
"Kitty Pryde",
"Publication history",
"What was the first publication date?",
"The fictional Kitty Pryde first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980),",
"How long was the publication?",
"I don't know.",
"Who introduced the character Kitty Pryde?",
"Uncanny X-Men artist John Byrne named Kitty Pryde after a classmate he met in art school, Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary in 1973.",
"What is the story behind the name Kitty Pryde?",
"He had told Pryde he liked her name and asked for permission to use it, promising to name his first original comics character after her."
] | C_98d6a9f0735942e3a427f07b743f5a4d_1 | Where did the Kitty part come from? | 5 | Where did the Kitty part come from in Kitty Pryde? | Kitty Pryde | Kitty Pryde was introduced into the X-Men title as the result of an editorial dictate that the book was supposed to depict a school for mutants. Uncanny X-Men artist John Byrne named Kitty Pryde after a classmate he met in art school, Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary in 1973. He had told Pryde he liked her name and asked for permission to use it, promising to name his first original comics character after her. Byrne drew the character to slightly resemble an adolescent Sigourney Weaver. The fictional Kitty Pryde first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980), by writer Chris Claremont and artist Byrne, as a highly intelligent 13-year-old girl. Claremont said several elements of the character's personality were derived from those of X-Men editor Louise Simonson's daughter, Julie. Claremont and Byrne made the new character a full-fledged X-Man in issue #139, where she was codenamed "Sprite". She was the main character in issues #141-142, the "Days of Future Past" storyline, where she is possessed by her older self, whose consciousness time travels to the past to prevent a mass extermination of mutants. The six-issue miniseries Kitty Pryde and Wolverine (1984-1985), written by Claremont, is a coming-of-age storyline in which she matures from a girl to a young woman, adopting the new name "Shadowcat". In the late '80s, she joined the British-based super team, Excalibur, where she remained for roughly ten years before coming back to the X-Men. In the early 2000s, she disappeared from the spotlight after semi-retiring from superhero work. She was featured in the 2002 mini-series Mekanix and came back to the main X-Men books in 2004 under the pen of Joss Whedon in Astonishing X-Men. She remained a part of the X-Men books until 2008 when she left again for roughly 2 years. After coming back, she was featured in Jason Aaron's Wolverine and the X-Men and Brian Michael Bendis' All-New X-Men books. In early 2015, she joined the Guardians of the Galaxy. After the Secret Wars event, she adopted her new alias, Star-Lord (first believed to be Star-Lady). Shadowcat's popularity had a profound effect on the real-life Kitty Pryde: the latter became so overwhelmed by attention from Shadowcat fans, she abbreviated her name to K.D. Pryde to avoid association with her fictional counterpart. She has since stated she has mixed feelings about her fame, saying she values Byrne's comics for their entertainment and artistic value, but wishes more people would appreciate her as more than just Shadowcat's namesake. CANNOTANSWER | Claremont said several elements of the character's personality were derived from those of X-Men editor Louise Simonson's daughter, Julie. | Katherine Anne "Kitty" Pryde is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics, commonly in association with the X-Men. The character first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980) and was co-created by writer-artist John Byrne and Chris Claremont.
A mutant, Pryde possesses a "phasing" ability that allows her, as well as objects or people she is in contact with, to become intangible. This power also disrupts any electrical field she passes through, and lets her simulate levitation.
The youngest to join the X-Men, she was first portrayed as a "kid sister" to many older members of the group, filling the role of literary foil to the more established characters. She occasionally used the codenames Sprite and Ariel, cycling through several uniforms until settling for her trademark black-and-gold costume. During the miniseries Kitty Pryde and Wolverine, she was renamed Shadowcat, the alias she would be most associated with, and shifted to a more mature depiction in her subsequent appearances. Pryde would eventually abandon her nickname, "Kitty", and switch to "Kate". She was one of the main cast of characters depicted in the original Excalibur title. After momentarily joining the Guardians of the Galaxy, she assumed her then-fiancé's superhero identity as the Star-Lord (Star-Lady). As of the series Marauders, she is now informally known as Captain Kate Pryde and the Red Queen of the Hellfire Trading Company.
In the X-Men film series, Kitty Pryde was initially portrayed by young actresses in cameos; Sumela Kay in X-Men (2000) and Katie Stuart in X2 (2003). Later, a pre-transition Elliot Page portrayed the character in X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) and X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) in full-length appearances. Pryde is ranked #47 in IGN's Top 100 Comic Book Heroes.
Publication history
Kitty Pryde was introduced into the X-Men title as the result of an editorial dictate that the book was supposed to depict a school for mutants. Uncanny X-Men artist John Byrne named Kitty Pryde after a classmate he met in art school, Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary in 1973. He had told Pryde he liked her name and asked for permission to use it, promising to name his first original comics character after her. Byrne drew the character to slightly resemble an adolescent Sigourney Weaver.
The fictional Kitty Pryde first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980), by writer Chris Claremont and artist Byrne, as a highly intelligent 13-year-old girl. Claremont said several elements of the character's personality were derived from those of X-Men editor Louise Simonson's daughter, Julie. Claremont and Byrne made the new character a full-fledged X-Man in issue #139, where she was codenamed "Sprite". She was the main character in issues #141–142, the "Days of Future Past" storyline, where she is possessed by her older self, whose consciousness time travels to the past to prevent a mass extermination of mutants. The six-issue miniseries Kitty Pryde and Wolverine (1984–1985), written by Claremont, is a coming-of-age storyline in which she matures from a girl to a young woman, adopting the new name "Shadowcat".
In the late 1980s, Kitty joined the British-based super team, Excalibur, where she remained for roughly ten years before coming back to the X-Men. In the early 2000s, she disappeared from the spotlight after semi-retiring from superhero work. She was featured in the 2002 mini-series Mekanix and came back to the main X-Men books in 2004 under the pen of Joss Whedon in Astonishing X-Men. She remained a part of the X-Men books until 2008 when she left again for roughly 2 years. After coming back, she was featured in Jason Aaron's Wolverine and the X-Men and Brian Michael Bendis' All-New X-Men books.
In early 2015, she joined the Guardians of the Galaxy. After the Secret Wars event, she adopted her new alias, Star-Lord (first believed to be Star-Lady).
In 2020, Kitty Pryde was revealed to be bisexual. Her co-creator, Chris Claremont, had always intended this to be the case, considering Rachel Summers as a possible love interest for Pryde. However, Claremont wasn't allowed to show this at the time due to censorship, as he revealed on the "Xplain the X-Men" podcast in 2016.
Shadowcat's popularity had a profound effect on the real-life Kitty Pryde: the latter became so overwhelmed by attention from Shadowcat fans, she abbreviated her name to K.D. Pryde to avoid association with her fictional counterpart. She has since stated she has mixed feelings about her fame, saying she values Byrne's comics for their entertainment and artistic value, but wishes more people would appreciate her as more than just Shadowcat's namesake.
Fictional character biography
Katherine Anne "Kitty" Pryde was born in Deerfield, Illinois, to Carmen and Theresa Pryde. She is an Ashkenazi Jewish-American and her paternal grandfather, Samuel Prydeman, was held in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. Kitty started to have headaches at age thirteen, signaling the emergence of her mutant powers. She was approached by both the X-Men's Charles Xavier and the Hellfire Club's White Queen, Emma Frost, both of whom hoped to recruit her for their respective causes. Kitty was unnerved by Frost, observing that the White Queen looked at her as if she were "something good to eat." She got along better with Xavier and the three X-Men who escorted him, quickly becoming friends with Ororo Munroe. Ororo told Kitty who she really was and about the X-Men, which made the teenager even more enthusiastic about attending Xavier's school.
Their conversation was cut short when they (along with Wolverine and Colossus) were attacked by armored mercenaries in the employ of Frost and the Hellfire Club. The X-Men defeated their assailants, but were subdued by the White Queen's telepathic powers immediately after. In the confusion, Kitty was separated from the X-Men, and not captured along with them. She managed to contact Cyclops, Phoenix, and Nightcrawler. With the help of Dazzler and Pryde, those X-Men rescued their teammates from the Hellfire Club.
The White Queen appeared to perish in the battle, which meant she was no longer competing with Xavier for the approval of Kitty's parents. Kitty's parents had not heard from her in more than a day, because during that time she was first being pursued by the Hellfire Club's men and then working with the X-Men to save their friends. All they knew was Kitty had left with Xavier's "students" to get a soda, there had been reports that the soda shop had been blown up, and Kitty had been missing since. Therefore, they were angry at Xavier when he finally returned with Kitty in tow. At first, it seemed like there was no chance of Kitty being allowed to attend the school and join the X-Men. Phoenix then used her considerable telepathic power to erase the memories of Kitty's parents and plant false ones, resulting in a complete shift in their attitude towards Xavier. Kitty was then allowed to enroll at Xavier's school with her parents' blessing, becoming the youngest member of the team.
Joining the X-Men
Kitty joined the X-Men, and assumed the costumed identity of Sprite. Early in her career as an X-Man, Kitty's adult self from an alternate future took possession of her body in the present to help X-Men thwart the assassination of Senator Robert Kelly by the second Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Kitty then singlehandedly defeated a N'Garai demon. Kitty also briefly attended the White Queen's Massachusetts Academy when her parents became convinced that she needed to be with students of her own age, but following a failed attempt to subdue the X-Men, Frost revoked Kitty's admission.
During her teen years, Kitty fostered a number of close relationships with others at the school and in the X-Men. She developed a crush on Colossus and became close friends with his little sister Illyana Rasputin. Initially uneasy around Nightcrawler and other mutants with physical deformities, Kitty finally overcame her fears and became close friends with him. Kitty also befriended Lockheed, a highly intelligent alien resembling a dragon, who followed her home after a mission in outer space. Lockheed is extremely loyal to Kitty, and the two of them share a psychic bond. Wolverine became something of a mentor to Kitty despite his usually gruff personality. Storm came to view Kitty as the daughter she never had.
Though Xavier has threatened to reassign Kitty to the New Mutants, a team of younger mutants he established in the absence of the X-Men, ever since the X-Men returned from outer space, she never ended up joining the group, who she derisively calls the "X-Babies". Kitty was later abducted by the Morlocks and nearly forced to wed Caliban. She was then abducted by the White Queen, but rescued by the New Mutants.
During this time, Kitty began to date Colossus, although this did not last long. Colossus developed feelings for an alien woman named Zsaji whom he met on the Beyonder's planet in the first Secret Wars. Colossus' feelings toward Zsaji were primarily a side effect of her own unique healing abilities, which she had used on him after he became injured. Regardless, Colossus' feelings were real and he returned to Earth consumed with grief after Zsaji's death. He admitted to Kitty that he loved Zsaji, which hurt her deeply and ended the budding romantic relationship. Kitty had made good friends with a local boy from Salem Central named Doug Ramsey around this time, but her feelings for him never went as deep as his for her, and they never actually dated, though they remained close, even more so after Doug's status as a mutant was revealed and he joined the New Mutants under the codename Cypher. They remained friends until his death some time later.
Ogun
During the 1984–1985 Kitty Pryde and Wolverine miniseries, Kitty is possessed by a demon, the ninja Ogun. Ogun psychically bestows upon Kitty a virtual lifetime of martial arts training. Kitty was brainwashed by Ogun into becoming a ninja assassin, and was sent to attack Wolverine. Kitty is able to resist Ogun's influence with Wolverine's help, and the two form a strong teacher/student bond, which helps them in vanquishing Ogun. Kitty returns to the X-Men, no longer the innocent girl they once knew, and officially adopts the codename Shadowcat.
Morlock Massacre
While trying to save Rogue, Kitty was badly injured by Harpoon's energy spear during the Mutant Massacre story arc, in the massacre of the Morlocks, with the result that she lost control of her power and was stuck in an intangible state and could not regain her solidity. She was rushed to Muir Island along with other surviving casualties of the Massacre to be tended to by Moira MacTaggert. MacTaggert was able to keep Kitty's condition from deteriorating to the point where she completely lost physical substance and ceased to exist, but was not able to do any more to help her.
At this time, Kitty's natural state was to be intangible. Where she once had to make a conscious effort to phase, she could now only maintain her solidity through an act of conscious will. The X-Men went to Reed Richards, Mister Fantastic of the Fantastic Four, for aid, but Richards initially refused because he was not sure he would be able to help.
Having nowhere else to go, the X-Men turned to Richards' enemy Doctor Doom. This created a moral dilemma for both the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, and both teams fought each other because the Fantastic Four were trying to stop the treatment while the X-Men were determined to save Kitty's life. In the end, both the personal crisis of the Fantastic Four and the life of Shadowcat were saved after Franklin Richards, with the help of Lockheed, brought both teams to their senses. Kitty has since recovered from this state and now has full control over her power again.
Excalibur
Among the others injured and brought to Muir Isle were Colossus and Nightcrawler, although Colossus left the United Kingdom shortly after being released from MacTaggert's care to join the rest of the X-Men on their mission to battle the Adversary. The X-Men sacrificed their lives to defeat the Adversary, the battle and their sacrifice was televised and broadcast across the world. The X-Men were resurrected later in the same issue, unknown to the world at large, but chose to keep a low profile and perpetuate the belief that they were still dead. This strategy was enforced to more effectively fight their enemies. This meant avoiding contact with friends and family, including Kitty. Thinking the X-Men were dead, Kitty and Nightcrawler joined Rachel Summers, Captain Britain, and Meggan to form the Britain-based team Excalibur. For a brief time, Kitty studied at St. Searle's School for Girls in Britain. During her time with Excalibur, Kitty developed a crush on Professor Alistaire Stuart which went unreciprocated since Alistaire was attracted to Rachel. Later, she was romantically involved with former Black Air agent Pete Wisdom. At some point Kitty was recruited by the international law enforcement agency S.H.I.E.L.D. to repair the computer system of their flying headquarters. Kitty discovered the problem was due to Ogun's spirit having infiltrated the computer system, and with the aid of Wolverine, she managed to purge Ogun's presence. During this time, Kitty was attracted to a S.H.I.E.L.D. intern her own age, and this made her begin to doubt her relationship with Wisdom. Soon after, she broke off their relationship.
Back to the X-Men
After Excalibur's dissolution, Shadowcat, Nightcrawler, and Colossus return to the X-Men. While returning, they faced a group of imposters following Cerebro, in the guise of Professor X. While tracking Mystique, she stumbles onto prophetic diaries that belonged to Irene Adler, a precognitive. During the six-month gap, Kitty visited Genosha. Whatever she experienced there is unknown (although presumably connected to her father, living on Genosha at the time), but it had a profound effect on her. She cut her hair and began to act rebelliously, also using one of Wolverine's bone claws broken off during battle as a weapon. Kitty remained with the X-Men for a while before leaving after the apparent death of Colossus. Trying to give herself a normal life, she attended the University of Chicago. During this time, her father was killed when Cassandra Nova’s Sentinels destroyed Genosha. Kitty later finds a recording of his death due to exploring footage of the attack. She is also kidnapped by William Stryker, but the X-Treme X-Men team helped her escape, and she assisted them on several missions.
At the start of Joss Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men, Kitty once again rejoins the X-Men, despite having extreme reservations about working with the former White Queen, given their history. This was the primary reason why Frost herself wanted Kitty on the team, as a sort of "safety" should Frost ever revert to type. Frost reasoned that the person who trusted her least would be most likely to spot such behavior. On one of the team's first missions, Shadowcat discovered Colossus was alive. After some initial awkwardness, Kitty and Colossus resumed dating.
Kitty Pryde appeared alongside Colossus in the "Blinded by the Light" arc in X-Men. They are the two X-Men left to look after the students while the rest of the X-Men leave for Mystique's home in Mississippi to check up on Rogue, during which they are ambushed by the Marauders. Kitty and Colossus, meanwhile, attempt to protect the students from a faction of the Marauders led by Exodus. It is revealed over the course of the story that Kitty, worried of the Destiny Diaries' safety, devised a plan with Cyclops and Emma Frost to hide them and have Emma wipe the location from her mind. The location could only be revealed by a code word spoken to Kitty. The arc concludes with a battle between Iceman and Cannonball against the Marauders for the diaries, during which they are destroyed by Gambit.
In the "Torn" arc, the latest incarnation of the Hellfire Club begin an assault on Xavier's School. Kitty fulfilled the role that Emma Frost envisioned, personally taking down Frost and imprisoning her, only to fall under a telepathic delusion created by Hellfire member Perfection, who claimed to be the true, unreformed Emma Frost. Under this delusion, Kitty was made to believe that she and Colossus had conceived a child, which was later taken away by the X-Men because its potential mutant abilities were supposedly dangerous. Kitty reacts in the delusion by attempting to rescue the child from a near-inescapable "box" in the depths of the school, unaware that in reality she is freeing an alien entity, Stuff, who contains the trapped consciousness of Cassandra Nova, the apparent ringleader of this new Hellfire Club. A newly awakened Cyclops revealed that the new Hellfire Club, including Perfection and Nova, are actually mental projections created by a piece of Cassandra Nova's consciousness; which became lodged in Emma's mind during the X-Men's last confrontation with her, playing on her survivor's guilt over the Genoshan massacre, and utilizing Emma's telepathy to both confound the X-Men and orchestrate her (Nova's) escape from the Stuff body. As Cyclops killed the mental projections, Emma tried to force Kitty to kill her to get rid of Nova. Undeterred, Cassandra Nova switched her focus to attempt to transfer her mind to Hisako Ichiki. It appears that Nova did not succeed, as the team was transported to S.W.O.R.D.'s air station en route to Ord's Breakworld for the "Unstoppable" arc that concludes Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men.
Breakworld
As the team prepares to end the confrontation with the Breakworld leader, the team splits up—with Kitty on the team appointed to stop the missile pointed at Earth. Kitty phases into the missile to disrupt its circuitry noting that it is composed of the same material as the rest of Breakworld, a material that is difficult and exhausting for her to phase through. After phasing for a mile into the missile, Kitty finds the center only to discover it empty. The missile is fired, causing Kitty to pass out inside of it as Beast discovers too late that due to its shape, trajectory, and lack of internal circuitry, the Breakworld's weapon is not a missile, but a bullet. As the bullet hurtles toward Earth, Kitty lies unconscious within it.
As the situation becomes increasingly dire, Emma establishes mental contact with Kitty, reassuring her that she will come out of this fine, though it eventually becomes clear to both that the situation will be grim. Kitty and Emma come to an understanding and reconciliation, Emma stating that she never wanted something like this to happen to her. Kitty then phases the bullet through Earth, but is trapped within. At the end of Giant-Size Astonishing X-Men, Scott Summers mentions that Doctor Strange, Reed Richards, and some "top men" tried to save her, but believe she has fused to the bullet, as it continues to hurtle through space. Whether she is alive or dead is unknown, though the X-Men consider her lost to them.
As a result of these events Kitty does not appear in the X-Men crossover event X-Men: Messiah Complex, since this takes place after the events of Giant-Size Astonishing X-Men. She is briefly mentioned in the aftermath of the Messiah Complex, by Colossus, Nightcrawler, and Wolverine, as the three of them discuss "losing her."
To cope with Kitty's loss, Colossus takes down a group of Russian criminals dealing in human trafficking, and gets a tattoo of the name 'Katya' on his chest. Emma begins having a recurring dream in which she hears a voice whom she believes is Kitty's trying to reach out to her.
It was later confirmed by Abigail Brand that Kitty Pryde was still alive within the bullet, but because the bullet's design would harden as time went on, it would become increasingly difficult to break the bullet open.
Return
After the X-Men move to the island of Utopia, Magneto arrives on the island professing his desire to join and support the X-Men in their effort to unite the world's remaining mutants. The X-Men reluctantly let him stay, remaining wary of him despite his efforts to gain their trust. In a final bid to gain their trust, Magneto focuses his powers, attempting to divert the interstellar path of the metal bullet Kitty is trapped in and bring her home to Earth. Meanwhile, inside the bullet, Kitty is revealed to still be alive. Unbeknownst to the others, Magneto had encountered the bullet earlier while attempting to regain his powers with the High Evolutionary and surmised that Kitty was inside. Despite this and the High Evolutionary's apparent ability to retrieve the bullet and Kitty, Magneto chose to focus on regaining his powers, secretly keeping tabs on the bullet until his decision to draw it back to Earth. During her time trapped inside the bullet, Kitty keeps herself and the bullet phased to avoid collisions with any inhabited objects in its path.
Magneto brings Kitty Pryde safely down to Earth by cracking the bullet in two and levitating Kitty to the ground. When she and Colossus try to touch, it is revealed that she is trapped in her intangible form, unable to speak, and the X-Men place her in a protective chamber similar to the one used for her following the events of the Mutant Massacre. How Kitty survived her time in the bullet is unclear to the X-Men's science team, where the X-Men discover that all her bodily functions halted. An analysis by Kavita Rao hypothesizes that Kitty created an intense muscle memory to keep herself and the bullet phased and has "forgotten" how to un-phase.
During a conversation with Colossus, with Emma Frost acting as the psi-conduit, Kitty picks up Emma's stray thoughts on killing the captive Sebastian Shaw, to prevent Namor from discovering she previously lied to him. While disgusted at Emma's intentions, Kitty offers a compromise. Due to her current ghost state, she is the perfect tool for making Shaw disappear.
In a storyline in Uncanny X-Men, the Breakworlders make their way to Earth. During the conflict between the Breakworlder Kr'uun and the X-Men, Kitty is slain and resurrected by Kr'uun's mate in an alien ritual, which results in her powers returning to normal.
Regenesis
Shortly thereafter, Kitty breaks up with Colossus, and decides to return with Wolverine to Westchester to open the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning. In Wolverine and the X-Men #4, she appears to be suddenly pregnant, but the pregnancy was revealed to be a Brood infestation, and it was swiftly dealt with by a team of X-Men. Since returning to Westchester, Kitty has shared several kisses with Iceman. During the events of Avengers vs. X-Men, Kitty does not take a side, but instead decides to stay at the school to work with the students. Once Bobby returned from working with the X-Men after realizing that the Phoenix had corrupted them, he and Kitty finally decide to go on a date.
All-New X-Men
After Beast brings the original five X-Men into the future to stop Cyclops in the present, Kitty volunteers to take responsibility for the temporally relocated X-Men while they work to undo this dark future. This soon puts her at odds with the rest of her team as they believed the original five should go back to their own time in order to prevent any damage to the space-time continuity. Eventually, this leads Kitty to take the decision of abandoning the school with the time-displaced X-Men and join Cyclops's X-Men at the New Xavier School. During the first few weeks at the New Xavier School, Jean Grey is abducted by the Shiar Empire to stand trial for her future self's crimes. Kitty and the time-displaced X-Men team up with the Guardians of the Galaxy and succeed in rescuing Jean from the Shiar. At the conclusion of the storyline, Kitty begins a long-distance, flirtatious relationship with Starlord, Peter Quill.
The Black Vortex
In the following weeks, Kitty's relationship with Peter Quill evolves more and more as they developed stronger feelings for each other every day. At one point, Quill gets captured during one of their dates and she has no option but to go to his rescue, despite her fear of space as a result of her being trapped on the giant space bullet. After rescuing Peter, she decides to stay in space with him. Then, Kitty convinces Peter to steal a powerful artifact called the Black Vortex from his father J'son. Soon, they find themselves being chased by J'son's assassination squad, the Slaughter Lords. In despair, they request the aid of the X-Men and the Guardians of the Galaxy to protect the Vortex. After a few of their own friends can't resist the temptation and submit to the Vortex, betray the team, and escape with the artifact; the team splits and Kitty stays in Spartax to help an orphanage. She is encased in amber after Thane (who was allied with J'son) freezes the whole planet along with the people inside it; but thanks to her phasing powers, she manages to get out of the amber. Then the Brood attacks Spartax, planning to use every encased person to lay eggs and create an army of Brood to start invading other planets and conquering them. Kitty feels the only way to stop them is by submitting to the Vortex herself as she's the only one who can resist the cosmic corruption. She reluctantly submits and becomes a being of unlimited power. After being reminded of the love between her and Peter Quill, she goes back and phases all the amber that encased Spartax, along with the Broods trying to infect the people, and sends them all to another dimension. Kitty doesn't give up the cosmic power but admits to Peter that she is afraid of it. Peter promises her that he will never abandon her no matter how much she changes. Then, Peter kneels and proposes marriage to Kitty. She, with tears in her eyes, accepts. Later when Star Lord is declared Emperor of Spartax she is told she will become the first lady of Spartax.
Guardians of the Galaxy
Kitty takes on the mantle of Star Lord and joins the Guardians of the Galaxy in Peter Quill's place so he can take on his royal duties. When Hala the Accuser massacres Spartax in an attempt to make Quill pay for J'son's actions against her people, she initially easily lays waste to the capitol and overpowers the Guardians. After the Guardians regroup and formulate a strategy to defeat her, Kitty manages to partially phase Hala into the ground so the rest of the Guardians can knock her out and separate her from her weapon. After Quill loses his title as king he and Kitty end up on a mission with the rest of the Guardians on a concentration camp prison planet owned by the Badoon after Gamora gave them information on it so they can free Angela. Once there, Kitty has a personal reaction upon seeing the prisoners and makes it her mission to liberate everyone there and defeat the captors, as it reminds her of Nazi concentration camps. After Quill gets captured and sentenced to death in an arena battle, Kitty finds and kills one of the Badoon leaders by phasing his heart out of his body. When Captain Marvel summons the Guardians to Earth to help her address Tony Stark, Kitty learns that Thanos is a prisoner on Earth and tries to convince Quill to tell Gamora. When fighting starts Kitty woefully realizes that some of her former students are on Tony Stark's side instead of fighting with Captain Marvel. During the battle the Guardians' ship was destroyed, effectively stranding them on Earth. After helping the Guardians stop Thanos from leading an invasion from the Negative Zone the Guardians are given a new ship; however, Kitty decides to stay on Earth and ends her time with the Guardians and Quill.
Leading the X-Men
Upon returning to Earth, Kitty hopes to finally regain a semblance of a normal life but ends up approached by Storm, who informs Kitty of everything the X-Men have gone through while Kitty was away. Storm announces to Kitty that she intends to step down as leader of the X-Men due to the guilt that she feels for leading the X-Men to war and offers Kitty her position. After touring X-Haven and seeing how much things have changed and how much things need to change for the better, Kitty agrees to lead the X-Men as long as Storm remains on the team. Her next act is to relocate the mansion from Limbo to Central Park, New York so the X-Men can refocus on being part of the world instead of fearing it under the belief that if the X-Men truly are to be seen as heroes, then they need to actually live in the world that they are trying to save instead of constantly worrying about their own survival.
Under Kitty's new leadership, the X-Men go through some small changes in order to shed their past history and make new names for themselves, such as convincing Rachel Summers to change her code name to Prestige and renaming the mansion as The Xavier Institute for Mutant Education and Outreach. Kitty learns first-hand how hard it is to balance leading the X-Men as well as managing the mansion when there are many political factors trying to deliberately get in the way of the X-Men. She also begins to have awkward one-on-one moments with Colossus; they try to remain friends, but given their long history their interactions swiftly become complicated. Kitty's first case as field leader of the X-Men sees her and her team taking on a new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. After discovering that an outspoken anti-mutant politician brainwashed this new Brotherhood to work for her to publicly discredit mutants, Kitty threatened to expose her if she continued exploiting mutants for her own personal gain.
Dawn of X
After Krakoa became a new sovereign nation for Mutants, Kitty Pryde, now going by Captain Kate Pryde, discovers she is the sole mutant who is, for unknown reasons, unable to use the various warp gates leading to Krakoa. It is implied that she has done something to anger Krakoa, but that restriction does not mean Kitty cannot use other means to reach the mutant homeland. She steals a boat and sets sail for the island. Kitty's time on Krakoa proves to be just as fruitless, as the island's natural resources (like flowers that grow into biome homes) are similarly prohibited to Kitty. Emma Frost comes asking Kitty to take up a special mission: taking a bigger boat out to serve as pirate captain on the X-Men's mission to liberate mutants trapped in oppressive countries that do not recognize mutant sovereignty, while also smuggling and supplying for Emma's Hellfire Trading Company the lifesaving drugs the X-Men provide to humans. Kate Pryde is later appointed the new Red Queen of the Hellfire Trading Company by Emma Frost, to the dismay of Sebastian Shaw. Seeing Pryde as an obstacle to his complete control of the Hellfire Corporation, Shaw began plotting against Kate and her crew. After taking notice how Emma became overprotective of the newly crowned Red Queen, Shaw realized that for the same reason she can't travel through Krakoa's gates nor read or understand the Krakoan language until Emma implanted it in her brain, the X-Men's Resurrection Protocols also won't apply to her, which means Kate cannot be resurrected if she died. He orchestrated a distraction by paying off human supremacists Homines Verendi to stage an attack on his own son. Once Kate was defenseless, Shaw emerged from below deck and ensnared Lockheed with a net gun, making him a helpless hostage. He then released Krakoan seeds at her feet, which wrapped around her and prevented her from using her powers. He then dropped her and Lockheed into the sea. While Lockheed was able to survive, Kate sank helplessly, and once her head dropped under the surface, she had no air left and drowned instantly. Her death is later confirmed by Bishop as he retrieves Kate's body, as it was also established that the Resurrection Protocols indeed do not apply to Kate, as the Five, for reasons unknown, cannot resurrect her. However, she is later resurrected, as Emma Frost realized that it was due to the nature of Kate's intangibility powers that her mindless body was unable to break out of the egg.
Powers and abilities
Kitty is a mutant with the ability to pass through solid matter by passing her atomic particles through the spaces between the atoms of the object through which she is moving. In this way she and the object through which she is passing can temporarily merge without interacting, and each is unharmed when Shadowcat has finished passing through the object. This process is called "phasing" or quantum tunneling and it renders her almost completely intangible to physical touch. Shadowcat passes through objects at the same speed at which she is moving before she enters them. Since she is unable to breathe while inside an object, she can only continuously phase through solid objects (as when she travels underground) as long as she can hold her breath. However, contrary depictions of the duration of her phasing ability have been presented, such as when she has phased miles within an object. The use of her abilities also interferes with any electrical systems as she passes through by disrupting the flow of electrons from atom to atom, including the bio-electric systems of living bodies if she concentrates in the right way. This typically causes machines to malfunction or be destroyed as she phases through them, and can induce shock and unconsciousness in living beings.
Using her power began as an optional ability, but for a period (over ten years of published comics, approximately two years in-continuity) Kitty existed in a naturally "phased" state, and had to consciously choose to become solid. Kitty has returned to her original form and is normally solid and must choose to use her power. While phasing, she does not physically walk on surfaces, but rather interacts with the molecules of air above them, allowing her to ascend and descend, causing her to seemingly walk on air. While phased, she is immune to most physical attacks, and has inconsistent showings of some resistance to telepathy. The density of some materials (such as adamantium) can prove deleterious to her phasing, causing her to be severely disoriented or experience pain if she tries to pass through them. Some energy attacks also prove problematic for Kitty. For example, an energy blast fired by Harpoon, a member of the Marauders, caused her to lose her ability to become fully tangible for months. Magic and magical beings can also harm her in her phased state, as demonstrated in a battle with a N'Garai demon whose claws left no visible marks, but caused Kitty severe pain as they passed through her intangible body.
Kitty can also extend her powers to phase other people and objects. She is able to phase at least six other people (or objects of similar mass) with her, so long as they establish and maintain physical contact with her. She can extend her phasing effect to her own clothing or any other object with mass up to that of a small truck, as long as she remains in contact with it. Kitty can also make objects intangible by maintaining contact with them. She has threatened to leave people phased into a wall, and used her power offensively to harm the Technarch Magus, and Danger.
Kitty's powers seem to have increased over the years. During an X-Treme X-Men story arc in which she is kidnapped by Reverend William Stryker, she phases out of sync with Earth's rotation to move from one place in the world (only east or west) to another seemingly instantaneously. At the climax of Astonishing X-Men, Kitty phases a 10 mi (16 km) long "bullet" composed of super-dense alien metals through the entire planet Earth. This feat caused her considerable strain, but she is unable to phase out of the bullet. Moreover, originally Kitty found it difficult or impossible to phase only part of her body at a time. In the Days of Future Past story arc, she is possessed by her older future self, allowing her to solidify only her shoulder while phasing the rest of her body through Destiny—a feat explicitly beyond the 13-year-old Kitty's abilities. By contrast, the Kitty Pryde of Joss Whedon's run can punch and kick someone standing on the other side of a wall, selectively phasing and unphasing body parts as necessary. She can even run and leap through an armed opponent, grabbing their weapon as she passes by, which presumably requires her to solidify only the surface area of the palms of her hands and then immediately phase both her palms and the weapon.
Besides her mutant powers, Kitty is a genius in the field of applied technology and computer science. She is highly talented in the design and use of computer hardware. She is a skilled pilot of piston and jet engine aircraft, and a competent pilot of certain advanced interstellar vehicles. She has previously shown a unique ability to wield the Soulsword and also be harmed by it. Since her possession by the ninja demon Ogun, she has been consistently shown to be an excellent hand-to-hand combatant, having since been endowed with a lifetime of training in the martial arts of Japanese ninja and samurai.
She is a professional-level dancer in both ballet and modern dance. She speaks fluent English, Japanese, Russian, and the royal and standard languages of the alien Shi'ar and Skrull, and has moderate expertise in Gaelic, Hebrew, and German.
Kitty also shares a mental/empathic connection with her pet dragon Lockheed; both she and the alien dragon can "sense" each other's presence at times and generally understand one another's thoughts and actions.
When Kitty used the Black Vortex, her powers were augmented to a cosmic scale making her a god-like being. She can phase through any material of any density and can even phase a planet out of Thane's amber, whereas in her normal state it is an extremely difficult task to simply phase herself out of the amber. She can also apparently transverse between the planes of the multiverse and is immune to the effects of space. Her appearance can be changed but her natural form appears to be rather gaseous in look.
Other versions
In addition to her mainstream incarnation, Kitty Pryde has been depicted in other fictional universes.
Age of Apocalypse
In the Age of Apocalypse reality, Kitty grows up under harsh circumstances and her nature reflects it. She has short hair, tight clothes, and chain smokes cigarettes. Her parents are killed in the Chicago Cullings, and she is forcibly recruited into Apocalypse's army, but is later rescued by Colossus. Magneto puts Shadowcat under Weapon X's training, hoping to turn her into the X-Men's assassin, and she is given a set of retractable artificial claws around each wrist to better imitate her teacher's fighting style. After the fallout between Colossus and Magneto, Shadowcat sides with Colossus, whom she has married. Instead of leaving the fight against Apocalypse altogether, the couple become the teachers of Generation Next. The two submit their trainees to harsh situations, giving them little comfort despite the fact that Shadowcat is close to the age of her students.
Shadowcat assists the team in rescuing Illyana Rasputin from the Seattle Core, and, at Colossus' behest, abandons her students after Illyana is saved. She is killed by Colossus in his ruthless obsession to protect his sister, Illyana; coming between an enraged Colossus and his endangered sister, Shadowcat never believed he would harm her.
Days of Future Past
In the Days of Future Past timeline (Earth-811), Shadowcat goes by the name Kate Pryde. Kate attempts to go back in time to prevent the assassination of Senator Robert Kelly by Mystique and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. She succeeds, only to create a separate timeline where the events of her past still come to pass. After returning to her own time Kate helps Rachel Summers escape back to the timeline she just created. Captured by Sentinels, Kate escapes by phasing through her inhibitor collar and fell into a time warp, causing her to merge with the Sentinel that was scanning her, and arrives in the timeline Rachel is inhabiting. Kate's mind settles in a small, metal, off-spherical body and becomes known as Widget. After a few adventures in that timeline, mostly in company with her Earth-616 counterpart's team Excalibur, Kate regains her memory and returns to her original timeline where she is able to reprogram the ruling Sentinels to protect life, ending their tyranny.
Earth X
In Earth X it is revealed in the appendix of issue six that Kitty Pryde is killed saving Colossus while he could not shift into his metal form. Instead of phasing the bullet through her, she heroically takes the bullet and is killed.
Exiles
A version of Kitty Pryde codenamed Cat first appeared in Exiles #96. She is younger than her Earth-616 counterpart. She has the appearance and powers of the normal Shadowcat although she wears a different costume. Prior to her joining the Exiles, this version of Kitty had been recruited by Emma Frost as one of the core agents of the Hellfire Club's strike force. She helps Psylocke defeat Doom's soldiers who have invaded the Panoptichron. She helps retrieve Blink, Morph, and Sabretooth from being scattered across the multiverse. She works as a computer expert for the team and is a full member of the Exiles.
Cat's skill with using her powers means she is not tied to any dimension and can see through various realities, including those of the mind (for instance seeing the various personalities in Sage's mind as "ghosts" surrounding her). Her arrival in the Crystal Palace and connection to its computers has increased this, giving her the ability to "cascade" through different alternative versions of herself, altering her appearance and details of her powers. Amongst other versions, she has assumed the form of a Kitty Pryde with the appearance and powers of Tigra. During the New Exiles' last mission Cat faced off against Madame Hydra (Sue Storm) and killed her at the cost of her own life.
There has been another version of Kitty that appeared in the King Hyperion story arc (Exiles #38-40). She had survived an attack on the X-Mansion by the Sentinels. The Colossus from her universe had been killed in the attack but she had the same feelings towards Weapon X's Colossus even though he was not her Colossus. The two eventually fell in love with each other. Unfortunately this did not last since she died with Colossus when they were shot into the empty vacuum of space by Hyperion.
House of M
When the Scarlet Witch altered reality in the 616 Universe, creating the reality known as House of M where mutants were the dominant population, Kitty Pryde was a teacher in a public middle school in Cincinnati, Ohio. Like many of the heroes of Earth 616, she is reminded of the true reality by Layla Miller and recruited in the fight to restore reality.
Magik
In the limited series Magik (Illyana and Storm), an alternative reality Kitty renames herself "Cat" after she is mutated by the demonic sorcerer Belasco into a more feline form, with cat eyes, whiskers, a tail, and enhanced physical abilities and senses. Trapped in Belasco's Limbo, Cat takes a militant view towards defeating the sorcerer, eschewing the magic that her reality's Storm embraces, instead turning to skills in swordplay and physical combat. She tries to save the Illyana Rasputin of Earth-616 from corruption through magic by taking Illyana into the wilderness of Limbo and teaching the child to fight and survive. Like the Kitty Pryde of Earth-616 eventually would, Cat became Illyana's best friend, but more in the role of an older sister due to the difference in their ages.
Cat's plan goes awry when the pair's attempt to confront Belasco fails, at the cost of the life of an enslaved Nightcrawler; Illyana falls under Belasco's influence and Cat is further transformed towards a feline, with a semi-animalistic mind completely loyal to Belasco. Cat is eventually slain by Illyana when Belasco sets Cat upon his rebellious apprentice; facing death at Cat's hands and knowing that, deep down, a part of Kitty still exists and hates her enslavement, Illyana broke Cat's neck in self-defense.
Long after Illyana overthrows Belasco, escapes Limbo, and becomes a member of the junior X-Men team known as the New Mutants, Cat's remains are found by the team in Limbo's throne room. By then she had completely decomposed to a skeleton. Illyana, facing a rebellion of Limbo's demon population that threatened to overrun Earth, smashed Cat's skull in rage over the demonic taint that Belasco left on her soul and frustration over the horrible choice she had to make to kill Cat.
Marvel Zombies
Kitty is briefly shown in the background as a zombie in Ultimate Fantastic Four #23, despite her mutant phasing powers. She is also seen in Marvel Zombies: Dead Days, when zombie Alpha Flight attack the X-Men. This would appear to have been retconned, though, as of Marvel Zombies: Halloween, which depicts her and her son Peter with Colossus surviving for several years in an out of the way house farm, encountering zombies, but, fortunately, being rescued by Mephisto, who dispatched the remaining zombies.
The Earth-91126/Earth-Z Kitty is recruited by Earth-2149/Marvel Zombies Spider-Man to help him develop a cure for the zombie hunger, on the grounds that her powers mean that she would be in no danger from him if he should succumb to his zombie instincts, but she is later seemingly killed when the zombie Quasar holds her underwater until she is forced to become solid once more, allowing the infected Namor to eat her flesh (much to the rage of the zombie Wolverine, of Earth-2149).
Mutant X
Storm was taken by the vampire Dracula and unlike Earth 616, she does not return. Kitty goes off to battle her, either to save or kill her. Kitty slays several vampires in the way but Storm proves too much for her and Kitty becomes her unwilling slave for some time. She later shows up as the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club and seems to be none too happy with Storm. It's also hinted that she was engaged or going to be engaged to Colossus. Her ultimate fate at the end of the series is unknown.
Lightning Force
In the reality of Earth-597, an alternative universe where World War II was won by Nazi Germany, Kitty is forced to serve as Shadowcat alongside Nightcrawler, Meggan, and Hauptmann Englande as a member of the Lightning Force (a version of Excalibur), made a virtual slave because of her Jewish heritage. She leads a sad existence and is easily identified by her shaved head and the Star of David tattooed on her forehead. It is indicated, from her own statements and those made by her reality's counterpart of Moira MacTaggert, that this Shadowcat is a true ghost, raised from the dead by a combination of science and magic and bound to serve the Nazi regime. This Shadowcat had the added ability to disrupt life force with her phasing power, knocking her victims unconscious, much like how her counterpart in the "prime" Marvel Universe (Earth-616) can disrupt technology that she phases through. She is also able to alter her facial features to a "demonic" aspect when attacking enemies or else responding to aggressive, commanding behavior from her superiors.
Pirate Kitty
Kitty tells Illyana a bedtime story and casts herself as Pirate Kitty Pryde, captain of the Abdul Alhazred, who operated in a magical world. Unlike her mainstream counterpart, she did not have any mutant powers and wore a classic pirate outfit which also included her Star of David necklace. She was also sometimes known as Colleen. Kitty was good friends of her version of Colossus, the Bamfs (Nightcrawler), Windrider (Storm), the "Fiend-with-no-name" (later revealed to be named "Mean") (Wolverine) and Lockheed (an alternative version of the X-Jet). Kitty also helped her versions of Professor X and Cyclops capture and cure that universe's version of Dark Phoenix.
At first she was only a fairy tale character, but later it is revealed that her fairy tale is actually an alternative universe. (In fact, several members of this universe, the Bamfs, would later come to Earth-616 to cause trouble.) When Earth-616's Nightcrawler was temporarily stranded in her world, Kitty helped him defeat the sorcerer Shagreen and also encountered the Earth-616 versions of Illyana, Lockheed, and herself.
Professor W's X-Men
In the native universe of the Exiles member Nocturne, Kitty is a senior member of the X-Men led by Nightcrawler. She is a teacher and TJ refers to her as "Aunt Kate". During a fight with Apocalypse Kitty gets exposed to a machine that reverts her to a younger stage of her life when she had only been with the X-Men a few weeks. Nocturne helps Kitty fit into the school and becomes her best friend. She also proves useful in the fight against the Brotherhood led by Cyclops.
Ruins
Imprisoned alongside other mutants at a prison camp in Texas by President X, Kitty attempted to use her phasing powers to escape, only to get stuck halfway through her cell door, losing three feet of intestines in the process.
Secret Wars (2015)
During the Secret Wars storyline, a version of Kitty named Kitten resides in the wuxia-inspired K'un-L'un region of Battleworld. In this reality, Kitten is a martial artist who joins Callisto's band of outcasts after being expelled from her school for attempting a forbidden technique, a side effect of which left her intangible. Kitten and her fellow outcasts became pupils of Shang-Chi, the exiled son of Emperor Zheng Zu. Dubbing their new school The Lowest Caste, Shang-Chi represents the group as their master for the tournament deciding the next Emperor of K'un-L'un, hoping to usurp his father's tyrannical rule. Kitten accompanies Shang-Chi for each of his fights in the Thirteen Chambers. During his final fight with Zu, Shang-Chi uses Kitten's technique of intangibility, which leads to his eventual victory and replaces his father as the new Emperor of K'un-L'un.
Ultimate Marvel
The Ultimate version of Shadowcat (Kitty Pryde) first appears as a 14-year-old girl in Ultimate X-Men #21. She is also Jewish and wears the Star of David around her neck, but does not appear to possess the same genius IQ as her mainstream (Earth-616) counterpart.
Kitty's mother, worried about Kitty's mutation, seeks help from Professor Charles Xavier. Kitty becomes a student at Xavier's school, when her mother allows her to attend under the condition she does not take part in any X-Men missions, nor train in any "Danger Room" simulations. Kitty soon rebels against this and joins the X-Men as their youngest member. She idolizes Spider-Man and has a crush on him; she even dates Peter Parker for a time. After a fierce argument with Professor Xavier concerning Peter's secret identity, which his Aunt May had just found out about, Kitty leaves the X-Men and enrolls in Peter's school. Their relationship is strained after their romantic involvement (as superheroes) becomes publicly known, making it impossible for them to date anymore in their civilian identities, and eventually comes to an end when Peter realizes he cannot get over his feelings for Mary Jane. However, Kitty still retains strong feelings for him.
Following the disastrous flood triggered by Magneto and the subsequent ban of public use of mutant powers, Kitty assumes the identity of the Shroud. Kitty also discovers that she can also decrease the space between her atoms make herself super-dense, giving her both superhuman strength and durability. When the authorities see Kitty as a threat, she enters into a fierce rage and demonstrates these powers for the first time to her friends. She is strong and angry enough to punch Spider-Man several feet through the air. She eventually escapes and goes into hiding in the now abandoned Morlock Tunnel with Iceman and the Human Torch after Peter Parker's death.
Kitty makes an appearance in Ultimate Comics: X, locating Jimmy Hudson, who is revealed to be Wolverine's son. Kitty was charged by Logan before his death to locate Jimmy and reveal his true origins to him.
After the death of Spider-Man she formed new team of X-Men consisting of herself, Iceman and the Human Torch. They soon rescued the mutant Rogue from the mutant-hunting Nimrod robots, going on to recruit Jimmy Hudson into their group as well. After killing the mutant-hunting William Stryker, Kitty decided to leave New York for the Southwest along with Bobby, Rogue, and Jimmy (leaving only Johnny behind) in order to save the mutants there and defeat the Nimrods, now controlled by the deceased Stryker's consciousness.
Spider-Gwen
In the reality where Gwen Stacy is Spider-Woman, Kitty is an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Black Ops department, where she works closely with Wolverine to keep him in check and to help him fight his immortal curse. Like the Age of Apocalypse version, she also wields artificial claws on her wrists. It's revealed that she works with Logan out of guilt, as Stryker forced her to use her powers to subject Logan to the Weapon X experiment.
What If
In What if Phoenix Had Not Died, Kitty is obliterated by Dark Phoenix before she destroyed the Earth.
In What If the X-Men had Lost Inferno?, Kitty is one of the last eight remaining superheroes on the planet. She is slain by a demonic Wolverine, but her death makes Wolverine come to his senses and he fights against Baron Mordo, who had joined up with the demon hordes.
In What If... Wolverine: Enemy of the State, Kitty is the only hero left to kill a Hydra-programmed Wolverine after he has taken down the Marvel Universe. Kitty was the last remaining member of the team assembled to recapture Wolverine. The initial plan failed and Kitty was forced to phase her hand into Wolverine's brain. She then solidified her hand killing Wolverine instantly although she lost her hand in the process.
In What if Magneto and Professor X Had Formed The X-Men Together, Kitty is the tech guru at the Good Shepard clinic (That reality's version of the X-Mansion). She is very similar to her mainstream counterpart. But unlike the mainstream version this Kitty Pryde would wear different coloured wigs and cut her natural hair short. She also had trouble with her powers since she would phase herself through a solid object and accidentally leave her clothes behind. She was also friends with Lockheed although she only called him Dragon.
In What if Astonishing X-Men, Kitty is amongst the X-Men who fight a Phoenix powered Emma Frost. She phased Emma's heart from her chest but a Phoenix fire flares up from her body killing Kitty instantly. In the second story during the events of Astonishing X-Men #6-#12 Elixir had not been able to heal Kitty after being impaled and she dies.
In "What if the Dark Phoenix Rose Again", Kitty has Colossus "set up a fastball special" to help her phase into a Master Mold. She is killed after solidifying inside the Master Mold's head destroying it in the process.
In What if Storm Had the Power of the Phoenix, Kitty helps revive the 'real' Storm (the Phoenix being the cosmic entity in Storm's shape) by phasing inside her body and getting her internal organs working again.
X-Babies
An X-Baby version of Shadowcat appears briefly in the X-Babies one-shot comic. She is wearing her original costume and is younger than the other X-Babies. She is named as Shadowkitty rather than Shadowcat or Kitty Pryde. She also doesn't seem to have a strong bond with the X-Baby version of Lockheed.
X-Men Forever
In the X-Men Forever series, Kitty and Nightcrawler have left Excalibur and rejoined the X-Men after the events of X-Men #1-3. Of the X-Men, she undergoes the most drastic changes from the events of X-Men Forever #1. During the battle with Fabian Cortez, she phases through Wolverine while he is being affected by Cortez's power. This drives her powers haywire as well, and somehow she ends up with one of Wolverine's claws in her wrist. Claremont has also hinted in dialogue throughout the title so far that she may have also undergone psychological or psychic changes as a result of the event. From Forever #4 to the current issue, she is shown to be able to use the claw in the exact method Wolverine would manifest it, with no apparent ill effects (the mechanism for this has not yet been made clear) outside of excruciating pain. Because of the merger with Logan's DNA she has begun to develop a healing factor, slower than Wolverine's but it heals faster when she is intangible. She has also slightly enhanced senses, she also can produce a set of five retractable claws on her left hand like Sabretooth. She has also begun to take on Logan's personality and memories as well. And because of this she is beginning to wonder what part of her truly remains the same.
X-Men: Misfits
In the X-Men: Misfits original English language manga one-shot graphic novel from Marvel and DelRay, Kitty is the newest and only female student of the all-male Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters, which is now experimenting with having a co-ed student body. As the sole girl, she becomes the center of attention and attraction for the rest of the students. She becomes a member and the mascot of the elitist fraternity, The Hellfire Club, and has a short-lived romantic relationship with the school troublemaker Pyro.
X-Men: The End
In the X-Men: The End future, Kitty Pryde becomes the mayor of Chicago and then President of the United States. She has three children: her eldest daughter, named Meredith, and twins 10 years younger than Meredith, Sara and Doug, with an unnamed partner who died protecting her from an assassination attempt.
Miscellaneous
In Excalibur #103, we see many alternative versions of Shadowcat. Many of these variations have appeared in other comics, such as Age of Apocalypse, but there were other variations, including one of her as a Phalanx convert, a sex dominatrix, a homeless person, a nun, a version wearing a costume similar to Phantom Girl, and a normal person who owns an Olde Curiosity Shoppe.
In New Mutants #63 Illyana (Magik), along with Lockheed, gets trapped on an alien spaceship that has been invaded by a Brood Queen. On this ship the Brood Queen created clones of the X-Men, including Kitty. This one had the Ariel suit on, but it was green, instead of the typical blue. These X-Men are implanted with Brood eggs. Her memories were altered by the Brood Queen like the other X-Men, but eventually they rebel against her and are free. Illyana uses the soulsword to eliminate the Brood Eggs from their bodies. The X-Men stay on the ship; whether they are still on it is unknown.
During the Cross Time Caper storyline a few different appearances of Kitty appear. One was a princess who was gifted with magic abilities. She eventually married a short dashing prince (who had originally fallen in love with the mainstream version of Kitty). A second version was a crime boss who was betrayed and killed by her partner in crime Illiyana Rasputin. A third was from a world of sentient dinosaurs. She went by the name of Shadowcompsognathus.
Collected editions
Several of Kitty Pryde's earlier adventures were collected in paperback form.
In other media
Music
Kitty Pryde is referenced in Weezer's song "In the Garage" from their "Blue Album".
Television
Kitty Pryde appeared as Sprite in "The X-Men Adventure" episode of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, which guest-starred the X-Men. She was voiced by Melissa Sue Anderson. She also appeared in her short-lived "Ariel" costume in the X-Men group cameo at the end of the episode "The Education of a Superhero".
Kitty Pryde (voiced by Kath Soucie) was a viewpoint character in the animated television one-shot Pryde of the X-Men, as the newest member of the team. She is a new recruit of the team and is initially frightened of Nightcrawler, due to his demonic appearance. She and Nightcrawler later succeed in defeating Magneto. Once Nightcrawler seemingly dies as a result of having apparently sacrificed himself, Kitty begins to cry until discovering that he is alive and is met with positive relations by her teammates, except Wolverine. As the pilot was a failure, and the character had lost prominence in comics at the time, she was not used in the next X-Men TV series, not even in cameos. Jubilee replaced her as the young viewpoint character, and in the adaptations of stories that involved her.
In the animated series X-Men: Evolution, Shadowcat is a main character, who is shown as the teenybopper of the team and who has a romantic interest in Brotherhood member Lance Alvers. Shadowcat saves Wolverine in the season one episode "Grim Reminder", where she unintentionally stows away with Nightcrawler while on the Blackbird without the knowledge that he was beginning to pilot the jet. She is also shown to have developed a close friendship with Nightcrawler, despite the fact that she at first displayed a dislike for his appearance. Besides Nightcrawler, she is shown to have formed a friendship with Rogue and Spyke. Her initial dislike of his appearance changes after he is severely wounded by Rogue, while she and the rest of the X-Men tried to recruit her. In this series, she does not have Lockheed for a pet, but she is shown preferring to sleep with a stuffed dragon instead of a teddy bear. Though she has an on-and-off interest in the delinquent mutant boy Lance Alvers, early in the series she displays interest in Cyclops. After Rogue is recruited, she serves as her support in beginning a romantic relationship with Scott and develops a friendship with her, despite their differences. When Avalanche tries to join the X-Men in the season two episode "Joyride", she tries to help him and shows additional attraction to him as she grades him and the other members of the junior team. After he informs her that some members of the group have started a joyride on the Blackbird and helps her avert catastrophe, she staunchly defends him once he is accused by Cyclops of being responsible. When Avalanche starts to leave, Shadowcat gives him a brief kiss before his departure. Their relationship continues with the two of them going to a school dance, talking on the phone and going to the mall. Despite being with the Brotherhood, Avalanche tries to protect Kitty in the fight against the Scarlet Witch. In season 3, Kitty and Lance's relationship briefly ends after the Brotherhood and Mystique blow up the X Mansion and are in part responsible for the exposure of mutants. Kitty calls Lance a "hood" after he attacks the high school and he says "he will never be good enough for her". Both look sad at these comments. In the fourth season, the X-Men try to use her powers to damage one of Apocalypse's domes and fails, instead being electrocuted briefly. In the fiftieth episode of the series, entitled "Ghost of a Chance", she comes across Danielle Moonstar once she depicts herself in a dream sequence to her. Once she wakes out of it, she tries to and successfully finds her, becoming friends with the girl after learning she had been in suspended animation for two years. Prior to this, it is discovered that her fear is phasing repeatedly into the ground and going further without any control of where she is going. Shadowcat plays a key role in the defeat of Apocalypse and asks the Brotherhood for help. They come to her aid; as Lance and Kitty resume their romantic relationship. Of the six main X-Men from the first season of the series, she is one of the four that is still a member of the team in the future Charles Xavier saw while in the mind of Apocalypse. Shadowcat was voiced by Maggie Blue O'Hara.
Shadowcat appears in Wolverine and the X-Men, voiced by Danielle Judovits and was a student at the Xavier Institute before the destruction of the X-Mansion and disappearance of Professor X. When Wolverine reformed the X-Men to take down the Mutant Response Division and save the dismal future controlled by the Sentinels, Kitty was on her way to the "mutant paradise" Genosha. The X-Men came to re-recruit her and she immediately rejoined the team. Shadowcat appears as the youngest member of the team and she seems to have a crush on Iceman as she is jealous when his attention is taken by Emma Frost and is shown with a love-struck face when she lands on Bobby during a Danger Room training session, though she quickly moves away from him when Angel arrives. She seems to have formed a friendship with Tildie Soames after babysitting her in one episode. In the last episode of the series, she uses her powers to penetrate a Sentinel controlled by Magneto, of which Beast had difficulty with. Her design is inspired by the appearance of the character in the Astonishing X-Men comics, and her costume emulates the design with the appearance of the blue and yellow used on her costume. The shorts she wears are based on the appearances of the original X-Men, and her first appearance when she wore a variant of the uniform.
Shadowcat appears in The Super Hero Squad Show episode "And Lo...A Pilot Shall Come". She appears alongside Colossus at the unveiling of the Great Wall that separates Super Hero City from Villainville and helping citizens into the S.H.I.E.L.D. Shelters. In the episode "Mysterious Mayhem at Mutant Academy", she uses Lockheed to chase Reptil and the hypnotized X-Men out of the girls' bathroom.
Motion comics
Shadowcat appears in the Astonishing X-Men motion comic, voiced by Eileen Stevens and later by Laura Harris.
Film
In the film X-Men, she has a small cameo, played by Sumela Kay. She is referenced as the "girl in Illinois who can walk through walls" by Senator Kelly. She is shown in Xavier's class when Wolverine walks in; she returns for her books which she had left behind, grabs them, and phases through the door on her way out. Xavier responds with a cheerful "Bye, Kitty" while Wolverine looks on, startled.
In X2, she has a brief appearance played by Katie Stuart. She is shown phasing through walls and through people to escape William Stryker's military forces during their attack on the X-Mansion. Another scene shows her falling through her bed to avoid an assault. She shares a room with Siryn; in the novelization it is stated that this is because her phasing ability gives her partial protection from Siryn's scream. When the President of the United States asks Professor Xavier how he got the files he gave him, Xavier replies that he knows a little girl who can walk through walls.
In X-Men: The Last Stand, she is portrayed by a pre-transition Elliot Page, and has a central role. She serves as a rival to Rogue for the romantic attentions of Iceman, since their close friendship and their kiss (deleted scene) make Rogue increasingly jealous and frustrated. She also joins the X-Men in the battle on Alcatraz Island, breaking off from the battle to save Leech from the Juggernaut. In the novelization of the film, it is hinted that at some point Kitty had a romantic relationship with Colossus, but that it had long since run its course, although Colossus appears to still retain feelings towards her.
Page reprised the role in X-Men: Days of Future Past. Pryde is the prime facilitator because she has developed a new power. In this film, she can send the consciousness of another person back into his or her body in the past. At the beginning of the film, she has been using this ability to repeatedly send Bishop four days back in time whenever the Sentinels attack, thus; preventing her group from ever engaging them by having him warn the past team before they are detected. In order to prevent the Sentinels' creation, she sends Wolverine back to 1973 (chosen as the strain of sending someone else back that far would snap their mind, with Logan's healing factor the only thing that makes such a trip survivable for him) and was gravely injured when Wolverine becomes violent; due to provocation from events in 1973. After the timeline was successfully altered, Kitty is seen teaching a class at the X-Mansion with Colossus. In the film's alternate release, called The Rogue Cut, Kitty's injuries from sending Wolverine back to the past result in the X-Men rescuing Rogue to take over for her. Rogue absorbs Kitty's powers and takes over, stabilizing Wolverine and Kitty helps Magneto flee a Sentinel attack.
In January 2018, a Kitty Pryde solo movie was announced to be in development, with Tim Miller attached as the director and Brian Michael Bendis as the writer, but in March 2019, after Disney's purchase of 21st Century Fox, Fox executive Emma Watts described The New Mutants as the final film in the X-Men series, thus; ending the development of the Kitty Pryde film.
Video games
Kitty Pryde appears in Konami's 1992 X-Men video arcade game, as a non-playable character (NPC). In this game, she is not known as "Sprite"; instead, she plays the "damsel in distress" role as it is based on "Pryde of the X-Men". In the 2010 re-release of the game she is voiced by Mela Lee.
Shadowcat is a playable character in the game X-Men II: The Fall of the Mutants.
Shadowcat appears as an NPC in the X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse, voiced by Kim Mai Guest. She has special dialogue with Colossus (who she scolds for flirting with Scarlet Witch).
Shadowcat appears in X-Men: The Official Game, with Kim Mai Guest reprising her role.
Shadowcat is a playable character in Marvel Super Hero Squad Online, voiced by Tara Strong.
In X-Men: Destiny, Gambit mentions that the U-Men had captured Kitty and extracted bits of her power. Gambit obtains a vial of a substance which temporarily lets the character fall through the roof (if the player chose the correct option).
Kitty Pryde is a playable character in the Facebook game Marvel: Avengers Alliance.
Kitty Pryde is a playable character in the X-Men: Days of Future Past app game.
Kitty Pryde is a playable character in the online MMO Marvel Heroes, with Danielle Judovits reprising her role.
Kitty Pryde appears as a playable character in Marvel Future Fight.
Kitty Pryde appears as a playable character in Marvel Puzzle Quest.
Kitty Pryde appears as a playable character in Marvel Strike Force.
Novels
Kitty Pryde appears in the X-Men/Star Trek crossover novel Planet X. In it, she is examined by Geordi La Forge, who notes the similarities between her ability and the chroniton displacement he and Ro Laren experienced in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Next Phase".
Reception
Kitty Pryde has been well received as a comic book character and as a member of the X-Men. Wizard magazine put her at number #13 in 200 Greatest Comic Characters of All Time. She was the highest female comic character in the list beating rivals such as Wonder Woman, Buffy Summers, and She-Hulk. IGN ranked her as the 47th greatest comic book hero of all time stating that "as X-Men writers have often found it useful to introduce younger teen recruits to offset the experienced members of the team, Kitty Pryde set the standard when she debuted, and none have surpassed her". IGN rated Kitty Pryde #3 on its list of the Top 25 X-Men from the Past 40 Years describing her as the mutant everyman, the common girl turned superhero; IGN also stated that as her pet dragon, Lockheed, "became instantly attached to Kitty, [they] were hooked early on". Marvel.com ranked her as the tenth greatest X-Men member stating that "unquestionably, the dynamic of the X-Men shifted entirely when teenage whiz kid Kitty Pryde joined the team in the early 1980s"; Marvel.com also stated that even though Kitty has since blossomed into a young woman of considerable maturity and power, she remains the access point to the X-Men for countless readers. A later list on Marvel's website, ranking the top 50 X-Men characters, placed her in first place, citing the ease of identifying with her for the audience, and her development over the years.
Notes
References
External links
Kitty Pryde at Marvel.com
UncannyXmen.net Spotlight on Shadowcat
American superheroes
Characters created by Chris Claremont
Characters created by John Byrne (comics)
Comics characters introduced in 1980
Excalibur (comics)
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Female characters in film
Female characters in television
Fictional American Jews in comics
Fictional bisexual females
Fictional characters from Illinois
Fictional characters who can turn intangible
Fictional dancers
Fictional female ninja
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Teenage characters in comics
X-Men members | true | [
"is a Japanese character designer and illustrator. She is well known as the third character designer of Hello Kitty.\n\nBiography\n\nEarly life\nYamaguchi was born in Kōchi, Kōchi, Japan. She attended Joshibi University of Art and Design where she studied industrial design.\n\nSanrio tenure\nYamaguchi joined Sanrio in 1978. In 1980, Yamaguchi won an internal design contest with her design of Hello Kitty playing the piano, and would later become the third (and current) primary designer of Hello Kitty.\n\nAside from Hello Kitty, Yamaguchi has been designing Jewelpet since 2008. She also did the illustration for TV Asahi's official mascot, Go-Chan.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nOfficial blog \n\nJapanese graphic designers\nPeople from Kōchi, Kōchi\nLiving people\nHello Kitty\nJewelpet\nYear of birth missing (living people)\nArtists from Kōchi Prefecture",
"is the Japanese designer who created Hello Kitty.\n\nShe was born in Japan. After graduating from Musashino Art University, she created Hello Kitty at Sanrio in 1974. She left Sanrio in 1976 to get married and has been working as a freelance designer ever since. She did not make a lot of money from Hello Kitty.\n\nThe other characters she has created include Angel Cat Sugar and Rebecca Bonbon. She has also published some picture books.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\nThe Official Hello Kitty Website\nThe Official Rebecca Bonbon Website\nThe Official Angel Cat Sugar Website\n\n1946 births\nLiving people\nHello Kitty\nArtists from Chiba Prefecture\nJapanese designers"
] |
[
"Kitty Pryde",
"Publication history",
"What was the first publication date?",
"The fictional Kitty Pryde first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980),",
"How long was the publication?",
"I don't know.",
"Who introduced the character Kitty Pryde?",
"Uncanny X-Men artist John Byrne named Kitty Pryde after a classmate he met in art school, Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary in 1973.",
"What is the story behind the name Kitty Pryde?",
"He had told Pryde he liked her name and asked for permission to use it, promising to name his first original comics character after her.",
"Where did the Kitty part come from?",
"Claremont said several elements of the character's personality were derived from those of X-Men editor Louise Simonson's daughter, Julie."
] | C_98d6a9f0735942e3a427f07b743f5a4d_1 | What were Kitty's powers going to be? | 6 | What were Kitty's powers going to be in Kitty Pryde? | Kitty Pryde | Kitty Pryde was introduced into the X-Men title as the result of an editorial dictate that the book was supposed to depict a school for mutants. Uncanny X-Men artist John Byrne named Kitty Pryde after a classmate he met in art school, Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary in 1973. He had told Pryde he liked her name and asked for permission to use it, promising to name his first original comics character after her. Byrne drew the character to slightly resemble an adolescent Sigourney Weaver. The fictional Kitty Pryde first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980), by writer Chris Claremont and artist Byrne, as a highly intelligent 13-year-old girl. Claremont said several elements of the character's personality were derived from those of X-Men editor Louise Simonson's daughter, Julie. Claremont and Byrne made the new character a full-fledged X-Man in issue #139, where she was codenamed "Sprite". She was the main character in issues #141-142, the "Days of Future Past" storyline, where she is possessed by her older self, whose consciousness time travels to the past to prevent a mass extermination of mutants. The six-issue miniseries Kitty Pryde and Wolverine (1984-1985), written by Claremont, is a coming-of-age storyline in which she matures from a girl to a young woman, adopting the new name "Shadowcat". In the late '80s, she joined the British-based super team, Excalibur, where she remained for roughly ten years before coming back to the X-Men. In the early 2000s, she disappeared from the spotlight after semi-retiring from superhero work. She was featured in the 2002 mini-series Mekanix and came back to the main X-Men books in 2004 under the pen of Joss Whedon in Astonishing X-Men. She remained a part of the X-Men books until 2008 when she left again for roughly 2 years. After coming back, she was featured in Jason Aaron's Wolverine and the X-Men and Brian Michael Bendis' All-New X-Men books. In early 2015, she joined the Guardians of the Galaxy. After the Secret Wars event, she adopted her new alias, Star-Lord (first believed to be Star-Lady). Shadowcat's popularity had a profound effect on the real-life Kitty Pryde: the latter became so overwhelmed by attention from Shadowcat fans, she abbreviated her name to K.D. Pryde to avoid association with her fictional counterpart. She has since stated she has mixed feelings about her fame, saying she values Byrne's comics for their entertainment and artistic value, but wishes more people would appreciate her as more than just Shadowcat's namesake. CANNOTANSWER | Claremont and Byrne made the new character a full-fledged X-Man in issue #139, where she was codenamed "Sprite". | Katherine Anne "Kitty" Pryde is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics, commonly in association with the X-Men. The character first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980) and was co-created by writer-artist John Byrne and Chris Claremont.
A mutant, Pryde possesses a "phasing" ability that allows her, as well as objects or people she is in contact with, to become intangible. This power also disrupts any electrical field she passes through, and lets her simulate levitation.
The youngest to join the X-Men, she was first portrayed as a "kid sister" to many older members of the group, filling the role of literary foil to the more established characters. She occasionally used the codenames Sprite and Ariel, cycling through several uniforms until settling for her trademark black-and-gold costume. During the miniseries Kitty Pryde and Wolverine, she was renamed Shadowcat, the alias she would be most associated with, and shifted to a more mature depiction in her subsequent appearances. Pryde would eventually abandon her nickname, "Kitty", and switch to "Kate". She was one of the main cast of characters depicted in the original Excalibur title. After momentarily joining the Guardians of the Galaxy, she assumed her then-fiancé's superhero identity as the Star-Lord (Star-Lady). As of the series Marauders, she is now informally known as Captain Kate Pryde and the Red Queen of the Hellfire Trading Company.
In the X-Men film series, Kitty Pryde was initially portrayed by young actresses in cameos; Sumela Kay in X-Men (2000) and Katie Stuart in X2 (2003). Later, a pre-transition Elliot Page portrayed the character in X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) and X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) in full-length appearances. Pryde is ranked #47 in IGN's Top 100 Comic Book Heroes.
Publication history
Kitty Pryde was introduced into the X-Men title as the result of an editorial dictate that the book was supposed to depict a school for mutants. Uncanny X-Men artist John Byrne named Kitty Pryde after a classmate he met in art school, Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary in 1973. He had told Pryde he liked her name and asked for permission to use it, promising to name his first original comics character after her. Byrne drew the character to slightly resemble an adolescent Sigourney Weaver.
The fictional Kitty Pryde first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980), by writer Chris Claremont and artist Byrne, as a highly intelligent 13-year-old girl. Claremont said several elements of the character's personality were derived from those of X-Men editor Louise Simonson's daughter, Julie. Claremont and Byrne made the new character a full-fledged X-Man in issue #139, where she was codenamed "Sprite". She was the main character in issues #141–142, the "Days of Future Past" storyline, where she is possessed by her older self, whose consciousness time travels to the past to prevent a mass extermination of mutants. The six-issue miniseries Kitty Pryde and Wolverine (1984–1985), written by Claremont, is a coming-of-age storyline in which she matures from a girl to a young woman, adopting the new name "Shadowcat".
In the late 1980s, Kitty joined the British-based super team, Excalibur, where she remained for roughly ten years before coming back to the X-Men. In the early 2000s, she disappeared from the spotlight after semi-retiring from superhero work. She was featured in the 2002 mini-series Mekanix and came back to the main X-Men books in 2004 under the pen of Joss Whedon in Astonishing X-Men. She remained a part of the X-Men books until 2008 when she left again for roughly 2 years. After coming back, she was featured in Jason Aaron's Wolverine and the X-Men and Brian Michael Bendis' All-New X-Men books.
In early 2015, she joined the Guardians of the Galaxy. After the Secret Wars event, she adopted her new alias, Star-Lord (first believed to be Star-Lady).
In 2020, Kitty Pryde was revealed to be bisexual. Her co-creator, Chris Claremont, had always intended this to be the case, considering Rachel Summers as a possible love interest for Pryde. However, Claremont wasn't allowed to show this at the time due to censorship, as he revealed on the "Xplain the X-Men" podcast in 2016.
Shadowcat's popularity had a profound effect on the real-life Kitty Pryde: the latter became so overwhelmed by attention from Shadowcat fans, she abbreviated her name to K.D. Pryde to avoid association with her fictional counterpart. She has since stated she has mixed feelings about her fame, saying she values Byrne's comics for their entertainment and artistic value, but wishes more people would appreciate her as more than just Shadowcat's namesake.
Fictional character biography
Katherine Anne "Kitty" Pryde was born in Deerfield, Illinois, to Carmen and Theresa Pryde. She is an Ashkenazi Jewish-American and her paternal grandfather, Samuel Prydeman, was held in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. Kitty started to have headaches at age thirteen, signaling the emergence of her mutant powers. She was approached by both the X-Men's Charles Xavier and the Hellfire Club's White Queen, Emma Frost, both of whom hoped to recruit her for their respective causes. Kitty was unnerved by Frost, observing that the White Queen looked at her as if she were "something good to eat." She got along better with Xavier and the three X-Men who escorted him, quickly becoming friends with Ororo Munroe. Ororo told Kitty who she really was and about the X-Men, which made the teenager even more enthusiastic about attending Xavier's school.
Their conversation was cut short when they (along with Wolverine and Colossus) were attacked by armored mercenaries in the employ of Frost and the Hellfire Club. The X-Men defeated their assailants, but were subdued by the White Queen's telepathic powers immediately after. In the confusion, Kitty was separated from the X-Men, and not captured along with them. She managed to contact Cyclops, Phoenix, and Nightcrawler. With the help of Dazzler and Pryde, those X-Men rescued their teammates from the Hellfire Club.
The White Queen appeared to perish in the battle, which meant she was no longer competing with Xavier for the approval of Kitty's parents. Kitty's parents had not heard from her in more than a day, because during that time she was first being pursued by the Hellfire Club's men and then working with the X-Men to save their friends. All they knew was Kitty had left with Xavier's "students" to get a soda, there had been reports that the soda shop had been blown up, and Kitty had been missing since. Therefore, they were angry at Xavier when he finally returned with Kitty in tow. At first, it seemed like there was no chance of Kitty being allowed to attend the school and join the X-Men. Phoenix then used her considerable telepathic power to erase the memories of Kitty's parents and plant false ones, resulting in a complete shift in their attitude towards Xavier. Kitty was then allowed to enroll at Xavier's school with her parents' blessing, becoming the youngest member of the team.
Joining the X-Men
Kitty joined the X-Men, and assumed the costumed identity of Sprite. Early in her career as an X-Man, Kitty's adult self from an alternate future took possession of her body in the present to help X-Men thwart the assassination of Senator Robert Kelly by the second Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Kitty then singlehandedly defeated a N'Garai demon. Kitty also briefly attended the White Queen's Massachusetts Academy when her parents became convinced that she needed to be with students of her own age, but following a failed attempt to subdue the X-Men, Frost revoked Kitty's admission.
During her teen years, Kitty fostered a number of close relationships with others at the school and in the X-Men. She developed a crush on Colossus and became close friends with his little sister Illyana Rasputin. Initially uneasy around Nightcrawler and other mutants with physical deformities, Kitty finally overcame her fears and became close friends with him. Kitty also befriended Lockheed, a highly intelligent alien resembling a dragon, who followed her home after a mission in outer space. Lockheed is extremely loyal to Kitty, and the two of them share a psychic bond. Wolverine became something of a mentor to Kitty despite his usually gruff personality. Storm came to view Kitty as the daughter she never had.
Though Xavier has threatened to reassign Kitty to the New Mutants, a team of younger mutants he established in the absence of the X-Men, ever since the X-Men returned from outer space, she never ended up joining the group, who she derisively calls the "X-Babies". Kitty was later abducted by the Morlocks and nearly forced to wed Caliban. She was then abducted by the White Queen, but rescued by the New Mutants.
During this time, Kitty began to date Colossus, although this did not last long. Colossus developed feelings for an alien woman named Zsaji whom he met on the Beyonder's planet in the first Secret Wars. Colossus' feelings toward Zsaji were primarily a side effect of her own unique healing abilities, which she had used on him after he became injured. Regardless, Colossus' feelings were real and he returned to Earth consumed with grief after Zsaji's death. He admitted to Kitty that he loved Zsaji, which hurt her deeply and ended the budding romantic relationship. Kitty had made good friends with a local boy from Salem Central named Doug Ramsey around this time, but her feelings for him never went as deep as his for her, and they never actually dated, though they remained close, even more so after Doug's status as a mutant was revealed and he joined the New Mutants under the codename Cypher. They remained friends until his death some time later.
Ogun
During the 1984–1985 Kitty Pryde and Wolverine miniseries, Kitty is possessed by a demon, the ninja Ogun. Ogun psychically bestows upon Kitty a virtual lifetime of martial arts training. Kitty was brainwashed by Ogun into becoming a ninja assassin, and was sent to attack Wolverine. Kitty is able to resist Ogun's influence with Wolverine's help, and the two form a strong teacher/student bond, which helps them in vanquishing Ogun. Kitty returns to the X-Men, no longer the innocent girl they once knew, and officially adopts the codename Shadowcat.
Morlock Massacre
While trying to save Rogue, Kitty was badly injured by Harpoon's energy spear during the Mutant Massacre story arc, in the massacre of the Morlocks, with the result that she lost control of her power and was stuck in an intangible state and could not regain her solidity. She was rushed to Muir Island along with other surviving casualties of the Massacre to be tended to by Moira MacTaggert. MacTaggert was able to keep Kitty's condition from deteriorating to the point where she completely lost physical substance and ceased to exist, but was not able to do any more to help her.
At this time, Kitty's natural state was to be intangible. Where she once had to make a conscious effort to phase, she could now only maintain her solidity through an act of conscious will. The X-Men went to Reed Richards, Mister Fantastic of the Fantastic Four, for aid, but Richards initially refused because he was not sure he would be able to help.
Having nowhere else to go, the X-Men turned to Richards' enemy Doctor Doom. This created a moral dilemma for both the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, and both teams fought each other because the Fantastic Four were trying to stop the treatment while the X-Men were determined to save Kitty's life. In the end, both the personal crisis of the Fantastic Four and the life of Shadowcat were saved after Franklin Richards, with the help of Lockheed, brought both teams to their senses. Kitty has since recovered from this state and now has full control over her power again.
Excalibur
Among the others injured and brought to Muir Isle were Colossus and Nightcrawler, although Colossus left the United Kingdom shortly after being released from MacTaggert's care to join the rest of the X-Men on their mission to battle the Adversary. The X-Men sacrificed their lives to defeat the Adversary, the battle and their sacrifice was televised and broadcast across the world. The X-Men were resurrected later in the same issue, unknown to the world at large, but chose to keep a low profile and perpetuate the belief that they were still dead. This strategy was enforced to more effectively fight their enemies. This meant avoiding contact with friends and family, including Kitty. Thinking the X-Men were dead, Kitty and Nightcrawler joined Rachel Summers, Captain Britain, and Meggan to form the Britain-based team Excalibur. For a brief time, Kitty studied at St. Searle's School for Girls in Britain. During her time with Excalibur, Kitty developed a crush on Professor Alistaire Stuart which went unreciprocated since Alistaire was attracted to Rachel. Later, she was romantically involved with former Black Air agent Pete Wisdom. At some point Kitty was recruited by the international law enforcement agency S.H.I.E.L.D. to repair the computer system of their flying headquarters. Kitty discovered the problem was due to Ogun's spirit having infiltrated the computer system, and with the aid of Wolverine, she managed to purge Ogun's presence. During this time, Kitty was attracted to a S.H.I.E.L.D. intern her own age, and this made her begin to doubt her relationship with Wisdom. Soon after, she broke off their relationship.
Back to the X-Men
After Excalibur's dissolution, Shadowcat, Nightcrawler, and Colossus return to the X-Men. While returning, they faced a group of imposters following Cerebro, in the guise of Professor X. While tracking Mystique, she stumbles onto prophetic diaries that belonged to Irene Adler, a precognitive. During the six-month gap, Kitty visited Genosha. Whatever she experienced there is unknown (although presumably connected to her father, living on Genosha at the time), but it had a profound effect on her. She cut her hair and began to act rebelliously, also using one of Wolverine's bone claws broken off during battle as a weapon. Kitty remained with the X-Men for a while before leaving after the apparent death of Colossus. Trying to give herself a normal life, she attended the University of Chicago. During this time, her father was killed when Cassandra Nova’s Sentinels destroyed Genosha. Kitty later finds a recording of his death due to exploring footage of the attack. She is also kidnapped by William Stryker, but the X-Treme X-Men team helped her escape, and she assisted them on several missions.
At the start of Joss Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men, Kitty once again rejoins the X-Men, despite having extreme reservations about working with the former White Queen, given their history. This was the primary reason why Frost herself wanted Kitty on the team, as a sort of "safety" should Frost ever revert to type. Frost reasoned that the person who trusted her least would be most likely to spot such behavior. On one of the team's first missions, Shadowcat discovered Colossus was alive. After some initial awkwardness, Kitty and Colossus resumed dating.
Kitty Pryde appeared alongside Colossus in the "Blinded by the Light" arc in X-Men. They are the two X-Men left to look after the students while the rest of the X-Men leave for Mystique's home in Mississippi to check up on Rogue, during which they are ambushed by the Marauders. Kitty and Colossus, meanwhile, attempt to protect the students from a faction of the Marauders led by Exodus. It is revealed over the course of the story that Kitty, worried of the Destiny Diaries' safety, devised a plan with Cyclops and Emma Frost to hide them and have Emma wipe the location from her mind. The location could only be revealed by a code word spoken to Kitty. The arc concludes with a battle between Iceman and Cannonball against the Marauders for the diaries, during which they are destroyed by Gambit.
In the "Torn" arc, the latest incarnation of the Hellfire Club begin an assault on Xavier's School. Kitty fulfilled the role that Emma Frost envisioned, personally taking down Frost and imprisoning her, only to fall under a telepathic delusion created by Hellfire member Perfection, who claimed to be the true, unreformed Emma Frost. Under this delusion, Kitty was made to believe that she and Colossus had conceived a child, which was later taken away by the X-Men because its potential mutant abilities were supposedly dangerous. Kitty reacts in the delusion by attempting to rescue the child from a near-inescapable "box" in the depths of the school, unaware that in reality she is freeing an alien entity, Stuff, who contains the trapped consciousness of Cassandra Nova, the apparent ringleader of this new Hellfire Club. A newly awakened Cyclops revealed that the new Hellfire Club, including Perfection and Nova, are actually mental projections created by a piece of Cassandra Nova's consciousness; which became lodged in Emma's mind during the X-Men's last confrontation with her, playing on her survivor's guilt over the Genoshan massacre, and utilizing Emma's telepathy to both confound the X-Men and orchestrate her (Nova's) escape from the Stuff body. As Cyclops killed the mental projections, Emma tried to force Kitty to kill her to get rid of Nova. Undeterred, Cassandra Nova switched her focus to attempt to transfer her mind to Hisako Ichiki. It appears that Nova did not succeed, as the team was transported to S.W.O.R.D.'s air station en route to Ord's Breakworld for the "Unstoppable" arc that concludes Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men.
Breakworld
As the team prepares to end the confrontation with the Breakworld leader, the team splits up—with Kitty on the team appointed to stop the missile pointed at Earth. Kitty phases into the missile to disrupt its circuitry noting that it is composed of the same material as the rest of Breakworld, a material that is difficult and exhausting for her to phase through. After phasing for a mile into the missile, Kitty finds the center only to discover it empty. The missile is fired, causing Kitty to pass out inside of it as Beast discovers too late that due to its shape, trajectory, and lack of internal circuitry, the Breakworld's weapon is not a missile, but a bullet. As the bullet hurtles toward Earth, Kitty lies unconscious within it.
As the situation becomes increasingly dire, Emma establishes mental contact with Kitty, reassuring her that she will come out of this fine, though it eventually becomes clear to both that the situation will be grim. Kitty and Emma come to an understanding and reconciliation, Emma stating that she never wanted something like this to happen to her. Kitty then phases the bullet through Earth, but is trapped within. At the end of Giant-Size Astonishing X-Men, Scott Summers mentions that Doctor Strange, Reed Richards, and some "top men" tried to save her, but believe she has fused to the bullet, as it continues to hurtle through space. Whether she is alive or dead is unknown, though the X-Men consider her lost to them.
As a result of these events Kitty does not appear in the X-Men crossover event X-Men: Messiah Complex, since this takes place after the events of Giant-Size Astonishing X-Men. She is briefly mentioned in the aftermath of the Messiah Complex, by Colossus, Nightcrawler, and Wolverine, as the three of them discuss "losing her."
To cope with Kitty's loss, Colossus takes down a group of Russian criminals dealing in human trafficking, and gets a tattoo of the name 'Katya' on his chest. Emma begins having a recurring dream in which she hears a voice whom she believes is Kitty's trying to reach out to her.
It was later confirmed by Abigail Brand that Kitty Pryde was still alive within the bullet, but because the bullet's design would harden as time went on, it would become increasingly difficult to break the bullet open.
Return
After the X-Men move to the island of Utopia, Magneto arrives on the island professing his desire to join and support the X-Men in their effort to unite the world's remaining mutants. The X-Men reluctantly let him stay, remaining wary of him despite his efforts to gain their trust. In a final bid to gain their trust, Magneto focuses his powers, attempting to divert the interstellar path of the metal bullet Kitty is trapped in and bring her home to Earth. Meanwhile, inside the bullet, Kitty is revealed to still be alive. Unbeknownst to the others, Magneto had encountered the bullet earlier while attempting to regain his powers with the High Evolutionary and surmised that Kitty was inside. Despite this and the High Evolutionary's apparent ability to retrieve the bullet and Kitty, Magneto chose to focus on regaining his powers, secretly keeping tabs on the bullet until his decision to draw it back to Earth. During her time trapped inside the bullet, Kitty keeps herself and the bullet phased to avoid collisions with any inhabited objects in its path.
Magneto brings Kitty Pryde safely down to Earth by cracking the bullet in two and levitating Kitty to the ground. When she and Colossus try to touch, it is revealed that she is trapped in her intangible form, unable to speak, and the X-Men place her in a protective chamber similar to the one used for her following the events of the Mutant Massacre. How Kitty survived her time in the bullet is unclear to the X-Men's science team, where the X-Men discover that all her bodily functions halted. An analysis by Kavita Rao hypothesizes that Kitty created an intense muscle memory to keep herself and the bullet phased and has "forgotten" how to un-phase.
During a conversation with Colossus, with Emma Frost acting as the psi-conduit, Kitty picks up Emma's stray thoughts on killing the captive Sebastian Shaw, to prevent Namor from discovering she previously lied to him. While disgusted at Emma's intentions, Kitty offers a compromise. Due to her current ghost state, she is the perfect tool for making Shaw disappear.
In a storyline in Uncanny X-Men, the Breakworlders make their way to Earth. During the conflict between the Breakworlder Kr'uun and the X-Men, Kitty is slain and resurrected by Kr'uun's mate in an alien ritual, which results in her powers returning to normal.
Regenesis
Shortly thereafter, Kitty breaks up with Colossus, and decides to return with Wolverine to Westchester to open the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning. In Wolverine and the X-Men #4, she appears to be suddenly pregnant, but the pregnancy was revealed to be a Brood infestation, and it was swiftly dealt with by a team of X-Men. Since returning to Westchester, Kitty has shared several kisses with Iceman. During the events of Avengers vs. X-Men, Kitty does not take a side, but instead decides to stay at the school to work with the students. Once Bobby returned from working with the X-Men after realizing that the Phoenix had corrupted them, he and Kitty finally decide to go on a date.
All-New X-Men
After Beast brings the original five X-Men into the future to stop Cyclops in the present, Kitty volunteers to take responsibility for the temporally relocated X-Men while they work to undo this dark future. This soon puts her at odds with the rest of her team as they believed the original five should go back to their own time in order to prevent any damage to the space-time continuity. Eventually, this leads Kitty to take the decision of abandoning the school with the time-displaced X-Men and join Cyclops's X-Men at the New Xavier School. During the first few weeks at the New Xavier School, Jean Grey is abducted by the Shiar Empire to stand trial for her future self's crimes. Kitty and the time-displaced X-Men team up with the Guardians of the Galaxy and succeed in rescuing Jean from the Shiar. At the conclusion of the storyline, Kitty begins a long-distance, flirtatious relationship with Starlord, Peter Quill.
The Black Vortex
In the following weeks, Kitty's relationship with Peter Quill evolves more and more as they developed stronger feelings for each other every day. At one point, Quill gets captured during one of their dates and she has no option but to go to his rescue, despite her fear of space as a result of her being trapped on the giant space bullet. After rescuing Peter, she decides to stay in space with him. Then, Kitty convinces Peter to steal a powerful artifact called the Black Vortex from his father J'son. Soon, they find themselves being chased by J'son's assassination squad, the Slaughter Lords. In despair, they request the aid of the X-Men and the Guardians of the Galaxy to protect the Vortex. After a few of their own friends can't resist the temptation and submit to the Vortex, betray the team, and escape with the artifact; the team splits and Kitty stays in Spartax to help an orphanage. She is encased in amber after Thane (who was allied with J'son) freezes the whole planet along with the people inside it; but thanks to her phasing powers, she manages to get out of the amber. Then the Brood attacks Spartax, planning to use every encased person to lay eggs and create an army of Brood to start invading other planets and conquering them. Kitty feels the only way to stop them is by submitting to the Vortex herself as she's the only one who can resist the cosmic corruption. She reluctantly submits and becomes a being of unlimited power. After being reminded of the love between her and Peter Quill, she goes back and phases all the amber that encased Spartax, along with the Broods trying to infect the people, and sends them all to another dimension. Kitty doesn't give up the cosmic power but admits to Peter that she is afraid of it. Peter promises her that he will never abandon her no matter how much she changes. Then, Peter kneels and proposes marriage to Kitty. She, with tears in her eyes, accepts. Later when Star Lord is declared Emperor of Spartax she is told she will become the first lady of Spartax.
Guardians of the Galaxy
Kitty takes on the mantle of Star Lord and joins the Guardians of the Galaxy in Peter Quill's place so he can take on his royal duties. When Hala the Accuser massacres Spartax in an attempt to make Quill pay for J'son's actions against her people, she initially easily lays waste to the capitol and overpowers the Guardians. After the Guardians regroup and formulate a strategy to defeat her, Kitty manages to partially phase Hala into the ground so the rest of the Guardians can knock her out and separate her from her weapon. After Quill loses his title as king he and Kitty end up on a mission with the rest of the Guardians on a concentration camp prison planet owned by the Badoon after Gamora gave them information on it so they can free Angela. Once there, Kitty has a personal reaction upon seeing the prisoners and makes it her mission to liberate everyone there and defeat the captors, as it reminds her of Nazi concentration camps. After Quill gets captured and sentenced to death in an arena battle, Kitty finds and kills one of the Badoon leaders by phasing his heart out of his body. When Captain Marvel summons the Guardians to Earth to help her address Tony Stark, Kitty learns that Thanos is a prisoner on Earth and tries to convince Quill to tell Gamora. When fighting starts Kitty woefully realizes that some of her former students are on Tony Stark's side instead of fighting with Captain Marvel. During the battle the Guardians' ship was destroyed, effectively stranding them on Earth. After helping the Guardians stop Thanos from leading an invasion from the Negative Zone the Guardians are given a new ship; however, Kitty decides to stay on Earth and ends her time with the Guardians and Quill.
Leading the X-Men
Upon returning to Earth, Kitty hopes to finally regain a semblance of a normal life but ends up approached by Storm, who informs Kitty of everything the X-Men have gone through while Kitty was away. Storm announces to Kitty that she intends to step down as leader of the X-Men due to the guilt that she feels for leading the X-Men to war and offers Kitty her position. After touring X-Haven and seeing how much things have changed and how much things need to change for the better, Kitty agrees to lead the X-Men as long as Storm remains on the team. Her next act is to relocate the mansion from Limbo to Central Park, New York so the X-Men can refocus on being part of the world instead of fearing it under the belief that if the X-Men truly are to be seen as heroes, then they need to actually live in the world that they are trying to save instead of constantly worrying about their own survival.
Under Kitty's new leadership, the X-Men go through some small changes in order to shed their past history and make new names for themselves, such as convincing Rachel Summers to change her code name to Prestige and renaming the mansion as The Xavier Institute for Mutant Education and Outreach. Kitty learns first-hand how hard it is to balance leading the X-Men as well as managing the mansion when there are many political factors trying to deliberately get in the way of the X-Men. She also begins to have awkward one-on-one moments with Colossus; they try to remain friends, but given their long history their interactions swiftly become complicated. Kitty's first case as field leader of the X-Men sees her and her team taking on a new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. After discovering that an outspoken anti-mutant politician brainwashed this new Brotherhood to work for her to publicly discredit mutants, Kitty threatened to expose her if she continued exploiting mutants for her own personal gain.
Dawn of X
After Krakoa became a new sovereign nation for Mutants, Kitty Pryde, now going by Captain Kate Pryde, discovers she is the sole mutant who is, for unknown reasons, unable to use the various warp gates leading to Krakoa. It is implied that she has done something to anger Krakoa, but that restriction does not mean Kitty cannot use other means to reach the mutant homeland. She steals a boat and sets sail for the island. Kitty's time on Krakoa proves to be just as fruitless, as the island's natural resources (like flowers that grow into biome homes) are similarly prohibited to Kitty. Emma Frost comes asking Kitty to take up a special mission: taking a bigger boat out to serve as pirate captain on the X-Men's mission to liberate mutants trapped in oppressive countries that do not recognize mutant sovereignty, while also smuggling and supplying for Emma's Hellfire Trading Company the lifesaving drugs the X-Men provide to humans. Kate Pryde is later appointed the new Red Queen of the Hellfire Trading Company by Emma Frost, to the dismay of Sebastian Shaw. Seeing Pryde as an obstacle to his complete control of the Hellfire Corporation, Shaw began plotting against Kate and her crew. After taking notice how Emma became overprotective of the newly crowned Red Queen, Shaw realized that for the same reason she can't travel through Krakoa's gates nor read or understand the Krakoan language until Emma implanted it in her brain, the X-Men's Resurrection Protocols also won't apply to her, which means Kate cannot be resurrected if she died. He orchestrated a distraction by paying off human supremacists Homines Verendi to stage an attack on his own son. Once Kate was defenseless, Shaw emerged from below deck and ensnared Lockheed with a net gun, making him a helpless hostage. He then released Krakoan seeds at her feet, which wrapped around her and prevented her from using her powers. He then dropped her and Lockheed into the sea. While Lockheed was able to survive, Kate sank helplessly, and once her head dropped under the surface, she had no air left and drowned instantly. Her death is later confirmed by Bishop as he retrieves Kate's body, as it was also established that the Resurrection Protocols indeed do not apply to Kate, as the Five, for reasons unknown, cannot resurrect her. However, she is later resurrected, as Emma Frost realized that it was due to the nature of Kate's intangibility powers that her mindless body was unable to break out of the egg.
Powers and abilities
Kitty is a mutant with the ability to pass through solid matter by passing her atomic particles through the spaces between the atoms of the object through which she is moving. In this way she and the object through which she is passing can temporarily merge without interacting, and each is unharmed when Shadowcat has finished passing through the object. This process is called "phasing" or quantum tunneling and it renders her almost completely intangible to physical touch. Shadowcat passes through objects at the same speed at which she is moving before she enters them. Since she is unable to breathe while inside an object, she can only continuously phase through solid objects (as when she travels underground) as long as she can hold her breath. However, contrary depictions of the duration of her phasing ability have been presented, such as when she has phased miles within an object. The use of her abilities also interferes with any electrical systems as she passes through by disrupting the flow of electrons from atom to atom, including the bio-electric systems of living bodies if she concentrates in the right way. This typically causes machines to malfunction or be destroyed as she phases through them, and can induce shock and unconsciousness in living beings.
Using her power began as an optional ability, but for a period (over ten years of published comics, approximately two years in-continuity) Kitty existed in a naturally "phased" state, and had to consciously choose to become solid. Kitty has returned to her original form and is normally solid and must choose to use her power. While phasing, she does not physically walk on surfaces, but rather interacts with the molecules of air above them, allowing her to ascend and descend, causing her to seemingly walk on air. While phased, she is immune to most physical attacks, and has inconsistent showings of some resistance to telepathy. The density of some materials (such as adamantium) can prove deleterious to her phasing, causing her to be severely disoriented or experience pain if she tries to pass through them. Some energy attacks also prove problematic for Kitty. For example, an energy blast fired by Harpoon, a member of the Marauders, caused her to lose her ability to become fully tangible for months. Magic and magical beings can also harm her in her phased state, as demonstrated in a battle with a N'Garai demon whose claws left no visible marks, but caused Kitty severe pain as they passed through her intangible body.
Kitty can also extend her powers to phase other people and objects. She is able to phase at least six other people (or objects of similar mass) with her, so long as they establish and maintain physical contact with her. She can extend her phasing effect to her own clothing or any other object with mass up to that of a small truck, as long as she remains in contact with it. Kitty can also make objects intangible by maintaining contact with them. She has threatened to leave people phased into a wall, and used her power offensively to harm the Technarch Magus, and Danger.
Kitty's powers seem to have increased over the years. During an X-Treme X-Men story arc in which she is kidnapped by Reverend William Stryker, she phases out of sync with Earth's rotation to move from one place in the world (only east or west) to another seemingly instantaneously. At the climax of Astonishing X-Men, Kitty phases a 10 mi (16 km) long "bullet" composed of super-dense alien metals through the entire planet Earth. This feat caused her considerable strain, but she is unable to phase out of the bullet. Moreover, originally Kitty found it difficult or impossible to phase only part of her body at a time. In the Days of Future Past story arc, she is possessed by her older future self, allowing her to solidify only her shoulder while phasing the rest of her body through Destiny—a feat explicitly beyond the 13-year-old Kitty's abilities. By contrast, the Kitty Pryde of Joss Whedon's run can punch and kick someone standing on the other side of a wall, selectively phasing and unphasing body parts as necessary. She can even run and leap through an armed opponent, grabbing their weapon as she passes by, which presumably requires her to solidify only the surface area of the palms of her hands and then immediately phase both her palms and the weapon.
Besides her mutant powers, Kitty is a genius in the field of applied technology and computer science. She is highly talented in the design and use of computer hardware. She is a skilled pilot of piston and jet engine aircraft, and a competent pilot of certain advanced interstellar vehicles. She has previously shown a unique ability to wield the Soulsword and also be harmed by it. Since her possession by the ninja demon Ogun, she has been consistently shown to be an excellent hand-to-hand combatant, having since been endowed with a lifetime of training in the martial arts of Japanese ninja and samurai.
She is a professional-level dancer in both ballet and modern dance. She speaks fluent English, Japanese, Russian, and the royal and standard languages of the alien Shi'ar and Skrull, and has moderate expertise in Gaelic, Hebrew, and German.
Kitty also shares a mental/empathic connection with her pet dragon Lockheed; both she and the alien dragon can "sense" each other's presence at times and generally understand one another's thoughts and actions.
When Kitty used the Black Vortex, her powers were augmented to a cosmic scale making her a god-like being. She can phase through any material of any density and can even phase a planet out of Thane's amber, whereas in her normal state it is an extremely difficult task to simply phase herself out of the amber. She can also apparently transverse between the planes of the multiverse and is immune to the effects of space. Her appearance can be changed but her natural form appears to be rather gaseous in look.
Other versions
In addition to her mainstream incarnation, Kitty Pryde has been depicted in other fictional universes.
Age of Apocalypse
In the Age of Apocalypse reality, Kitty grows up under harsh circumstances and her nature reflects it. She has short hair, tight clothes, and chain smokes cigarettes. Her parents are killed in the Chicago Cullings, and she is forcibly recruited into Apocalypse's army, but is later rescued by Colossus. Magneto puts Shadowcat under Weapon X's training, hoping to turn her into the X-Men's assassin, and she is given a set of retractable artificial claws around each wrist to better imitate her teacher's fighting style. After the fallout between Colossus and Magneto, Shadowcat sides with Colossus, whom she has married. Instead of leaving the fight against Apocalypse altogether, the couple become the teachers of Generation Next. The two submit their trainees to harsh situations, giving them little comfort despite the fact that Shadowcat is close to the age of her students.
Shadowcat assists the team in rescuing Illyana Rasputin from the Seattle Core, and, at Colossus' behest, abandons her students after Illyana is saved. She is killed by Colossus in his ruthless obsession to protect his sister, Illyana; coming between an enraged Colossus and his endangered sister, Shadowcat never believed he would harm her.
Days of Future Past
In the Days of Future Past timeline (Earth-811), Shadowcat goes by the name Kate Pryde. Kate attempts to go back in time to prevent the assassination of Senator Robert Kelly by Mystique and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. She succeeds, only to create a separate timeline where the events of her past still come to pass. After returning to her own time Kate helps Rachel Summers escape back to the timeline she just created. Captured by Sentinels, Kate escapes by phasing through her inhibitor collar and fell into a time warp, causing her to merge with the Sentinel that was scanning her, and arrives in the timeline Rachel is inhabiting. Kate's mind settles in a small, metal, off-spherical body and becomes known as Widget. After a few adventures in that timeline, mostly in company with her Earth-616 counterpart's team Excalibur, Kate regains her memory and returns to her original timeline where she is able to reprogram the ruling Sentinels to protect life, ending their tyranny.
Earth X
In Earth X it is revealed in the appendix of issue six that Kitty Pryde is killed saving Colossus while he could not shift into his metal form. Instead of phasing the bullet through her, she heroically takes the bullet and is killed.
Exiles
A version of Kitty Pryde codenamed Cat first appeared in Exiles #96. She is younger than her Earth-616 counterpart. She has the appearance and powers of the normal Shadowcat although she wears a different costume. Prior to her joining the Exiles, this version of Kitty had been recruited by Emma Frost as one of the core agents of the Hellfire Club's strike force. She helps Psylocke defeat Doom's soldiers who have invaded the Panoptichron. She helps retrieve Blink, Morph, and Sabretooth from being scattered across the multiverse. She works as a computer expert for the team and is a full member of the Exiles.
Cat's skill with using her powers means she is not tied to any dimension and can see through various realities, including those of the mind (for instance seeing the various personalities in Sage's mind as "ghosts" surrounding her). Her arrival in the Crystal Palace and connection to its computers has increased this, giving her the ability to "cascade" through different alternative versions of herself, altering her appearance and details of her powers. Amongst other versions, she has assumed the form of a Kitty Pryde with the appearance and powers of Tigra. During the New Exiles' last mission Cat faced off against Madame Hydra (Sue Storm) and killed her at the cost of her own life.
There has been another version of Kitty that appeared in the King Hyperion story arc (Exiles #38-40). She had survived an attack on the X-Mansion by the Sentinels. The Colossus from her universe had been killed in the attack but she had the same feelings towards Weapon X's Colossus even though he was not her Colossus. The two eventually fell in love with each other. Unfortunately this did not last since she died with Colossus when they were shot into the empty vacuum of space by Hyperion.
House of M
When the Scarlet Witch altered reality in the 616 Universe, creating the reality known as House of M where mutants were the dominant population, Kitty Pryde was a teacher in a public middle school in Cincinnati, Ohio. Like many of the heroes of Earth 616, she is reminded of the true reality by Layla Miller and recruited in the fight to restore reality.
Magik
In the limited series Magik (Illyana and Storm), an alternative reality Kitty renames herself "Cat" after she is mutated by the demonic sorcerer Belasco into a more feline form, with cat eyes, whiskers, a tail, and enhanced physical abilities and senses. Trapped in Belasco's Limbo, Cat takes a militant view towards defeating the sorcerer, eschewing the magic that her reality's Storm embraces, instead turning to skills in swordplay and physical combat. She tries to save the Illyana Rasputin of Earth-616 from corruption through magic by taking Illyana into the wilderness of Limbo and teaching the child to fight and survive. Like the Kitty Pryde of Earth-616 eventually would, Cat became Illyana's best friend, but more in the role of an older sister due to the difference in their ages.
Cat's plan goes awry when the pair's attempt to confront Belasco fails, at the cost of the life of an enslaved Nightcrawler; Illyana falls under Belasco's influence and Cat is further transformed towards a feline, with a semi-animalistic mind completely loyal to Belasco. Cat is eventually slain by Illyana when Belasco sets Cat upon his rebellious apprentice; facing death at Cat's hands and knowing that, deep down, a part of Kitty still exists and hates her enslavement, Illyana broke Cat's neck in self-defense.
Long after Illyana overthrows Belasco, escapes Limbo, and becomes a member of the junior X-Men team known as the New Mutants, Cat's remains are found by the team in Limbo's throne room. By then she had completely decomposed to a skeleton. Illyana, facing a rebellion of Limbo's demon population that threatened to overrun Earth, smashed Cat's skull in rage over the demonic taint that Belasco left on her soul and frustration over the horrible choice she had to make to kill Cat.
Marvel Zombies
Kitty is briefly shown in the background as a zombie in Ultimate Fantastic Four #23, despite her mutant phasing powers. She is also seen in Marvel Zombies: Dead Days, when zombie Alpha Flight attack the X-Men. This would appear to have been retconned, though, as of Marvel Zombies: Halloween, which depicts her and her son Peter with Colossus surviving for several years in an out of the way house farm, encountering zombies, but, fortunately, being rescued by Mephisto, who dispatched the remaining zombies.
The Earth-91126/Earth-Z Kitty is recruited by Earth-2149/Marvel Zombies Spider-Man to help him develop a cure for the zombie hunger, on the grounds that her powers mean that she would be in no danger from him if he should succumb to his zombie instincts, but she is later seemingly killed when the zombie Quasar holds her underwater until she is forced to become solid once more, allowing the infected Namor to eat her flesh (much to the rage of the zombie Wolverine, of Earth-2149).
Mutant X
Storm was taken by the vampire Dracula and unlike Earth 616, she does not return. Kitty goes off to battle her, either to save or kill her. Kitty slays several vampires in the way but Storm proves too much for her and Kitty becomes her unwilling slave for some time. She later shows up as the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club and seems to be none too happy with Storm. It's also hinted that she was engaged or going to be engaged to Colossus. Her ultimate fate at the end of the series is unknown.
Lightning Force
In the reality of Earth-597, an alternative universe where World War II was won by Nazi Germany, Kitty is forced to serve as Shadowcat alongside Nightcrawler, Meggan, and Hauptmann Englande as a member of the Lightning Force (a version of Excalibur), made a virtual slave because of her Jewish heritage. She leads a sad existence and is easily identified by her shaved head and the Star of David tattooed on her forehead. It is indicated, from her own statements and those made by her reality's counterpart of Moira MacTaggert, that this Shadowcat is a true ghost, raised from the dead by a combination of science and magic and bound to serve the Nazi regime. This Shadowcat had the added ability to disrupt life force with her phasing power, knocking her victims unconscious, much like how her counterpart in the "prime" Marvel Universe (Earth-616) can disrupt technology that she phases through. She is also able to alter her facial features to a "demonic" aspect when attacking enemies or else responding to aggressive, commanding behavior from her superiors.
Pirate Kitty
Kitty tells Illyana a bedtime story and casts herself as Pirate Kitty Pryde, captain of the Abdul Alhazred, who operated in a magical world. Unlike her mainstream counterpart, she did not have any mutant powers and wore a classic pirate outfit which also included her Star of David necklace. She was also sometimes known as Colleen. Kitty was good friends of her version of Colossus, the Bamfs (Nightcrawler), Windrider (Storm), the "Fiend-with-no-name" (later revealed to be named "Mean") (Wolverine) and Lockheed (an alternative version of the X-Jet). Kitty also helped her versions of Professor X and Cyclops capture and cure that universe's version of Dark Phoenix.
At first she was only a fairy tale character, but later it is revealed that her fairy tale is actually an alternative universe. (In fact, several members of this universe, the Bamfs, would later come to Earth-616 to cause trouble.) When Earth-616's Nightcrawler was temporarily stranded in her world, Kitty helped him defeat the sorcerer Shagreen and also encountered the Earth-616 versions of Illyana, Lockheed, and herself.
Professor W's X-Men
In the native universe of the Exiles member Nocturne, Kitty is a senior member of the X-Men led by Nightcrawler. She is a teacher and TJ refers to her as "Aunt Kate". During a fight with Apocalypse Kitty gets exposed to a machine that reverts her to a younger stage of her life when she had only been with the X-Men a few weeks. Nocturne helps Kitty fit into the school and becomes her best friend. She also proves useful in the fight against the Brotherhood led by Cyclops.
Ruins
Imprisoned alongside other mutants at a prison camp in Texas by President X, Kitty attempted to use her phasing powers to escape, only to get stuck halfway through her cell door, losing three feet of intestines in the process.
Secret Wars (2015)
During the Secret Wars storyline, a version of Kitty named Kitten resides in the wuxia-inspired K'un-L'un region of Battleworld. In this reality, Kitten is a martial artist who joins Callisto's band of outcasts after being expelled from her school for attempting a forbidden technique, a side effect of which left her intangible. Kitten and her fellow outcasts became pupils of Shang-Chi, the exiled son of Emperor Zheng Zu. Dubbing their new school The Lowest Caste, Shang-Chi represents the group as their master for the tournament deciding the next Emperor of K'un-L'un, hoping to usurp his father's tyrannical rule. Kitten accompanies Shang-Chi for each of his fights in the Thirteen Chambers. During his final fight with Zu, Shang-Chi uses Kitten's technique of intangibility, which leads to his eventual victory and replaces his father as the new Emperor of K'un-L'un.
Ultimate Marvel
The Ultimate version of Shadowcat (Kitty Pryde) first appears as a 14-year-old girl in Ultimate X-Men #21. She is also Jewish and wears the Star of David around her neck, but does not appear to possess the same genius IQ as her mainstream (Earth-616) counterpart.
Kitty's mother, worried about Kitty's mutation, seeks help from Professor Charles Xavier. Kitty becomes a student at Xavier's school, when her mother allows her to attend under the condition she does not take part in any X-Men missions, nor train in any "Danger Room" simulations. Kitty soon rebels against this and joins the X-Men as their youngest member. She idolizes Spider-Man and has a crush on him; she even dates Peter Parker for a time. After a fierce argument with Professor Xavier concerning Peter's secret identity, which his Aunt May had just found out about, Kitty leaves the X-Men and enrolls in Peter's school. Their relationship is strained after their romantic involvement (as superheroes) becomes publicly known, making it impossible for them to date anymore in their civilian identities, and eventually comes to an end when Peter realizes he cannot get over his feelings for Mary Jane. However, Kitty still retains strong feelings for him.
Following the disastrous flood triggered by Magneto and the subsequent ban of public use of mutant powers, Kitty assumes the identity of the Shroud. Kitty also discovers that she can also decrease the space between her atoms make herself super-dense, giving her both superhuman strength and durability. When the authorities see Kitty as a threat, she enters into a fierce rage and demonstrates these powers for the first time to her friends. She is strong and angry enough to punch Spider-Man several feet through the air. She eventually escapes and goes into hiding in the now abandoned Morlock Tunnel with Iceman and the Human Torch after Peter Parker's death.
Kitty makes an appearance in Ultimate Comics: X, locating Jimmy Hudson, who is revealed to be Wolverine's son. Kitty was charged by Logan before his death to locate Jimmy and reveal his true origins to him.
After the death of Spider-Man she formed new team of X-Men consisting of herself, Iceman and the Human Torch. They soon rescued the mutant Rogue from the mutant-hunting Nimrod robots, going on to recruit Jimmy Hudson into their group as well. After killing the mutant-hunting William Stryker, Kitty decided to leave New York for the Southwest along with Bobby, Rogue, and Jimmy (leaving only Johnny behind) in order to save the mutants there and defeat the Nimrods, now controlled by the deceased Stryker's consciousness.
Spider-Gwen
In the reality where Gwen Stacy is Spider-Woman, Kitty is an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Black Ops department, where she works closely with Wolverine to keep him in check and to help him fight his immortal curse. Like the Age of Apocalypse version, she also wields artificial claws on her wrists. It's revealed that she works with Logan out of guilt, as Stryker forced her to use her powers to subject Logan to the Weapon X experiment.
What If
In What if Phoenix Had Not Died, Kitty is obliterated by Dark Phoenix before she destroyed the Earth.
In What If the X-Men had Lost Inferno?, Kitty is one of the last eight remaining superheroes on the planet. She is slain by a demonic Wolverine, but her death makes Wolverine come to his senses and he fights against Baron Mordo, who had joined up with the demon hordes.
In What If... Wolverine: Enemy of the State, Kitty is the only hero left to kill a Hydra-programmed Wolverine after he has taken down the Marvel Universe. Kitty was the last remaining member of the team assembled to recapture Wolverine. The initial plan failed and Kitty was forced to phase her hand into Wolverine's brain. She then solidified her hand killing Wolverine instantly although she lost her hand in the process.
In What if Magneto and Professor X Had Formed The X-Men Together, Kitty is the tech guru at the Good Shepard clinic (That reality's version of the X-Mansion). She is very similar to her mainstream counterpart. But unlike the mainstream version this Kitty Pryde would wear different coloured wigs and cut her natural hair short. She also had trouble with her powers since she would phase herself through a solid object and accidentally leave her clothes behind. She was also friends with Lockheed although she only called him Dragon.
In What if Astonishing X-Men, Kitty is amongst the X-Men who fight a Phoenix powered Emma Frost. She phased Emma's heart from her chest but a Phoenix fire flares up from her body killing Kitty instantly. In the second story during the events of Astonishing X-Men #6-#12 Elixir had not been able to heal Kitty after being impaled and she dies.
In "What if the Dark Phoenix Rose Again", Kitty has Colossus "set up a fastball special" to help her phase into a Master Mold. She is killed after solidifying inside the Master Mold's head destroying it in the process.
In What if Storm Had the Power of the Phoenix, Kitty helps revive the 'real' Storm (the Phoenix being the cosmic entity in Storm's shape) by phasing inside her body and getting her internal organs working again.
X-Babies
An X-Baby version of Shadowcat appears briefly in the X-Babies one-shot comic. She is wearing her original costume and is younger than the other X-Babies. She is named as Shadowkitty rather than Shadowcat or Kitty Pryde. She also doesn't seem to have a strong bond with the X-Baby version of Lockheed.
X-Men Forever
In the X-Men Forever series, Kitty and Nightcrawler have left Excalibur and rejoined the X-Men after the events of X-Men #1-3. Of the X-Men, she undergoes the most drastic changes from the events of X-Men Forever #1. During the battle with Fabian Cortez, she phases through Wolverine while he is being affected by Cortez's power. This drives her powers haywire as well, and somehow she ends up with one of Wolverine's claws in her wrist. Claremont has also hinted in dialogue throughout the title so far that she may have also undergone psychological or psychic changes as a result of the event. From Forever #4 to the current issue, she is shown to be able to use the claw in the exact method Wolverine would manifest it, with no apparent ill effects (the mechanism for this has not yet been made clear) outside of excruciating pain. Because of the merger with Logan's DNA she has begun to develop a healing factor, slower than Wolverine's but it heals faster when she is intangible. She has also slightly enhanced senses, she also can produce a set of five retractable claws on her left hand like Sabretooth. She has also begun to take on Logan's personality and memories as well. And because of this she is beginning to wonder what part of her truly remains the same.
X-Men: Misfits
In the X-Men: Misfits original English language manga one-shot graphic novel from Marvel and DelRay, Kitty is the newest and only female student of the all-male Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters, which is now experimenting with having a co-ed student body. As the sole girl, she becomes the center of attention and attraction for the rest of the students. She becomes a member and the mascot of the elitist fraternity, The Hellfire Club, and has a short-lived romantic relationship with the school troublemaker Pyro.
X-Men: The End
In the X-Men: The End future, Kitty Pryde becomes the mayor of Chicago and then President of the United States. She has three children: her eldest daughter, named Meredith, and twins 10 years younger than Meredith, Sara and Doug, with an unnamed partner who died protecting her from an assassination attempt.
Miscellaneous
In Excalibur #103, we see many alternative versions of Shadowcat. Many of these variations have appeared in other comics, such as Age of Apocalypse, but there were other variations, including one of her as a Phalanx convert, a sex dominatrix, a homeless person, a nun, a version wearing a costume similar to Phantom Girl, and a normal person who owns an Olde Curiosity Shoppe.
In New Mutants #63 Illyana (Magik), along with Lockheed, gets trapped on an alien spaceship that has been invaded by a Brood Queen. On this ship the Brood Queen created clones of the X-Men, including Kitty. This one had the Ariel suit on, but it was green, instead of the typical blue. These X-Men are implanted with Brood eggs. Her memories were altered by the Brood Queen like the other X-Men, but eventually they rebel against her and are free. Illyana uses the soulsword to eliminate the Brood Eggs from their bodies. The X-Men stay on the ship; whether they are still on it is unknown.
During the Cross Time Caper storyline a few different appearances of Kitty appear. One was a princess who was gifted with magic abilities. She eventually married a short dashing prince (who had originally fallen in love with the mainstream version of Kitty). A second version was a crime boss who was betrayed and killed by her partner in crime Illiyana Rasputin. A third was from a world of sentient dinosaurs. She went by the name of Shadowcompsognathus.
Collected editions
Several of Kitty Pryde's earlier adventures were collected in paperback form.
In other media
Music
Kitty Pryde is referenced in Weezer's song "In the Garage" from their "Blue Album".
Television
Kitty Pryde appeared as Sprite in "The X-Men Adventure" episode of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, which guest-starred the X-Men. She was voiced by Melissa Sue Anderson. She also appeared in her short-lived "Ariel" costume in the X-Men group cameo at the end of the episode "The Education of a Superhero".
Kitty Pryde (voiced by Kath Soucie) was a viewpoint character in the animated television one-shot Pryde of the X-Men, as the newest member of the team. She is a new recruit of the team and is initially frightened of Nightcrawler, due to his demonic appearance. She and Nightcrawler later succeed in defeating Magneto. Once Nightcrawler seemingly dies as a result of having apparently sacrificed himself, Kitty begins to cry until discovering that he is alive and is met with positive relations by her teammates, except Wolverine. As the pilot was a failure, and the character had lost prominence in comics at the time, she was not used in the next X-Men TV series, not even in cameos. Jubilee replaced her as the young viewpoint character, and in the adaptations of stories that involved her.
In the animated series X-Men: Evolution, Shadowcat is a main character, who is shown as the teenybopper of the team and who has a romantic interest in Brotherhood member Lance Alvers. Shadowcat saves Wolverine in the season one episode "Grim Reminder", where she unintentionally stows away with Nightcrawler while on the Blackbird without the knowledge that he was beginning to pilot the jet. She is also shown to have developed a close friendship with Nightcrawler, despite the fact that she at first displayed a dislike for his appearance. Besides Nightcrawler, she is shown to have formed a friendship with Rogue and Spyke. Her initial dislike of his appearance changes after he is severely wounded by Rogue, while she and the rest of the X-Men tried to recruit her. In this series, she does not have Lockheed for a pet, but she is shown preferring to sleep with a stuffed dragon instead of a teddy bear. Though she has an on-and-off interest in the delinquent mutant boy Lance Alvers, early in the series she displays interest in Cyclops. After Rogue is recruited, she serves as her support in beginning a romantic relationship with Scott and develops a friendship with her, despite their differences. When Avalanche tries to join the X-Men in the season two episode "Joyride", she tries to help him and shows additional attraction to him as she grades him and the other members of the junior team. After he informs her that some members of the group have started a joyride on the Blackbird and helps her avert catastrophe, she staunchly defends him once he is accused by Cyclops of being responsible. When Avalanche starts to leave, Shadowcat gives him a brief kiss before his departure. Their relationship continues with the two of them going to a school dance, talking on the phone and going to the mall. Despite being with the Brotherhood, Avalanche tries to protect Kitty in the fight against the Scarlet Witch. In season 3, Kitty and Lance's relationship briefly ends after the Brotherhood and Mystique blow up the X Mansion and are in part responsible for the exposure of mutants. Kitty calls Lance a "hood" after he attacks the high school and he says "he will never be good enough for her". Both look sad at these comments. In the fourth season, the X-Men try to use her powers to damage one of Apocalypse's domes and fails, instead being electrocuted briefly. In the fiftieth episode of the series, entitled "Ghost of a Chance", she comes across Danielle Moonstar once she depicts herself in a dream sequence to her. Once she wakes out of it, she tries to and successfully finds her, becoming friends with the girl after learning she had been in suspended animation for two years. Prior to this, it is discovered that her fear is phasing repeatedly into the ground and going further without any control of where she is going. Shadowcat plays a key role in the defeat of Apocalypse and asks the Brotherhood for help. They come to her aid; as Lance and Kitty resume their romantic relationship. Of the six main X-Men from the first season of the series, she is one of the four that is still a member of the team in the future Charles Xavier saw while in the mind of Apocalypse. Shadowcat was voiced by Maggie Blue O'Hara.
Shadowcat appears in Wolverine and the X-Men, voiced by Danielle Judovits and was a student at the Xavier Institute before the destruction of the X-Mansion and disappearance of Professor X. When Wolverine reformed the X-Men to take down the Mutant Response Division and save the dismal future controlled by the Sentinels, Kitty was on her way to the "mutant paradise" Genosha. The X-Men came to re-recruit her and she immediately rejoined the team. Shadowcat appears as the youngest member of the team and she seems to have a crush on Iceman as she is jealous when his attention is taken by Emma Frost and is shown with a love-struck face when she lands on Bobby during a Danger Room training session, though she quickly moves away from him when Angel arrives. She seems to have formed a friendship with Tildie Soames after babysitting her in one episode. In the last episode of the series, she uses her powers to penetrate a Sentinel controlled by Magneto, of which Beast had difficulty with. Her design is inspired by the appearance of the character in the Astonishing X-Men comics, and her costume emulates the design with the appearance of the blue and yellow used on her costume. The shorts she wears are based on the appearances of the original X-Men, and her first appearance when she wore a variant of the uniform.
Shadowcat appears in The Super Hero Squad Show episode "And Lo...A Pilot Shall Come". She appears alongside Colossus at the unveiling of the Great Wall that separates Super Hero City from Villainville and helping citizens into the S.H.I.E.L.D. Shelters. In the episode "Mysterious Mayhem at Mutant Academy", she uses Lockheed to chase Reptil and the hypnotized X-Men out of the girls' bathroom.
Motion comics
Shadowcat appears in the Astonishing X-Men motion comic, voiced by Eileen Stevens and later by Laura Harris.
Film
In the film X-Men, she has a small cameo, played by Sumela Kay. She is referenced as the "girl in Illinois who can walk through walls" by Senator Kelly. She is shown in Xavier's class when Wolverine walks in; she returns for her books which she had left behind, grabs them, and phases through the door on her way out. Xavier responds with a cheerful "Bye, Kitty" while Wolverine looks on, startled.
In X2, she has a brief appearance played by Katie Stuart. She is shown phasing through walls and through people to escape William Stryker's military forces during their attack on the X-Mansion. Another scene shows her falling through her bed to avoid an assault. She shares a room with Siryn; in the novelization it is stated that this is because her phasing ability gives her partial protection from Siryn's scream. When the President of the United States asks Professor Xavier how he got the files he gave him, Xavier replies that he knows a little girl who can walk through walls.
In X-Men: The Last Stand, she is portrayed by a pre-transition Elliot Page, and has a central role. She serves as a rival to Rogue for the romantic attentions of Iceman, since their close friendship and their kiss (deleted scene) make Rogue increasingly jealous and frustrated. She also joins the X-Men in the battle on Alcatraz Island, breaking off from the battle to save Leech from the Juggernaut. In the novelization of the film, it is hinted that at some point Kitty had a romantic relationship with Colossus, but that it had long since run its course, although Colossus appears to still retain feelings towards her.
Page reprised the role in X-Men: Days of Future Past. Pryde is the prime facilitator because she has developed a new power. In this film, she can send the consciousness of another person back into his or her body in the past. At the beginning of the film, she has been using this ability to repeatedly send Bishop four days back in time whenever the Sentinels attack, thus; preventing her group from ever engaging them by having him warn the past team before they are detected. In order to prevent the Sentinels' creation, she sends Wolverine back to 1973 (chosen as the strain of sending someone else back that far would snap their mind, with Logan's healing factor the only thing that makes such a trip survivable for him) and was gravely injured when Wolverine becomes violent; due to provocation from events in 1973. After the timeline was successfully altered, Kitty is seen teaching a class at the X-Mansion with Colossus. In the film's alternate release, called The Rogue Cut, Kitty's injuries from sending Wolverine back to the past result in the X-Men rescuing Rogue to take over for her. Rogue absorbs Kitty's powers and takes over, stabilizing Wolverine and Kitty helps Magneto flee a Sentinel attack.
In January 2018, a Kitty Pryde solo movie was announced to be in development, with Tim Miller attached as the director and Brian Michael Bendis as the writer, but in March 2019, after Disney's purchase of 21st Century Fox, Fox executive Emma Watts described The New Mutants as the final film in the X-Men series, thus; ending the development of the Kitty Pryde film.
Video games
Kitty Pryde appears in Konami's 1992 X-Men video arcade game, as a non-playable character (NPC). In this game, she is not known as "Sprite"; instead, she plays the "damsel in distress" role as it is based on "Pryde of the X-Men". In the 2010 re-release of the game she is voiced by Mela Lee.
Shadowcat is a playable character in the game X-Men II: The Fall of the Mutants.
Shadowcat appears as an NPC in the X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse, voiced by Kim Mai Guest. She has special dialogue with Colossus (who she scolds for flirting with Scarlet Witch).
Shadowcat appears in X-Men: The Official Game, with Kim Mai Guest reprising her role.
Shadowcat is a playable character in Marvel Super Hero Squad Online, voiced by Tara Strong.
In X-Men: Destiny, Gambit mentions that the U-Men had captured Kitty and extracted bits of her power. Gambit obtains a vial of a substance which temporarily lets the character fall through the roof (if the player chose the correct option).
Kitty Pryde is a playable character in the Facebook game Marvel: Avengers Alliance.
Kitty Pryde is a playable character in the X-Men: Days of Future Past app game.
Kitty Pryde is a playable character in the online MMO Marvel Heroes, with Danielle Judovits reprising her role.
Kitty Pryde appears as a playable character in Marvel Future Fight.
Kitty Pryde appears as a playable character in Marvel Puzzle Quest.
Kitty Pryde appears as a playable character in Marvel Strike Force.
Novels
Kitty Pryde appears in the X-Men/Star Trek crossover novel Planet X. In it, she is examined by Geordi La Forge, who notes the similarities between her ability and the chroniton displacement he and Ro Laren experienced in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Next Phase".
Reception
Kitty Pryde has been well received as a comic book character and as a member of the X-Men. Wizard magazine put her at number #13 in 200 Greatest Comic Characters of All Time. She was the highest female comic character in the list beating rivals such as Wonder Woman, Buffy Summers, and She-Hulk. IGN ranked her as the 47th greatest comic book hero of all time stating that "as X-Men writers have often found it useful to introduce younger teen recruits to offset the experienced members of the team, Kitty Pryde set the standard when she debuted, and none have surpassed her". IGN rated Kitty Pryde #3 on its list of the Top 25 X-Men from the Past 40 Years describing her as the mutant everyman, the common girl turned superhero; IGN also stated that as her pet dragon, Lockheed, "became instantly attached to Kitty, [they] were hooked early on". Marvel.com ranked her as the tenth greatest X-Men member stating that "unquestionably, the dynamic of the X-Men shifted entirely when teenage whiz kid Kitty Pryde joined the team in the early 1980s"; Marvel.com also stated that even though Kitty has since blossomed into a young woman of considerable maturity and power, she remains the access point to the X-Men for countless readers. A later list on Marvel's website, ranking the top 50 X-Men characters, placed her in first place, citing the ease of identifying with her for the audience, and her development over the years.
Notes
References
External links
Kitty Pryde at Marvel.com
UncannyXmen.net Spotlight on Shadowcat
American superheroes
Characters created by Chris Claremont
Characters created by John Byrne (comics)
Comics characters introduced in 1980
Excalibur (comics)
Female characters in animation
Female characters in film
Female characters in television
Fictional American Jews in comics
Fictional bisexual females
Fictional characters from Illinois
Fictional characters who can turn intangible
Fictional dancers
Fictional female ninja
Fictional linguists
Fictional mayors
Fictional schoolteachers
Fictional secret agents and spies
Fictional women soldiers and warriors
Jewish superheroes
Marvel Comics female superheroes
Marvel Comics film characters
Marvel Comics LGBT superheroes
Marvel Comics martial artists
Marvel Comics mutants
S.H.I.E.L.D. agents
Teenage characters in comics
X-Men members | true | [
"\"The Prime Mover\" is episode 57 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on March 24, 1961 on CBS.\n\nOpening narration\n\nPlot\nSmall-time gambler Ace Larsen discovers that his partner, Jimbo Cobb, has telekinetic powers after a car overturns outside their café and Jimbo moves the car without touching it.\n\nAce plans to use Jimbo's powers to win big in Las Vegas, and he takes his girlfriend Kitty with them. Ace wins many jackpots, disregarding Jimbo's headaches from the use of his powers and his growing moral concerns over what they are doing. Kitty is repulsed and leaves, so Ace uses his newly acquired cash to lure the attention of the casino's cigarette girl and bets the pile in a game of craps, just as Jimbo's powers appear to \"run out\". The loss awakens Ace to the reality of what he has become, and he and Jimbo have a good laugh over their misfortune. The three return home and, back at the café, Ace asks Kitty to marry him just as Jimbo drops his broom. She flips a coin, and Ace calls \"heads\". Kitty doesn't show Ace the coin or tell him the result of the coin toss; Kitty simply accepts his proposal. As they embrace, Jimbo picks up the broom telekinetically, revealing he faked his loss of power to snap Ace out of his greed.\n\nClosing narration\n\nCast\nDane Clark as Ace Larsen\nBuddy Ebsen as Jimbo Cobb\nJane Burgess as Sheila\nChristine White as Kitty Cavanaugh\nWilliam Keene as Desk clerk\nNesdon Booth as Big Phil Nolan \nClancy Cooper as Trucker\n\nProduction\nThe crash scene re-uses footage from the 1958 film Thunder Road.\n\nSee also\n List of The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) episodes\n\nReferences\nDeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. \nGrams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing.\n\nExternal links\n \n\n1961 American television episodes\nThe Twilight Zone (1959 TV series season 2) episodes\nTelevision shows written by Charles Beaumont\nTelevision episodes about telekinesis\nTelevision episodes written by George Clayton Johnson\nTelevision episodes set in Las Vegas",
"Kitty Powers' Matchmaker is a 2014 simulation video game that was developed by Magic Notion and published through Mastertronic Group. It is available on Windows, OS X, Android, PlayStation 4 and iOS. The mobile version of the game was released on September 3, 2014 and a desktop edition was launched on April 22, 2015 on Steam. The game's premise has the player serving as an employee to drag queen and matchmaker Kitty Powers.\n\nThe game has become popular among Let's Play personalities on YouTube, however the developer has cautioned users about posting videos as the game's soundtrack contains copyrighted music that may be automatically flagged by the website.\n\nSynopsis and game play\nKitty Powers has recently launched a new branch of her dating service and has hired the player to serve as her newest matchmaker. Players can personalize their character and perform a personality quiz to create their own profile. There is an option that allows players to allow their character data (minus the name) to other players, who will try to successfully match the character with other people. Clients can be matched up with someone of the same gender.\n\nWhile playing the game players must try to match their clients' personal tastes with that of their prospective dates. If their attributes are to the other's liking, this will cause the pair to fall in love with one another, but matching up people with opposing interests runs the risk of ruining the date. Dates are held at one of several restaurants themed around various countries, each of which has differing levels of difficulty. During the date players must successfully guide their client through minigames and typical date questions on topics such as hobbies, personality, and employment. If a client finds that their date has expressed a preference or a feature that they do not like, players are given the ability to either tell the truth or lie about their opinion. If they choose to lie, the player must spin a wheel that will decide if the lie is detected or not.\n\nDevelopment\nKitty Powers' Matchmaker's premise was developed by Rich Franke, who chose to incorporate his drag personality of Kitty Powers into the game. He decided to do this for several reasons, stating that he had \"been messing about with drag for a while and I wanted a good reason to evolve it and take it to a new place. Secondly I felt drag and video games hadn't really collided properly yet and this might be a good way to do it. Thirdly I wanted to make my debut game unique, and a real reflection of me and my voice. Kitty seemed like a good way to tick all of the boxes.\"\n\nReception\nKitty Powers' Matchmaker received \"mixed or average reviews\" from critics, according to review aggregator Metacritic.\n\nPolygon rated the game favorably, writing \"Gay, straight, everything is great in Kitty Powers Matchmaker\". Hardcore Gamer was more mixed in its review, and commented that the players would be better off purchasing the game on their mobile devices where it was cheaper and better suited for \"the brevity of play\". They added that the game also \"provides a solid casual title for those looking to play cupid.\"\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n Making Kitty Powers' Matchmaker: Adventures of a Videogame Drag Queen by Richard Franke at the 2015 Game Developers Conference\n\n2014 video games\nAndroid (operating system) games\nIOS games\nMacOS games\nPuzzle video games\nVideo games developed in the United Kingdom\nWindows games"
] |
[
"Kitty Pryde",
"Publication history",
"What was the first publication date?",
"The fictional Kitty Pryde first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980),",
"How long was the publication?",
"I don't know.",
"Who introduced the character Kitty Pryde?",
"Uncanny X-Men artist John Byrne named Kitty Pryde after a classmate he met in art school, Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary in 1973.",
"What is the story behind the name Kitty Pryde?",
"He had told Pryde he liked her name and asked for permission to use it, promising to name his first original comics character after her.",
"Where did the Kitty part come from?",
"Claremont said several elements of the character's personality were derived from those of X-Men editor Louise Simonson's daughter, Julie.",
"What were Kitty's powers going to be?",
"Claremont and Byrne made the new character a full-fledged X-Man in issue #139, where she was codenamed \"Sprite\"."
] | C_98d6a9f0735942e3a427f07b743f5a4d_1 | How was Kitty accepted into the Xmen issues by readers? | 7 | How was Kitty accepted into the Xmen issues by readers? | Kitty Pryde | Kitty Pryde was introduced into the X-Men title as the result of an editorial dictate that the book was supposed to depict a school for mutants. Uncanny X-Men artist John Byrne named Kitty Pryde after a classmate he met in art school, Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary in 1973. He had told Pryde he liked her name and asked for permission to use it, promising to name his first original comics character after her. Byrne drew the character to slightly resemble an adolescent Sigourney Weaver. The fictional Kitty Pryde first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980), by writer Chris Claremont and artist Byrne, as a highly intelligent 13-year-old girl. Claremont said several elements of the character's personality were derived from those of X-Men editor Louise Simonson's daughter, Julie. Claremont and Byrne made the new character a full-fledged X-Man in issue #139, where she was codenamed "Sprite". She was the main character in issues #141-142, the "Days of Future Past" storyline, where she is possessed by her older self, whose consciousness time travels to the past to prevent a mass extermination of mutants. The six-issue miniseries Kitty Pryde and Wolverine (1984-1985), written by Claremont, is a coming-of-age storyline in which she matures from a girl to a young woman, adopting the new name "Shadowcat". In the late '80s, she joined the British-based super team, Excalibur, where she remained for roughly ten years before coming back to the X-Men. In the early 2000s, she disappeared from the spotlight after semi-retiring from superhero work. She was featured in the 2002 mini-series Mekanix and came back to the main X-Men books in 2004 under the pen of Joss Whedon in Astonishing X-Men. She remained a part of the X-Men books until 2008 when she left again for roughly 2 years. After coming back, she was featured in Jason Aaron's Wolverine and the X-Men and Brian Michael Bendis' All-New X-Men books. In early 2015, she joined the Guardians of the Galaxy. After the Secret Wars event, she adopted her new alias, Star-Lord (first believed to be Star-Lady). Shadowcat's popularity had a profound effect on the real-life Kitty Pryde: the latter became so overwhelmed by attention from Shadowcat fans, she abbreviated her name to K.D. Pryde to avoid association with her fictional counterpart. She has since stated she has mixed feelings about her fame, saying she values Byrne's comics for their entertainment and artistic value, but wishes more people would appreciate her as more than just Shadowcat's namesake. CANNOTANSWER | Shadowcat's popularity had a profound effect on the real-life Kitty Pryde: the latter became so overwhelmed by attention from Shadowcat fans, she abbreviated her name to K.D. Pryde | Katherine Anne "Kitty" Pryde is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics, commonly in association with the X-Men. The character first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980) and was co-created by writer-artist John Byrne and Chris Claremont.
A mutant, Pryde possesses a "phasing" ability that allows her, as well as objects or people she is in contact with, to become intangible. This power also disrupts any electrical field she passes through, and lets her simulate levitation.
The youngest to join the X-Men, she was first portrayed as a "kid sister" to many older members of the group, filling the role of literary foil to the more established characters. She occasionally used the codenames Sprite and Ariel, cycling through several uniforms until settling for her trademark black-and-gold costume. During the miniseries Kitty Pryde and Wolverine, she was renamed Shadowcat, the alias she would be most associated with, and shifted to a more mature depiction in her subsequent appearances. Pryde would eventually abandon her nickname, "Kitty", and switch to "Kate". She was one of the main cast of characters depicted in the original Excalibur title. After momentarily joining the Guardians of the Galaxy, she assumed her then-fiancé's superhero identity as the Star-Lord (Star-Lady). As of the series Marauders, she is now informally known as Captain Kate Pryde and the Red Queen of the Hellfire Trading Company.
In the X-Men film series, Kitty Pryde was initially portrayed by young actresses in cameos; Sumela Kay in X-Men (2000) and Katie Stuart in X2 (2003). Later, a pre-transition Elliot Page portrayed the character in X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) and X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) in full-length appearances. Pryde is ranked #47 in IGN's Top 100 Comic Book Heroes.
Publication history
Kitty Pryde was introduced into the X-Men title as the result of an editorial dictate that the book was supposed to depict a school for mutants. Uncanny X-Men artist John Byrne named Kitty Pryde after a classmate he met in art school, Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary in 1973. He had told Pryde he liked her name and asked for permission to use it, promising to name his first original comics character after her. Byrne drew the character to slightly resemble an adolescent Sigourney Weaver.
The fictional Kitty Pryde first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980), by writer Chris Claremont and artist Byrne, as a highly intelligent 13-year-old girl. Claremont said several elements of the character's personality were derived from those of X-Men editor Louise Simonson's daughter, Julie. Claremont and Byrne made the new character a full-fledged X-Man in issue #139, where she was codenamed "Sprite". She was the main character in issues #141–142, the "Days of Future Past" storyline, where she is possessed by her older self, whose consciousness time travels to the past to prevent a mass extermination of mutants. The six-issue miniseries Kitty Pryde and Wolverine (1984–1985), written by Claremont, is a coming-of-age storyline in which she matures from a girl to a young woman, adopting the new name "Shadowcat".
In the late 1980s, Kitty joined the British-based super team, Excalibur, where she remained for roughly ten years before coming back to the X-Men. In the early 2000s, she disappeared from the spotlight after semi-retiring from superhero work. She was featured in the 2002 mini-series Mekanix and came back to the main X-Men books in 2004 under the pen of Joss Whedon in Astonishing X-Men. She remained a part of the X-Men books until 2008 when she left again for roughly 2 years. After coming back, she was featured in Jason Aaron's Wolverine and the X-Men and Brian Michael Bendis' All-New X-Men books.
In early 2015, she joined the Guardians of the Galaxy. After the Secret Wars event, she adopted her new alias, Star-Lord (first believed to be Star-Lady).
In 2020, Kitty Pryde was revealed to be bisexual. Her co-creator, Chris Claremont, had always intended this to be the case, considering Rachel Summers as a possible love interest for Pryde. However, Claremont wasn't allowed to show this at the time due to censorship, as he revealed on the "Xplain the X-Men" podcast in 2016.
Shadowcat's popularity had a profound effect on the real-life Kitty Pryde: the latter became so overwhelmed by attention from Shadowcat fans, she abbreviated her name to K.D. Pryde to avoid association with her fictional counterpart. She has since stated she has mixed feelings about her fame, saying she values Byrne's comics for their entertainment and artistic value, but wishes more people would appreciate her as more than just Shadowcat's namesake.
Fictional character biography
Katherine Anne "Kitty" Pryde was born in Deerfield, Illinois, to Carmen and Theresa Pryde. She is an Ashkenazi Jewish-American and her paternal grandfather, Samuel Prydeman, was held in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. Kitty started to have headaches at age thirteen, signaling the emergence of her mutant powers. She was approached by both the X-Men's Charles Xavier and the Hellfire Club's White Queen, Emma Frost, both of whom hoped to recruit her for their respective causes. Kitty was unnerved by Frost, observing that the White Queen looked at her as if she were "something good to eat." She got along better with Xavier and the three X-Men who escorted him, quickly becoming friends with Ororo Munroe. Ororo told Kitty who she really was and about the X-Men, which made the teenager even more enthusiastic about attending Xavier's school.
Their conversation was cut short when they (along with Wolverine and Colossus) were attacked by armored mercenaries in the employ of Frost and the Hellfire Club. The X-Men defeated their assailants, but were subdued by the White Queen's telepathic powers immediately after. In the confusion, Kitty was separated from the X-Men, and not captured along with them. She managed to contact Cyclops, Phoenix, and Nightcrawler. With the help of Dazzler and Pryde, those X-Men rescued their teammates from the Hellfire Club.
The White Queen appeared to perish in the battle, which meant she was no longer competing with Xavier for the approval of Kitty's parents. Kitty's parents had not heard from her in more than a day, because during that time she was first being pursued by the Hellfire Club's men and then working with the X-Men to save their friends. All they knew was Kitty had left with Xavier's "students" to get a soda, there had been reports that the soda shop had been blown up, and Kitty had been missing since. Therefore, they were angry at Xavier when he finally returned with Kitty in tow. At first, it seemed like there was no chance of Kitty being allowed to attend the school and join the X-Men. Phoenix then used her considerable telepathic power to erase the memories of Kitty's parents and plant false ones, resulting in a complete shift in their attitude towards Xavier. Kitty was then allowed to enroll at Xavier's school with her parents' blessing, becoming the youngest member of the team.
Joining the X-Men
Kitty joined the X-Men, and assumed the costumed identity of Sprite. Early in her career as an X-Man, Kitty's adult self from an alternate future took possession of her body in the present to help X-Men thwart the assassination of Senator Robert Kelly by the second Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Kitty then singlehandedly defeated a N'Garai demon. Kitty also briefly attended the White Queen's Massachusetts Academy when her parents became convinced that she needed to be with students of her own age, but following a failed attempt to subdue the X-Men, Frost revoked Kitty's admission.
During her teen years, Kitty fostered a number of close relationships with others at the school and in the X-Men. She developed a crush on Colossus and became close friends with his little sister Illyana Rasputin. Initially uneasy around Nightcrawler and other mutants with physical deformities, Kitty finally overcame her fears and became close friends with him. Kitty also befriended Lockheed, a highly intelligent alien resembling a dragon, who followed her home after a mission in outer space. Lockheed is extremely loyal to Kitty, and the two of them share a psychic bond. Wolverine became something of a mentor to Kitty despite his usually gruff personality. Storm came to view Kitty as the daughter she never had.
Though Xavier has threatened to reassign Kitty to the New Mutants, a team of younger mutants he established in the absence of the X-Men, ever since the X-Men returned from outer space, she never ended up joining the group, who she derisively calls the "X-Babies". Kitty was later abducted by the Morlocks and nearly forced to wed Caliban. She was then abducted by the White Queen, but rescued by the New Mutants.
During this time, Kitty began to date Colossus, although this did not last long. Colossus developed feelings for an alien woman named Zsaji whom he met on the Beyonder's planet in the first Secret Wars. Colossus' feelings toward Zsaji were primarily a side effect of her own unique healing abilities, which she had used on him after he became injured. Regardless, Colossus' feelings were real and he returned to Earth consumed with grief after Zsaji's death. He admitted to Kitty that he loved Zsaji, which hurt her deeply and ended the budding romantic relationship. Kitty had made good friends with a local boy from Salem Central named Doug Ramsey around this time, but her feelings for him never went as deep as his for her, and they never actually dated, though they remained close, even more so after Doug's status as a mutant was revealed and he joined the New Mutants under the codename Cypher. They remained friends until his death some time later.
Ogun
During the 1984–1985 Kitty Pryde and Wolverine miniseries, Kitty is possessed by a demon, the ninja Ogun. Ogun psychically bestows upon Kitty a virtual lifetime of martial arts training. Kitty was brainwashed by Ogun into becoming a ninja assassin, and was sent to attack Wolverine. Kitty is able to resist Ogun's influence with Wolverine's help, and the two form a strong teacher/student bond, which helps them in vanquishing Ogun. Kitty returns to the X-Men, no longer the innocent girl they once knew, and officially adopts the codename Shadowcat.
Morlock Massacre
While trying to save Rogue, Kitty was badly injured by Harpoon's energy spear during the Mutant Massacre story arc, in the massacre of the Morlocks, with the result that she lost control of her power and was stuck in an intangible state and could not regain her solidity. She was rushed to Muir Island along with other surviving casualties of the Massacre to be tended to by Moira MacTaggert. MacTaggert was able to keep Kitty's condition from deteriorating to the point where she completely lost physical substance and ceased to exist, but was not able to do any more to help her.
At this time, Kitty's natural state was to be intangible. Where she once had to make a conscious effort to phase, she could now only maintain her solidity through an act of conscious will. The X-Men went to Reed Richards, Mister Fantastic of the Fantastic Four, for aid, but Richards initially refused because he was not sure he would be able to help.
Having nowhere else to go, the X-Men turned to Richards' enemy Doctor Doom. This created a moral dilemma for both the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, and both teams fought each other because the Fantastic Four were trying to stop the treatment while the X-Men were determined to save Kitty's life. In the end, both the personal crisis of the Fantastic Four and the life of Shadowcat were saved after Franklin Richards, with the help of Lockheed, brought both teams to their senses. Kitty has since recovered from this state and now has full control over her power again.
Excalibur
Among the others injured and brought to Muir Isle were Colossus and Nightcrawler, although Colossus left the United Kingdom shortly after being released from MacTaggert's care to join the rest of the X-Men on their mission to battle the Adversary. The X-Men sacrificed their lives to defeat the Adversary, the battle and their sacrifice was televised and broadcast across the world. The X-Men were resurrected later in the same issue, unknown to the world at large, but chose to keep a low profile and perpetuate the belief that they were still dead. This strategy was enforced to more effectively fight their enemies. This meant avoiding contact with friends and family, including Kitty. Thinking the X-Men were dead, Kitty and Nightcrawler joined Rachel Summers, Captain Britain, and Meggan to form the Britain-based team Excalibur. For a brief time, Kitty studied at St. Searle's School for Girls in Britain. During her time with Excalibur, Kitty developed a crush on Professor Alistaire Stuart which went unreciprocated since Alistaire was attracted to Rachel. Later, she was romantically involved with former Black Air agent Pete Wisdom. At some point Kitty was recruited by the international law enforcement agency S.H.I.E.L.D. to repair the computer system of their flying headquarters. Kitty discovered the problem was due to Ogun's spirit having infiltrated the computer system, and with the aid of Wolverine, she managed to purge Ogun's presence. During this time, Kitty was attracted to a S.H.I.E.L.D. intern her own age, and this made her begin to doubt her relationship with Wisdom. Soon after, she broke off their relationship.
Back to the X-Men
After Excalibur's dissolution, Shadowcat, Nightcrawler, and Colossus return to the X-Men. While returning, they faced a group of imposters following Cerebro, in the guise of Professor X. While tracking Mystique, she stumbles onto prophetic diaries that belonged to Irene Adler, a precognitive. During the six-month gap, Kitty visited Genosha. Whatever she experienced there is unknown (although presumably connected to her father, living on Genosha at the time), but it had a profound effect on her. She cut her hair and began to act rebelliously, also using one of Wolverine's bone claws broken off during battle as a weapon. Kitty remained with the X-Men for a while before leaving after the apparent death of Colossus. Trying to give herself a normal life, she attended the University of Chicago. During this time, her father was killed when Cassandra Nova’s Sentinels destroyed Genosha. Kitty later finds a recording of his death due to exploring footage of the attack. She is also kidnapped by William Stryker, but the X-Treme X-Men team helped her escape, and she assisted them on several missions.
At the start of Joss Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men, Kitty once again rejoins the X-Men, despite having extreme reservations about working with the former White Queen, given their history. This was the primary reason why Frost herself wanted Kitty on the team, as a sort of "safety" should Frost ever revert to type. Frost reasoned that the person who trusted her least would be most likely to spot such behavior. On one of the team's first missions, Shadowcat discovered Colossus was alive. After some initial awkwardness, Kitty and Colossus resumed dating.
Kitty Pryde appeared alongside Colossus in the "Blinded by the Light" arc in X-Men. They are the two X-Men left to look after the students while the rest of the X-Men leave for Mystique's home in Mississippi to check up on Rogue, during which they are ambushed by the Marauders. Kitty and Colossus, meanwhile, attempt to protect the students from a faction of the Marauders led by Exodus. It is revealed over the course of the story that Kitty, worried of the Destiny Diaries' safety, devised a plan with Cyclops and Emma Frost to hide them and have Emma wipe the location from her mind. The location could only be revealed by a code word spoken to Kitty. The arc concludes with a battle between Iceman and Cannonball against the Marauders for the diaries, during which they are destroyed by Gambit.
In the "Torn" arc, the latest incarnation of the Hellfire Club begin an assault on Xavier's School. Kitty fulfilled the role that Emma Frost envisioned, personally taking down Frost and imprisoning her, only to fall under a telepathic delusion created by Hellfire member Perfection, who claimed to be the true, unreformed Emma Frost. Under this delusion, Kitty was made to believe that she and Colossus had conceived a child, which was later taken away by the X-Men because its potential mutant abilities were supposedly dangerous. Kitty reacts in the delusion by attempting to rescue the child from a near-inescapable "box" in the depths of the school, unaware that in reality she is freeing an alien entity, Stuff, who contains the trapped consciousness of Cassandra Nova, the apparent ringleader of this new Hellfire Club. A newly awakened Cyclops revealed that the new Hellfire Club, including Perfection and Nova, are actually mental projections created by a piece of Cassandra Nova's consciousness; which became lodged in Emma's mind during the X-Men's last confrontation with her, playing on her survivor's guilt over the Genoshan massacre, and utilizing Emma's telepathy to both confound the X-Men and orchestrate her (Nova's) escape from the Stuff body. As Cyclops killed the mental projections, Emma tried to force Kitty to kill her to get rid of Nova. Undeterred, Cassandra Nova switched her focus to attempt to transfer her mind to Hisako Ichiki. It appears that Nova did not succeed, as the team was transported to S.W.O.R.D.'s air station en route to Ord's Breakworld for the "Unstoppable" arc that concludes Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men.
Breakworld
As the team prepares to end the confrontation with the Breakworld leader, the team splits up—with Kitty on the team appointed to stop the missile pointed at Earth. Kitty phases into the missile to disrupt its circuitry noting that it is composed of the same material as the rest of Breakworld, a material that is difficult and exhausting for her to phase through. After phasing for a mile into the missile, Kitty finds the center only to discover it empty. The missile is fired, causing Kitty to pass out inside of it as Beast discovers too late that due to its shape, trajectory, and lack of internal circuitry, the Breakworld's weapon is not a missile, but a bullet. As the bullet hurtles toward Earth, Kitty lies unconscious within it.
As the situation becomes increasingly dire, Emma establishes mental contact with Kitty, reassuring her that she will come out of this fine, though it eventually becomes clear to both that the situation will be grim. Kitty and Emma come to an understanding and reconciliation, Emma stating that she never wanted something like this to happen to her. Kitty then phases the bullet through Earth, but is trapped within. At the end of Giant-Size Astonishing X-Men, Scott Summers mentions that Doctor Strange, Reed Richards, and some "top men" tried to save her, but believe she has fused to the bullet, as it continues to hurtle through space. Whether she is alive or dead is unknown, though the X-Men consider her lost to them.
As a result of these events Kitty does not appear in the X-Men crossover event X-Men: Messiah Complex, since this takes place after the events of Giant-Size Astonishing X-Men. She is briefly mentioned in the aftermath of the Messiah Complex, by Colossus, Nightcrawler, and Wolverine, as the three of them discuss "losing her."
To cope with Kitty's loss, Colossus takes down a group of Russian criminals dealing in human trafficking, and gets a tattoo of the name 'Katya' on his chest. Emma begins having a recurring dream in which she hears a voice whom she believes is Kitty's trying to reach out to her.
It was later confirmed by Abigail Brand that Kitty Pryde was still alive within the bullet, but because the bullet's design would harden as time went on, it would become increasingly difficult to break the bullet open.
Return
After the X-Men move to the island of Utopia, Magneto arrives on the island professing his desire to join and support the X-Men in their effort to unite the world's remaining mutants. The X-Men reluctantly let him stay, remaining wary of him despite his efforts to gain their trust. In a final bid to gain their trust, Magneto focuses his powers, attempting to divert the interstellar path of the metal bullet Kitty is trapped in and bring her home to Earth. Meanwhile, inside the bullet, Kitty is revealed to still be alive. Unbeknownst to the others, Magneto had encountered the bullet earlier while attempting to regain his powers with the High Evolutionary and surmised that Kitty was inside. Despite this and the High Evolutionary's apparent ability to retrieve the bullet and Kitty, Magneto chose to focus on regaining his powers, secretly keeping tabs on the bullet until his decision to draw it back to Earth. During her time trapped inside the bullet, Kitty keeps herself and the bullet phased to avoid collisions with any inhabited objects in its path.
Magneto brings Kitty Pryde safely down to Earth by cracking the bullet in two and levitating Kitty to the ground. When she and Colossus try to touch, it is revealed that she is trapped in her intangible form, unable to speak, and the X-Men place her in a protective chamber similar to the one used for her following the events of the Mutant Massacre. How Kitty survived her time in the bullet is unclear to the X-Men's science team, where the X-Men discover that all her bodily functions halted. An analysis by Kavita Rao hypothesizes that Kitty created an intense muscle memory to keep herself and the bullet phased and has "forgotten" how to un-phase.
During a conversation with Colossus, with Emma Frost acting as the psi-conduit, Kitty picks up Emma's stray thoughts on killing the captive Sebastian Shaw, to prevent Namor from discovering she previously lied to him. While disgusted at Emma's intentions, Kitty offers a compromise. Due to her current ghost state, she is the perfect tool for making Shaw disappear.
In a storyline in Uncanny X-Men, the Breakworlders make their way to Earth. During the conflict between the Breakworlder Kr'uun and the X-Men, Kitty is slain and resurrected by Kr'uun's mate in an alien ritual, which results in her powers returning to normal.
Regenesis
Shortly thereafter, Kitty breaks up with Colossus, and decides to return with Wolverine to Westchester to open the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning. In Wolverine and the X-Men #4, she appears to be suddenly pregnant, but the pregnancy was revealed to be a Brood infestation, and it was swiftly dealt with by a team of X-Men. Since returning to Westchester, Kitty has shared several kisses with Iceman. During the events of Avengers vs. X-Men, Kitty does not take a side, but instead decides to stay at the school to work with the students. Once Bobby returned from working with the X-Men after realizing that the Phoenix had corrupted them, he and Kitty finally decide to go on a date.
All-New X-Men
After Beast brings the original five X-Men into the future to stop Cyclops in the present, Kitty volunteers to take responsibility for the temporally relocated X-Men while they work to undo this dark future. This soon puts her at odds with the rest of her team as they believed the original five should go back to their own time in order to prevent any damage to the space-time continuity. Eventually, this leads Kitty to take the decision of abandoning the school with the time-displaced X-Men and join Cyclops's X-Men at the New Xavier School. During the first few weeks at the New Xavier School, Jean Grey is abducted by the Shiar Empire to stand trial for her future self's crimes. Kitty and the time-displaced X-Men team up with the Guardians of the Galaxy and succeed in rescuing Jean from the Shiar. At the conclusion of the storyline, Kitty begins a long-distance, flirtatious relationship with Starlord, Peter Quill.
The Black Vortex
In the following weeks, Kitty's relationship with Peter Quill evolves more and more as they developed stronger feelings for each other every day. At one point, Quill gets captured during one of their dates and she has no option but to go to his rescue, despite her fear of space as a result of her being trapped on the giant space bullet. After rescuing Peter, she decides to stay in space with him. Then, Kitty convinces Peter to steal a powerful artifact called the Black Vortex from his father J'son. Soon, they find themselves being chased by J'son's assassination squad, the Slaughter Lords. In despair, they request the aid of the X-Men and the Guardians of the Galaxy to protect the Vortex. After a few of their own friends can't resist the temptation and submit to the Vortex, betray the team, and escape with the artifact; the team splits and Kitty stays in Spartax to help an orphanage. She is encased in amber after Thane (who was allied with J'son) freezes the whole planet along with the people inside it; but thanks to her phasing powers, she manages to get out of the amber. Then the Brood attacks Spartax, planning to use every encased person to lay eggs and create an army of Brood to start invading other planets and conquering them. Kitty feels the only way to stop them is by submitting to the Vortex herself as she's the only one who can resist the cosmic corruption. She reluctantly submits and becomes a being of unlimited power. After being reminded of the love between her and Peter Quill, she goes back and phases all the amber that encased Spartax, along with the Broods trying to infect the people, and sends them all to another dimension. Kitty doesn't give up the cosmic power but admits to Peter that she is afraid of it. Peter promises her that he will never abandon her no matter how much she changes. Then, Peter kneels and proposes marriage to Kitty. She, with tears in her eyes, accepts. Later when Star Lord is declared Emperor of Spartax she is told she will become the first lady of Spartax.
Guardians of the Galaxy
Kitty takes on the mantle of Star Lord and joins the Guardians of the Galaxy in Peter Quill's place so he can take on his royal duties. When Hala the Accuser massacres Spartax in an attempt to make Quill pay for J'son's actions against her people, she initially easily lays waste to the capitol and overpowers the Guardians. After the Guardians regroup and formulate a strategy to defeat her, Kitty manages to partially phase Hala into the ground so the rest of the Guardians can knock her out and separate her from her weapon. After Quill loses his title as king he and Kitty end up on a mission with the rest of the Guardians on a concentration camp prison planet owned by the Badoon after Gamora gave them information on it so they can free Angela. Once there, Kitty has a personal reaction upon seeing the prisoners and makes it her mission to liberate everyone there and defeat the captors, as it reminds her of Nazi concentration camps. After Quill gets captured and sentenced to death in an arena battle, Kitty finds and kills one of the Badoon leaders by phasing his heart out of his body. When Captain Marvel summons the Guardians to Earth to help her address Tony Stark, Kitty learns that Thanos is a prisoner on Earth and tries to convince Quill to tell Gamora. When fighting starts Kitty woefully realizes that some of her former students are on Tony Stark's side instead of fighting with Captain Marvel. During the battle the Guardians' ship was destroyed, effectively stranding them on Earth. After helping the Guardians stop Thanos from leading an invasion from the Negative Zone the Guardians are given a new ship; however, Kitty decides to stay on Earth and ends her time with the Guardians and Quill.
Leading the X-Men
Upon returning to Earth, Kitty hopes to finally regain a semblance of a normal life but ends up approached by Storm, who informs Kitty of everything the X-Men have gone through while Kitty was away. Storm announces to Kitty that she intends to step down as leader of the X-Men due to the guilt that she feels for leading the X-Men to war and offers Kitty her position. After touring X-Haven and seeing how much things have changed and how much things need to change for the better, Kitty agrees to lead the X-Men as long as Storm remains on the team. Her next act is to relocate the mansion from Limbo to Central Park, New York so the X-Men can refocus on being part of the world instead of fearing it under the belief that if the X-Men truly are to be seen as heroes, then they need to actually live in the world that they are trying to save instead of constantly worrying about their own survival.
Under Kitty's new leadership, the X-Men go through some small changes in order to shed their past history and make new names for themselves, such as convincing Rachel Summers to change her code name to Prestige and renaming the mansion as The Xavier Institute for Mutant Education and Outreach. Kitty learns first-hand how hard it is to balance leading the X-Men as well as managing the mansion when there are many political factors trying to deliberately get in the way of the X-Men. She also begins to have awkward one-on-one moments with Colossus; they try to remain friends, but given their long history their interactions swiftly become complicated. Kitty's first case as field leader of the X-Men sees her and her team taking on a new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. After discovering that an outspoken anti-mutant politician brainwashed this new Brotherhood to work for her to publicly discredit mutants, Kitty threatened to expose her if she continued exploiting mutants for her own personal gain.
Dawn of X
After Krakoa became a new sovereign nation for Mutants, Kitty Pryde, now going by Captain Kate Pryde, discovers she is the sole mutant who is, for unknown reasons, unable to use the various warp gates leading to Krakoa. It is implied that she has done something to anger Krakoa, but that restriction does not mean Kitty cannot use other means to reach the mutant homeland. She steals a boat and sets sail for the island. Kitty's time on Krakoa proves to be just as fruitless, as the island's natural resources (like flowers that grow into biome homes) are similarly prohibited to Kitty. Emma Frost comes asking Kitty to take up a special mission: taking a bigger boat out to serve as pirate captain on the X-Men's mission to liberate mutants trapped in oppressive countries that do not recognize mutant sovereignty, while also smuggling and supplying for Emma's Hellfire Trading Company the lifesaving drugs the X-Men provide to humans. Kate Pryde is later appointed the new Red Queen of the Hellfire Trading Company by Emma Frost, to the dismay of Sebastian Shaw. Seeing Pryde as an obstacle to his complete control of the Hellfire Corporation, Shaw began plotting against Kate and her crew. After taking notice how Emma became overprotective of the newly crowned Red Queen, Shaw realized that for the same reason she can't travel through Krakoa's gates nor read or understand the Krakoan language until Emma implanted it in her brain, the X-Men's Resurrection Protocols also won't apply to her, which means Kate cannot be resurrected if she died. He orchestrated a distraction by paying off human supremacists Homines Verendi to stage an attack on his own son. Once Kate was defenseless, Shaw emerged from below deck and ensnared Lockheed with a net gun, making him a helpless hostage. He then released Krakoan seeds at her feet, which wrapped around her and prevented her from using her powers. He then dropped her and Lockheed into the sea. While Lockheed was able to survive, Kate sank helplessly, and once her head dropped under the surface, she had no air left and drowned instantly. Her death is later confirmed by Bishop as he retrieves Kate's body, as it was also established that the Resurrection Protocols indeed do not apply to Kate, as the Five, for reasons unknown, cannot resurrect her. However, she is later resurrected, as Emma Frost realized that it was due to the nature of Kate's intangibility powers that her mindless body was unable to break out of the egg.
Powers and abilities
Kitty is a mutant with the ability to pass through solid matter by passing her atomic particles through the spaces between the atoms of the object through which she is moving. In this way she and the object through which she is passing can temporarily merge without interacting, and each is unharmed when Shadowcat has finished passing through the object. This process is called "phasing" or quantum tunneling and it renders her almost completely intangible to physical touch. Shadowcat passes through objects at the same speed at which she is moving before she enters them. Since she is unable to breathe while inside an object, she can only continuously phase through solid objects (as when she travels underground) as long as she can hold her breath. However, contrary depictions of the duration of her phasing ability have been presented, such as when she has phased miles within an object. The use of her abilities also interferes with any electrical systems as she passes through by disrupting the flow of electrons from atom to atom, including the bio-electric systems of living bodies if she concentrates in the right way. This typically causes machines to malfunction or be destroyed as she phases through them, and can induce shock and unconsciousness in living beings.
Using her power began as an optional ability, but for a period (over ten years of published comics, approximately two years in-continuity) Kitty existed in a naturally "phased" state, and had to consciously choose to become solid. Kitty has returned to her original form and is normally solid and must choose to use her power. While phasing, she does not physically walk on surfaces, but rather interacts with the molecules of air above them, allowing her to ascend and descend, causing her to seemingly walk on air. While phased, she is immune to most physical attacks, and has inconsistent showings of some resistance to telepathy. The density of some materials (such as adamantium) can prove deleterious to her phasing, causing her to be severely disoriented or experience pain if she tries to pass through them. Some energy attacks also prove problematic for Kitty. For example, an energy blast fired by Harpoon, a member of the Marauders, caused her to lose her ability to become fully tangible for months. Magic and magical beings can also harm her in her phased state, as demonstrated in a battle with a N'Garai demon whose claws left no visible marks, but caused Kitty severe pain as they passed through her intangible body.
Kitty can also extend her powers to phase other people and objects. She is able to phase at least six other people (or objects of similar mass) with her, so long as they establish and maintain physical contact with her. She can extend her phasing effect to her own clothing or any other object with mass up to that of a small truck, as long as she remains in contact with it. Kitty can also make objects intangible by maintaining contact with them. She has threatened to leave people phased into a wall, and used her power offensively to harm the Technarch Magus, and Danger.
Kitty's powers seem to have increased over the years. During an X-Treme X-Men story arc in which she is kidnapped by Reverend William Stryker, she phases out of sync with Earth's rotation to move from one place in the world (only east or west) to another seemingly instantaneously. At the climax of Astonishing X-Men, Kitty phases a 10 mi (16 km) long "bullet" composed of super-dense alien metals through the entire planet Earth. This feat caused her considerable strain, but she is unable to phase out of the bullet. Moreover, originally Kitty found it difficult or impossible to phase only part of her body at a time. In the Days of Future Past story arc, she is possessed by her older future self, allowing her to solidify only her shoulder while phasing the rest of her body through Destiny—a feat explicitly beyond the 13-year-old Kitty's abilities. By contrast, the Kitty Pryde of Joss Whedon's run can punch and kick someone standing on the other side of a wall, selectively phasing and unphasing body parts as necessary. She can even run and leap through an armed opponent, grabbing their weapon as she passes by, which presumably requires her to solidify only the surface area of the palms of her hands and then immediately phase both her palms and the weapon.
Besides her mutant powers, Kitty is a genius in the field of applied technology and computer science. She is highly talented in the design and use of computer hardware. She is a skilled pilot of piston and jet engine aircraft, and a competent pilot of certain advanced interstellar vehicles. She has previously shown a unique ability to wield the Soulsword and also be harmed by it. Since her possession by the ninja demon Ogun, she has been consistently shown to be an excellent hand-to-hand combatant, having since been endowed with a lifetime of training in the martial arts of Japanese ninja and samurai.
She is a professional-level dancer in both ballet and modern dance. She speaks fluent English, Japanese, Russian, and the royal and standard languages of the alien Shi'ar and Skrull, and has moderate expertise in Gaelic, Hebrew, and German.
Kitty also shares a mental/empathic connection with her pet dragon Lockheed; both she and the alien dragon can "sense" each other's presence at times and generally understand one another's thoughts and actions.
When Kitty used the Black Vortex, her powers were augmented to a cosmic scale making her a god-like being. She can phase through any material of any density and can even phase a planet out of Thane's amber, whereas in her normal state it is an extremely difficult task to simply phase herself out of the amber. She can also apparently transverse between the planes of the multiverse and is immune to the effects of space. Her appearance can be changed but her natural form appears to be rather gaseous in look.
Other versions
In addition to her mainstream incarnation, Kitty Pryde has been depicted in other fictional universes.
Age of Apocalypse
In the Age of Apocalypse reality, Kitty grows up under harsh circumstances and her nature reflects it. She has short hair, tight clothes, and chain smokes cigarettes. Her parents are killed in the Chicago Cullings, and she is forcibly recruited into Apocalypse's army, but is later rescued by Colossus. Magneto puts Shadowcat under Weapon X's training, hoping to turn her into the X-Men's assassin, and she is given a set of retractable artificial claws around each wrist to better imitate her teacher's fighting style. After the fallout between Colossus and Magneto, Shadowcat sides with Colossus, whom she has married. Instead of leaving the fight against Apocalypse altogether, the couple become the teachers of Generation Next. The two submit their trainees to harsh situations, giving them little comfort despite the fact that Shadowcat is close to the age of her students.
Shadowcat assists the team in rescuing Illyana Rasputin from the Seattle Core, and, at Colossus' behest, abandons her students after Illyana is saved. She is killed by Colossus in his ruthless obsession to protect his sister, Illyana; coming between an enraged Colossus and his endangered sister, Shadowcat never believed he would harm her.
Days of Future Past
In the Days of Future Past timeline (Earth-811), Shadowcat goes by the name Kate Pryde. Kate attempts to go back in time to prevent the assassination of Senator Robert Kelly by Mystique and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. She succeeds, only to create a separate timeline where the events of her past still come to pass. After returning to her own time Kate helps Rachel Summers escape back to the timeline she just created. Captured by Sentinels, Kate escapes by phasing through her inhibitor collar and fell into a time warp, causing her to merge with the Sentinel that was scanning her, and arrives in the timeline Rachel is inhabiting. Kate's mind settles in a small, metal, off-spherical body and becomes known as Widget. After a few adventures in that timeline, mostly in company with her Earth-616 counterpart's team Excalibur, Kate regains her memory and returns to her original timeline where she is able to reprogram the ruling Sentinels to protect life, ending their tyranny.
Earth X
In Earth X it is revealed in the appendix of issue six that Kitty Pryde is killed saving Colossus while he could not shift into his metal form. Instead of phasing the bullet through her, she heroically takes the bullet and is killed.
Exiles
A version of Kitty Pryde codenamed Cat first appeared in Exiles #96. She is younger than her Earth-616 counterpart. She has the appearance and powers of the normal Shadowcat although she wears a different costume. Prior to her joining the Exiles, this version of Kitty had been recruited by Emma Frost as one of the core agents of the Hellfire Club's strike force. She helps Psylocke defeat Doom's soldiers who have invaded the Panoptichron. She helps retrieve Blink, Morph, and Sabretooth from being scattered across the multiverse. She works as a computer expert for the team and is a full member of the Exiles.
Cat's skill with using her powers means she is not tied to any dimension and can see through various realities, including those of the mind (for instance seeing the various personalities in Sage's mind as "ghosts" surrounding her). Her arrival in the Crystal Palace and connection to its computers has increased this, giving her the ability to "cascade" through different alternative versions of herself, altering her appearance and details of her powers. Amongst other versions, she has assumed the form of a Kitty Pryde with the appearance and powers of Tigra. During the New Exiles' last mission Cat faced off against Madame Hydra (Sue Storm) and killed her at the cost of her own life.
There has been another version of Kitty that appeared in the King Hyperion story arc (Exiles #38-40). She had survived an attack on the X-Mansion by the Sentinels. The Colossus from her universe had been killed in the attack but she had the same feelings towards Weapon X's Colossus even though he was not her Colossus. The two eventually fell in love with each other. Unfortunately this did not last since she died with Colossus when they were shot into the empty vacuum of space by Hyperion.
House of M
When the Scarlet Witch altered reality in the 616 Universe, creating the reality known as House of M where mutants were the dominant population, Kitty Pryde was a teacher in a public middle school in Cincinnati, Ohio. Like many of the heroes of Earth 616, she is reminded of the true reality by Layla Miller and recruited in the fight to restore reality.
Magik
In the limited series Magik (Illyana and Storm), an alternative reality Kitty renames herself "Cat" after she is mutated by the demonic sorcerer Belasco into a more feline form, with cat eyes, whiskers, a tail, and enhanced physical abilities and senses. Trapped in Belasco's Limbo, Cat takes a militant view towards defeating the sorcerer, eschewing the magic that her reality's Storm embraces, instead turning to skills in swordplay and physical combat. She tries to save the Illyana Rasputin of Earth-616 from corruption through magic by taking Illyana into the wilderness of Limbo and teaching the child to fight and survive. Like the Kitty Pryde of Earth-616 eventually would, Cat became Illyana's best friend, but more in the role of an older sister due to the difference in their ages.
Cat's plan goes awry when the pair's attempt to confront Belasco fails, at the cost of the life of an enslaved Nightcrawler; Illyana falls under Belasco's influence and Cat is further transformed towards a feline, with a semi-animalistic mind completely loyal to Belasco. Cat is eventually slain by Illyana when Belasco sets Cat upon his rebellious apprentice; facing death at Cat's hands and knowing that, deep down, a part of Kitty still exists and hates her enslavement, Illyana broke Cat's neck in self-defense.
Long after Illyana overthrows Belasco, escapes Limbo, and becomes a member of the junior X-Men team known as the New Mutants, Cat's remains are found by the team in Limbo's throne room. By then she had completely decomposed to a skeleton. Illyana, facing a rebellion of Limbo's demon population that threatened to overrun Earth, smashed Cat's skull in rage over the demonic taint that Belasco left on her soul and frustration over the horrible choice she had to make to kill Cat.
Marvel Zombies
Kitty is briefly shown in the background as a zombie in Ultimate Fantastic Four #23, despite her mutant phasing powers. She is also seen in Marvel Zombies: Dead Days, when zombie Alpha Flight attack the X-Men. This would appear to have been retconned, though, as of Marvel Zombies: Halloween, which depicts her and her son Peter with Colossus surviving for several years in an out of the way house farm, encountering zombies, but, fortunately, being rescued by Mephisto, who dispatched the remaining zombies.
The Earth-91126/Earth-Z Kitty is recruited by Earth-2149/Marvel Zombies Spider-Man to help him develop a cure for the zombie hunger, on the grounds that her powers mean that she would be in no danger from him if he should succumb to his zombie instincts, but she is later seemingly killed when the zombie Quasar holds her underwater until she is forced to become solid once more, allowing the infected Namor to eat her flesh (much to the rage of the zombie Wolverine, of Earth-2149).
Mutant X
Storm was taken by the vampire Dracula and unlike Earth 616, she does not return. Kitty goes off to battle her, either to save or kill her. Kitty slays several vampires in the way but Storm proves too much for her and Kitty becomes her unwilling slave for some time. She later shows up as the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club and seems to be none too happy with Storm. It's also hinted that she was engaged or going to be engaged to Colossus. Her ultimate fate at the end of the series is unknown.
Lightning Force
In the reality of Earth-597, an alternative universe where World War II was won by Nazi Germany, Kitty is forced to serve as Shadowcat alongside Nightcrawler, Meggan, and Hauptmann Englande as a member of the Lightning Force (a version of Excalibur), made a virtual slave because of her Jewish heritage. She leads a sad existence and is easily identified by her shaved head and the Star of David tattooed on her forehead. It is indicated, from her own statements and those made by her reality's counterpart of Moira MacTaggert, that this Shadowcat is a true ghost, raised from the dead by a combination of science and magic and bound to serve the Nazi regime. This Shadowcat had the added ability to disrupt life force with her phasing power, knocking her victims unconscious, much like how her counterpart in the "prime" Marvel Universe (Earth-616) can disrupt technology that she phases through. She is also able to alter her facial features to a "demonic" aspect when attacking enemies or else responding to aggressive, commanding behavior from her superiors.
Pirate Kitty
Kitty tells Illyana a bedtime story and casts herself as Pirate Kitty Pryde, captain of the Abdul Alhazred, who operated in a magical world. Unlike her mainstream counterpart, she did not have any mutant powers and wore a classic pirate outfit which also included her Star of David necklace. She was also sometimes known as Colleen. Kitty was good friends of her version of Colossus, the Bamfs (Nightcrawler), Windrider (Storm), the "Fiend-with-no-name" (later revealed to be named "Mean") (Wolverine) and Lockheed (an alternative version of the X-Jet). Kitty also helped her versions of Professor X and Cyclops capture and cure that universe's version of Dark Phoenix.
At first she was only a fairy tale character, but later it is revealed that her fairy tale is actually an alternative universe. (In fact, several members of this universe, the Bamfs, would later come to Earth-616 to cause trouble.) When Earth-616's Nightcrawler was temporarily stranded in her world, Kitty helped him defeat the sorcerer Shagreen and also encountered the Earth-616 versions of Illyana, Lockheed, and herself.
Professor W's X-Men
In the native universe of the Exiles member Nocturne, Kitty is a senior member of the X-Men led by Nightcrawler. She is a teacher and TJ refers to her as "Aunt Kate". During a fight with Apocalypse Kitty gets exposed to a machine that reverts her to a younger stage of her life when she had only been with the X-Men a few weeks. Nocturne helps Kitty fit into the school and becomes her best friend. She also proves useful in the fight against the Brotherhood led by Cyclops.
Ruins
Imprisoned alongside other mutants at a prison camp in Texas by President X, Kitty attempted to use her phasing powers to escape, only to get stuck halfway through her cell door, losing three feet of intestines in the process.
Secret Wars (2015)
During the Secret Wars storyline, a version of Kitty named Kitten resides in the wuxia-inspired K'un-L'un region of Battleworld. In this reality, Kitten is a martial artist who joins Callisto's band of outcasts after being expelled from her school for attempting a forbidden technique, a side effect of which left her intangible. Kitten and her fellow outcasts became pupils of Shang-Chi, the exiled son of Emperor Zheng Zu. Dubbing their new school The Lowest Caste, Shang-Chi represents the group as their master for the tournament deciding the next Emperor of K'un-L'un, hoping to usurp his father's tyrannical rule. Kitten accompanies Shang-Chi for each of his fights in the Thirteen Chambers. During his final fight with Zu, Shang-Chi uses Kitten's technique of intangibility, which leads to his eventual victory and replaces his father as the new Emperor of K'un-L'un.
Ultimate Marvel
The Ultimate version of Shadowcat (Kitty Pryde) first appears as a 14-year-old girl in Ultimate X-Men #21. She is also Jewish and wears the Star of David around her neck, but does not appear to possess the same genius IQ as her mainstream (Earth-616) counterpart.
Kitty's mother, worried about Kitty's mutation, seeks help from Professor Charles Xavier. Kitty becomes a student at Xavier's school, when her mother allows her to attend under the condition she does not take part in any X-Men missions, nor train in any "Danger Room" simulations. Kitty soon rebels against this and joins the X-Men as their youngest member. She idolizes Spider-Man and has a crush on him; she even dates Peter Parker for a time. After a fierce argument with Professor Xavier concerning Peter's secret identity, which his Aunt May had just found out about, Kitty leaves the X-Men and enrolls in Peter's school. Their relationship is strained after their romantic involvement (as superheroes) becomes publicly known, making it impossible for them to date anymore in their civilian identities, and eventually comes to an end when Peter realizes he cannot get over his feelings for Mary Jane. However, Kitty still retains strong feelings for him.
Following the disastrous flood triggered by Magneto and the subsequent ban of public use of mutant powers, Kitty assumes the identity of the Shroud. Kitty also discovers that she can also decrease the space between her atoms make herself super-dense, giving her both superhuman strength and durability. When the authorities see Kitty as a threat, she enters into a fierce rage and demonstrates these powers for the first time to her friends. She is strong and angry enough to punch Spider-Man several feet through the air. She eventually escapes and goes into hiding in the now abandoned Morlock Tunnel with Iceman and the Human Torch after Peter Parker's death.
Kitty makes an appearance in Ultimate Comics: X, locating Jimmy Hudson, who is revealed to be Wolverine's son. Kitty was charged by Logan before his death to locate Jimmy and reveal his true origins to him.
After the death of Spider-Man she formed new team of X-Men consisting of herself, Iceman and the Human Torch. They soon rescued the mutant Rogue from the mutant-hunting Nimrod robots, going on to recruit Jimmy Hudson into their group as well. After killing the mutant-hunting William Stryker, Kitty decided to leave New York for the Southwest along with Bobby, Rogue, and Jimmy (leaving only Johnny behind) in order to save the mutants there and defeat the Nimrods, now controlled by the deceased Stryker's consciousness.
Spider-Gwen
In the reality where Gwen Stacy is Spider-Woman, Kitty is an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Black Ops department, where she works closely with Wolverine to keep him in check and to help him fight his immortal curse. Like the Age of Apocalypse version, she also wields artificial claws on her wrists. It's revealed that she works with Logan out of guilt, as Stryker forced her to use her powers to subject Logan to the Weapon X experiment.
What If
In What if Phoenix Had Not Died, Kitty is obliterated by Dark Phoenix before she destroyed the Earth.
In What If the X-Men had Lost Inferno?, Kitty is one of the last eight remaining superheroes on the planet. She is slain by a demonic Wolverine, but her death makes Wolverine come to his senses and he fights against Baron Mordo, who had joined up with the demon hordes.
In What If... Wolverine: Enemy of the State, Kitty is the only hero left to kill a Hydra-programmed Wolverine after he has taken down the Marvel Universe. Kitty was the last remaining member of the team assembled to recapture Wolverine. The initial plan failed and Kitty was forced to phase her hand into Wolverine's brain. She then solidified her hand killing Wolverine instantly although she lost her hand in the process.
In What if Magneto and Professor X Had Formed The X-Men Together, Kitty is the tech guru at the Good Shepard clinic (That reality's version of the X-Mansion). She is very similar to her mainstream counterpart. But unlike the mainstream version this Kitty Pryde would wear different coloured wigs and cut her natural hair short. She also had trouble with her powers since she would phase herself through a solid object and accidentally leave her clothes behind. She was also friends with Lockheed although she only called him Dragon.
In What if Astonishing X-Men, Kitty is amongst the X-Men who fight a Phoenix powered Emma Frost. She phased Emma's heart from her chest but a Phoenix fire flares up from her body killing Kitty instantly. In the second story during the events of Astonishing X-Men #6-#12 Elixir had not been able to heal Kitty after being impaled and she dies.
In "What if the Dark Phoenix Rose Again", Kitty has Colossus "set up a fastball special" to help her phase into a Master Mold. She is killed after solidifying inside the Master Mold's head destroying it in the process.
In What if Storm Had the Power of the Phoenix, Kitty helps revive the 'real' Storm (the Phoenix being the cosmic entity in Storm's shape) by phasing inside her body and getting her internal organs working again.
X-Babies
An X-Baby version of Shadowcat appears briefly in the X-Babies one-shot comic. She is wearing her original costume and is younger than the other X-Babies. She is named as Shadowkitty rather than Shadowcat or Kitty Pryde. She also doesn't seem to have a strong bond with the X-Baby version of Lockheed.
X-Men Forever
In the X-Men Forever series, Kitty and Nightcrawler have left Excalibur and rejoined the X-Men after the events of X-Men #1-3. Of the X-Men, she undergoes the most drastic changes from the events of X-Men Forever #1. During the battle with Fabian Cortez, she phases through Wolverine while he is being affected by Cortez's power. This drives her powers haywire as well, and somehow she ends up with one of Wolverine's claws in her wrist. Claremont has also hinted in dialogue throughout the title so far that she may have also undergone psychological or psychic changes as a result of the event. From Forever #4 to the current issue, she is shown to be able to use the claw in the exact method Wolverine would manifest it, with no apparent ill effects (the mechanism for this has not yet been made clear) outside of excruciating pain. Because of the merger with Logan's DNA she has begun to develop a healing factor, slower than Wolverine's but it heals faster when she is intangible. She has also slightly enhanced senses, she also can produce a set of five retractable claws on her left hand like Sabretooth. She has also begun to take on Logan's personality and memories as well. And because of this she is beginning to wonder what part of her truly remains the same.
X-Men: Misfits
In the X-Men: Misfits original English language manga one-shot graphic novel from Marvel and DelRay, Kitty is the newest and only female student of the all-male Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters, which is now experimenting with having a co-ed student body. As the sole girl, she becomes the center of attention and attraction for the rest of the students. She becomes a member and the mascot of the elitist fraternity, The Hellfire Club, and has a short-lived romantic relationship with the school troublemaker Pyro.
X-Men: The End
In the X-Men: The End future, Kitty Pryde becomes the mayor of Chicago and then President of the United States. She has three children: her eldest daughter, named Meredith, and twins 10 years younger than Meredith, Sara and Doug, with an unnamed partner who died protecting her from an assassination attempt.
Miscellaneous
In Excalibur #103, we see many alternative versions of Shadowcat. Many of these variations have appeared in other comics, such as Age of Apocalypse, but there were other variations, including one of her as a Phalanx convert, a sex dominatrix, a homeless person, a nun, a version wearing a costume similar to Phantom Girl, and a normal person who owns an Olde Curiosity Shoppe.
In New Mutants #63 Illyana (Magik), along with Lockheed, gets trapped on an alien spaceship that has been invaded by a Brood Queen. On this ship the Brood Queen created clones of the X-Men, including Kitty. This one had the Ariel suit on, but it was green, instead of the typical blue. These X-Men are implanted with Brood eggs. Her memories were altered by the Brood Queen like the other X-Men, but eventually they rebel against her and are free. Illyana uses the soulsword to eliminate the Brood Eggs from their bodies. The X-Men stay on the ship; whether they are still on it is unknown.
During the Cross Time Caper storyline a few different appearances of Kitty appear. One was a princess who was gifted with magic abilities. She eventually married a short dashing prince (who had originally fallen in love with the mainstream version of Kitty). A second version was a crime boss who was betrayed and killed by her partner in crime Illiyana Rasputin. A third was from a world of sentient dinosaurs. She went by the name of Shadowcompsognathus.
Collected editions
Several of Kitty Pryde's earlier adventures were collected in paperback form.
In other media
Music
Kitty Pryde is referenced in Weezer's song "In the Garage" from their "Blue Album".
Television
Kitty Pryde appeared as Sprite in "The X-Men Adventure" episode of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, which guest-starred the X-Men. She was voiced by Melissa Sue Anderson. She also appeared in her short-lived "Ariel" costume in the X-Men group cameo at the end of the episode "The Education of a Superhero".
Kitty Pryde (voiced by Kath Soucie) was a viewpoint character in the animated television one-shot Pryde of the X-Men, as the newest member of the team. She is a new recruit of the team and is initially frightened of Nightcrawler, due to his demonic appearance. She and Nightcrawler later succeed in defeating Magneto. Once Nightcrawler seemingly dies as a result of having apparently sacrificed himself, Kitty begins to cry until discovering that he is alive and is met with positive relations by her teammates, except Wolverine. As the pilot was a failure, and the character had lost prominence in comics at the time, she was not used in the next X-Men TV series, not even in cameos. Jubilee replaced her as the young viewpoint character, and in the adaptations of stories that involved her.
In the animated series X-Men: Evolution, Shadowcat is a main character, who is shown as the teenybopper of the team and who has a romantic interest in Brotherhood member Lance Alvers. Shadowcat saves Wolverine in the season one episode "Grim Reminder", where she unintentionally stows away with Nightcrawler while on the Blackbird without the knowledge that he was beginning to pilot the jet. She is also shown to have developed a close friendship with Nightcrawler, despite the fact that she at first displayed a dislike for his appearance. Besides Nightcrawler, she is shown to have formed a friendship with Rogue and Spyke. Her initial dislike of his appearance changes after he is severely wounded by Rogue, while she and the rest of the X-Men tried to recruit her. In this series, she does not have Lockheed for a pet, but she is shown preferring to sleep with a stuffed dragon instead of a teddy bear. Though she has an on-and-off interest in the delinquent mutant boy Lance Alvers, early in the series she displays interest in Cyclops. After Rogue is recruited, she serves as her support in beginning a romantic relationship with Scott and develops a friendship with her, despite their differences. When Avalanche tries to join the X-Men in the season two episode "Joyride", she tries to help him and shows additional attraction to him as she grades him and the other members of the junior team. After he informs her that some members of the group have started a joyride on the Blackbird and helps her avert catastrophe, she staunchly defends him once he is accused by Cyclops of being responsible. When Avalanche starts to leave, Shadowcat gives him a brief kiss before his departure. Their relationship continues with the two of them going to a school dance, talking on the phone and going to the mall. Despite being with the Brotherhood, Avalanche tries to protect Kitty in the fight against the Scarlet Witch. In season 3, Kitty and Lance's relationship briefly ends after the Brotherhood and Mystique blow up the X Mansion and are in part responsible for the exposure of mutants. Kitty calls Lance a "hood" after he attacks the high school and he says "he will never be good enough for her". Both look sad at these comments. In the fourth season, the X-Men try to use her powers to damage one of Apocalypse's domes and fails, instead being electrocuted briefly. In the fiftieth episode of the series, entitled "Ghost of a Chance", she comes across Danielle Moonstar once she depicts herself in a dream sequence to her. Once she wakes out of it, she tries to and successfully finds her, becoming friends with the girl after learning she had been in suspended animation for two years. Prior to this, it is discovered that her fear is phasing repeatedly into the ground and going further without any control of where she is going. Shadowcat plays a key role in the defeat of Apocalypse and asks the Brotherhood for help. They come to her aid; as Lance and Kitty resume their romantic relationship. Of the six main X-Men from the first season of the series, she is one of the four that is still a member of the team in the future Charles Xavier saw while in the mind of Apocalypse. Shadowcat was voiced by Maggie Blue O'Hara.
Shadowcat appears in Wolverine and the X-Men, voiced by Danielle Judovits and was a student at the Xavier Institute before the destruction of the X-Mansion and disappearance of Professor X. When Wolverine reformed the X-Men to take down the Mutant Response Division and save the dismal future controlled by the Sentinels, Kitty was on her way to the "mutant paradise" Genosha. The X-Men came to re-recruit her and she immediately rejoined the team. Shadowcat appears as the youngest member of the team and she seems to have a crush on Iceman as she is jealous when his attention is taken by Emma Frost and is shown with a love-struck face when she lands on Bobby during a Danger Room training session, though she quickly moves away from him when Angel arrives. She seems to have formed a friendship with Tildie Soames after babysitting her in one episode. In the last episode of the series, she uses her powers to penetrate a Sentinel controlled by Magneto, of which Beast had difficulty with. Her design is inspired by the appearance of the character in the Astonishing X-Men comics, and her costume emulates the design with the appearance of the blue and yellow used on her costume. The shorts she wears are based on the appearances of the original X-Men, and her first appearance when she wore a variant of the uniform.
Shadowcat appears in The Super Hero Squad Show episode "And Lo...A Pilot Shall Come". She appears alongside Colossus at the unveiling of the Great Wall that separates Super Hero City from Villainville and helping citizens into the S.H.I.E.L.D. Shelters. In the episode "Mysterious Mayhem at Mutant Academy", she uses Lockheed to chase Reptil and the hypnotized X-Men out of the girls' bathroom.
Motion comics
Shadowcat appears in the Astonishing X-Men motion comic, voiced by Eileen Stevens and later by Laura Harris.
Film
In the film X-Men, she has a small cameo, played by Sumela Kay. She is referenced as the "girl in Illinois who can walk through walls" by Senator Kelly. She is shown in Xavier's class when Wolverine walks in; she returns for her books which she had left behind, grabs them, and phases through the door on her way out. Xavier responds with a cheerful "Bye, Kitty" while Wolverine looks on, startled.
In X2, she has a brief appearance played by Katie Stuart. She is shown phasing through walls and through people to escape William Stryker's military forces during their attack on the X-Mansion. Another scene shows her falling through her bed to avoid an assault. She shares a room with Siryn; in the novelization it is stated that this is because her phasing ability gives her partial protection from Siryn's scream. When the President of the United States asks Professor Xavier how he got the files he gave him, Xavier replies that he knows a little girl who can walk through walls.
In X-Men: The Last Stand, she is portrayed by a pre-transition Elliot Page, and has a central role. She serves as a rival to Rogue for the romantic attentions of Iceman, since their close friendship and their kiss (deleted scene) make Rogue increasingly jealous and frustrated. She also joins the X-Men in the battle on Alcatraz Island, breaking off from the battle to save Leech from the Juggernaut. In the novelization of the film, it is hinted that at some point Kitty had a romantic relationship with Colossus, but that it had long since run its course, although Colossus appears to still retain feelings towards her.
Page reprised the role in X-Men: Days of Future Past. Pryde is the prime facilitator because she has developed a new power. In this film, she can send the consciousness of another person back into his or her body in the past. At the beginning of the film, she has been using this ability to repeatedly send Bishop four days back in time whenever the Sentinels attack, thus; preventing her group from ever engaging them by having him warn the past team before they are detected. In order to prevent the Sentinels' creation, she sends Wolverine back to 1973 (chosen as the strain of sending someone else back that far would snap their mind, with Logan's healing factor the only thing that makes such a trip survivable for him) and was gravely injured when Wolverine becomes violent; due to provocation from events in 1973. After the timeline was successfully altered, Kitty is seen teaching a class at the X-Mansion with Colossus. In the film's alternate release, called The Rogue Cut, Kitty's injuries from sending Wolverine back to the past result in the X-Men rescuing Rogue to take over for her. Rogue absorbs Kitty's powers and takes over, stabilizing Wolverine and Kitty helps Magneto flee a Sentinel attack.
In January 2018, a Kitty Pryde solo movie was announced to be in development, with Tim Miller attached as the director and Brian Michael Bendis as the writer, but in March 2019, after Disney's purchase of 21st Century Fox, Fox executive Emma Watts described The New Mutants as the final film in the X-Men series, thus; ending the development of the Kitty Pryde film.
Video games
Kitty Pryde appears in Konami's 1992 X-Men video arcade game, as a non-playable character (NPC). In this game, she is not known as "Sprite"; instead, she plays the "damsel in distress" role as it is based on "Pryde of the X-Men". In the 2010 re-release of the game she is voiced by Mela Lee.
Shadowcat is a playable character in the game X-Men II: The Fall of the Mutants.
Shadowcat appears as an NPC in the X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse, voiced by Kim Mai Guest. She has special dialogue with Colossus (who she scolds for flirting with Scarlet Witch).
Shadowcat appears in X-Men: The Official Game, with Kim Mai Guest reprising her role.
Shadowcat is a playable character in Marvel Super Hero Squad Online, voiced by Tara Strong.
In X-Men: Destiny, Gambit mentions that the U-Men had captured Kitty and extracted bits of her power. Gambit obtains a vial of a substance which temporarily lets the character fall through the roof (if the player chose the correct option).
Kitty Pryde is a playable character in the Facebook game Marvel: Avengers Alliance.
Kitty Pryde is a playable character in the X-Men: Days of Future Past app game.
Kitty Pryde is a playable character in the online MMO Marvel Heroes, with Danielle Judovits reprising her role.
Kitty Pryde appears as a playable character in Marvel Future Fight.
Kitty Pryde appears as a playable character in Marvel Puzzle Quest.
Kitty Pryde appears as a playable character in Marvel Strike Force.
Novels
Kitty Pryde appears in the X-Men/Star Trek crossover novel Planet X. In it, she is examined by Geordi La Forge, who notes the similarities between her ability and the chroniton displacement he and Ro Laren experienced in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Next Phase".
Reception
Kitty Pryde has been well received as a comic book character and as a member of the X-Men. Wizard magazine put her at number #13 in 200 Greatest Comic Characters of All Time. She was the highest female comic character in the list beating rivals such as Wonder Woman, Buffy Summers, and She-Hulk. IGN ranked her as the 47th greatest comic book hero of all time stating that "as X-Men writers have often found it useful to introduce younger teen recruits to offset the experienced members of the team, Kitty Pryde set the standard when she debuted, and none have surpassed her". IGN rated Kitty Pryde #3 on its list of the Top 25 X-Men from the Past 40 Years describing her as the mutant everyman, the common girl turned superhero; IGN also stated that as her pet dragon, Lockheed, "became instantly attached to Kitty, [they] were hooked early on". Marvel.com ranked her as the tenth greatest X-Men member stating that "unquestionably, the dynamic of the X-Men shifted entirely when teenage whiz kid Kitty Pryde joined the team in the early 1980s"; Marvel.com also stated that even though Kitty has since blossomed into a young woman of considerable maturity and power, she remains the access point to the X-Men for countless readers. A later list on Marvel's website, ranking the top 50 X-Men characters, placed her in first place, citing the ease of identifying with her for the audience, and her development over the years.
Notes
References
External links
Kitty Pryde at Marvel.com
UncannyXmen.net Spotlight on Shadowcat
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X-Men members | true | [
"XMEN disease is a rare genetic disorder of the immune system that illustrates the role of Mg2+ in cell signaling. XMEN stands for “X-linked immunodeficiency with magnesium defect, Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection, and neoplasia.” The disease is characterized by CD4 lymphopenia, severe chronic viral infections, and defective T-lymphocyte activation. Investigators in the laboratory of Dr. Michael Lenardo, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health first described this condition in 2011.\n\nPresentation\n\nXMEN patients have splenomegaly, chronic Epstein Barr Virus (EBV) infection, and are developmentally normal. They have an increased susceptibility for developing EBV+ lymphoma. Additionally, XMEN patients have excessive infections consistent with the underlying immunodeficiency. These infections included recurrent otitis media, sinusitis, viral pneumonia, diarrhea, upper respiratory infections, epiglottitis, and pertussis. Although autoimmune symptoms do not feature prominently in XMEN autoimmune cytopenias were observed in two unrelated patients.\n\nIn the figure to the left, major features are present in all XMEN patients, while minor features are found only in some.\n\nGenetics\n\nXMEN disease is caused by loss of function mutations in the gene MAGT1. MAGT1 is a 70 kb gene with 10 exons encoding for a 335 amino acid protein that maps to Xq21.1. MagT1 is a component of the N-linked glycosylation machinery (oligosacchyrltransferase, OST), a fundamental component of all cells that regulates the attachment of sugar moieties onto specific sites in proteins. Many of the immunodeficiency-related features of XMEN disease are related to the hypoglycosylation phenotype caused by loss of the OST component MagT1.\n\nThe conclusive connection between MAGT1, glycosylation, and Mg2+ import remains unknown. A prominent hypothesis from XMEN patients suggests that MAGT1's role in glycosylation is essential to the function (either directly or indirectly) of a Mg+2 transporter.\n\nMAGT1 is evolutionarily conserved and expressed in all mammalian cells with higher expression in hematopoietic lineages. XMEN patients have been found to carry both MAGT1 deletions and missense mutations. However, the severity of the phenotype is not entirely explained by the genotype. The disease severity also likely depends on environmental and other genetic factors.\n\nXMEN disease follows an X-linked inheritance pattern because the MAGT1 is located on the X chromosome. Mothers of XMEN patients exhibit preferential X chromosome inactivation of the chromosome with the mutation in their hematopoietic cells and are asymptomatic.\n\nDiagnosis\nXMEN patients generally have chronically high levels of EBV with increased EBV-infected cells, diminished thymic output of CD4+ cells, reduced CD4:CD8 ratio, moderately high B cell counts, and mild neutropenia. Their neutropenia may be related to their chronic EBV. Some patients also showed defective T cell proliferation in response to mitogen stimulation, variable immunoglobulin deficiencies, or deficient vaccination response.\n\nTreatment\nOnce a diagnosis is made, each individual's treatment is based on an individual’s clinical condition. Hematopoietic stem cell transplant is a possible treatment of this condition but its effectiveness is unproven and may be accompanied by severe and potentially fatal hemorrhage.\n\nIt was previously thought magnesium supplementation was a promising potential treatment for XMEN. One of the consequences of loss of MAGT1 function is a decreased level of unbound intracellular Mg2+. This decrease leads to loss of expression of an immune cell receptor called NKG2D, which is involved in EBV-immunity. Mg2+ supplementation in some tests restored NKG2D expression and other functions that are abnormal in patients with XMEN disease. Early evidence suggested continuous oral magnesium threonate supplementation was safe and well tolerated. A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study was conducted to evaluate the use of Mg2+ as a treatment for XMEN. In vitro magnesium supplementation experiments failed to significantly rescue NKG2D expression in patients with XMEN disease and the clinical trial was stopped. Therefore, magnesium supplementation is unlikely to be an effective therapeutic option in XMEN disease. Investigators at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the US National Institutes of Health currently have clinical protocols to study new approaches to the diagnosis and treatment of this disorder.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n\nImmune system disorders\nGenetic diseases and disorders\nEpstein–Barr virus-associated diseases\nX-linked recessive disorders",
"Stevie Hunter is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Her first appearance was in The Uncanny X-Men #139 as a surprise dance teacher for the newest X-Man/Student, Kitty Pryde, a.k.a. Shadowcat. She has continued to make some scattered appearance in X-Men comic books.\n\nFictional character biography\nStevie Hunter was a professional dancer, but an injury to her knee ruined her career and forced her to discontinue her dancing full-time. As an alternative, she began teaching dance classes at a studio in Salem Center, her most notable student being Kitty Pryde. Stevie quickly became a best friend to Kitty, and on occasions made Storm, who had unofficially taken up the mantle of Kitty's surrogate mother, slightly jealous of the attention that Kitty gave to Stevie.\n\nAt one point, Stevie and Storm attended a ballet performance at the Metropolitan Opera House, where Stevie was captured and taken hostage by Arcade's assistant Miss Locke and later rescued by the X-Men. Upon this incident, Stevie learned about the true identities of Kitty, Ororo and their friends, and became an ally of the X-Men and privy to their secrets. She later began physical education classes with the rookie New Mutants, focusing on ballet. She would continue these sessions over the years.\n\nStevie has tried to stay out of the fights the mutants get in, but has become involved in a few nevertheless. In one case, she and the New Mutants were involved in a fight against the demon S'ym, who attacks them inside the X-Mansion. In trying to get a rattled Magik away from the fight, she ends up face to face with the demon. Her life was saved only by the magical might of Illyana herself, turning the demon's loyalties. Even then S'ym offered to kill Stevie for knowing too much.\n\nIn a later incident, Stevie was present when forces from Genosha attacked the X-Mansion. She made it through a trapdoor to safety below, but unfortunately Storm, Warlock, Rictor, Boom-Boom and Wolfsbane, one of her original students, were kidnapped. Stevie did not go on the rescue mission.\n\nIn one of her last major appearances, the Shadow King had taken over the mind of Peter Rasputin, Illyana's brother. Stevie helps Professor X stay one step ahead of Peter, until they can get to the mansion's Danger Room. This allows them to subdue Peter without harming him.\n\nIn X-Men Gold, Stevie Hunter reappears as a Congresswoman attempting to assist Kitty's X-Men in presenting the mutant case during a governmental proposition for an unjust Mutant Deportation Act.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \nUncanny Xmen.net Database\n\nCharacters created by Chris Claremont\nComics characters introduced in 1980\nCharacters created by John Byrne (comics)\nFictional African-American people\nFictional dancers\nFictional schoolteachers\nMarvel Comics female characters\nX-Men supporting characters"
] |
[
"Kitty Pryde",
"Publication history",
"What was the first publication date?",
"The fictional Kitty Pryde first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980),",
"How long was the publication?",
"I don't know.",
"Who introduced the character Kitty Pryde?",
"Uncanny X-Men artist John Byrne named Kitty Pryde after a classmate he met in art school, Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary in 1973.",
"What is the story behind the name Kitty Pryde?",
"He had told Pryde he liked her name and asked for permission to use it, promising to name his first original comics character after her.",
"Where did the Kitty part come from?",
"Claremont said several elements of the character's personality were derived from those of X-Men editor Louise Simonson's daughter, Julie.",
"What were Kitty's powers going to be?",
"Claremont and Byrne made the new character a full-fledged X-Man in issue #139, where she was codenamed \"Sprite\".",
"How was Kitty accepted into the Xmen issues by readers?",
"Shadowcat's popularity had a profound effect on the real-life Kitty Pryde: the latter became so overwhelmed by attention from Shadowcat fans, she abbreviated her name to K.D. Pryde"
] | C_98d6a9f0735942e3a427f07b743f5a4d_1 | How long did Kitty last in the Xmen series? | 8 | How long did Kitty last in the Xmen series? | Kitty Pryde | Kitty Pryde was introduced into the X-Men title as the result of an editorial dictate that the book was supposed to depict a school for mutants. Uncanny X-Men artist John Byrne named Kitty Pryde after a classmate he met in art school, Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary in 1973. He had told Pryde he liked her name and asked for permission to use it, promising to name his first original comics character after her. Byrne drew the character to slightly resemble an adolescent Sigourney Weaver. The fictional Kitty Pryde first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980), by writer Chris Claremont and artist Byrne, as a highly intelligent 13-year-old girl. Claremont said several elements of the character's personality were derived from those of X-Men editor Louise Simonson's daughter, Julie. Claremont and Byrne made the new character a full-fledged X-Man in issue #139, where she was codenamed "Sprite". She was the main character in issues #141-142, the "Days of Future Past" storyline, where she is possessed by her older self, whose consciousness time travels to the past to prevent a mass extermination of mutants. The six-issue miniseries Kitty Pryde and Wolverine (1984-1985), written by Claremont, is a coming-of-age storyline in which she matures from a girl to a young woman, adopting the new name "Shadowcat". In the late '80s, she joined the British-based super team, Excalibur, where she remained for roughly ten years before coming back to the X-Men. In the early 2000s, she disappeared from the spotlight after semi-retiring from superhero work. She was featured in the 2002 mini-series Mekanix and came back to the main X-Men books in 2004 under the pen of Joss Whedon in Astonishing X-Men. She remained a part of the X-Men books until 2008 when she left again for roughly 2 years. After coming back, she was featured in Jason Aaron's Wolverine and the X-Men and Brian Michael Bendis' All-New X-Men books. In early 2015, she joined the Guardians of the Galaxy. After the Secret Wars event, she adopted her new alias, Star-Lord (first believed to be Star-Lady). Shadowcat's popularity had a profound effect on the real-life Kitty Pryde: the latter became so overwhelmed by attention from Shadowcat fans, she abbreviated her name to K.D. Pryde to avoid association with her fictional counterpart. She has since stated she has mixed feelings about her fame, saying she values Byrne's comics for their entertainment and artistic value, but wishes more people would appreciate her as more than just Shadowcat's namesake. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Katherine Anne "Kitty" Pryde is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics, commonly in association with the X-Men. The character first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980) and was co-created by writer-artist John Byrne and Chris Claremont.
A mutant, Pryde possesses a "phasing" ability that allows her, as well as objects or people she is in contact with, to become intangible. This power also disrupts any electrical field she passes through, and lets her simulate levitation.
The youngest to join the X-Men, she was first portrayed as a "kid sister" to many older members of the group, filling the role of literary foil to the more established characters. She occasionally used the codenames Sprite and Ariel, cycling through several uniforms until settling for her trademark black-and-gold costume. During the miniseries Kitty Pryde and Wolverine, she was renamed Shadowcat, the alias she would be most associated with, and shifted to a more mature depiction in her subsequent appearances. Pryde would eventually abandon her nickname, "Kitty", and switch to "Kate". She was one of the main cast of characters depicted in the original Excalibur title. After momentarily joining the Guardians of the Galaxy, she assumed her then-fiancé's superhero identity as the Star-Lord (Star-Lady). As of the series Marauders, she is now informally known as Captain Kate Pryde and the Red Queen of the Hellfire Trading Company.
In the X-Men film series, Kitty Pryde was initially portrayed by young actresses in cameos; Sumela Kay in X-Men (2000) and Katie Stuart in X2 (2003). Later, a pre-transition Elliot Page portrayed the character in X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) and X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) in full-length appearances. Pryde is ranked #47 in IGN's Top 100 Comic Book Heroes.
Publication history
Kitty Pryde was introduced into the X-Men title as the result of an editorial dictate that the book was supposed to depict a school for mutants. Uncanny X-Men artist John Byrne named Kitty Pryde after a classmate he met in art school, Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary in 1973. He had told Pryde he liked her name and asked for permission to use it, promising to name his first original comics character after her. Byrne drew the character to slightly resemble an adolescent Sigourney Weaver.
The fictional Kitty Pryde first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980), by writer Chris Claremont and artist Byrne, as a highly intelligent 13-year-old girl. Claremont said several elements of the character's personality were derived from those of X-Men editor Louise Simonson's daughter, Julie. Claremont and Byrne made the new character a full-fledged X-Man in issue #139, where she was codenamed "Sprite". She was the main character in issues #141–142, the "Days of Future Past" storyline, where she is possessed by her older self, whose consciousness time travels to the past to prevent a mass extermination of mutants. The six-issue miniseries Kitty Pryde and Wolverine (1984–1985), written by Claremont, is a coming-of-age storyline in which she matures from a girl to a young woman, adopting the new name "Shadowcat".
In the late 1980s, Kitty joined the British-based super team, Excalibur, where she remained for roughly ten years before coming back to the X-Men. In the early 2000s, she disappeared from the spotlight after semi-retiring from superhero work. She was featured in the 2002 mini-series Mekanix and came back to the main X-Men books in 2004 under the pen of Joss Whedon in Astonishing X-Men. She remained a part of the X-Men books until 2008 when she left again for roughly 2 years. After coming back, she was featured in Jason Aaron's Wolverine and the X-Men and Brian Michael Bendis' All-New X-Men books.
In early 2015, she joined the Guardians of the Galaxy. After the Secret Wars event, she adopted her new alias, Star-Lord (first believed to be Star-Lady).
In 2020, Kitty Pryde was revealed to be bisexual. Her co-creator, Chris Claremont, had always intended this to be the case, considering Rachel Summers as a possible love interest for Pryde. However, Claremont wasn't allowed to show this at the time due to censorship, as he revealed on the "Xplain the X-Men" podcast in 2016.
Shadowcat's popularity had a profound effect on the real-life Kitty Pryde: the latter became so overwhelmed by attention from Shadowcat fans, she abbreviated her name to K.D. Pryde to avoid association with her fictional counterpart. She has since stated she has mixed feelings about her fame, saying she values Byrne's comics for their entertainment and artistic value, but wishes more people would appreciate her as more than just Shadowcat's namesake.
Fictional character biography
Katherine Anne "Kitty" Pryde was born in Deerfield, Illinois, to Carmen and Theresa Pryde. She is an Ashkenazi Jewish-American and her paternal grandfather, Samuel Prydeman, was held in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. Kitty started to have headaches at age thirteen, signaling the emergence of her mutant powers. She was approached by both the X-Men's Charles Xavier and the Hellfire Club's White Queen, Emma Frost, both of whom hoped to recruit her for their respective causes. Kitty was unnerved by Frost, observing that the White Queen looked at her as if she were "something good to eat." She got along better with Xavier and the three X-Men who escorted him, quickly becoming friends with Ororo Munroe. Ororo told Kitty who she really was and about the X-Men, which made the teenager even more enthusiastic about attending Xavier's school.
Their conversation was cut short when they (along with Wolverine and Colossus) were attacked by armored mercenaries in the employ of Frost and the Hellfire Club. The X-Men defeated their assailants, but were subdued by the White Queen's telepathic powers immediately after. In the confusion, Kitty was separated from the X-Men, and not captured along with them. She managed to contact Cyclops, Phoenix, and Nightcrawler. With the help of Dazzler and Pryde, those X-Men rescued their teammates from the Hellfire Club.
The White Queen appeared to perish in the battle, which meant she was no longer competing with Xavier for the approval of Kitty's parents. Kitty's parents had not heard from her in more than a day, because during that time she was first being pursued by the Hellfire Club's men and then working with the X-Men to save their friends. All they knew was Kitty had left with Xavier's "students" to get a soda, there had been reports that the soda shop had been blown up, and Kitty had been missing since. Therefore, they were angry at Xavier when he finally returned with Kitty in tow. At first, it seemed like there was no chance of Kitty being allowed to attend the school and join the X-Men. Phoenix then used her considerable telepathic power to erase the memories of Kitty's parents and plant false ones, resulting in a complete shift in their attitude towards Xavier. Kitty was then allowed to enroll at Xavier's school with her parents' blessing, becoming the youngest member of the team.
Joining the X-Men
Kitty joined the X-Men, and assumed the costumed identity of Sprite. Early in her career as an X-Man, Kitty's adult self from an alternate future took possession of her body in the present to help X-Men thwart the assassination of Senator Robert Kelly by the second Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Kitty then singlehandedly defeated a N'Garai demon. Kitty also briefly attended the White Queen's Massachusetts Academy when her parents became convinced that she needed to be with students of her own age, but following a failed attempt to subdue the X-Men, Frost revoked Kitty's admission.
During her teen years, Kitty fostered a number of close relationships with others at the school and in the X-Men. She developed a crush on Colossus and became close friends with his little sister Illyana Rasputin. Initially uneasy around Nightcrawler and other mutants with physical deformities, Kitty finally overcame her fears and became close friends with him. Kitty also befriended Lockheed, a highly intelligent alien resembling a dragon, who followed her home after a mission in outer space. Lockheed is extremely loyal to Kitty, and the two of them share a psychic bond. Wolverine became something of a mentor to Kitty despite his usually gruff personality. Storm came to view Kitty as the daughter she never had.
Though Xavier has threatened to reassign Kitty to the New Mutants, a team of younger mutants he established in the absence of the X-Men, ever since the X-Men returned from outer space, she never ended up joining the group, who she derisively calls the "X-Babies". Kitty was later abducted by the Morlocks and nearly forced to wed Caliban. She was then abducted by the White Queen, but rescued by the New Mutants.
During this time, Kitty began to date Colossus, although this did not last long. Colossus developed feelings for an alien woman named Zsaji whom he met on the Beyonder's planet in the first Secret Wars. Colossus' feelings toward Zsaji were primarily a side effect of her own unique healing abilities, which she had used on him after he became injured. Regardless, Colossus' feelings were real and he returned to Earth consumed with grief after Zsaji's death. He admitted to Kitty that he loved Zsaji, which hurt her deeply and ended the budding romantic relationship. Kitty had made good friends with a local boy from Salem Central named Doug Ramsey around this time, but her feelings for him never went as deep as his for her, and they never actually dated, though they remained close, even more so after Doug's status as a mutant was revealed and he joined the New Mutants under the codename Cypher. They remained friends until his death some time later.
Ogun
During the 1984–1985 Kitty Pryde and Wolverine miniseries, Kitty is possessed by a demon, the ninja Ogun. Ogun psychically bestows upon Kitty a virtual lifetime of martial arts training. Kitty was brainwashed by Ogun into becoming a ninja assassin, and was sent to attack Wolverine. Kitty is able to resist Ogun's influence with Wolverine's help, and the two form a strong teacher/student bond, which helps them in vanquishing Ogun. Kitty returns to the X-Men, no longer the innocent girl they once knew, and officially adopts the codename Shadowcat.
Morlock Massacre
While trying to save Rogue, Kitty was badly injured by Harpoon's energy spear during the Mutant Massacre story arc, in the massacre of the Morlocks, with the result that she lost control of her power and was stuck in an intangible state and could not regain her solidity. She was rushed to Muir Island along with other surviving casualties of the Massacre to be tended to by Moira MacTaggert. MacTaggert was able to keep Kitty's condition from deteriorating to the point where she completely lost physical substance and ceased to exist, but was not able to do any more to help her.
At this time, Kitty's natural state was to be intangible. Where she once had to make a conscious effort to phase, she could now only maintain her solidity through an act of conscious will. The X-Men went to Reed Richards, Mister Fantastic of the Fantastic Four, for aid, but Richards initially refused because he was not sure he would be able to help.
Having nowhere else to go, the X-Men turned to Richards' enemy Doctor Doom. This created a moral dilemma for both the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, and both teams fought each other because the Fantastic Four were trying to stop the treatment while the X-Men were determined to save Kitty's life. In the end, both the personal crisis of the Fantastic Four and the life of Shadowcat were saved after Franklin Richards, with the help of Lockheed, brought both teams to their senses. Kitty has since recovered from this state and now has full control over her power again.
Excalibur
Among the others injured and brought to Muir Isle were Colossus and Nightcrawler, although Colossus left the United Kingdom shortly after being released from MacTaggert's care to join the rest of the X-Men on their mission to battle the Adversary. The X-Men sacrificed their lives to defeat the Adversary, the battle and their sacrifice was televised and broadcast across the world. The X-Men were resurrected later in the same issue, unknown to the world at large, but chose to keep a low profile and perpetuate the belief that they were still dead. This strategy was enforced to more effectively fight their enemies. This meant avoiding contact with friends and family, including Kitty. Thinking the X-Men were dead, Kitty and Nightcrawler joined Rachel Summers, Captain Britain, and Meggan to form the Britain-based team Excalibur. For a brief time, Kitty studied at St. Searle's School for Girls in Britain. During her time with Excalibur, Kitty developed a crush on Professor Alistaire Stuart which went unreciprocated since Alistaire was attracted to Rachel. Later, she was romantically involved with former Black Air agent Pete Wisdom. At some point Kitty was recruited by the international law enforcement agency S.H.I.E.L.D. to repair the computer system of their flying headquarters. Kitty discovered the problem was due to Ogun's spirit having infiltrated the computer system, and with the aid of Wolverine, she managed to purge Ogun's presence. During this time, Kitty was attracted to a S.H.I.E.L.D. intern her own age, and this made her begin to doubt her relationship with Wisdom. Soon after, she broke off their relationship.
Back to the X-Men
After Excalibur's dissolution, Shadowcat, Nightcrawler, and Colossus return to the X-Men. While returning, they faced a group of imposters following Cerebro, in the guise of Professor X. While tracking Mystique, she stumbles onto prophetic diaries that belonged to Irene Adler, a precognitive. During the six-month gap, Kitty visited Genosha. Whatever she experienced there is unknown (although presumably connected to her father, living on Genosha at the time), but it had a profound effect on her. She cut her hair and began to act rebelliously, also using one of Wolverine's bone claws broken off during battle as a weapon. Kitty remained with the X-Men for a while before leaving after the apparent death of Colossus. Trying to give herself a normal life, she attended the University of Chicago. During this time, her father was killed when Cassandra Nova’s Sentinels destroyed Genosha. Kitty later finds a recording of his death due to exploring footage of the attack. She is also kidnapped by William Stryker, but the X-Treme X-Men team helped her escape, and she assisted them on several missions.
At the start of Joss Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men, Kitty once again rejoins the X-Men, despite having extreme reservations about working with the former White Queen, given their history. This was the primary reason why Frost herself wanted Kitty on the team, as a sort of "safety" should Frost ever revert to type. Frost reasoned that the person who trusted her least would be most likely to spot such behavior. On one of the team's first missions, Shadowcat discovered Colossus was alive. After some initial awkwardness, Kitty and Colossus resumed dating.
Kitty Pryde appeared alongside Colossus in the "Blinded by the Light" arc in X-Men. They are the two X-Men left to look after the students while the rest of the X-Men leave for Mystique's home in Mississippi to check up on Rogue, during which they are ambushed by the Marauders. Kitty and Colossus, meanwhile, attempt to protect the students from a faction of the Marauders led by Exodus. It is revealed over the course of the story that Kitty, worried of the Destiny Diaries' safety, devised a plan with Cyclops and Emma Frost to hide them and have Emma wipe the location from her mind. The location could only be revealed by a code word spoken to Kitty. The arc concludes with a battle between Iceman and Cannonball against the Marauders for the diaries, during which they are destroyed by Gambit.
In the "Torn" arc, the latest incarnation of the Hellfire Club begin an assault on Xavier's School. Kitty fulfilled the role that Emma Frost envisioned, personally taking down Frost and imprisoning her, only to fall under a telepathic delusion created by Hellfire member Perfection, who claimed to be the true, unreformed Emma Frost. Under this delusion, Kitty was made to believe that she and Colossus had conceived a child, which was later taken away by the X-Men because its potential mutant abilities were supposedly dangerous. Kitty reacts in the delusion by attempting to rescue the child from a near-inescapable "box" in the depths of the school, unaware that in reality she is freeing an alien entity, Stuff, who contains the trapped consciousness of Cassandra Nova, the apparent ringleader of this new Hellfire Club. A newly awakened Cyclops revealed that the new Hellfire Club, including Perfection and Nova, are actually mental projections created by a piece of Cassandra Nova's consciousness; which became lodged in Emma's mind during the X-Men's last confrontation with her, playing on her survivor's guilt over the Genoshan massacre, and utilizing Emma's telepathy to both confound the X-Men and orchestrate her (Nova's) escape from the Stuff body. As Cyclops killed the mental projections, Emma tried to force Kitty to kill her to get rid of Nova. Undeterred, Cassandra Nova switched her focus to attempt to transfer her mind to Hisako Ichiki. It appears that Nova did not succeed, as the team was transported to S.W.O.R.D.'s air station en route to Ord's Breakworld for the "Unstoppable" arc that concludes Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men.
Breakworld
As the team prepares to end the confrontation with the Breakworld leader, the team splits up—with Kitty on the team appointed to stop the missile pointed at Earth. Kitty phases into the missile to disrupt its circuitry noting that it is composed of the same material as the rest of Breakworld, a material that is difficult and exhausting for her to phase through. After phasing for a mile into the missile, Kitty finds the center only to discover it empty. The missile is fired, causing Kitty to pass out inside of it as Beast discovers too late that due to its shape, trajectory, and lack of internal circuitry, the Breakworld's weapon is not a missile, but a bullet. As the bullet hurtles toward Earth, Kitty lies unconscious within it.
As the situation becomes increasingly dire, Emma establishes mental contact with Kitty, reassuring her that she will come out of this fine, though it eventually becomes clear to both that the situation will be grim. Kitty and Emma come to an understanding and reconciliation, Emma stating that she never wanted something like this to happen to her. Kitty then phases the bullet through Earth, but is trapped within. At the end of Giant-Size Astonishing X-Men, Scott Summers mentions that Doctor Strange, Reed Richards, and some "top men" tried to save her, but believe she has fused to the bullet, as it continues to hurtle through space. Whether she is alive or dead is unknown, though the X-Men consider her lost to them.
As a result of these events Kitty does not appear in the X-Men crossover event X-Men: Messiah Complex, since this takes place after the events of Giant-Size Astonishing X-Men. She is briefly mentioned in the aftermath of the Messiah Complex, by Colossus, Nightcrawler, and Wolverine, as the three of them discuss "losing her."
To cope with Kitty's loss, Colossus takes down a group of Russian criminals dealing in human trafficking, and gets a tattoo of the name 'Katya' on his chest. Emma begins having a recurring dream in which she hears a voice whom she believes is Kitty's trying to reach out to her.
It was later confirmed by Abigail Brand that Kitty Pryde was still alive within the bullet, but because the bullet's design would harden as time went on, it would become increasingly difficult to break the bullet open.
Return
After the X-Men move to the island of Utopia, Magneto arrives on the island professing his desire to join and support the X-Men in their effort to unite the world's remaining mutants. The X-Men reluctantly let him stay, remaining wary of him despite his efforts to gain their trust. In a final bid to gain their trust, Magneto focuses his powers, attempting to divert the interstellar path of the metal bullet Kitty is trapped in and bring her home to Earth. Meanwhile, inside the bullet, Kitty is revealed to still be alive. Unbeknownst to the others, Magneto had encountered the bullet earlier while attempting to regain his powers with the High Evolutionary and surmised that Kitty was inside. Despite this and the High Evolutionary's apparent ability to retrieve the bullet and Kitty, Magneto chose to focus on regaining his powers, secretly keeping tabs on the bullet until his decision to draw it back to Earth. During her time trapped inside the bullet, Kitty keeps herself and the bullet phased to avoid collisions with any inhabited objects in its path.
Magneto brings Kitty Pryde safely down to Earth by cracking the bullet in two and levitating Kitty to the ground. When she and Colossus try to touch, it is revealed that she is trapped in her intangible form, unable to speak, and the X-Men place her in a protective chamber similar to the one used for her following the events of the Mutant Massacre. How Kitty survived her time in the bullet is unclear to the X-Men's science team, where the X-Men discover that all her bodily functions halted. An analysis by Kavita Rao hypothesizes that Kitty created an intense muscle memory to keep herself and the bullet phased and has "forgotten" how to un-phase.
During a conversation with Colossus, with Emma Frost acting as the psi-conduit, Kitty picks up Emma's stray thoughts on killing the captive Sebastian Shaw, to prevent Namor from discovering she previously lied to him. While disgusted at Emma's intentions, Kitty offers a compromise. Due to her current ghost state, she is the perfect tool for making Shaw disappear.
In a storyline in Uncanny X-Men, the Breakworlders make their way to Earth. During the conflict between the Breakworlder Kr'uun and the X-Men, Kitty is slain and resurrected by Kr'uun's mate in an alien ritual, which results in her powers returning to normal.
Regenesis
Shortly thereafter, Kitty breaks up with Colossus, and decides to return with Wolverine to Westchester to open the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning. In Wolverine and the X-Men #4, she appears to be suddenly pregnant, but the pregnancy was revealed to be a Brood infestation, and it was swiftly dealt with by a team of X-Men. Since returning to Westchester, Kitty has shared several kisses with Iceman. During the events of Avengers vs. X-Men, Kitty does not take a side, but instead decides to stay at the school to work with the students. Once Bobby returned from working with the X-Men after realizing that the Phoenix had corrupted them, he and Kitty finally decide to go on a date.
All-New X-Men
After Beast brings the original five X-Men into the future to stop Cyclops in the present, Kitty volunteers to take responsibility for the temporally relocated X-Men while they work to undo this dark future. This soon puts her at odds with the rest of her team as they believed the original five should go back to their own time in order to prevent any damage to the space-time continuity. Eventually, this leads Kitty to take the decision of abandoning the school with the time-displaced X-Men and join Cyclops's X-Men at the New Xavier School. During the first few weeks at the New Xavier School, Jean Grey is abducted by the Shiar Empire to stand trial for her future self's crimes. Kitty and the time-displaced X-Men team up with the Guardians of the Galaxy and succeed in rescuing Jean from the Shiar. At the conclusion of the storyline, Kitty begins a long-distance, flirtatious relationship with Starlord, Peter Quill.
The Black Vortex
In the following weeks, Kitty's relationship with Peter Quill evolves more and more as they developed stronger feelings for each other every day. At one point, Quill gets captured during one of their dates and she has no option but to go to his rescue, despite her fear of space as a result of her being trapped on the giant space bullet. After rescuing Peter, she decides to stay in space with him. Then, Kitty convinces Peter to steal a powerful artifact called the Black Vortex from his father J'son. Soon, they find themselves being chased by J'son's assassination squad, the Slaughter Lords. In despair, they request the aid of the X-Men and the Guardians of the Galaxy to protect the Vortex. After a few of their own friends can't resist the temptation and submit to the Vortex, betray the team, and escape with the artifact; the team splits and Kitty stays in Spartax to help an orphanage. She is encased in amber after Thane (who was allied with J'son) freezes the whole planet along with the people inside it; but thanks to her phasing powers, she manages to get out of the amber. Then the Brood attacks Spartax, planning to use every encased person to lay eggs and create an army of Brood to start invading other planets and conquering them. Kitty feels the only way to stop them is by submitting to the Vortex herself as she's the only one who can resist the cosmic corruption. She reluctantly submits and becomes a being of unlimited power. After being reminded of the love between her and Peter Quill, she goes back and phases all the amber that encased Spartax, along with the Broods trying to infect the people, and sends them all to another dimension. Kitty doesn't give up the cosmic power but admits to Peter that she is afraid of it. Peter promises her that he will never abandon her no matter how much she changes. Then, Peter kneels and proposes marriage to Kitty. She, with tears in her eyes, accepts. Later when Star Lord is declared Emperor of Spartax she is told she will become the first lady of Spartax.
Guardians of the Galaxy
Kitty takes on the mantle of Star Lord and joins the Guardians of the Galaxy in Peter Quill's place so he can take on his royal duties. When Hala the Accuser massacres Spartax in an attempt to make Quill pay for J'son's actions against her people, she initially easily lays waste to the capitol and overpowers the Guardians. After the Guardians regroup and formulate a strategy to defeat her, Kitty manages to partially phase Hala into the ground so the rest of the Guardians can knock her out and separate her from her weapon. After Quill loses his title as king he and Kitty end up on a mission with the rest of the Guardians on a concentration camp prison planet owned by the Badoon after Gamora gave them information on it so they can free Angela. Once there, Kitty has a personal reaction upon seeing the prisoners and makes it her mission to liberate everyone there and defeat the captors, as it reminds her of Nazi concentration camps. After Quill gets captured and sentenced to death in an arena battle, Kitty finds and kills one of the Badoon leaders by phasing his heart out of his body. When Captain Marvel summons the Guardians to Earth to help her address Tony Stark, Kitty learns that Thanos is a prisoner on Earth and tries to convince Quill to tell Gamora. When fighting starts Kitty woefully realizes that some of her former students are on Tony Stark's side instead of fighting with Captain Marvel. During the battle the Guardians' ship was destroyed, effectively stranding them on Earth. After helping the Guardians stop Thanos from leading an invasion from the Negative Zone the Guardians are given a new ship; however, Kitty decides to stay on Earth and ends her time with the Guardians and Quill.
Leading the X-Men
Upon returning to Earth, Kitty hopes to finally regain a semblance of a normal life but ends up approached by Storm, who informs Kitty of everything the X-Men have gone through while Kitty was away. Storm announces to Kitty that she intends to step down as leader of the X-Men due to the guilt that she feels for leading the X-Men to war and offers Kitty her position. After touring X-Haven and seeing how much things have changed and how much things need to change for the better, Kitty agrees to lead the X-Men as long as Storm remains on the team. Her next act is to relocate the mansion from Limbo to Central Park, New York so the X-Men can refocus on being part of the world instead of fearing it under the belief that if the X-Men truly are to be seen as heroes, then they need to actually live in the world that they are trying to save instead of constantly worrying about their own survival.
Under Kitty's new leadership, the X-Men go through some small changes in order to shed their past history and make new names for themselves, such as convincing Rachel Summers to change her code name to Prestige and renaming the mansion as The Xavier Institute for Mutant Education and Outreach. Kitty learns first-hand how hard it is to balance leading the X-Men as well as managing the mansion when there are many political factors trying to deliberately get in the way of the X-Men. She also begins to have awkward one-on-one moments with Colossus; they try to remain friends, but given their long history their interactions swiftly become complicated. Kitty's first case as field leader of the X-Men sees her and her team taking on a new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. After discovering that an outspoken anti-mutant politician brainwashed this new Brotherhood to work for her to publicly discredit mutants, Kitty threatened to expose her if she continued exploiting mutants for her own personal gain.
Dawn of X
After Krakoa became a new sovereign nation for Mutants, Kitty Pryde, now going by Captain Kate Pryde, discovers she is the sole mutant who is, for unknown reasons, unable to use the various warp gates leading to Krakoa. It is implied that she has done something to anger Krakoa, but that restriction does not mean Kitty cannot use other means to reach the mutant homeland. She steals a boat and sets sail for the island. Kitty's time on Krakoa proves to be just as fruitless, as the island's natural resources (like flowers that grow into biome homes) are similarly prohibited to Kitty. Emma Frost comes asking Kitty to take up a special mission: taking a bigger boat out to serve as pirate captain on the X-Men's mission to liberate mutants trapped in oppressive countries that do not recognize mutant sovereignty, while also smuggling and supplying for Emma's Hellfire Trading Company the lifesaving drugs the X-Men provide to humans. Kate Pryde is later appointed the new Red Queen of the Hellfire Trading Company by Emma Frost, to the dismay of Sebastian Shaw. Seeing Pryde as an obstacle to his complete control of the Hellfire Corporation, Shaw began plotting against Kate and her crew. After taking notice how Emma became overprotective of the newly crowned Red Queen, Shaw realized that for the same reason she can't travel through Krakoa's gates nor read or understand the Krakoan language until Emma implanted it in her brain, the X-Men's Resurrection Protocols also won't apply to her, which means Kate cannot be resurrected if she died. He orchestrated a distraction by paying off human supremacists Homines Verendi to stage an attack on his own son. Once Kate was defenseless, Shaw emerged from below deck and ensnared Lockheed with a net gun, making him a helpless hostage. He then released Krakoan seeds at her feet, which wrapped around her and prevented her from using her powers. He then dropped her and Lockheed into the sea. While Lockheed was able to survive, Kate sank helplessly, and once her head dropped under the surface, she had no air left and drowned instantly. Her death is later confirmed by Bishop as he retrieves Kate's body, as it was also established that the Resurrection Protocols indeed do not apply to Kate, as the Five, for reasons unknown, cannot resurrect her. However, she is later resurrected, as Emma Frost realized that it was due to the nature of Kate's intangibility powers that her mindless body was unable to break out of the egg.
Powers and abilities
Kitty is a mutant with the ability to pass through solid matter by passing her atomic particles through the spaces between the atoms of the object through which she is moving. In this way she and the object through which she is passing can temporarily merge without interacting, and each is unharmed when Shadowcat has finished passing through the object. This process is called "phasing" or quantum tunneling and it renders her almost completely intangible to physical touch. Shadowcat passes through objects at the same speed at which she is moving before she enters them. Since she is unable to breathe while inside an object, she can only continuously phase through solid objects (as when she travels underground) as long as she can hold her breath. However, contrary depictions of the duration of her phasing ability have been presented, such as when she has phased miles within an object. The use of her abilities also interferes with any electrical systems as she passes through by disrupting the flow of electrons from atom to atom, including the bio-electric systems of living bodies if she concentrates in the right way. This typically causes machines to malfunction or be destroyed as she phases through them, and can induce shock and unconsciousness in living beings.
Using her power began as an optional ability, but for a period (over ten years of published comics, approximately two years in-continuity) Kitty existed in a naturally "phased" state, and had to consciously choose to become solid. Kitty has returned to her original form and is normally solid and must choose to use her power. While phasing, she does not physically walk on surfaces, but rather interacts with the molecules of air above them, allowing her to ascend and descend, causing her to seemingly walk on air. While phased, she is immune to most physical attacks, and has inconsistent showings of some resistance to telepathy. The density of some materials (such as adamantium) can prove deleterious to her phasing, causing her to be severely disoriented or experience pain if she tries to pass through them. Some energy attacks also prove problematic for Kitty. For example, an energy blast fired by Harpoon, a member of the Marauders, caused her to lose her ability to become fully tangible for months. Magic and magical beings can also harm her in her phased state, as demonstrated in a battle with a N'Garai demon whose claws left no visible marks, but caused Kitty severe pain as they passed through her intangible body.
Kitty can also extend her powers to phase other people and objects. She is able to phase at least six other people (or objects of similar mass) with her, so long as they establish and maintain physical contact with her. She can extend her phasing effect to her own clothing or any other object with mass up to that of a small truck, as long as she remains in contact with it. Kitty can also make objects intangible by maintaining contact with them. She has threatened to leave people phased into a wall, and used her power offensively to harm the Technarch Magus, and Danger.
Kitty's powers seem to have increased over the years. During an X-Treme X-Men story arc in which she is kidnapped by Reverend William Stryker, she phases out of sync with Earth's rotation to move from one place in the world (only east or west) to another seemingly instantaneously. At the climax of Astonishing X-Men, Kitty phases a 10 mi (16 km) long "bullet" composed of super-dense alien metals through the entire planet Earth. This feat caused her considerable strain, but she is unable to phase out of the bullet. Moreover, originally Kitty found it difficult or impossible to phase only part of her body at a time. In the Days of Future Past story arc, she is possessed by her older future self, allowing her to solidify only her shoulder while phasing the rest of her body through Destiny—a feat explicitly beyond the 13-year-old Kitty's abilities. By contrast, the Kitty Pryde of Joss Whedon's run can punch and kick someone standing on the other side of a wall, selectively phasing and unphasing body parts as necessary. She can even run and leap through an armed opponent, grabbing their weapon as she passes by, which presumably requires her to solidify only the surface area of the palms of her hands and then immediately phase both her palms and the weapon.
Besides her mutant powers, Kitty is a genius in the field of applied technology and computer science. She is highly talented in the design and use of computer hardware. She is a skilled pilot of piston and jet engine aircraft, and a competent pilot of certain advanced interstellar vehicles. She has previously shown a unique ability to wield the Soulsword and also be harmed by it. Since her possession by the ninja demon Ogun, she has been consistently shown to be an excellent hand-to-hand combatant, having since been endowed with a lifetime of training in the martial arts of Japanese ninja and samurai.
She is a professional-level dancer in both ballet and modern dance. She speaks fluent English, Japanese, Russian, and the royal and standard languages of the alien Shi'ar and Skrull, and has moderate expertise in Gaelic, Hebrew, and German.
Kitty also shares a mental/empathic connection with her pet dragon Lockheed; both she and the alien dragon can "sense" each other's presence at times and generally understand one another's thoughts and actions.
When Kitty used the Black Vortex, her powers were augmented to a cosmic scale making her a god-like being. She can phase through any material of any density and can even phase a planet out of Thane's amber, whereas in her normal state it is an extremely difficult task to simply phase herself out of the amber. She can also apparently transverse between the planes of the multiverse and is immune to the effects of space. Her appearance can be changed but her natural form appears to be rather gaseous in look.
Other versions
In addition to her mainstream incarnation, Kitty Pryde has been depicted in other fictional universes.
Age of Apocalypse
In the Age of Apocalypse reality, Kitty grows up under harsh circumstances and her nature reflects it. She has short hair, tight clothes, and chain smokes cigarettes. Her parents are killed in the Chicago Cullings, and she is forcibly recruited into Apocalypse's army, but is later rescued by Colossus. Magneto puts Shadowcat under Weapon X's training, hoping to turn her into the X-Men's assassin, and she is given a set of retractable artificial claws around each wrist to better imitate her teacher's fighting style. After the fallout between Colossus and Magneto, Shadowcat sides with Colossus, whom she has married. Instead of leaving the fight against Apocalypse altogether, the couple become the teachers of Generation Next. The two submit their trainees to harsh situations, giving them little comfort despite the fact that Shadowcat is close to the age of her students.
Shadowcat assists the team in rescuing Illyana Rasputin from the Seattle Core, and, at Colossus' behest, abandons her students after Illyana is saved. She is killed by Colossus in his ruthless obsession to protect his sister, Illyana; coming between an enraged Colossus and his endangered sister, Shadowcat never believed he would harm her.
Days of Future Past
In the Days of Future Past timeline (Earth-811), Shadowcat goes by the name Kate Pryde. Kate attempts to go back in time to prevent the assassination of Senator Robert Kelly by Mystique and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. She succeeds, only to create a separate timeline where the events of her past still come to pass. After returning to her own time Kate helps Rachel Summers escape back to the timeline she just created. Captured by Sentinels, Kate escapes by phasing through her inhibitor collar and fell into a time warp, causing her to merge with the Sentinel that was scanning her, and arrives in the timeline Rachel is inhabiting. Kate's mind settles in a small, metal, off-spherical body and becomes known as Widget. After a few adventures in that timeline, mostly in company with her Earth-616 counterpart's team Excalibur, Kate regains her memory and returns to her original timeline where she is able to reprogram the ruling Sentinels to protect life, ending their tyranny.
Earth X
In Earth X it is revealed in the appendix of issue six that Kitty Pryde is killed saving Colossus while he could not shift into his metal form. Instead of phasing the bullet through her, she heroically takes the bullet and is killed.
Exiles
A version of Kitty Pryde codenamed Cat first appeared in Exiles #96. She is younger than her Earth-616 counterpart. She has the appearance and powers of the normal Shadowcat although she wears a different costume. Prior to her joining the Exiles, this version of Kitty had been recruited by Emma Frost as one of the core agents of the Hellfire Club's strike force. She helps Psylocke defeat Doom's soldiers who have invaded the Panoptichron. She helps retrieve Blink, Morph, and Sabretooth from being scattered across the multiverse. She works as a computer expert for the team and is a full member of the Exiles.
Cat's skill with using her powers means she is not tied to any dimension and can see through various realities, including those of the mind (for instance seeing the various personalities in Sage's mind as "ghosts" surrounding her). Her arrival in the Crystal Palace and connection to its computers has increased this, giving her the ability to "cascade" through different alternative versions of herself, altering her appearance and details of her powers. Amongst other versions, she has assumed the form of a Kitty Pryde with the appearance and powers of Tigra. During the New Exiles' last mission Cat faced off against Madame Hydra (Sue Storm) and killed her at the cost of her own life.
There has been another version of Kitty that appeared in the King Hyperion story arc (Exiles #38-40). She had survived an attack on the X-Mansion by the Sentinels. The Colossus from her universe had been killed in the attack but she had the same feelings towards Weapon X's Colossus even though he was not her Colossus. The two eventually fell in love with each other. Unfortunately this did not last since she died with Colossus when they were shot into the empty vacuum of space by Hyperion.
House of M
When the Scarlet Witch altered reality in the 616 Universe, creating the reality known as House of M where mutants were the dominant population, Kitty Pryde was a teacher in a public middle school in Cincinnati, Ohio. Like many of the heroes of Earth 616, she is reminded of the true reality by Layla Miller and recruited in the fight to restore reality.
Magik
In the limited series Magik (Illyana and Storm), an alternative reality Kitty renames herself "Cat" after she is mutated by the demonic sorcerer Belasco into a more feline form, with cat eyes, whiskers, a tail, and enhanced physical abilities and senses. Trapped in Belasco's Limbo, Cat takes a militant view towards defeating the sorcerer, eschewing the magic that her reality's Storm embraces, instead turning to skills in swordplay and physical combat. She tries to save the Illyana Rasputin of Earth-616 from corruption through magic by taking Illyana into the wilderness of Limbo and teaching the child to fight and survive. Like the Kitty Pryde of Earth-616 eventually would, Cat became Illyana's best friend, but more in the role of an older sister due to the difference in their ages.
Cat's plan goes awry when the pair's attempt to confront Belasco fails, at the cost of the life of an enslaved Nightcrawler; Illyana falls under Belasco's influence and Cat is further transformed towards a feline, with a semi-animalistic mind completely loyal to Belasco. Cat is eventually slain by Illyana when Belasco sets Cat upon his rebellious apprentice; facing death at Cat's hands and knowing that, deep down, a part of Kitty still exists and hates her enslavement, Illyana broke Cat's neck in self-defense.
Long after Illyana overthrows Belasco, escapes Limbo, and becomes a member of the junior X-Men team known as the New Mutants, Cat's remains are found by the team in Limbo's throne room. By then she had completely decomposed to a skeleton. Illyana, facing a rebellion of Limbo's demon population that threatened to overrun Earth, smashed Cat's skull in rage over the demonic taint that Belasco left on her soul and frustration over the horrible choice she had to make to kill Cat.
Marvel Zombies
Kitty is briefly shown in the background as a zombie in Ultimate Fantastic Four #23, despite her mutant phasing powers. She is also seen in Marvel Zombies: Dead Days, when zombie Alpha Flight attack the X-Men. This would appear to have been retconned, though, as of Marvel Zombies: Halloween, which depicts her and her son Peter with Colossus surviving for several years in an out of the way house farm, encountering zombies, but, fortunately, being rescued by Mephisto, who dispatched the remaining zombies.
The Earth-91126/Earth-Z Kitty is recruited by Earth-2149/Marvel Zombies Spider-Man to help him develop a cure for the zombie hunger, on the grounds that her powers mean that she would be in no danger from him if he should succumb to his zombie instincts, but she is later seemingly killed when the zombie Quasar holds her underwater until she is forced to become solid once more, allowing the infected Namor to eat her flesh (much to the rage of the zombie Wolverine, of Earth-2149).
Mutant X
Storm was taken by the vampire Dracula and unlike Earth 616, she does not return. Kitty goes off to battle her, either to save or kill her. Kitty slays several vampires in the way but Storm proves too much for her and Kitty becomes her unwilling slave for some time. She later shows up as the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club and seems to be none too happy with Storm. It's also hinted that she was engaged or going to be engaged to Colossus. Her ultimate fate at the end of the series is unknown.
Lightning Force
In the reality of Earth-597, an alternative universe where World War II was won by Nazi Germany, Kitty is forced to serve as Shadowcat alongside Nightcrawler, Meggan, and Hauptmann Englande as a member of the Lightning Force (a version of Excalibur), made a virtual slave because of her Jewish heritage. She leads a sad existence and is easily identified by her shaved head and the Star of David tattooed on her forehead. It is indicated, from her own statements and those made by her reality's counterpart of Moira MacTaggert, that this Shadowcat is a true ghost, raised from the dead by a combination of science and magic and bound to serve the Nazi regime. This Shadowcat had the added ability to disrupt life force with her phasing power, knocking her victims unconscious, much like how her counterpart in the "prime" Marvel Universe (Earth-616) can disrupt technology that she phases through. She is also able to alter her facial features to a "demonic" aspect when attacking enemies or else responding to aggressive, commanding behavior from her superiors.
Pirate Kitty
Kitty tells Illyana a bedtime story and casts herself as Pirate Kitty Pryde, captain of the Abdul Alhazred, who operated in a magical world. Unlike her mainstream counterpart, she did not have any mutant powers and wore a classic pirate outfit which also included her Star of David necklace. She was also sometimes known as Colleen. Kitty was good friends of her version of Colossus, the Bamfs (Nightcrawler), Windrider (Storm), the "Fiend-with-no-name" (later revealed to be named "Mean") (Wolverine) and Lockheed (an alternative version of the X-Jet). Kitty also helped her versions of Professor X and Cyclops capture and cure that universe's version of Dark Phoenix.
At first she was only a fairy tale character, but later it is revealed that her fairy tale is actually an alternative universe. (In fact, several members of this universe, the Bamfs, would later come to Earth-616 to cause trouble.) When Earth-616's Nightcrawler was temporarily stranded in her world, Kitty helped him defeat the sorcerer Shagreen and also encountered the Earth-616 versions of Illyana, Lockheed, and herself.
Professor W's X-Men
In the native universe of the Exiles member Nocturne, Kitty is a senior member of the X-Men led by Nightcrawler. She is a teacher and TJ refers to her as "Aunt Kate". During a fight with Apocalypse Kitty gets exposed to a machine that reverts her to a younger stage of her life when she had only been with the X-Men a few weeks. Nocturne helps Kitty fit into the school and becomes her best friend. She also proves useful in the fight against the Brotherhood led by Cyclops.
Ruins
Imprisoned alongside other mutants at a prison camp in Texas by President X, Kitty attempted to use her phasing powers to escape, only to get stuck halfway through her cell door, losing three feet of intestines in the process.
Secret Wars (2015)
During the Secret Wars storyline, a version of Kitty named Kitten resides in the wuxia-inspired K'un-L'un region of Battleworld. In this reality, Kitten is a martial artist who joins Callisto's band of outcasts after being expelled from her school for attempting a forbidden technique, a side effect of which left her intangible. Kitten and her fellow outcasts became pupils of Shang-Chi, the exiled son of Emperor Zheng Zu. Dubbing their new school The Lowest Caste, Shang-Chi represents the group as their master for the tournament deciding the next Emperor of K'un-L'un, hoping to usurp his father's tyrannical rule. Kitten accompanies Shang-Chi for each of his fights in the Thirteen Chambers. During his final fight with Zu, Shang-Chi uses Kitten's technique of intangibility, which leads to his eventual victory and replaces his father as the new Emperor of K'un-L'un.
Ultimate Marvel
The Ultimate version of Shadowcat (Kitty Pryde) first appears as a 14-year-old girl in Ultimate X-Men #21. She is also Jewish and wears the Star of David around her neck, but does not appear to possess the same genius IQ as her mainstream (Earth-616) counterpart.
Kitty's mother, worried about Kitty's mutation, seeks help from Professor Charles Xavier. Kitty becomes a student at Xavier's school, when her mother allows her to attend under the condition she does not take part in any X-Men missions, nor train in any "Danger Room" simulations. Kitty soon rebels against this and joins the X-Men as their youngest member. She idolizes Spider-Man and has a crush on him; she even dates Peter Parker for a time. After a fierce argument with Professor Xavier concerning Peter's secret identity, which his Aunt May had just found out about, Kitty leaves the X-Men and enrolls in Peter's school. Their relationship is strained after their romantic involvement (as superheroes) becomes publicly known, making it impossible for them to date anymore in their civilian identities, and eventually comes to an end when Peter realizes he cannot get over his feelings for Mary Jane. However, Kitty still retains strong feelings for him.
Following the disastrous flood triggered by Magneto and the subsequent ban of public use of mutant powers, Kitty assumes the identity of the Shroud. Kitty also discovers that she can also decrease the space between her atoms make herself super-dense, giving her both superhuman strength and durability. When the authorities see Kitty as a threat, she enters into a fierce rage and demonstrates these powers for the first time to her friends. She is strong and angry enough to punch Spider-Man several feet through the air. She eventually escapes and goes into hiding in the now abandoned Morlock Tunnel with Iceman and the Human Torch after Peter Parker's death.
Kitty makes an appearance in Ultimate Comics: X, locating Jimmy Hudson, who is revealed to be Wolverine's son. Kitty was charged by Logan before his death to locate Jimmy and reveal his true origins to him.
After the death of Spider-Man she formed new team of X-Men consisting of herself, Iceman and the Human Torch. They soon rescued the mutant Rogue from the mutant-hunting Nimrod robots, going on to recruit Jimmy Hudson into their group as well. After killing the mutant-hunting William Stryker, Kitty decided to leave New York for the Southwest along with Bobby, Rogue, and Jimmy (leaving only Johnny behind) in order to save the mutants there and defeat the Nimrods, now controlled by the deceased Stryker's consciousness.
Spider-Gwen
In the reality where Gwen Stacy is Spider-Woman, Kitty is an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Black Ops department, where she works closely with Wolverine to keep him in check and to help him fight his immortal curse. Like the Age of Apocalypse version, she also wields artificial claws on her wrists. It's revealed that she works with Logan out of guilt, as Stryker forced her to use her powers to subject Logan to the Weapon X experiment.
What If
In What if Phoenix Had Not Died, Kitty is obliterated by Dark Phoenix before she destroyed the Earth.
In What If the X-Men had Lost Inferno?, Kitty is one of the last eight remaining superheroes on the planet. She is slain by a demonic Wolverine, but her death makes Wolverine come to his senses and he fights against Baron Mordo, who had joined up with the demon hordes.
In What If... Wolverine: Enemy of the State, Kitty is the only hero left to kill a Hydra-programmed Wolverine after he has taken down the Marvel Universe. Kitty was the last remaining member of the team assembled to recapture Wolverine. The initial plan failed and Kitty was forced to phase her hand into Wolverine's brain. She then solidified her hand killing Wolverine instantly although she lost her hand in the process.
In What if Magneto and Professor X Had Formed The X-Men Together, Kitty is the tech guru at the Good Shepard clinic (That reality's version of the X-Mansion). She is very similar to her mainstream counterpart. But unlike the mainstream version this Kitty Pryde would wear different coloured wigs and cut her natural hair short. She also had trouble with her powers since she would phase herself through a solid object and accidentally leave her clothes behind. She was also friends with Lockheed although she only called him Dragon.
In What if Astonishing X-Men, Kitty is amongst the X-Men who fight a Phoenix powered Emma Frost. She phased Emma's heart from her chest but a Phoenix fire flares up from her body killing Kitty instantly. In the second story during the events of Astonishing X-Men #6-#12 Elixir had not been able to heal Kitty after being impaled and she dies.
In "What if the Dark Phoenix Rose Again", Kitty has Colossus "set up a fastball special" to help her phase into a Master Mold. She is killed after solidifying inside the Master Mold's head destroying it in the process.
In What if Storm Had the Power of the Phoenix, Kitty helps revive the 'real' Storm (the Phoenix being the cosmic entity in Storm's shape) by phasing inside her body and getting her internal organs working again.
X-Babies
An X-Baby version of Shadowcat appears briefly in the X-Babies one-shot comic. She is wearing her original costume and is younger than the other X-Babies. She is named as Shadowkitty rather than Shadowcat or Kitty Pryde. She also doesn't seem to have a strong bond with the X-Baby version of Lockheed.
X-Men Forever
In the X-Men Forever series, Kitty and Nightcrawler have left Excalibur and rejoined the X-Men after the events of X-Men #1-3. Of the X-Men, she undergoes the most drastic changes from the events of X-Men Forever #1. During the battle with Fabian Cortez, she phases through Wolverine while he is being affected by Cortez's power. This drives her powers haywire as well, and somehow she ends up with one of Wolverine's claws in her wrist. Claremont has also hinted in dialogue throughout the title so far that she may have also undergone psychological or psychic changes as a result of the event. From Forever #4 to the current issue, she is shown to be able to use the claw in the exact method Wolverine would manifest it, with no apparent ill effects (the mechanism for this has not yet been made clear) outside of excruciating pain. Because of the merger with Logan's DNA she has begun to develop a healing factor, slower than Wolverine's but it heals faster when she is intangible. She has also slightly enhanced senses, she also can produce a set of five retractable claws on her left hand like Sabretooth. She has also begun to take on Logan's personality and memories as well. And because of this she is beginning to wonder what part of her truly remains the same.
X-Men: Misfits
In the X-Men: Misfits original English language manga one-shot graphic novel from Marvel and DelRay, Kitty is the newest and only female student of the all-male Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters, which is now experimenting with having a co-ed student body. As the sole girl, she becomes the center of attention and attraction for the rest of the students. She becomes a member and the mascot of the elitist fraternity, The Hellfire Club, and has a short-lived romantic relationship with the school troublemaker Pyro.
X-Men: The End
In the X-Men: The End future, Kitty Pryde becomes the mayor of Chicago and then President of the United States. She has three children: her eldest daughter, named Meredith, and twins 10 years younger than Meredith, Sara and Doug, with an unnamed partner who died protecting her from an assassination attempt.
Miscellaneous
In Excalibur #103, we see many alternative versions of Shadowcat. Many of these variations have appeared in other comics, such as Age of Apocalypse, but there were other variations, including one of her as a Phalanx convert, a sex dominatrix, a homeless person, a nun, a version wearing a costume similar to Phantom Girl, and a normal person who owns an Olde Curiosity Shoppe.
In New Mutants #63 Illyana (Magik), along with Lockheed, gets trapped on an alien spaceship that has been invaded by a Brood Queen. On this ship the Brood Queen created clones of the X-Men, including Kitty. This one had the Ariel suit on, but it was green, instead of the typical blue. These X-Men are implanted with Brood eggs. Her memories were altered by the Brood Queen like the other X-Men, but eventually they rebel against her and are free. Illyana uses the soulsword to eliminate the Brood Eggs from their bodies. The X-Men stay on the ship; whether they are still on it is unknown.
During the Cross Time Caper storyline a few different appearances of Kitty appear. One was a princess who was gifted with magic abilities. She eventually married a short dashing prince (who had originally fallen in love with the mainstream version of Kitty). A second version was a crime boss who was betrayed and killed by her partner in crime Illiyana Rasputin. A third was from a world of sentient dinosaurs. She went by the name of Shadowcompsognathus.
Collected editions
Several of Kitty Pryde's earlier adventures were collected in paperback form.
In other media
Music
Kitty Pryde is referenced in Weezer's song "In the Garage" from their "Blue Album".
Television
Kitty Pryde appeared as Sprite in "The X-Men Adventure" episode of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, which guest-starred the X-Men. She was voiced by Melissa Sue Anderson. She also appeared in her short-lived "Ariel" costume in the X-Men group cameo at the end of the episode "The Education of a Superhero".
Kitty Pryde (voiced by Kath Soucie) was a viewpoint character in the animated television one-shot Pryde of the X-Men, as the newest member of the team. She is a new recruit of the team and is initially frightened of Nightcrawler, due to his demonic appearance. She and Nightcrawler later succeed in defeating Magneto. Once Nightcrawler seemingly dies as a result of having apparently sacrificed himself, Kitty begins to cry until discovering that he is alive and is met with positive relations by her teammates, except Wolverine. As the pilot was a failure, and the character had lost prominence in comics at the time, she was not used in the next X-Men TV series, not even in cameos. Jubilee replaced her as the young viewpoint character, and in the adaptations of stories that involved her.
In the animated series X-Men: Evolution, Shadowcat is a main character, who is shown as the teenybopper of the team and who has a romantic interest in Brotherhood member Lance Alvers. Shadowcat saves Wolverine in the season one episode "Grim Reminder", where she unintentionally stows away with Nightcrawler while on the Blackbird without the knowledge that he was beginning to pilot the jet. She is also shown to have developed a close friendship with Nightcrawler, despite the fact that she at first displayed a dislike for his appearance. Besides Nightcrawler, she is shown to have formed a friendship with Rogue and Spyke. Her initial dislike of his appearance changes after he is severely wounded by Rogue, while she and the rest of the X-Men tried to recruit her. In this series, she does not have Lockheed for a pet, but she is shown preferring to sleep with a stuffed dragon instead of a teddy bear. Though she has an on-and-off interest in the delinquent mutant boy Lance Alvers, early in the series she displays interest in Cyclops. After Rogue is recruited, she serves as her support in beginning a romantic relationship with Scott and develops a friendship with her, despite their differences. When Avalanche tries to join the X-Men in the season two episode "Joyride", she tries to help him and shows additional attraction to him as she grades him and the other members of the junior team. After he informs her that some members of the group have started a joyride on the Blackbird and helps her avert catastrophe, she staunchly defends him once he is accused by Cyclops of being responsible. When Avalanche starts to leave, Shadowcat gives him a brief kiss before his departure. Their relationship continues with the two of them going to a school dance, talking on the phone and going to the mall. Despite being with the Brotherhood, Avalanche tries to protect Kitty in the fight against the Scarlet Witch. In season 3, Kitty and Lance's relationship briefly ends after the Brotherhood and Mystique blow up the X Mansion and are in part responsible for the exposure of mutants. Kitty calls Lance a "hood" after he attacks the high school and he says "he will never be good enough for her". Both look sad at these comments. In the fourth season, the X-Men try to use her powers to damage one of Apocalypse's domes and fails, instead being electrocuted briefly. In the fiftieth episode of the series, entitled "Ghost of a Chance", she comes across Danielle Moonstar once she depicts herself in a dream sequence to her. Once she wakes out of it, she tries to and successfully finds her, becoming friends with the girl after learning she had been in suspended animation for two years. Prior to this, it is discovered that her fear is phasing repeatedly into the ground and going further without any control of where she is going. Shadowcat plays a key role in the defeat of Apocalypse and asks the Brotherhood for help. They come to her aid; as Lance and Kitty resume their romantic relationship. Of the six main X-Men from the first season of the series, she is one of the four that is still a member of the team in the future Charles Xavier saw while in the mind of Apocalypse. Shadowcat was voiced by Maggie Blue O'Hara.
Shadowcat appears in Wolverine and the X-Men, voiced by Danielle Judovits and was a student at the Xavier Institute before the destruction of the X-Mansion and disappearance of Professor X. When Wolverine reformed the X-Men to take down the Mutant Response Division and save the dismal future controlled by the Sentinels, Kitty was on her way to the "mutant paradise" Genosha. The X-Men came to re-recruit her and she immediately rejoined the team. Shadowcat appears as the youngest member of the team and she seems to have a crush on Iceman as she is jealous when his attention is taken by Emma Frost and is shown with a love-struck face when she lands on Bobby during a Danger Room training session, though she quickly moves away from him when Angel arrives. She seems to have formed a friendship with Tildie Soames after babysitting her in one episode. In the last episode of the series, she uses her powers to penetrate a Sentinel controlled by Magneto, of which Beast had difficulty with. Her design is inspired by the appearance of the character in the Astonishing X-Men comics, and her costume emulates the design with the appearance of the blue and yellow used on her costume. The shorts she wears are based on the appearances of the original X-Men, and her first appearance when she wore a variant of the uniform.
Shadowcat appears in The Super Hero Squad Show episode "And Lo...A Pilot Shall Come". She appears alongside Colossus at the unveiling of the Great Wall that separates Super Hero City from Villainville and helping citizens into the S.H.I.E.L.D. Shelters. In the episode "Mysterious Mayhem at Mutant Academy", she uses Lockheed to chase Reptil and the hypnotized X-Men out of the girls' bathroom.
Motion comics
Shadowcat appears in the Astonishing X-Men motion comic, voiced by Eileen Stevens and later by Laura Harris.
Film
In the film X-Men, she has a small cameo, played by Sumela Kay. She is referenced as the "girl in Illinois who can walk through walls" by Senator Kelly. She is shown in Xavier's class when Wolverine walks in; she returns for her books which she had left behind, grabs them, and phases through the door on her way out. Xavier responds with a cheerful "Bye, Kitty" while Wolverine looks on, startled.
In X2, she has a brief appearance played by Katie Stuart. She is shown phasing through walls and through people to escape William Stryker's military forces during their attack on the X-Mansion. Another scene shows her falling through her bed to avoid an assault. She shares a room with Siryn; in the novelization it is stated that this is because her phasing ability gives her partial protection from Siryn's scream. When the President of the United States asks Professor Xavier how he got the files he gave him, Xavier replies that he knows a little girl who can walk through walls.
In X-Men: The Last Stand, she is portrayed by a pre-transition Elliot Page, and has a central role. She serves as a rival to Rogue for the romantic attentions of Iceman, since their close friendship and their kiss (deleted scene) make Rogue increasingly jealous and frustrated. She also joins the X-Men in the battle on Alcatraz Island, breaking off from the battle to save Leech from the Juggernaut. In the novelization of the film, it is hinted that at some point Kitty had a romantic relationship with Colossus, but that it had long since run its course, although Colossus appears to still retain feelings towards her.
Page reprised the role in X-Men: Days of Future Past. Pryde is the prime facilitator because she has developed a new power. In this film, she can send the consciousness of another person back into his or her body in the past. At the beginning of the film, she has been using this ability to repeatedly send Bishop four days back in time whenever the Sentinels attack, thus; preventing her group from ever engaging them by having him warn the past team before they are detected. In order to prevent the Sentinels' creation, she sends Wolverine back to 1973 (chosen as the strain of sending someone else back that far would snap their mind, with Logan's healing factor the only thing that makes such a trip survivable for him) and was gravely injured when Wolverine becomes violent; due to provocation from events in 1973. After the timeline was successfully altered, Kitty is seen teaching a class at the X-Mansion with Colossus. In the film's alternate release, called The Rogue Cut, Kitty's injuries from sending Wolverine back to the past result in the X-Men rescuing Rogue to take over for her. Rogue absorbs Kitty's powers and takes over, stabilizing Wolverine and Kitty helps Magneto flee a Sentinel attack.
In January 2018, a Kitty Pryde solo movie was announced to be in development, with Tim Miller attached as the director and Brian Michael Bendis as the writer, but in March 2019, after Disney's purchase of 21st Century Fox, Fox executive Emma Watts described The New Mutants as the final film in the X-Men series, thus; ending the development of the Kitty Pryde film.
Video games
Kitty Pryde appears in Konami's 1992 X-Men video arcade game, as a non-playable character (NPC). In this game, she is not known as "Sprite"; instead, she plays the "damsel in distress" role as it is based on "Pryde of the X-Men". In the 2010 re-release of the game she is voiced by Mela Lee.
Shadowcat is a playable character in the game X-Men II: The Fall of the Mutants.
Shadowcat appears as an NPC in the X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse, voiced by Kim Mai Guest. She has special dialogue with Colossus (who she scolds for flirting with Scarlet Witch).
Shadowcat appears in X-Men: The Official Game, with Kim Mai Guest reprising her role.
Shadowcat is a playable character in Marvel Super Hero Squad Online, voiced by Tara Strong.
In X-Men: Destiny, Gambit mentions that the U-Men had captured Kitty and extracted bits of her power. Gambit obtains a vial of a substance which temporarily lets the character fall through the roof (if the player chose the correct option).
Kitty Pryde is a playable character in the Facebook game Marvel: Avengers Alliance.
Kitty Pryde is a playable character in the X-Men: Days of Future Past app game.
Kitty Pryde is a playable character in the online MMO Marvel Heroes, with Danielle Judovits reprising her role.
Kitty Pryde appears as a playable character in Marvel Future Fight.
Kitty Pryde appears as a playable character in Marvel Puzzle Quest.
Kitty Pryde appears as a playable character in Marvel Strike Force.
Novels
Kitty Pryde appears in the X-Men/Star Trek crossover novel Planet X. In it, she is examined by Geordi La Forge, who notes the similarities between her ability and the chroniton displacement he and Ro Laren experienced in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Next Phase".
Reception
Kitty Pryde has been well received as a comic book character and as a member of the X-Men. Wizard magazine put her at number #13 in 200 Greatest Comic Characters of All Time. She was the highest female comic character in the list beating rivals such as Wonder Woman, Buffy Summers, and She-Hulk. IGN ranked her as the 47th greatest comic book hero of all time stating that "as X-Men writers have often found it useful to introduce younger teen recruits to offset the experienced members of the team, Kitty Pryde set the standard when she debuted, and none have surpassed her". IGN rated Kitty Pryde #3 on its list of the Top 25 X-Men from the Past 40 Years describing her as the mutant everyman, the common girl turned superhero; IGN also stated that as her pet dragon, Lockheed, "became instantly attached to Kitty, [they] were hooked early on". Marvel.com ranked her as the tenth greatest X-Men member stating that "unquestionably, the dynamic of the X-Men shifted entirely when teenage whiz kid Kitty Pryde joined the team in the early 1980s"; Marvel.com also stated that even though Kitty has since blossomed into a young woman of considerable maturity and power, she remains the access point to the X-Men for countless readers. A later list on Marvel's website, ranking the top 50 X-Men characters, placed her in first place, citing the ease of identifying with her for the audience, and her development over the years.
Notes
References
External links
Kitty Pryde at Marvel.com
UncannyXmen.net Spotlight on Shadowcat
American superheroes
Characters created by Chris Claremont
Characters created by John Byrne (comics)
Comics characters introduced in 1980
Excalibur (comics)
Female characters in animation
Female characters in film
Female characters in television
Fictional American Jews in comics
Fictional bisexual females
Fictional characters from Illinois
Fictional characters who can turn intangible
Fictional dancers
Fictional female ninja
Fictional linguists
Fictional mayors
Fictional schoolteachers
Fictional secret agents and spies
Fictional women soldiers and warriors
Jewish superheroes
Marvel Comics female superheroes
Marvel Comics film characters
Marvel Comics LGBT superheroes
Marvel Comics martial artists
Marvel Comics mutants
S.H.I.E.L.D. agents
Teenage characters in comics
X-Men members | false | [
"XMEN disease is a rare genetic disorder of the immune system that illustrates the role of Mg2+ in cell signaling. XMEN stands for “X-linked immunodeficiency with magnesium defect, Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection, and neoplasia.” The disease is characterized by CD4 lymphopenia, severe chronic viral infections, and defective T-lymphocyte activation. Investigators in the laboratory of Dr. Michael Lenardo, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health first described this condition in 2011.\n\nPresentation\n\nXMEN patients have splenomegaly, chronic Epstein Barr Virus (EBV) infection, and are developmentally normal. They have an increased susceptibility for developing EBV+ lymphoma. Additionally, XMEN patients have excessive infections consistent with the underlying immunodeficiency. These infections included recurrent otitis media, sinusitis, viral pneumonia, diarrhea, upper respiratory infections, epiglottitis, and pertussis. Although autoimmune symptoms do not feature prominently in XMEN autoimmune cytopenias were observed in two unrelated patients.\n\nIn the figure to the left, major features are present in all XMEN patients, while minor features are found only in some.\n\nGenetics\n\nXMEN disease is caused by loss of function mutations in the gene MAGT1. MAGT1 is a 70 kb gene with 10 exons encoding for a 335 amino acid protein that maps to Xq21.1. MagT1 is a component of the N-linked glycosylation machinery (oligosacchyrltransferase, OST), a fundamental component of all cells that regulates the attachment of sugar moieties onto specific sites in proteins. Many of the immunodeficiency-related features of XMEN disease are related to the hypoglycosylation phenotype caused by loss of the OST component MagT1.\n\nThe conclusive connection between MAGT1, glycosylation, and Mg2+ import remains unknown. A prominent hypothesis from XMEN patients suggests that MAGT1's role in glycosylation is essential to the function (either directly or indirectly) of a Mg+2 transporter.\n\nMAGT1 is evolutionarily conserved and expressed in all mammalian cells with higher expression in hematopoietic lineages. XMEN patients have been found to carry both MAGT1 deletions and missense mutations. However, the severity of the phenotype is not entirely explained by the genotype. The disease severity also likely depends on environmental and other genetic factors.\n\nXMEN disease follows an X-linked inheritance pattern because the MAGT1 is located on the X chromosome. Mothers of XMEN patients exhibit preferential X chromosome inactivation of the chromosome with the mutation in their hematopoietic cells and are asymptomatic.\n\nDiagnosis\nXMEN patients generally have chronically high levels of EBV with increased EBV-infected cells, diminished thymic output of CD4+ cells, reduced CD4:CD8 ratio, moderately high B cell counts, and mild neutropenia. Their neutropenia may be related to their chronic EBV. Some patients also showed defective T cell proliferation in response to mitogen stimulation, variable immunoglobulin deficiencies, or deficient vaccination response.\n\nTreatment\nOnce a diagnosis is made, each individual's treatment is based on an individual’s clinical condition. Hematopoietic stem cell transplant is a possible treatment of this condition but its effectiveness is unproven and may be accompanied by severe and potentially fatal hemorrhage.\n\nIt was previously thought magnesium supplementation was a promising potential treatment for XMEN. One of the consequences of loss of MAGT1 function is a decreased level of unbound intracellular Mg2+. This decrease leads to loss of expression of an immune cell receptor called NKG2D, which is involved in EBV-immunity. Mg2+ supplementation in some tests restored NKG2D expression and other functions that are abnormal in patients with XMEN disease. Early evidence suggested continuous oral magnesium threonate supplementation was safe and well tolerated. A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study was conducted to evaluate the use of Mg2+ as a treatment for XMEN. In vitro magnesium supplementation experiments failed to significantly rescue NKG2D expression in patients with XMEN disease and the clinical trial was stopped. Therefore, magnesium supplementation is unlikely to be an effective therapeutic option in XMEN disease. Investigators at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the US National Institutes of Health currently have clinical protocols to study new approaches to the diagnosis and treatment of this disorder.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n\nImmune system disorders\nGenetic diseases and disorders\nEpstein–Barr virus-associated diseases\nX-linked recessive disorders",
"Stevie Hunter is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Her first appearance was in The Uncanny X-Men #139 as a surprise dance teacher for the newest X-Man/Student, Kitty Pryde, a.k.a. Shadowcat. She has continued to make some scattered appearance in X-Men comic books.\n\nFictional character biography\nStevie Hunter was a professional dancer, but an injury to her knee ruined her career and forced her to discontinue her dancing full-time. As an alternative, she began teaching dance classes at a studio in Salem Center, her most notable student being Kitty Pryde. Stevie quickly became a best friend to Kitty, and on occasions made Storm, who had unofficially taken up the mantle of Kitty's surrogate mother, slightly jealous of the attention that Kitty gave to Stevie.\n\nAt one point, Stevie and Storm attended a ballet performance at the Metropolitan Opera House, where Stevie was captured and taken hostage by Arcade's assistant Miss Locke and later rescued by the X-Men. Upon this incident, Stevie learned about the true identities of Kitty, Ororo and their friends, and became an ally of the X-Men and privy to their secrets. She later began physical education classes with the rookie New Mutants, focusing on ballet. She would continue these sessions over the years.\n\nStevie has tried to stay out of the fights the mutants get in, but has become involved in a few nevertheless. In one case, she and the New Mutants were involved in a fight against the demon S'ym, who attacks them inside the X-Mansion. In trying to get a rattled Magik away from the fight, she ends up face to face with the demon. Her life was saved only by the magical might of Illyana herself, turning the demon's loyalties. Even then S'ym offered to kill Stevie for knowing too much.\n\nIn a later incident, Stevie was present when forces from Genosha attacked the X-Mansion. She made it through a trapdoor to safety below, but unfortunately Storm, Warlock, Rictor, Boom-Boom and Wolfsbane, one of her original students, were kidnapped. Stevie did not go on the rescue mission.\n\nIn one of her last major appearances, the Shadow King had taken over the mind of Peter Rasputin, Illyana's brother. Stevie helps Professor X stay one step ahead of Peter, until they can get to the mansion's Danger Room. This allows them to subdue Peter without harming him.\n\nIn X-Men Gold, Stevie Hunter reappears as a Congresswoman attempting to assist Kitty's X-Men in presenting the mutant case during a governmental proposition for an unjust Mutant Deportation Act.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \nUncanny Xmen.net Database\n\nCharacters created by Chris Claremont\nComics characters introduced in 1980\nCharacters created by John Byrne (comics)\nFictional African-American people\nFictional dancers\nFictional schoolteachers\nMarvel Comics female characters\nX-Men supporting characters"
] |
[
"Kitty Pryde",
"Publication history",
"What was the first publication date?",
"The fictional Kitty Pryde first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980),",
"How long was the publication?",
"I don't know.",
"Who introduced the character Kitty Pryde?",
"Uncanny X-Men artist John Byrne named Kitty Pryde after a classmate he met in art school, Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary in 1973.",
"What is the story behind the name Kitty Pryde?",
"He had told Pryde he liked her name and asked for permission to use it, promising to name his first original comics character after her.",
"Where did the Kitty part come from?",
"Claremont said several elements of the character's personality were derived from those of X-Men editor Louise Simonson's daughter, Julie.",
"What were Kitty's powers going to be?",
"Claremont and Byrne made the new character a full-fledged X-Man in issue #139, where she was codenamed \"Sprite\".",
"How was Kitty accepted into the Xmen issues by readers?",
"Shadowcat's popularity had a profound effect on the real-life Kitty Pryde: the latter became so overwhelmed by attention from Shadowcat fans, she abbreviated her name to K.D. Pryde",
"How long did Kitty last in the Xmen series?",
"I don't know."
] | C_98d6a9f0735942e3a427f07b743f5a4d_1 | What else was interesting about this characters history? | 9 | What else was interesting about Kitty Pryde's history along with Xmen? | Kitty Pryde | Kitty Pryde was introduced into the X-Men title as the result of an editorial dictate that the book was supposed to depict a school for mutants. Uncanny X-Men artist John Byrne named Kitty Pryde after a classmate he met in art school, Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary in 1973. He had told Pryde he liked her name and asked for permission to use it, promising to name his first original comics character after her. Byrne drew the character to slightly resemble an adolescent Sigourney Weaver. The fictional Kitty Pryde first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980), by writer Chris Claremont and artist Byrne, as a highly intelligent 13-year-old girl. Claremont said several elements of the character's personality were derived from those of X-Men editor Louise Simonson's daughter, Julie. Claremont and Byrne made the new character a full-fledged X-Man in issue #139, where she was codenamed "Sprite". She was the main character in issues #141-142, the "Days of Future Past" storyline, where she is possessed by her older self, whose consciousness time travels to the past to prevent a mass extermination of mutants. The six-issue miniseries Kitty Pryde and Wolverine (1984-1985), written by Claremont, is a coming-of-age storyline in which she matures from a girl to a young woman, adopting the new name "Shadowcat". In the late '80s, she joined the British-based super team, Excalibur, where she remained for roughly ten years before coming back to the X-Men. In the early 2000s, she disappeared from the spotlight after semi-retiring from superhero work. She was featured in the 2002 mini-series Mekanix and came back to the main X-Men books in 2004 under the pen of Joss Whedon in Astonishing X-Men. She remained a part of the X-Men books until 2008 when she left again for roughly 2 years. After coming back, she was featured in Jason Aaron's Wolverine and the X-Men and Brian Michael Bendis' All-New X-Men books. In early 2015, she joined the Guardians of the Galaxy. After the Secret Wars event, she adopted her new alias, Star-Lord (first believed to be Star-Lady). Shadowcat's popularity had a profound effect on the real-life Kitty Pryde: the latter became so overwhelmed by attention from Shadowcat fans, she abbreviated her name to K.D. Pryde to avoid association with her fictional counterpart. She has since stated she has mixed feelings about her fame, saying she values Byrne's comics for their entertainment and artistic value, but wishes more people would appreciate her as more than just Shadowcat's namesake. CANNOTANSWER | She remained a part of the X-Men books until 2008 when she left again for roughly 2 years. | Katherine Anne "Kitty" Pryde is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics, commonly in association with the X-Men. The character first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980) and was co-created by writer-artist John Byrne and Chris Claremont.
A mutant, Pryde possesses a "phasing" ability that allows her, as well as objects or people she is in contact with, to become intangible. This power also disrupts any electrical field she passes through, and lets her simulate levitation.
The youngest to join the X-Men, she was first portrayed as a "kid sister" to many older members of the group, filling the role of literary foil to the more established characters. She occasionally used the codenames Sprite and Ariel, cycling through several uniforms until settling for her trademark black-and-gold costume. During the miniseries Kitty Pryde and Wolverine, she was renamed Shadowcat, the alias she would be most associated with, and shifted to a more mature depiction in her subsequent appearances. Pryde would eventually abandon her nickname, "Kitty", and switch to "Kate". She was one of the main cast of characters depicted in the original Excalibur title. After momentarily joining the Guardians of the Galaxy, she assumed her then-fiancé's superhero identity as the Star-Lord (Star-Lady). As of the series Marauders, she is now informally known as Captain Kate Pryde and the Red Queen of the Hellfire Trading Company.
In the X-Men film series, Kitty Pryde was initially portrayed by young actresses in cameos; Sumela Kay in X-Men (2000) and Katie Stuart in X2 (2003). Later, a pre-transition Elliot Page portrayed the character in X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) and X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) in full-length appearances. Pryde is ranked #47 in IGN's Top 100 Comic Book Heroes.
Publication history
Kitty Pryde was introduced into the X-Men title as the result of an editorial dictate that the book was supposed to depict a school for mutants. Uncanny X-Men artist John Byrne named Kitty Pryde after a classmate he met in art school, Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary in 1973. He had told Pryde he liked her name and asked for permission to use it, promising to name his first original comics character after her. Byrne drew the character to slightly resemble an adolescent Sigourney Weaver.
The fictional Kitty Pryde first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980), by writer Chris Claremont and artist Byrne, as a highly intelligent 13-year-old girl. Claremont said several elements of the character's personality were derived from those of X-Men editor Louise Simonson's daughter, Julie. Claremont and Byrne made the new character a full-fledged X-Man in issue #139, where she was codenamed "Sprite". She was the main character in issues #141–142, the "Days of Future Past" storyline, where she is possessed by her older self, whose consciousness time travels to the past to prevent a mass extermination of mutants. The six-issue miniseries Kitty Pryde and Wolverine (1984–1985), written by Claremont, is a coming-of-age storyline in which she matures from a girl to a young woman, adopting the new name "Shadowcat".
In the late 1980s, Kitty joined the British-based super team, Excalibur, where she remained for roughly ten years before coming back to the X-Men. In the early 2000s, she disappeared from the spotlight after semi-retiring from superhero work. She was featured in the 2002 mini-series Mekanix and came back to the main X-Men books in 2004 under the pen of Joss Whedon in Astonishing X-Men. She remained a part of the X-Men books until 2008 when she left again for roughly 2 years. After coming back, she was featured in Jason Aaron's Wolverine and the X-Men and Brian Michael Bendis' All-New X-Men books.
In early 2015, she joined the Guardians of the Galaxy. After the Secret Wars event, she adopted her new alias, Star-Lord (first believed to be Star-Lady).
In 2020, Kitty Pryde was revealed to be bisexual. Her co-creator, Chris Claremont, had always intended this to be the case, considering Rachel Summers as a possible love interest for Pryde. However, Claremont wasn't allowed to show this at the time due to censorship, as he revealed on the "Xplain the X-Men" podcast in 2016.
Shadowcat's popularity had a profound effect on the real-life Kitty Pryde: the latter became so overwhelmed by attention from Shadowcat fans, she abbreviated her name to K.D. Pryde to avoid association with her fictional counterpart. She has since stated she has mixed feelings about her fame, saying she values Byrne's comics for their entertainment and artistic value, but wishes more people would appreciate her as more than just Shadowcat's namesake.
Fictional character biography
Katherine Anne "Kitty" Pryde was born in Deerfield, Illinois, to Carmen and Theresa Pryde. She is an Ashkenazi Jewish-American and her paternal grandfather, Samuel Prydeman, was held in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. Kitty started to have headaches at age thirteen, signaling the emergence of her mutant powers. She was approached by both the X-Men's Charles Xavier and the Hellfire Club's White Queen, Emma Frost, both of whom hoped to recruit her for their respective causes. Kitty was unnerved by Frost, observing that the White Queen looked at her as if she were "something good to eat." She got along better with Xavier and the three X-Men who escorted him, quickly becoming friends with Ororo Munroe. Ororo told Kitty who she really was and about the X-Men, which made the teenager even more enthusiastic about attending Xavier's school.
Their conversation was cut short when they (along with Wolverine and Colossus) were attacked by armored mercenaries in the employ of Frost and the Hellfire Club. The X-Men defeated their assailants, but were subdued by the White Queen's telepathic powers immediately after. In the confusion, Kitty was separated from the X-Men, and not captured along with them. She managed to contact Cyclops, Phoenix, and Nightcrawler. With the help of Dazzler and Pryde, those X-Men rescued their teammates from the Hellfire Club.
The White Queen appeared to perish in the battle, which meant she was no longer competing with Xavier for the approval of Kitty's parents. Kitty's parents had not heard from her in more than a day, because during that time she was first being pursued by the Hellfire Club's men and then working with the X-Men to save their friends. All they knew was Kitty had left with Xavier's "students" to get a soda, there had been reports that the soda shop had been blown up, and Kitty had been missing since. Therefore, they were angry at Xavier when he finally returned with Kitty in tow. At first, it seemed like there was no chance of Kitty being allowed to attend the school and join the X-Men. Phoenix then used her considerable telepathic power to erase the memories of Kitty's parents and plant false ones, resulting in a complete shift in their attitude towards Xavier. Kitty was then allowed to enroll at Xavier's school with her parents' blessing, becoming the youngest member of the team.
Joining the X-Men
Kitty joined the X-Men, and assumed the costumed identity of Sprite. Early in her career as an X-Man, Kitty's adult self from an alternate future took possession of her body in the present to help X-Men thwart the assassination of Senator Robert Kelly by the second Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Kitty then singlehandedly defeated a N'Garai demon. Kitty also briefly attended the White Queen's Massachusetts Academy when her parents became convinced that she needed to be with students of her own age, but following a failed attempt to subdue the X-Men, Frost revoked Kitty's admission.
During her teen years, Kitty fostered a number of close relationships with others at the school and in the X-Men. She developed a crush on Colossus and became close friends with his little sister Illyana Rasputin. Initially uneasy around Nightcrawler and other mutants with physical deformities, Kitty finally overcame her fears and became close friends with him. Kitty also befriended Lockheed, a highly intelligent alien resembling a dragon, who followed her home after a mission in outer space. Lockheed is extremely loyal to Kitty, and the two of them share a psychic bond. Wolverine became something of a mentor to Kitty despite his usually gruff personality. Storm came to view Kitty as the daughter she never had.
Though Xavier has threatened to reassign Kitty to the New Mutants, a team of younger mutants he established in the absence of the X-Men, ever since the X-Men returned from outer space, she never ended up joining the group, who she derisively calls the "X-Babies". Kitty was later abducted by the Morlocks and nearly forced to wed Caliban. She was then abducted by the White Queen, but rescued by the New Mutants.
During this time, Kitty began to date Colossus, although this did not last long. Colossus developed feelings for an alien woman named Zsaji whom he met on the Beyonder's planet in the first Secret Wars. Colossus' feelings toward Zsaji were primarily a side effect of her own unique healing abilities, which she had used on him after he became injured. Regardless, Colossus' feelings were real and he returned to Earth consumed with grief after Zsaji's death. He admitted to Kitty that he loved Zsaji, which hurt her deeply and ended the budding romantic relationship. Kitty had made good friends with a local boy from Salem Central named Doug Ramsey around this time, but her feelings for him never went as deep as his for her, and they never actually dated, though they remained close, even more so after Doug's status as a mutant was revealed and he joined the New Mutants under the codename Cypher. They remained friends until his death some time later.
Ogun
During the 1984–1985 Kitty Pryde and Wolverine miniseries, Kitty is possessed by a demon, the ninja Ogun. Ogun psychically bestows upon Kitty a virtual lifetime of martial arts training. Kitty was brainwashed by Ogun into becoming a ninja assassin, and was sent to attack Wolverine. Kitty is able to resist Ogun's influence with Wolverine's help, and the two form a strong teacher/student bond, which helps them in vanquishing Ogun. Kitty returns to the X-Men, no longer the innocent girl they once knew, and officially adopts the codename Shadowcat.
Morlock Massacre
While trying to save Rogue, Kitty was badly injured by Harpoon's energy spear during the Mutant Massacre story arc, in the massacre of the Morlocks, with the result that she lost control of her power and was stuck in an intangible state and could not regain her solidity. She was rushed to Muir Island along with other surviving casualties of the Massacre to be tended to by Moira MacTaggert. MacTaggert was able to keep Kitty's condition from deteriorating to the point where she completely lost physical substance and ceased to exist, but was not able to do any more to help her.
At this time, Kitty's natural state was to be intangible. Where she once had to make a conscious effort to phase, she could now only maintain her solidity through an act of conscious will. The X-Men went to Reed Richards, Mister Fantastic of the Fantastic Four, for aid, but Richards initially refused because he was not sure he would be able to help.
Having nowhere else to go, the X-Men turned to Richards' enemy Doctor Doom. This created a moral dilemma for both the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, and both teams fought each other because the Fantastic Four were trying to stop the treatment while the X-Men were determined to save Kitty's life. In the end, both the personal crisis of the Fantastic Four and the life of Shadowcat were saved after Franklin Richards, with the help of Lockheed, brought both teams to their senses. Kitty has since recovered from this state and now has full control over her power again.
Excalibur
Among the others injured and brought to Muir Isle were Colossus and Nightcrawler, although Colossus left the United Kingdom shortly after being released from MacTaggert's care to join the rest of the X-Men on their mission to battle the Adversary. The X-Men sacrificed their lives to defeat the Adversary, the battle and their sacrifice was televised and broadcast across the world. The X-Men were resurrected later in the same issue, unknown to the world at large, but chose to keep a low profile and perpetuate the belief that they were still dead. This strategy was enforced to more effectively fight their enemies. This meant avoiding contact with friends and family, including Kitty. Thinking the X-Men were dead, Kitty and Nightcrawler joined Rachel Summers, Captain Britain, and Meggan to form the Britain-based team Excalibur. For a brief time, Kitty studied at St. Searle's School for Girls in Britain. During her time with Excalibur, Kitty developed a crush on Professor Alistaire Stuart which went unreciprocated since Alistaire was attracted to Rachel. Later, she was romantically involved with former Black Air agent Pete Wisdom. At some point Kitty was recruited by the international law enforcement agency S.H.I.E.L.D. to repair the computer system of their flying headquarters. Kitty discovered the problem was due to Ogun's spirit having infiltrated the computer system, and with the aid of Wolverine, she managed to purge Ogun's presence. During this time, Kitty was attracted to a S.H.I.E.L.D. intern her own age, and this made her begin to doubt her relationship with Wisdom. Soon after, she broke off their relationship.
Back to the X-Men
After Excalibur's dissolution, Shadowcat, Nightcrawler, and Colossus return to the X-Men. While returning, they faced a group of imposters following Cerebro, in the guise of Professor X. While tracking Mystique, she stumbles onto prophetic diaries that belonged to Irene Adler, a precognitive. During the six-month gap, Kitty visited Genosha. Whatever she experienced there is unknown (although presumably connected to her father, living on Genosha at the time), but it had a profound effect on her. She cut her hair and began to act rebelliously, also using one of Wolverine's bone claws broken off during battle as a weapon. Kitty remained with the X-Men for a while before leaving after the apparent death of Colossus. Trying to give herself a normal life, she attended the University of Chicago. During this time, her father was killed when Cassandra Nova’s Sentinels destroyed Genosha. Kitty later finds a recording of his death due to exploring footage of the attack. She is also kidnapped by William Stryker, but the X-Treme X-Men team helped her escape, and she assisted them on several missions.
At the start of Joss Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men, Kitty once again rejoins the X-Men, despite having extreme reservations about working with the former White Queen, given their history. This was the primary reason why Frost herself wanted Kitty on the team, as a sort of "safety" should Frost ever revert to type. Frost reasoned that the person who trusted her least would be most likely to spot such behavior. On one of the team's first missions, Shadowcat discovered Colossus was alive. After some initial awkwardness, Kitty and Colossus resumed dating.
Kitty Pryde appeared alongside Colossus in the "Blinded by the Light" arc in X-Men. They are the two X-Men left to look after the students while the rest of the X-Men leave for Mystique's home in Mississippi to check up on Rogue, during which they are ambushed by the Marauders. Kitty and Colossus, meanwhile, attempt to protect the students from a faction of the Marauders led by Exodus. It is revealed over the course of the story that Kitty, worried of the Destiny Diaries' safety, devised a plan with Cyclops and Emma Frost to hide them and have Emma wipe the location from her mind. The location could only be revealed by a code word spoken to Kitty. The arc concludes with a battle between Iceman and Cannonball against the Marauders for the diaries, during which they are destroyed by Gambit.
In the "Torn" arc, the latest incarnation of the Hellfire Club begin an assault on Xavier's School. Kitty fulfilled the role that Emma Frost envisioned, personally taking down Frost and imprisoning her, only to fall under a telepathic delusion created by Hellfire member Perfection, who claimed to be the true, unreformed Emma Frost. Under this delusion, Kitty was made to believe that she and Colossus had conceived a child, which was later taken away by the X-Men because its potential mutant abilities were supposedly dangerous. Kitty reacts in the delusion by attempting to rescue the child from a near-inescapable "box" in the depths of the school, unaware that in reality she is freeing an alien entity, Stuff, who contains the trapped consciousness of Cassandra Nova, the apparent ringleader of this new Hellfire Club. A newly awakened Cyclops revealed that the new Hellfire Club, including Perfection and Nova, are actually mental projections created by a piece of Cassandra Nova's consciousness; which became lodged in Emma's mind during the X-Men's last confrontation with her, playing on her survivor's guilt over the Genoshan massacre, and utilizing Emma's telepathy to both confound the X-Men and orchestrate her (Nova's) escape from the Stuff body. As Cyclops killed the mental projections, Emma tried to force Kitty to kill her to get rid of Nova. Undeterred, Cassandra Nova switched her focus to attempt to transfer her mind to Hisako Ichiki. It appears that Nova did not succeed, as the team was transported to S.W.O.R.D.'s air station en route to Ord's Breakworld for the "Unstoppable" arc that concludes Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men.
Breakworld
As the team prepares to end the confrontation with the Breakworld leader, the team splits up—with Kitty on the team appointed to stop the missile pointed at Earth. Kitty phases into the missile to disrupt its circuitry noting that it is composed of the same material as the rest of Breakworld, a material that is difficult and exhausting for her to phase through. After phasing for a mile into the missile, Kitty finds the center only to discover it empty. The missile is fired, causing Kitty to pass out inside of it as Beast discovers too late that due to its shape, trajectory, and lack of internal circuitry, the Breakworld's weapon is not a missile, but a bullet. As the bullet hurtles toward Earth, Kitty lies unconscious within it.
As the situation becomes increasingly dire, Emma establishes mental contact with Kitty, reassuring her that she will come out of this fine, though it eventually becomes clear to both that the situation will be grim. Kitty and Emma come to an understanding and reconciliation, Emma stating that she never wanted something like this to happen to her. Kitty then phases the bullet through Earth, but is trapped within. At the end of Giant-Size Astonishing X-Men, Scott Summers mentions that Doctor Strange, Reed Richards, and some "top men" tried to save her, but believe she has fused to the bullet, as it continues to hurtle through space. Whether she is alive or dead is unknown, though the X-Men consider her lost to them.
As a result of these events Kitty does not appear in the X-Men crossover event X-Men: Messiah Complex, since this takes place after the events of Giant-Size Astonishing X-Men. She is briefly mentioned in the aftermath of the Messiah Complex, by Colossus, Nightcrawler, and Wolverine, as the three of them discuss "losing her."
To cope with Kitty's loss, Colossus takes down a group of Russian criminals dealing in human trafficking, and gets a tattoo of the name 'Katya' on his chest. Emma begins having a recurring dream in which she hears a voice whom she believes is Kitty's trying to reach out to her.
It was later confirmed by Abigail Brand that Kitty Pryde was still alive within the bullet, but because the bullet's design would harden as time went on, it would become increasingly difficult to break the bullet open.
Return
After the X-Men move to the island of Utopia, Magneto arrives on the island professing his desire to join and support the X-Men in their effort to unite the world's remaining mutants. The X-Men reluctantly let him stay, remaining wary of him despite his efforts to gain their trust. In a final bid to gain their trust, Magneto focuses his powers, attempting to divert the interstellar path of the metal bullet Kitty is trapped in and bring her home to Earth. Meanwhile, inside the bullet, Kitty is revealed to still be alive. Unbeknownst to the others, Magneto had encountered the bullet earlier while attempting to regain his powers with the High Evolutionary and surmised that Kitty was inside. Despite this and the High Evolutionary's apparent ability to retrieve the bullet and Kitty, Magneto chose to focus on regaining his powers, secretly keeping tabs on the bullet until his decision to draw it back to Earth. During her time trapped inside the bullet, Kitty keeps herself and the bullet phased to avoid collisions with any inhabited objects in its path.
Magneto brings Kitty Pryde safely down to Earth by cracking the bullet in two and levitating Kitty to the ground. When she and Colossus try to touch, it is revealed that she is trapped in her intangible form, unable to speak, and the X-Men place her in a protective chamber similar to the one used for her following the events of the Mutant Massacre. How Kitty survived her time in the bullet is unclear to the X-Men's science team, where the X-Men discover that all her bodily functions halted. An analysis by Kavita Rao hypothesizes that Kitty created an intense muscle memory to keep herself and the bullet phased and has "forgotten" how to un-phase.
During a conversation with Colossus, with Emma Frost acting as the psi-conduit, Kitty picks up Emma's stray thoughts on killing the captive Sebastian Shaw, to prevent Namor from discovering she previously lied to him. While disgusted at Emma's intentions, Kitty offers a compromise. Due to her current ghost state, she is the perfect tool for making Shaw disappear.
In a storyline in Uncanny X-Men, the Breakworlders make their way to Earth. During the conflict between the Breakworlder Kr'uun and the X-Men, Kitty is slain and resurrected by Kr'uun's mate in an alien ritual, which results in her powers returning to normal.
Regenesis
Shortly thereafter, Kitty breaks up with Colossus, and decides to return with Wolverine to Westchester to open the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning. In Wolverine and the X-Men #4, she appears to be suddenly pregnant, but the pregnancy was revealed to be a Brood infestation, and it was swiftly dealt with by a team of X-Men. Since returning to Westchester, Kitty has shared several kisses with Iceman. During the events of Avengers vs. X-Men, Kitty does not take a side, but instead decides to stay at the school to work with the students. Once Bobby returned from working with the X-Men after realizing that the Phoenix had corrupted them, he and Kitty finally decide to go on a date.
All-New X-Men
After Beast brings the original five X-Men into the future to stop Cyclops in the present, Kitty volunteers to take responsibility for the temporally relocated X-Men while they work to undo this dark future. This soon puts her at odds with the rest of her team as they believed the original five should go back to their own time in order to prevent any damage to the space-time continuity. Eventually, this leads Kitty to take the decision of abandoning the school with the time-displaced X-Men and join Cyclops's X-Men at the New Xavier School. During the first few weeks at the New Xavier School, Jean Grey is abducted by the Shiar Empire to stand trial for her future self's crimes. Kitty and the time-displaced X-Men team up with the Guardians of the Galaxy and succeed in rescuing Jean from the Shiar. At the conclusion of the storyline, Kitty begins a long-distance, flirtatious relationship with Starlord, Peter Quill.
The Black Vortex
In the following weeks, Kitty's relationship with Peter Quill evolves more and more as they developed stronger feelings for each other every day. At one point, Quill gets captured during one of their dates and she has no option but to go to his rescue, despite her fear of space as a result of her being trapped on the giant space bullet. After rescuing Peter, she decides to stay in space with him. Then, Kitty convinces Peter to steal a powerful artifact called the Black Vortex from his father J'son. Soon, they find themselves being chased by J'son's assassination squad, the Slaughter Lords. In despair, they request the aid of the X-Men and the Guardians of the Galaxy to protect the Vortex. After a few of their own friends can't resist the temptation and submit to the Vortex, betray the team, and escape with the artifact; the team splits and Kitty stays in Spartax to help an orphanage. She is encased in amber after Thane (who was allied with J'son) freezes the whole planet along with the people inside it; but thanks to her phasing powers, she manages to get out of the amber. Then the Brood attacks Spartax, planning to use every encased person to lay eggs and create an army of Brood to start invading other planets and conquering them. Kitty feels the only way to stop them is by submitting to the Vortex herself as she's the only one who can resist the cosmic corruption. She reluctantly submits and becomes a being of unlimited power. After being reminded of the love between her and Peter Quill, she goes back and phases all the amber that encased Spartax, along with the Broods trying to infect the people, and sends them all to another dimension. Kitty doesn't give up the cosmic power but admits to Peter that she is afraid of it. Peter promises her that he will never abandon her no matter how much she changes. Then, Peter kneels and proposes marriage to Kitty. She, with tears in her eyes, accepts. Later when Star Lord is declared Emperor of Spartax she is told she will become the first lady of Spartax.
Guardians of the Galaxy
Kitty takes on the mantle of Star Lord and joins the Guardians of the Galaxy in Peter Quill's place so he can take on his royal duties. When Hala the Accuser massacres Spartax in an attempt to make Quill pay for J'son's actions against her people, she initially easily lays waste to the capitol and overpowers the Guardians. After the Guardians regroup and formulate a strategy to defeat her, Kitty manages to partially phase Hala into the ground so the rest of the Guardians can knock her out and separate her from her weapon. After Quill loses his title as king he and Kitty end up on a mission with the rest of the Guardians on a concentration camp prison planet owned by the Badoon after Gamora gave them information on it so they can free Angela. Once there, Kitty has a personal reaction upon seeing the prisoners and makes it her mission to liberate everyone there and defeat the captors, as it reminds her of Nazi concentration camps. After Quill gets captured and sentenced to death in an arena battle, Kitty finds and kills one of the Badoon leaders by phasing his heart out of his body. When Captain Marvel summons the Guardians to Earth to help her address Tony Stark, Kitty learns that Thanos is a prisoner on Earth and tries to convince Quill to tell Gamora. When fighting starts Kitty woefully realizes that some of her former students are on Tony Stark's side instead of fighting with Captain Marvel. During the battle the Guardians' ship was destroyed, effectively stranding them on Earth. After helping the Guardians stop Thanos from leading an invasion from the Negative Zone the Guardians are given a new ship; however, Kitty decides to stay on Earth and ends her time with the Guardians and Quill.
Leading the X-Men
Upon returning to Earth, Kitty hopes to finally regain a semblance of a normal life but ends up approached by Storm, who informs Kitty of everything the X-Men have gone through while Kitty was away. Storm announces to Kitty that she intends to step down as leader of the X-Men due to the guilt that she feels for leading the X-Men to war and offers Kitty her position. After touring X-Haven and seeing how much things have changed and how much things need to change for the better, Kitty agrees to lead the X-Men as long as Storm remains on the team. Her next act is to relocate the mansion from Limbo to Central Park, New York so the X-Men can refocus on being part of the world instead of fearing it under the belief that if the X-Men truly are to be seen as heroes, then they need to actually live in the world that they are trying to save instead of constantly worrying about their own survival.
Under Kitty's new leadership, the X-Men go through some small changes in order to shed their past history and make new names for themselves, such as convincing Rachel Summers to change her code name to Prestige and renaming the mansion as The Xavier Institute for Mutant Education and Outreach. Kitty learns first-hand how hard it is to balance leading the X-Men as well as managing the mansion when there are many political factors trying to deliberately get in the way of the X-Men. She also begins to have awkward one-on-one moments with Colossus; they try to remain friends, but given their long history their interactions swiftly become complicated. Kitty's first case as field leader of the X-Men sees her and her team taking on a new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. After discovering that an outspoken anti-mutant politician brainwashed this new Brotherhood to work for her to publicly discredit mutants, Kitty threatened to expose her if she continued exploiting mutants for her own personal gain.
Dawn of X
After Krakoa became a new sovereign nation for Mutants, Kitty Pryde, now going by Captain Kate Pryde, discovers she is the sole mutant who is, for unknown reasons, unable to use the various warp gates leading to Krakoa. It is implied that she has done something to anger Krakoa, but that restriction does not mean Kitty cannot use other means to reach the mutant homeland. She steals a boat and sets sail for the island. Kitty's time on Krakoa proves to be just as fruitless, as the island's natural resources (like flowers that grow into biome homes) are similarly prohibited to Kitty. Emma Frost comes asking Kitty to take up a special mission: taking a bigger boat out to serve as pirate captain on the X-Men's mission to liberate mutants trapped in oppressive countries that do not recognize mutant sovereignty, while also smuggling and supplying for Emma's Hellfire Trading Company the lifesaving drugs the X-Men provide to humans. Kate Pryde is later appointed the new Red Queen of the Hellfire Trading Company by Emma Frost, to the dismay of Sebastian Shaw. Seeing Pryde as an obstacle to his complete control of the Hellfire Corporation, Shaw began plotting against Kate and her crew. After taking notice how Emma became overprotective of the newly crowned Red Queen, Shaw realized that for the same reason she can't travel through Krakoa's gates nor read or understand the Krakoan language until Emma implanted it in her brain, the X-Men's Resurrection Protocols also won't apply to her, which means Kate cannot be resurrected if she died. He orchestrated a distraction by paying off human supremacists Homines Verendi to stage an attack on his own son. Once Kate was defenseless, Shaw emerged from below deck and ensnared Lockheed with a net gun, making him a helpless hostage. He then released Krakoan seeds at her feet, which wrapped around her and prevented her from using her powers. He then dropped her and Lockheed into the sea. While Lockheed was able to survive, Kate sank helplessly, and once her head dropped under the surface, she had no air left and drowned instantly. Her death is later confirmed by Bishop as he retrieves Kate's body, as it was also established that the Resurrection Protocols indeed do not apply to Kate, as the Five, for reasons unknown, cannot resurrect her. However, she is later resurrected, as Emma Frost realized that it was due to the nature of Kate's intangibility powers that her mindless body was unable to break out of the egg.
Powers and abilities
Kitty is a mutant with the ability to pass through solid matter by passing her atomic particles through the spaces between the atoms of the object through which she is moving. In this way she and the object through which she is passing can temporarily merge without interacting, and each is unharmed when Shadowcat has finished passing through the object. This process is called "phasing" or quantum tunneling and it renders her almost completely intangible to physical touch. Shadowcat passes through objects at the same speed at which she is moving before she enters them. Since she is unable to breathe while inside an object, she can only continuously phase through solid objects (as when she travels underground) as long as she can hold her breath. However, contrary depictions of the duration of her phasing ability have been presented, such as when she has phased miles within an object. The use of her abilities also interferes with any electrical systems as she passes through by disrupting the flow of electrons from atom to atom, including the bio-electric systems of living bodies if she concentrates in the right way. This typically causes machines to malfunction or be destroyed as she phases through them, and can induce shock and unconsciousness in living beings.
Using her power began as an optional ability, but for a period (over ten years of published comics, approximately two years in-continuity) Kitty existed in a naturally "phased" state, and had to consciously choose to become solid. Kitty has returned to her original form and is normally solid and must choose to use her power. While phasing, she does not physically walk on surfaces, but rather interacts with the molecules of air above them, allowing her to ascend and descend, causing her to seemingly walk on air. While phased, she is immune to most physical attacks, and has inconsistent showings of some resistance to telepathy. The density of some materials (such as adamantium) can prove deleterious to her phasing, causing her to be severely disoriented or experience pain if she tries to pass through them. Some energy attacks also prove problematic for Kitty. For example, an energy blast fired by Harpoon, a member of the Marauders, caused her to lose her ability to become fully tangible for months. Magic and magical beings can also harm her in her phased state, as demonstrated in a battle with a N'Garai demon whose claws left no visible marks, but caused Kitty severe pain as they passed through her intangible body.
Kitty can also extend her powers to phase other people and objects. She is able to phase at least six other people (or objects of similar mass) with her, so long as they establish and maintain physical contact with her. She can extend her phasing effect to her own clothing or any other object with mass up to that of a small truck, as long as she remains in contact with it. Kitty can also make objects intangible by maintaining contact with them. She has threatened to leave people phased into a wall, and used her power offensively to harm the Technarch Magus, and Danger.
Kitty's powers seem to have increased over the years. During an X-Treme X-Men story arc in which she is kidnapped by Reverend William Stryker, she phases out of sync with Earth's rotation to move from one place in the world (only east or west) to another seemingly instantaneously. At the climax of Astonishing X-Men, Kitty phases a 10 mi (16 km) long "bullet" composed of super-dense alien metals through the entire planet Earth. This feat caused her considerable strain, but she is unable to phase out of the bullet. Moreover, originally Kitty found it difficult or impossible to phase only part of her body at a time. In the Days of Future Past story arc, she is possessed by her older future self, allowing her to solidify only her shoulder while phasing the rest of her body through Destiny—a feat explicitly beyond the 13-year-old Kitty's abilities. By contrast, the Kitty Pryde of Joss Whedon's run can punch and kick someone standing on the other side of a wall, selectively phasing and unphasing body parts as necessary. She can even run and leap through an armed opponent, grabbing their weapon as she passes by, which presumably requires her to solidify only the surface area of the palms of her hands and then immediately phase both her palms and the weapon.
Besides her mutant powers, Kitty is a genius in the field of applied technology and computer science. She is highly talented in the design and use of computer hardware. She is a skilled pilot of piston and jet engine aircraft, and a competent pilot of certain advanced interstellar vehicles. She has previously shown a unique ability to wield the Soulsword and also be harmed by it. Since her possession by the ninja demon Ogun, she has been consistently shown to be an excellent hand-to-hand combatant, having since been endowed with a lifetime of training in the martial arts of Japanese ninja and samurai.
She is a professional-level dancer in both ballet and modern dance. She speaks fluent English, Japanese, Russian, and the royal and standard languages of the alien Shi'ar and Skrull, and has moderate expertise in Gaelic, Hebrew, and German.
Kitty also shares a mental/empathic connection with her pet dragon Lockheed; both she and the alien dragon can "sense" each other's presence at times and generally understand one another's thoughts and actions.
When Kitty used the Black Vortex, her powers were augmented to a cosmic scale making her a god-like being. She can phase through any material of any density and can even phase a planet out of Thane's amber, whereas in her normal state it is an extremely difficult task to simply phase herself out of the amber. She can also apparently transverse between the planes of the multiverse and is immune to the effects of space. Her appearance can be changed but her natural form appears to be rather gaseous in look.
Other versions
In addition to her mainstream incarnation, Kitty Pryde has been depicted in other fictional universes.
Age of Apocalypse
In the Age of Apocalypse reality, Kitty grows up under harsh circumstances and her nature reflects it. She has short hair, tight clothes, and chain smokes cigarettes. Her parents are killed in the Chicago Cullings, and she is forcibly recruited into Apocalypse's army, but is later rescued by Colossus. Magneto puts Shadowcat under Weapon X's training, hoping to turn her into the X-Men's assassin, and she is given a set of retractable artificial claws around each wrist to better imitate her teacher's fighting style. After the fallout between Colossus and Magneto, Shadowcat sides with Colossus, whom she has married. Instead of leaving the fight against Apocalypse altogether, the couple become the teachers of Generation Next. The two submit their trainees to harsh situations, giving them little comfort despite the fact that Shadowcat is close to the age of her students.
Shadowcat assists the team in rescuing Illyana Rasputin from the Seattle Core, and, at Colossus' behest, abandons her students after Illyana is saved. She is killed by Colossus in his ruthless obsession to protect his sister, Illyana; coming between an enraged Colossus and his endangered sister, Shadowcat never believed he would harm her.
Days of Future Past
In the Days of Future Past timeline (Earth-811), Shadowcat goes by the name Kate Pryde. Kate attempts to go back in time to prevent the assassination of Senator Robert Kelly by Mystique and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. She succeeds, only to create a separate timeline where the events of her past still come to pass. After returning to her own time Kate helps Rachel Summers escape back to the timeline she just created. Captured by Sentinels, Kate escapes by phasing through her inhibitor collar and fell into a time warp, causing her to merge with the Sentinel that was scanning her, and arrives in the timeline Rachel is inhabiting. Kate's mind settles in a small, metal, off-spherical body and becomes known as Widget. After a few adventures in that timeline, mostly in company with her Earth-616 counterpart's team Excalibur, Kate regains her memory and returns to her original timeline where she is able to reprogram the ruling Sentinels to protect life, ending their tyranny.
Earth X
In Earth X it is revealed in the appendix of issue six that Kitty Pryde is killed saving Colossus while he could not shift into his metal form. Instead of phasing the bullet through her, she heroically takes the bullet and is killed.
Exiles
A version of Kitty Pryde codenamed Cat first appeared in Exiles #96. She is younger than her Earth-616 counterpart. She has the appearance and powers of the normal Shadowcat although she wears a different costume. Prior to her joining the Exiles, this version of Kitty had been recruited by Emma Frost as one of the core agents of the Hellfire Club's strike force. She helps Psylocke defeat Doom's soldiers who have invaded the Panoptichron. She helps retrieve Blink, Morph, and Sabretooth from being scattered across the multiverse. She works as a computer expert for the team and is a full member of the Exiles.
Cat's skill with using her powers means she is not tied to any dimension and can see through various realities, including those of the mind (for instance seeing the various personalities in Sage's mind as "ghosts" surrounding her). Her arrival in the Crystal Palace and connection to its computers has increased this, giving her the ability to "cascade" through different alternative versions of herself, altering her appearance and details of her powers. Amongst other versions, she has assumed the form of a Kitty Pryde with the appearance and powers of Tigra. During the New Exiles' last mission Cat faced off against Madame Hydra (Sue Storm) and killed her at the cost of her own life.
There has been another version of Kitty that appeared in the King Hyperion story arc (Exiles #38-40). She had survived an attack on the X-Mansion by the Sentinels. The Colossus from her universe had been killed in the attack but she had the same feelings towards Weapon X's Colossus even though he was not her Colossus. The two eventually fell in love with each other. Unfortunately this did not last since she died with Colossus when they were shot into the empty vacuum of space by Hyperion.
House of M
When the Scarlet Witch altered reality in the 616 Universe, creating the reality known as House of M where mutants were the dominant population, Kitty Pryde was a teacher in a public middle school in Cincinnati, Ohio. Like many of the heroes of Earth 616, she is reminded of the true reality by Layla Miller and recruited in the fight to restore reality.
Magik
In the limited series Magik (Illyana and Storm), an alternative reality Kitty renames herself "Cat" after she is mutated by the demonic sorcerer Belasco into a more feline form, with cat eyes, whiskers, a tail, and enhanced physical abilities and senses. Trapped in Belasco's Limbo, Cat takes a militant view towards defeating the sorcerer, eschewing the magic that her reality's Storm embraces, instead turning to skills in swordplay and physical combat. She tries to save the Illyana Rasputin of Earth-616 from corruption through magic by taking Illyana into the wilderness of Limbo and teaching the child to fight and survive. Like the Kitty Pryde of Earth-616 eventually would, Cat became Illyana's best friend, but more in the role of an older sister due to the difference in their ages.
Cat's plan goes awry when the pair's attempt to confront Belasco fails, at the cost of the life of an enslaved Nightcrawler; Illyana falls under Belasco's influence and Cat is further transformed towards a feline, with a semi-animalistic mind completely loyal to Belasco. Cat is eventually slain by Illyana when Belasco sets Cat upon his rebellious apprentice; facing death at Cat's hands and knowing that, deep down, a part of Kitty still exists and hates her enslavement, Illyana broke Cat's neck in self-defense.
Long after Illyana overthrows Belasco, escapes Limbo, and becomes a member of the junior X-Men team known as the New Mutants, Cat's remains are found by the team in Limbo's throne room. By then she had completely decomposed to a skeleton. Illyana, facing a rebellion of Limbo's demon population that threatened to overrun Earth, smashed Cat's skull in rage over the demonic taint that Belasco left on her soul and frustration over the horrible choice she had to make to kill Cat.
Marvel Zombies
Kitty is briefly shown in the background as a zombie in Ultimate Fantastic Four #23, despite her mutant phasing powers. She is also seen in Marvel Zombies: Dead Days, when zombie Alpha Flight attack the X-Men. This would appear to have been retconned, though, as of Marvel Zombies: Halloween, which depicts her and her son Peter with Colossus surviving for several years in an out of the way house farm, encountering zombies, but, fortunately, being rescued by Mephisto, who dispatched the remaining zombies.
The Earth-91126/Earth-Z Kitty is recruited by Earth-2149/Marvel Zombies Spider-Man to help him develop a cure for the zombie hunger, on the grounds that her powers mean that she would be in no danger from him if he should succumb to his zombie instincts, but she is later seemingly killed when the zombie Quasar holds her underwater until she is forced to become solid once more, allowing the infected Namor to eat her flesh (much to the rage of the zombie Wolverine, of Earth-2149).
Mutant X
Storm was taken by the vampire Dracula and unlike Earth 616, she does not return. Kitty goes off to battle her, either to save or kill her. Kitty slays several vampires in the way but Storm proves too much for her and Kitty becomes her unwilling slave for some time. She later shows up as the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club and seems to be none too happy with Storm. It's also hinted that she was engaged or going to be engaged to Colossus. Her ultimate fate at the end of the series is unknown.
Lightning Force
In the reality of Earth-597, an alternative universe where World War II was won by Nazi Germany, Kitty is forced to serve as Shadowcat alongside Nightcrawler, Meggan, and Hauptmann Englande as a member of the Lightning Force (a version of Excalibur), made a virtual slave because of her Jewish heritage. She leads a sad existence and is easily identified by her shaved head and the Star of David tattooed on her forehead. It is indicated, from her own statements and those made by her reality's counterpart of Moira MacTaggert, that this Shadowcat is a true ghost, raised from the dead by a combination of science and magic and bound to serve the Nazi regime. This Shadowcat had the added ability to disrupt life force with her phasing power, knocking her victims unconscious, much like how her counterpart in the "prime" Marvel Universe (Earth-616) can disrupt technology that she phases through. She is also able to alter her facial features to a "demonic" aspect when attacking enemies or else responding to aggressive, commanding behavior from her superiors.
Pirate Kitty
Kitty tells Illyana a bedtime story and casts herself as Pirate Kitty Pryde, captain of the Abdul Alhazred, who operated in a magical world. Unlike her mainstream counterpart, she did not have any mutant powers and wore a classic pirate outfit which also included her Star of David necklace. She was also sometimes known as Colleen. Kitty was good friends of her version of Colossus, the Bamfs (Nightcrawler), Windrider (Storm), the "Fiend-with-no-name" (later revealed to be named "Mean") (Wolverine) and Lockheed (an alternative version of the X-Jet). Kitty also helped her versions of Professor X and Cyclops capture and cure that universe's version of Dark Phoenix.
At first she was only a fairy tale character, but later it is revealed that her fairy tale is actually an alternative universe. (In fact, several members of this universe, the Bamfs, would later come to Earth-616 to cause trouble.) When Earth-616's Nightcrawler was temporarily stranded in her world, Kitty helped him defeat the sorcerer Shagreen and also encountered the Earth-616 versions of Illyana, Lockheed, and herself.
Professor W's X-Men
In the native universe of the Exiles member Nocturne, Kitty is a senior member of the X-Men led by Nightcrawler. She is a teacher and TJ refers to her as "Aunt Kate". During a fight with Apocalypse Kitty gets exposed to a machine that reverts her to a younger stage of her life when she had only been with the X-Men a few weeks. Nocturne helps Kitty fit into the school and becomes her best friend. She also proves useful in the fight against the Brotherhood led by Cyclops.
Ruins
Imprisoned alongside other mutants at a prison camp in Texas by President X, Kitty attempted to use her phasing powers to escape, only to get stuck halfway through her cell door, losing three feet of intestines in the process.
Secret Wars (2015)
During the Secret Wars storyline, a version of Kitty named Kitten resides in the wuxia-inspired K'un-L'un region of Battleworld. In this reality, Kitten is a martial artist who joins Callisto's band of outcasts after being expelled from her school for attempting a forbidden technique, a side effect of which left her intangible. Kitten and her fellow outcasts became pupils of Shang-Chi, the exiled son of Emperor Zheng Zu. Dubbing their new school The Lowest Caste, Shang-Chi represents the group as their master for the tournament deciding the next Emperor of K'un-L'un, hoping to usurp his father's tyrannical rule. Kitten accompanies Shang-Chi for each of his fights in the Thirteen Chambers. During his final fight with Zu, Shang-Chi uses Kitten's technique of intangibility, which leads to his eventual victory and replaces his father as the new Emperor of K'un-L'un.
Ultimate Marvel
The Ultimate version of Shadowcat (Kitty Pryde) first appears as a 14-year-old girl in Ultimate X-Men #21. She is also Jewish and wears the Star of David around her neck, but does not appear to possess the same genius IQ as her mainstream (Earth-616) counterpart.
Kitty's mother, worried about Kitty's mutation, seeks help from Professor Charles Xavier. Kitty becomes a student at Xavier's school, when her mother allows her to attend under the condition she does not take part in any X-Men missions, nor train in any "Danger Room" simulations. Kitty soon rebels against this and joins the X-Men as their youngest member. She idolizes Spider-Man and has a crush on him; she even dates Peter Parker for a time. After a fierce argument with Professor Xavier concerning Peter's secret identity, which his Aunt May had just found out about, Kitty leaves the X-Men and enrolls in Peter's school. Their relationship is strained after their romantic involvement (as superheroes) becomes publicly known, making it impossible for them to date anymore in their civilian identities, and eventually comes to an end when Peter realizes he cannot get over his feelings for Mary Jane. However, Kitty still retains strong feelings for him.
Following the disastrous flood triggered by Magneto and the subsequent ban of public use of mutant powers, Kitty assumes the identity of the Shroud. Kitty also discovers that she can also decrease the space between her atoms make herself super-dense, giving her both superhuman strength and durability. When the authorities see Kitty as a threat, she enters into a fierce rage and demonstrates these powers for the first time to her friends. She is strong and angry enough to punch Spider-Man several feet through the air. She eventually escapes and goes into hiding in the now abandoned Morlock Tunnel with Iceman and the Human Torch after Peter Parker's death.
Kitty makes an appearance in Ultimate Comics: X, locating Jimmy Hudson, who is revealed to be Wolverine's son. Kitty was charged by Logan before his death to locate Jimmy and reveal his true origins to him.
After the death of Spider-Man she formed new team of X-Men consisting of herself, Iceman and the Human Torch. They soon rescued the mutant Rogue from the mutant-hunting Nimrod robots, going on to recruit Jimmy Hudson into their group as well. After killing the mutant-hunting William Stryker, Kitty decided to leave New York for the Southwest along with Bobby, Rogue, and Jimmy (leaving only Johnny behind) in order to save the mutants there and defeat the Nimrods, now controlled by the deceased Stryker's consciousness.
Spider-Gwen
In the reality where Gwen Stacy is Spider-Woman, Kitty is an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Black Ops department, where she works closely with Wolverine to keep him in check and to help him fight his immortal curse. Like the Age of Apocalypse version, she also wields artificial claws on her wrists. It's revealed that she works with Logan out of guilt, as Stryker forced her to use her powers to subject Logan to the Weapon X experiment.
What If
In What if Phoenix Had Not Died, Kitty is obliterated by Dark Phoenix before she destroyed the Earth.
In What If the X-Men had Lost Inferno?, Kitty is one of the last eight remaining superheroes on the planet. She is slain by a demonic Wolverine, but her death makes Wolverine come to his senses and he fights against Baron Mordo, who had joined up with the demon hordes.
In What If... Wolverine: Enemy of the State, Kitty is the only hero left to kill a Hydra-programmed Wolverine after he has taken down the Marvel Universe. Kitty was the last remaining member of the team assembled to recapture Wolverine. The initial plan failed and Kitty was forced to phase her hand into Wolverine's brain. She then solidified her hand killing Wolverine instantly although she lost her hand in the process.
In What if Magneto and Professor X Had Formed The X-Men Together, Kitty is the tech guru at the Good Shepard clinic (That reality's version of the X-Mansion). She is very similar to her mainstream counterpart. But unlike the mainstream version this Kitty Pryde would wear different coloured wigs and cut her natural hair short. She also had trouble with her powers since she would phase herself through a solid object and accidentally leave her clothes behind. She was also friends with Lockheed although she only called him Dragon.
In What if Astonishing X-Men, Kitty is amongst the X-Men who fight a Phoenix powered Emma Frost. She phased Emma's heart from her chest but a Phoenix fire flares up from her body killing Kitty instantly. In the second story during the events of Astonishing X-Men #6-#12 Elixir had not been able to heal Kitty after being impaled and she dies.
In "What if the Dark Phoenix Rose Again", Kitty has Colossus "set up a fastball special" to help her phase into a Master Mold. She is killed after solidifying inside the Master Mold's head destroying it in the process.
In What if Storm Had the Power of the Phoenix, Kitty helps revive the 'real' Storm (the Phoenix being the cosmic entity in Storm's shape) by phasing inside her body and getting her internal organs working again.
X-Babies
An X-Baby version of Shadowcat appears briefly in the X-Babies one-shot comic. She is wearing her original costume and is younger than the other X-Babies. She is named as Shadowkitty rather than Shadowcat or Kitty Pryde. She also doesn't seem to have a strong bond with the X-Baby version of Lockheed.
X-Men Forever
In the X-Men Forever series, Kitty and Nightcrawler have left Excalibur and rejoined the X-Men after the events of X-Men #1-3. Of the X-Men, she undergoes the most drastic changes from the events of X-Men Forever #1. During the battle with Fabian Cortez, she phases through Wolverine while he is being affected by Cortez's power. This drives her powers haywire as well, and somehow she ends up with one of Wolverine's claws in her wrist. Claremont has also hinted in dialogue throughout the title so far that she may have also undergone psychological or psychic changes as a result of the event. From Forever #4 to the current issue, she is shown to be able to use the claw in the exact method Wolverine would manifest it, with no apparent ill effects (the mechanism for this has not yet been made clear) outside of excruciating pain. Because of the merger with Logan's DNA she has begun to develop a healing factor, slower than Wolverine's but it heals faster when she is intangible. She has also slightly enhanced senses, she also can produce a set of five retractable claws on her left hand like Sabretooth. She has also begun to take on Logan's personality and memories as well. And because of this she is beginning to wonder what part of her truly remains the same.
X-Men: Misfits
In the X-Men: Misfits original English language manga one-shot graphic novel from Marvel and DelRay, Kitty is the newest and only female student of the all-male Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters, which is now experimenting with having a co-ed student body. As the sole girl, she becomes the center of attention and attraction for the rest of the students. She becomes a member and the mascot of the elitist fraternity, The Hellfire Club, and has a short-lived romantic relationship with the school troublemaker Pyro.
X-Men: The End
In the X-Men: The End future, Kitty Pryde becomes the mayor of Chicago and then President of the United States. She has three children: her eldest daughter, named Meredith, and twins 10 years younger than Meredith, Sara and Doug, with an unnamed partner who died protecting her from an assassination attempt.
Miscellaneous
In Excalibur #103, we see many alternative versions of Shadowcat. Many of these variations have appeared in other comics, such as Age of Apocalypse, but there were other variations, including one of her as a Phalanx convert, a sex dominatrix, a homeless person, a nun, a version wearing a costume similar to Phantom Girl, and a normal person who owns an Olde Curiosity Shoppe.
In New Mutants #63 Illyana (Magik), along with Lockheed, gets trapped on an alien spaceship that has been invaded by a Brood Queen. On this ship the Brood Queen created clones of the X-Men, including Kitty. This one had the Ariel suit on, but it was green, instead of the typical blue. These X-Men are implanted with Brood eggs. Her memories were altered by the Brood Queen like the other X-Men, but eventually they rebel against her and are free. Illyana uses the soulsword to eliminate the Brood Eggs from their bodies. The X-Men stay on the ship; whether they are still on it is unknown.
During the Cross Time Caper storyline a few different appearances of Kitty appear. One was a princess who was gifted with magic abilities. She eventually married a short dashing prince (who had originally fallen in love with the mainstream version of Kitty). A second version was a crime boss who was betrayed and killed by her partner in crime Illiyana Rasputin. A third was from a world of sentient dinosaurs. She went by the name of Shadowcompsognathus.
Collected editions
Several of Kitty Pryde's earlier adventures were collected in paperback form.
In other media
Music
Kitty Pryde is referenced in Weezer's song "In the Garage" from their "Blue Album".
Television
Kitty Pryde appeared as Sprite in "The X-Men Adventure" episode of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, which guest-starred the X-Men. She was voiced by Melissa Sue Anderson. She also appeared in her short-lived "Ariel" costume in the X-Men group cameo at the end of the episode "The Education of a Superhero".
Kitty Pryde (voiced by Kath Soucie) was a viewpoint character in the animated television one-shot Pryde of the X-Men, as the newest member of the team. She is a new recruit of the team and is initially frightened of Nightcrawler, due to his demonic appearance. She and Nightcrawler later succeed in defeating Magneto. Once Nightcrawler seemingly dies as a result of having apparently sacrificed himself, Kitty begins to cry until discovering that he is alive and is met with positive relations by her teammates, except Wolverine. As the pilot was a failure, and the character had lost prominence in comics at the time, she was not used in the next X-Men TV series, not even in cameos. Jubilee replaced her as the young viewpoint character, and in the adaptations of stories that involved her.
In the animated series X-Men: Evolution, Shadowcat is a main character, who is shown as the teenybopper of the team and who has a romantic interest in Brotherhood member Lance Alvers. Shadowcat saves Wolverine in the season one episode "Grim Reminder", where she unintentionally stows away with Nightcrawler while on the Blackbird without the knowledge that he was beginning to pilot the jet. She is also shown to have developed a close friendship with Nightcrawler, despite the fact that she at first displayed a dislike for his appearance. Besides Nightcrawler, she is shown to have formed a friendship with Rogue and Spyke. Her initial dislike of his appearance changes after he is severely wounded by Rogue, while she and the rest of the X-Men tried to recruit her. In this series, she does not have Lockheed for a pet, but she is shown preferring to sleep with a stuffed dragon instead of a teddy bear. Though she has an on-and-off interest in the delinquent mutant boy Lance Alvers, early in the series she displays interest in Cyclops. After Rogue is recruited, she serves as her support in beginning a romantic relationship with Scott and develops a friendship with her, despite their differences. When Avalanche tries to join the X-Men in the season two episode "Joyride", she tries to help him and shows additional attraction to him as she grades him and the other members of the junior team. After he informs her that some members of the group have started a joyride on the Blackbird and helps her avert catastrophe, she staunchly defends him once he is accused by Cyclops of being responsible. When Avalanche starts to leave, Shadowcat gives him a brief kiss before his departure. Their relationship continues with the two of them going to a school dance, talking on the phone and going to the mall. Despite being with the Brotherhood, Avalanche tries to protect Kitty in the fight against the Scarlet Witch. In season 3, Kitty and Lance's relationship briefly ends after the Brotherhood and Mystique blow up the X Mansion and are in part responsible for the exposure of mutants. Kitty calls Lance a "hood" after he attacks the high school and he says "he will never be good enough for her". Both look sad at these comments. In the fourth season, the X-Men try to use her powers to damage one of Apocalypse's domes and fails, instead being electrocuted briefly. In the fiftieth episode of the series, entitled "Ghost of a Chance", she comes across Danielle Moonstar once she depicts herself in a dream sequence to her. Once she wakes out of it, she tries to and successfully finds her, becoming friends with the girl after learning she had been in suspended animation for two years. Prior to this, it is discovered that her fear is phasing repeatedly into the ground and going further without any control of where she is going. Shadowcat plays a key role in the defeat of Apocalypse and asks the Brotherhood for help. They come to her aid; as Lance and Kitty resume their romantic relationship. Of the six main X-Men from the first season of the series, she is one of the four that is still a member of the team in the future Charles Xavier saw while in the mind of Apocalypse. Shadowcat was voiced by Maggie Blue O'Hara.
Shadowcat appears in Wolverine and the X-Men, voiced by Danielle Judovits and was a student at the Xavier Institute before the destruction of the X-Mansion and disappearance of Professor X. When Wolverine reformed the X-Men to take down the Mutant Response Division and save the dismal future controlled by the Sentinels, Kitty was on her way to the "mutant paradise" Genosha. The X-Men came to re-recruit her and she immediately rejoined the team. Shadowcat appears as the youngest member of the team and she seems to have a crush on Iceman as she is jealous when his attention is taken by Emma Frost and is shown with a love-struck face when she lands on Bobby during a Danger Room training session, though she quickly moves away from him when Angel arrives. She seems to have formed a friendship with Tildie Soames after babysitting her in one episode. In the last episode of the series, she uses her powers to penetrate a Sentinel controlled by Magneto, of which Beast had difficulty with. Her design is inspired by the appearance of the character in the Astonishing X-Men comics, and her costume emulates the design with the appearance of the blue and yellow used on her costume. The shorts she wears are based on the appearances of the original X-Men, and her first appearance when she wore a variant of the uniform.
Shadowcat appears in The Super Hero Squad Show episode "And Lo...A Pilot Shall Come". She appears alongside Colossus at the unveiling of the Great Wall that separates Super Hero City from Villainville and helping citizens into the S.H.I.E.L.D. Shelters. In the episode "Mysterious Mayhem at Mutant Academy", she uses Lockheed to chase Reptil and the hypnotized X-Men out of the girls' bathroom.
Motion comics
Shadowcat appears in the Astonishing X-Men motion comic, voiced by Eileen Stevens and later by Laura Harris.
Film
In the film X-Men, she has a small cameo, played by Sumela Kay. She is referenced as the "girl in Illinois who can walk through walls" by Senator Kelly. She is shown in Xavier's class when Wolverine walks in; she returns for her books which she had left behind, grabs them, and phases through the door on her way out. Xavier responds with a cheerful "Bye, Kitty" while Wolverine looks on, startled.
In X2, she has a brief appearance played by Katie Stuart. She is shown phasing through walls and through people to escape William Stryker's military forces during their attack on the X-Mansion. Another scene shows her falling through her bed to avoid an assault. She shares a room with Siryn; in the novelization it is stated that this is because her phasing ability gives her partial protection from Siryn's scream. When the President of the United States asks Professor Xavier how he got the files he gave him, Xavier replies that he knows a little girl who can walk through walls.
In X-Men: The Last Stand, she is portrayed by a pre-transition Elliot Page, and has a central role. She serves as a rival to Rogue for the romantic attentions of Iceman, since their close friendship and their kiss (deleted scene) make Rogue increasingly jealous and frustrated. She also joins the X-Men in the battle on Alcatraz Island, breaking off from the battle to save Leech from the Juggernaut. In the novelization of the film, it is hinted that at some point Kitty had a romantic relationship with Colossus, but that it had long since run its course, although Colossus appears to still retain feelings towards her.
Page reprised the role in X-Men: Days of Future Past. Pryde is the prime facilitator because she has developed a new power. In this film, she can send the consciousness of another person back into his or her body in the past. At the beginning of the film, she has been using this ability to repeatedly send Bishop four days back in time whenever the Sentinels attack, thus; preventing her group from ever engaging them by having him warn the past team before they are detected. In order to prevent the Sentinels' creation, she sends Wolverine back to 1973 (chosen as the strain of sending someone else back that far would snap their mind, with Logan's healing factor the only thing that makes such a trip survivable for him) and was gravely injured when Wolverine becomes violent; due to provocation from events in 1973. After the timeline was successfully altered, Kitty is seen teaching a class at the X-Mansion with Colossus. In the film's alternate release, called The Rogue Cut, Kitty's injuries from sending Wolverine back to the past result in the X-Men rescuing Rogue to take over for her. Rogue absorbs Kitty's powers and takes over, stabilizing Wolverine and Kitty helps Magneto flee a Sentinel attack.
In January 2018, a Kitty Pryde solo movie was announced to be in development, with Tim Miller attached as the director and Brian Michael Bendis as the writer, but in March 2019, after Disney's purchase of 21st Century Fox, Fox executive Emma Watts described The New Mutants as the final film in the X-Men series, thus; ending the development of the Kitty Pryde film.
Video games
Kitty Pryde appears in Konami's 1992 X-Men video arcade game, as a non-playable character (NPC). In this game, she is not known as "Sprite"; instead, she plays the "damsel in distress" role as it is based on "Pryde of the X-Men". In the 2010 re-release of the game she is voiced by Mela Lee.
Shadowcat is a playable character in the game X-Men II: The Fall of the Mutants.
Shadowcat appears as an NPC in the X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse, voiced by Kim Mai Guest. She has special dialogue with Colossus (who she scolds for flirting with Scarlet Witch).
Shadowcat appears in X-Men: The Official Game, with Kim Mai Guest reprising her role.
Shadowcat is a playable character in Marvel Super Hero Squad Online, voiced by Tara Strong.
In X-Men: Destiny, Gambit mentions that the U-Men had captured Kitty and extracted bits of her power. Gambit obtains a vial of a substance which temporarily lets the character fall through the roof (if the player chose the correct option).
Kitty Pryde is a playable character in the Facebook game Marvel: Avengers Alliance.
Kitty Pryde is a playable character in the X-Men: Days of Future Past app game.
Kitty Pryde is a playable character in the online MMO Marvel Heroes, with Danielle Judovits reprising her role.
Kitty Pryde appears as a playable character in Marvel Future Fight.
Kitty Pryde appears as a playable character in Marvel Puzzle Quest.
Kitty Pryde appears as a playable character in Marvel Strike Force.
Novels
Kitty Pryde appears in the X-Men/Star Trek crossover novel Planet X. In it, she is examined by Geordi La Forge, who notes the similarities between her ability and the chroniton displacement he and Ro Laren experienced in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Next Phase".
Reception
Kitty Pryde has been well received as a comic book character and as a member of the X-Men. Wizard magazine put her at number #13 in 200 Greatest Comic Characters of All Time. She was the highest female comic character in the list beating rivals such as Wonder Woman, Buffy Summers, and She-Hulk. IGN ranked her as the 47th greatest comic book hero of all time stating that "as X-Men writers have often found it useful to introduce younger teen recruits to offset the experienced members of the team, Kitty Pryde set the standard when she debuted, and none have surpassed her". IGN rated Kitty Pryde #3 on its list of the Top 25 X-Men from the Past 40 Years describing her as the mutant everyman, the common girl turned superhero; IGN also stated that as her pet dragon, Lockheed, "became instantly attached to Kitty, [they] were hooked early on". Marvel.com ranked her as the tenth greatest X-Men member stating that "unquestionably, the dynamic of the X-Men shifted entirely when teenage whiz kid Kitty Pryde joined the team in the early 1980s"; Marvel.com also stated that even though Kitty has since blossomed into a young woman of considerable maturity and power, she remains the access point to the X-Men for countless readers. A later list on Marvel's website, ranking the top 50 X-Men characters, placed her in first place, citing the ease of identifying with her for the audience, and her development over the years.
Notes
References
External links
Kitty Pryde at Marvel.com
UncannyXmen.net Spotlight on Shadowcat
American superheroes
Characters created by Chris Claremont
Characters created by John Byrne (comics)
Comics characters introduced in 1980
Excalibur (comics)
Female characters in animation
Female characters in film
Female characters in television
Fictional American Jews in comics
Fictional bisexual females
Fictional characters from Illinois
Fictional characters who can turn intangible
Fictional dancers
Fictional female ninja
Fictional linguists
Fictional mayors
Fictional schoolteachers
Fictional secret agents and spies
Fictional women soldiers and warriors
Jewish superheroes
Marvel Comics female superheroes
Marvel Comics film characters
Marvel Comics LGBT superheroes
Marvel Comics martial artists
Marvel Comics mutants
S.H.I.E.L.D. agents
Teenage characters in comics
X-Men members | true | [
"\"What Else Is There?\" is the third single from the Norwegian duo Röyksopp's second album The Understanding. It features the vocals of Karin Dreijer from the Swedish electronica duo The Knife. The album was released in the UK with the help of Astralwerks.\n\nThe single was used in an O2 television advertisement in the Czech Republic and in Slovakia during 2008. It was also used in the 2006 film Cashback and the 2007 film, Meet Bill. Trentemøller's remix of \"What Else is There?\" was featured in an episode of the HBO show Entourage.\n\nThe song was covered by extreme metal band Enslaved as a bonus track for their album E.\n\nThe song was listed as the 375th best song of the 2000s by Pitchfork Media.\n\nOfficial versions\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Album Version) – 5:17\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Radio Edit) – 3:38\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Jacques Lu Cont Radio Mix) – 3:46\n\"What Else Is There?\" (The Emperor Machine Vocal Version) – 8:03\n\"What Else Is There?\" (The Emperor Machine Dub Version) – 7:51\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Thin White Duke Mix) – 8:25\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Thin White Duke Edit) – 4:50\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Thin White Duke Remix) (Radio Edit) – 3:06\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Trentemøller Remix) – 7:42\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Vitalic Remix) – 5:14\n\nResponse\nThe single was officially released on 5 December 2005 in the UK. The single had a limited release on 21 November 2005 to promote the upcoming album. On the UK Singles Chart, it peaked at number 32, while on the UK Dance Chart, it reached number one.\n\nMusic video\nThe music video was directed by Martin de Thurah. It features Norwegian model Marianne Schröder who is shown lip-syncing Dreijer's voice. Schröder is depicted as a floating woman traveling across stormy landscapes and within empty houses. Dreijer makes a cameo appearance as a woman wearing an Elizabethan ruff while dining alone at a festive table.\n\nMovie spots\n\nThe song is also featured in the movie Meet Bill as characters played by Jessica Alba and Aaron Eckhart smoke marijuana while listening to it. It is also part of the end credits music of the film Cashback.\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\n2005 singles\nRöyksopp songs\nAstralwerks singles\nSongs written by Svein Berge\nSongs written by Torbjørn Brundtland\n2004 songs\nSongs written by Roger Greenaway\nSongs written by Olof Dreijer\nSongs written by Karin Dreijer",
"Oil and Vinegar is a screenplay that was written but never filmed. It is a screenplay that John Hughes wrote and that Howard Deutch planned to direct. It would have starred Molly Ringwald and Matthew Broderick.\n\nPlot\nA soon-to-be-married man and a hitchhiking girl end up talking about their lives during the length of the car ride.\n\nProduction\n\nCasting\nThe film was set to have Molly Ringwald and Matthew Broderick as the two main characters.\n\nDevelopment\nThe screenplay was written by Hughes, with Howard Deutch set to direct. Its style was said to be similar to The Breakfast Club (1985) but instead of taking place in detention, it would have taken place in a car with Ringwald's and Broderick's characters both discussing their lives to each other.\n\nFuture\nWhen asked about Oil and Vinegar Howard Deutch said,\n\nYes. That was John's favorite script and he was saving it for himself, and I convinced him to let me do it. It was the story of a traveling salesman that Matthew Broderick was going to play, and a rock-and-roll girl, a real rocker. Polar opposites. Molly [Ringwald] was going to play that. And I had to make a personal decision about whether to go forward or not. We had rehearsals in a couple weeks, and I was exhausted, and my girlfriend Lea Thompson, who became my wife, said, \"You're going to die. You can't do this. I'm not going to stick around and watch that.\" And I think it was also sprinkled with the fact that I wanted to do one movie that was my movie, not necessarily in service to John, even though I loved John. So between the two things, I didn't... It could still happen. I would do it. Not with Matthew and Molly anymore, but the script is still there. It doesn't need anything. It's one of his great scripts. He had so many great scripts. For instance, he would stay up all night, music blasting, and at like 5:30 or 6 a.m., he'd hand me what was supposed to be a rewrite on Some Kind of Wonderful. We needed five pages, and it was 50 pages. I said, \"What did you do?! What is this?\" and he said, \"Oh, I didn't do that. I did something else. Tell me what you think?\" And it was Ferris Bueller's Day Off. He wrote the first half of the movie in, like, eight hours, and then finished it a couple days later. That was John. I never knew a writer who could do that. No one else had that ability. Even the stuff I fished out of the garbage was gold.\n\nReferences\n\nUnproduced screenplays\nFilms with screenplays by John Hughes (filmmaker)"
] |
[
"Kitty Pryde",
"Publication history",
"What was the first publication date?",
"The fictional Kitty Pryde first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980),",
"How long was the publication?",
"I don't know.",
"Who introduced the character Kitty Pryde?",
"Uncanny X-Men artist John Byrne named Kitty Pryde after a classmate he met in art school, Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary in 1973.",
"What is the story behind the name Kitty Pryde?",
"He had told Pryde he liked her name and asked for permission to use it, promising to name his first original comics character after her.",
"Where did the Kitty part come from?",
"Claremont said several elements of the character's personality were derived from those of X-Men editor Louise Simonson's daughter, Julie.",
"What were Kitty's powers going to be?",
"Claremont and Byrne made the new character a full-fledged X-Man in issue #139, where she was codenamed \"Sprite\".",
"How was Kitty accepted into the Xmen issues by readers?",
"Shadowcat's popularity had a profound effect on the real-life Kitty Pryde: the latter became so overwhelmed by attention from Shadowcat fans, she abbreviated her name to K.D. Pryde",
"How long did Kitty last in the Xmen series?",
"I don't know.",
"What else was interesting about this characters history?",
"She remained a part of the X-Men books until 2008 when she left again for roughly 2 years."
] | C_98d6a9f0735942e3a427f07b743f5a4d_1 | Why did she leave for 2 years? | 10 | Why did Kitty Pryde leave for 2 years? | Kitty Pryde | Kitty Pryde was introduced into the X-Men title as the result of an editorial dictate that the book was supposed to depict a school for mutants. Uncanny X-Men artist John Byrne named Kitty Pryde after a classmate he met in art school, Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary in 1973. He had told Pryde he liked her name and asked for permission to use it, promising to name his first original comics character after her. Byrne drew the character to slightly resemble an adolescent Sigourney Weaver. The fictional Kitty Pryde first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980), by writer Chris Claremont and artist Byrne, as a highly intelligent 13-year-old girl. Claremont said several elements of the character's personality were derived from those of X-Men editor Louise Simonson's daughter, Julie. Claremont and Byrne made the new character a full-fledged X-Man in issue #139, where she was codenamed "Sprite". She was the main character in issues #141-142, the "Days of Future Past" storyline, where she is possessed by her older self, whose consciousness time travels to the past to prevent a mass extermination of mutants. The six-issue miniseries Kitty Pryde and Wolverine (1984-1985), written by Claremont, is a coming-of-age storyline in which she matures from a girl to a young woman, adopting the new name "Shadowcat". In the late '80s, she joined the British-based super team, Excalibur, where she remained for roughly ten years before coming back to the X-Men. In the early 2000s, she disappeared from the spotlight after semi-retiring from superhero work. She was featured in the 2002 mini-series Mekanix and came back to the main X-Men books in 2004 under the pen of Joss Whedon in Astonishing X-Men. She remained a part of the X-Men books until 2008 when she left again for roughly 2 years. After coming back, she was featured in Jason Aaron's Wolverine and the X-Men and Brian Michael Bendis' All-New X-Men books. In early 2015, she joined the Guardians of the Galaxy. After the Secret Wars event, she adopted her new alias, Star-Lord (first believed to be Star-Lady). Shadowcat's popularity had a profound effect on the real-life Kitty Pryde: the latter became so overwhelmed by attention from Shadowcat fans, she abbreviated her name to K.D. Pryde to avoid association with her fictional counterpart. She has since stated she has mixed feelings about her fame, saying she values Byrne's comics for their entertainment and artistic value, but wishes more people would appreciate her as more than just Shadowcat's namesake. CANNOTANSWER | She was featured in the 2002 mini-series Mekanix | Katherine Anne "Kitty" Pryde is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics, commonly in association with the X-Men. The character first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980) and was co-created by writer-artist John Byrne and Chris Claremont.
A mutant, Pryde possesses a "phasing" ability that allows her, as well as objects or people she is in contact with, to become intangible. This power also disrupts any electrical field she passes through, and lets her simulate levitation.
The youngest to join the X-Men, she was first portrayed as a "kid sister" to many older members of the group, filling the role of literary foil to the more established characters. She occasionally used the codenames Sprite and Ariel, cycling through several uniforms until settling for her trademark black-and-gold costume. During the miniseries Kitty Pryde and Wolverine, she was renamed Shadowcat, the alias she would be most associated with, and shifted to a more mature depiction in her subsequent appearances. Pryde would eventually abandon her nickname, "Kitty", and switch to "Kate". She was one of the main cast of characters depicted in the original Excalibur title. After momentarily joining the Guardians of the Galaxy, she assumed her then-fiancé's superhero identity as the Star-Lord (Star-Lady). As of the series Marauders, she is now informally known as Captain Kate Pryde and the Red Queen of the Hellfire Trading Company.
In the X-Men film series, Kitty Pryde was initially portrayed by young actresses in cameos; Sumela Kay in X-Men (2000) and Katie Stuart in X2 (2003). Later, a pre-transition Elliot Page portrayed the character in X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) and X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) in full-length appearances. Pryde is ranked #47 in IGN's Top 100 Comic Book Heroes.
Publication history
Kitty Pryde was introduced into the X-Men title as the result of an editorial dictate that the book was supposed to depict a school for mutants. Uncanny X-Men artist John Byrne named Kitty Pryde after a classmate he met in art school, Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary in 1973. He had told Pryde he liked her name and asked for permission to use it, promising to name his first original comics character after her. Byrne drew the character to slightly resemble an adolescent Sigourney Weaver.
The fictional Kitty Pryde first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980), by writer Chris Claremont and artist Byrne, as a highly intelligent 13-year-old girl. Claremont said several elements of the character's personality were derived from those of X-Men editor Louise Simonson's daughter, Julie. Claremont and Byrne made the new character a full-fledged X-Man in issue #139, where she was codenamed "Sprite". She was the main character in issues #141–142, the "Days of Future Past" storyline, where she is possessed by her older self, whose consciousness time travels to the past to prevent a mass extermination of mutants. The six-issue miniseries Kitty Pryde and Wolverine (1984–1985), written by Claremont, is a coming-of-age storyline in which she matures from a girl to a young woman, adopting the new name "Shadowcat".
In the late 1980s, Kitty joined the British-based super team, Excalibur, where she remained for roughly ten years before coming back to the X-Men. In the early 2000s, she disappeared from the spotlight after semi-retiring from superhero work. She was featured in the 2002 mini-series Mekanix and came back to the main X-Men books in 2004 under the pen of Joss Whedon in Astonishing X-Men. She remained a part of the X-Men books until 2008 when she left again for roughly 2 years. After coming back, she was featured in Jason Aaron's Wolverine and the X-Men and Brian Michael Bendis' All-New X-Men books.
In early 2015, she joined the Guardians of the Galaxy. After the Secret Wars event, she adopted her new alias, Star-Lord (first believed to be Star-Lady).
In 2020, Kitty Pryde was revealed to be bisexual. Her co-creator, Chris Claremont, had always intended this to be the case, considering Rachel Summers as a possible love interest for Pryde. However, Claremont wasn't allowed to show this at the time due to censorship, as he revealed on the "Xplain the X-Men" podcast in 2016.
Shadowcat's popularity had a profound effect on the real-life Kitty Pryde: the latter became so overwhelmed by attention from Shadowcat fans, she abbreviated her name to K.D. Pryde to avoid association with her fictional counterpart. She has since stated she has mixed feelings about her fame, saying she values Byrne's comics for their entertainment and artistic value, but wishes more people would appreciate her as more than just Shadowcat's namesake.
Fictional character biography
Katherine Anne "Kitty" Pryde was born in Deerfield, Illinois, to Carmen and Theresa Pryde. She is an Ashkenazi Jewish-American and her paternal grandfather, Samuel Prydeman, was held in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. Kitty started to have headaches at age thirteen, signaling the emergence of her mutant powers. She was approached by both the X-Men's Charles Xavier and the Hellfire Club's White Queen, Emma Frost, both of whom hoped to recruit her for their respective causes. Kitty was unnerved by Frost, observing that the White Queen looked at her as if she were "something good to eat." She got along better with Xavier and the three X-Men who escorted him, quickly becoming friends with Ororo Munroe. Ororo told Kitty who she really was and about the X-Men, which made the teenager even more enthusiastic about attending Xavier's school.
Their conversation was cut short when they (along with Wolverine and Colossus) were attacked by armored mercenaries in the employ of Frost and the Hellfire Club. The X-Men defeated their assailants, but were subdued by the White Queen's telepathic powers immediately after. In the confusion, Kitty was separated from the X-Men, and not captured along with them. She managed to contact Cyclops, Phoenix, and Nightcrawler. With the help of Dazzler and Pryde, those X-Men rescued their teammates from the Hellfire Club.
The White Queen appeared to perish in the battle, which meant she was no longer competing with Xavier for the approval of Kitty's parents. Kitty's parents had not heard from her in more than a day, because during that time she was first being pursued by the Hellfire Club's men and then working with the X-Men to save their friends. All they knew was Kitty had left with Xavier's "students" to get a soda, there had been reports that the soda shop had been blown up, and Kitty had been missing since. Therefore, they were angry at Xavier when he finally returned with Kitty in tow. At first, it seemed like there was no chance of Kitty being allowed to attend the school and join the X-Men. Phoenix then used her considerable telepathic power to erase the memories of Kitty's parents and plant false ones, resulting in a complete shift in their attitude towards Xavier. Kitty was then allowed to enroll at Xavier's school with her parents' blessing, becoming the youngest member of the team.
Joining the X-Men
Kitty joined the X-Men, and assumed the costumed identity of Sprite. Early in her career as an X-Man, Kitty's adult self from an alternate future took possession of her body in the present to help X-Men thwart the assassination of Senator Robert Kelly by the second Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Kitty then singlehandedly defeated a N'Garai demon. Kitty also briefly attended the White Queen's Massachusetts Academy when her parents became convinced that she needed to be with students of her own age, but following a failed attempt to subdue the X-Men, Frost revoked Kitty's admission.
During her teen years, Kitty fostered a number of close relationships with others at the school and in the X-Men. She developed a crush on Colossus and became close friends with his little sister Illyana Rasputin. Initially uneasy around Nightcrawler and other mutants with physical deformities, Kitty finally overcame her fears and became close friends with him. Kitty also befriended Lockheed, a highly intelligent alien resembling a dragon, who followed her home after a mission in outer space. Lockheed is extremely loyal to Kitty, and the two of them share a psychic bond. Wolverine became something of a mentor to Kitty despite his usually gruff personality. Storm came to view Kitty as the daughter she never had.
Though Xavier has threatened to reassign Kitty to the New Mutants, a team of younger mutants he established in the absence of the X-Men, ever since the X-Men returned from outer space, she never ended up joining the group, who she derisively calls the "X-Babies". Kitty was later abducted by the Morlocks and nearly forced to wed Caliban. She was then abducted by the White Queen, but rescued by the New Mutants.
During this time, Kitty began to date Colossus, although this did not last long. Colossus developed feelings for an alien woman named Zsaji whom he met on the Beyonder's planet in the first Secret Wars. Colossus' feelings toward Zsaji were primarily a side effect of her own unique healing abilities, which she had used on him after he became injured. Regardless, Colossus' feelings were real and he returned to Earth consumed with grief after Zsaji's death. He admitted to Kitty that he loved Zsaji, which hurt her deeply and ended the budding romantic relationship. Kitty had made good friends with a local boy from Salem Central named Doug Ramsey around this time, but her feelings for him never went as deep as his for her, and they never actually dated, though they remained close, even more so after Doug's status as a mutant was revealed and he joined the New Mutants under the codename Cypher. They remained friends until his death some time later.
Ogun
During the 1984–1985 Kitty Pryde and Wolverine miniseries, Kitty is possessed by a demon, the ninja Ogun. Ogun psychically bestows upon Kitty a virtual lifetime of martial arts training. Kitty was brainwashed by Ogun into becoming a ninja assassin, and was sent to attack Wolverine. Kitty is able to resist Ogun's influence with Wolverine's help, and the two form a strong teacher/student bond, which helps them in vanquishing Ogun. Kitty returns to the X-Men, no longer the innocent girl they once knew, and officially adopts the codename Shadowcat.
Morlock Massacre
While trying to save Rogue, Kitty was badly injured by Harpoon's energy spear during the Mutant Massacre story arc, in the massacre of the Morlocks, with the result that she lost control of her power and was stuck in an intangible state and could not regain her solidity. She was rushed to Muir Island along with other surviving casualties of the Massacre to be tended to by Moira MacTaggert. MacTaggert was able to keep Kitty's condition from deteriorating to the point where she completely lost physical substance and ceased to exist, but was not able to do any more to help her.
At this time, Kitty's natural state was to be intangible. Where she once had to make a conscious effort to phase, she could now only maintain her solidity through an act of conscious will. The X-Men went to Reed Richards, Mister Fantastic of the Fantastic Four, for aid, but Richards initially refused because he was not sure he would be able to help.
Having nowhere else to go, the X-Men turned to Richards' enemy Doctor Doom. This created a moral dilemma for both the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, and both teams fought each other because the Fantastic Four were trying to stop the treatment while the X-Men were determined to save Kitty's life. In the end, both the personal crisis of the Fantastic Four and the life of Shadowcat were saved after Franklin Richards, with the help of Lockheed, brought both teams to their senses. Kitty has since recovered from this state and now has full control over her power again.
Excalibur
Among the others injured and brought to Muir Isle were Colossus and Nightcrawler, although Colossus left the United Kingdom shortly after being released from MacTaggert's care to join the rest of the X-Men on their mission to battle the Adversary. The X-Men sacrificed their lives to defeat the Adversary, the battle and their sacrifice was televised and broadcast across the world. The X-Men were resurrected later in the same issue, unknown to the world at large, but chose to keep a low profile and perpetuate the belief that they were still dead. This strategy was enforced to more effectively fight their enemies. This meant avoiding contact with friends and family, including Kitty. Thinking the X-Men were dead, Kitty and Nightcrawler joined Rachel Summers, Captain Britain, and Meggan to form the Britain-based team Excalibur. For a brief time, Kitty studied at St. Searle's School for Girls in Britain. During her time with Excalibur, Kitty developed a crush on Professor Alistaire Stuart which went unreciprocated since Alistaire was attracted to Rachel. Later, she was romantically involved with former Black Air agent Pete Wisdom. At some point Kitty was recruited by the international law enforcement agency S.H.I.E.L.D. to repair the computer system of their flying headquarters. Kitty discovered the problem was due to Ogun's spirit having infiltrated the computer system, and with the aid of Wolverine, she managed to purge Ogun's presence. During this time, Kitty was attracted to a S.H.I.E.L.D. intern her own age, and this made her begin to doubt her relationship with Wisdom. Soon after, she broke off their relationship.
Back to the X-Men
After Excalibur's dissolution, Shadowcat, Nightcrawler, and Colossus return to the X-Men. While returning, they faced a group of imposters following Cerebro, in the guise of Professor X. While tracking Mystique, she stumbles onto prophetic diaries that belonged to Irene Adler, a precognitive. During the six-month gap, Kitty visited Genosha. Whatever she experienced there is unknown (although presumably connected to her father, living on Genosha at the time), but it had a profound effect on her. She cut her hair and began to act rebelliously, also using one of Wolverine's bone claws broken off during battle as a weapon. Kitty remained with the X-Men for a while before leaving after the apparent death of Colossus. Trying to give herself a normal life, she attended the University of Chicago. During this time, her father was killed when Cassandra Nova’s Sentinels destroyed Genosha. Kitty later finds a recording of his death due to exploring footage of the attack. She is also kidnapped by William Stryker, but the X-Treme X-Men team helped her escape, and she assisted them on several missions.
At the start of Joss Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men, Kitty once again rejoins the X-Men, despite having extreme reservations about working with the former White Queen, given their history. This was the primary reason why Frost herself wanted Kitty on the team, as a sort of "safety" should Frost ever revert to type. Frost reasoned that the person who trusted her least would be most likely to spot such behavior. On one of the team's first missions, Shadowcat discovered Colossus was alive. After some initial awkwardness, Kitty and Colossus resumed dating.
Kitty Pryde appeared alongside Colossus in the "Blinded by the Light" arc in X-Men. They are the two X-Men left to look after the students while the rest of the X-Men leave for Mystique's home in Mississippi to check up on Rogue, during which they are ambushed by the Marauders. Kitty and Colossus, meanwhile, attempt to protect the students from a faction of the Marauders led by Exodus. It is revealed over the course of the story that Kitty, worried of the Destiny Diaries' safety, devised a plan with Cyclops and Emma Frost to hide them and have Emma wipe the location from her mind. The location could only be revealed by a code word spoken to Kitty. The arc concludes with a battle between Iceman and Cannonball against the Marauders for the diaries, during which they are destroyed by Gambit.
In the "Torn" arc, the latest incarnation of the Hellfire Club begin an assault on Xavier's School. Kitty fulfilled the role that Emma Frost envisioned, personally taking down Frost and imprisoning her, only to fall under a telepathic delusion created by Hellfire member Perfection, who claimed to be the true, unreformed Emma Frost. Under this delusion, Kitty was made to believe that she and Colossus had conceived a child, which was later taken away by the X-Men because its potential mutant abilities were supposedly dangerous. Kitty reacts in the delusion by attempting to rescue the child from a near-inescapable "box" in the depths of the school, unaware that in reality she is freeing an alien entity, Stuff, who contains the trapped consciousness of Cassandra Nova, the apparent ringleader of this new Hellfire Club. A newly awakened Cyclops revealed that the new Hellfire Club, including Perfection and Nova, are actually mental projections created by a piece of Cassandra Nova's consciousness; which became lodged in Emma's mind during the X-Men's last confrontation with her, playing on her survivor's guilt over the Genoshan massacre, and utilizing Emma's telepathy to both confound the X-Men and orchestrate her (Nova's) escape from the Stuff body. As Cyclops killed the mental projections, Emma tried to force Kitty to kill her to get rid of Nova. Undeterred, Cassandra Nova switched her focus to attempt to transfer her mind to Hisako Ichiki. It appears that Nova did not succeed, as the team was transported to S.W.O.R.D.'s air station en route to Ord's Breakworld for the "Unstoppable" arc that concludes Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men.
Breakworld
As the team prepares to end the confrontation with the Breakworld leader, the team splits up—with Kitty on the team appointed to stop the missile pointed at Earth. Kitty phases into the missile to disrupt its circuitry noting that it is composed of the same material as the rest of Breakworld, a material that is difficult and exhausting for her to phase through. After phasing for a mile into the missile, Kitty finds the center only to discover it empty. The missile is fired, causing Kitty to pass out inside of it as Beast discovers too late that due to its shape, trajectory, and lack of internal circuitry, the Breakworld's weapon is not a missile, but a bullet. As the bullet hurtles toward Earth, Kitty lies unconscious within it.
As the situation becomes increasingly dire, Emma establishes mental contact with Kitty, reassuring her that she will come out of this fine, though it eventually becomes clear to both that the situation will be grim. Kitty and Emma come to an understanding and reconciliation, Emma stating that she never wanted something like this to happen to her. Kitty then phases the bullet through Earth, but is trapped within. At the end of Giant-Size Astonishing X-Men, Scott Summers mentions that Doctor Strange, Reed Richards, and some "top men" tried to save her, but believe she has fused to the bullet, as it continues to hurtle through space. Whether she is alive or dead is unknown, though the X-Men consider her lost to them.
As a result of these events Kitty does not appear in the X-Men crossover event X-Men: Messiah Complex, since this takes place after the events of Giant-Size Astonishing X-Men. She is briefly mentioned in the aftermath of the Messiah Complex, by Colossus, Nightcrawler, and Wolverine, as the three of them discuss "losing her."
To cope with Kitty's loss, Colossus takes down a group of Russian criminals dealing in human trafficking, and gets a tattoo of the name 'Katya' on his chest. Emma begins having a recurring dream in which she hears a voice whom she believes is Kitty's trying to reach out to her.
It was later confirmed by Abigail Brand that Kitty Pryde was still alive within the bullet, but because the bullet's design would harden as time went on, it would become increasingly difficult to break the bullet open.
Return
After the X-Men move to the island of Utopia, Magneto arrives on the island professing his desire to join and support the X-Men in their effort to unite the world's remaining mutants. The X-Men reluctantly let him stay, remaining wary of him despite his efforts to gain their trust. In a final bid to gain their trust, Magneto focuses his powers, attempting to divert the interstellar path of the metal bullet Kitty is trapped in and bring her home to Earth. Meanwhile, inside the bullet, Kitty is revealed to still be alive. Unbeknownst to the others, Magneto had encountered the bullet earlier while attempting to regain his powers with the High Evolutionary and surmised that Kitty was inside. Despite this and the High Evolutionary's apparent ability to retrieve the bullet and Kitty, Magneto chose to focus on regaining his powers, secretly keeping tabs on the bullet until his decision to draw it back to Earth. During her time trapped inside the bullet, Kitty keeps herself and the bullet phased to avoid collisions with any inhabited objects in its path.
Magneto brings Kitty Pryde safely down to Earth by cracking the bullet in two and levitating Kitty to the ground. When she and Colossus try to touch, it is revealed that she is trapped in her intangible form, unable to speak, and the X-Men place her in a protective chamber similar to the one used for her following the events of the Mutant Massacre. How Kitty survived her time in the bullet is unclear to the X-Men's science team, where the X-Men discover that all her bodily functions halted. An analysis by Kavita Rao hypothesizes that Kitty created an intense muscle memory to keep herself and the bullet phased and has "forgotten" how to un-phase.
During a conversation with Colossus, with Emma Frost acting as the psi-conduit, Kitty picks up Emma's stray thoughts on killing the captive Sebastian Shaw, to prevent Namor from discovering she previously lied to him. While disgusted at Emma's intentions, Kitty offers a compromise. Due to her current ghost state, she is the perfect tool for making Shaw disappear.
In a storyline in Uncanny X-Men, the Breakworlders make their way to Earth. During the conflict between the Breakworlder Kr'uun and the X-Men, Kitty is slain and resurrected by Kr'uun's mate in an alien ritual, which results in her powers returning to normal.
Regenesis
Shortly thereafter, Kitty breaks up with Colossus, and decides to return with Wolverine to Westchester to open the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning. In Wolverine and the X-Men #4, she appears to be suddenly pregnant, but the pregnancy was revealed to be a Brood infestation, and it was swiftly dealt with by a team of X-Men. Since returning to Westchester, Kitty has shared several kisses with Iceman. During the events of Avengers vs. X-Men, Kitty does not take a side, but instead decides to stay at the school to work with the students. Once Bobby returned from working with the X-Men after realizing that the Phoenix had corrupted them, he and Kitty finally decide to go on a date.
All-New X-Men
After Beast brings the original five X-Men into the future to stop Cyclops in the present, Kitty volunteers to take responsibility for the temporally relocated X-Men while they work to undo this dark future. This soon puts her at odds with the rest of her team as they believed the original five should go back to their own time in order to prevent any damage to the space-time continuity. Eventually, this leads Kitty to take the decision of abandoning the school with the time-displaced X-Men and join Cyclops's X-Men at the New Xavier School. During the first few weeks at the New Xavier School, Jean Grey is abducted by the Shiar Empire to stand trial for her future self's crimes. Kitty and the time-displaced X-Men team up with the Guardians of the Galaxy and succeed in rescuing Jean from the Shiar. At the conclusion of the storyline, Kitty begins a long-distance, flirtatious relationship with Starlord, Peter Quill.
The Black Vortex
In the following weeks, Kitty's relationship with Peter Quill evolves more and more as they developed stronger feelings for each other every day. At one point, Quill gets captured during one of their dates and she has no option but to go to his rescue, despite her fear of space as a result of her being trapped on the giant space bullet. After rescuing Peter, she decides to stay in space with him. Then, Kitty convinces Peter to steal a powerful artifact called the Black Vortex from his father J'son. Soon, they find themselves being chased by J'son's assassination squad, the Slaughter Lords. In despair, they request the aid of the X-Men and the Guardians of the Galaxy to protect the Vortex. After a few of their own friends can't resist the temptation and submit to the Vortex, betray the team, and escape with the artifact; the team splits and Kitty stays in Spartax to help an orphanage. She is encased in amber after Thane (who was allied with J'son) freezes the whole planet along with the people inside it; but thanks to her phasing powers, she manages to get out of the amber. Then the Brood attacks Spartax, planning to use every encased person to lay eggs and create an army of Brood to start invading other planets and conquering them. Kitty feels the only way to stop them is by submitting to the Vortex herself as she's the only one who can resist the cosmic corruption. She reluctantly submits and becomes a being of unlimited power. After being reminded of the love between her and Peter Quill, she goes back and phases all the amber that encased Spartax, along with the Broods trying to infect the people, and sends them all to another dimension. Kitty doesn't give up the cosmic power but admits to Peter that she is afraid of it. Peter promises her that he will never abandon her no matter how much she changes. Then, Peter kneels and proposes marriage to Kitty. She, with tears in her eyes, accepts. Later when Star Lord is declared Emperor of Spartax she is told she will become the first lady of Spartax.
Guardians of the Galaxy
Kitty takes on the mantle of Star Lord and joins the Guardians of the Galaxy in Peter Quill's place so he can take on his royal duties. When Hala the Accuser massacres Spartax in an attempt to make Quill pay for J'son's actions against her people, she initially easily lays waste to the capitol and overpowers the Guardians. After the Guardians regroup and formulate a strategy to defeat her, Kitty manages to partially phase Hala into the ground so the rest of the Guardians can knock her out and separate her from her weapon. After Quill loses his title as king he and Kitty end up on a mission with the rest of the Guardians on a concentration camp prison planet owned by the Badoon after Gamora gave them information on it so they can free Angela. Once there, Kitty has a personal reaction upon seeing the prisoners and makes it her mission to liberate everyone there and defeat the captors, as it reminds her of Nazi concentration camps. After Quill gets captured and sentenced to death in an arena battle, Kitty finds and kills one of the Badoon leaders by phasing his heart out of his body. When Captain Marvel summons the Guardians to Earth to help her address Tony Stark, Kitty learns that Thanos is a prisoner on Earth and tries to convince Quill to tell Gamora. When fighting starts Kitty woefully realizes that some of her former students are on Tony Stark's side instead of fighting with Captain Marvel. During the battle the Guardians' ship was destroyed, effectively stranding them on Earth. After helping the Guardians stop Thanos from leading an invasion from the Negative Zone the Guardians are given a new ship; however, Kitty decides to stay on Earth and ends her time with the Guardians and Quill.
Leading the X-Men
Upon returning to Earth, Kitty hopes to finally regain a semblance of a normal life but ends up approached by Storm, who informs Kitty of everything the X-Men have gone through while Kitty was away. Storm announces to Kitty that she intends to step down as leader of the X-Men due to the guilt that she feels for leading the X-Men to war and offers Kitty her position. After touring X-Haven and seeing how much things have changed and how much things need to change for the better, Kitty agrees to lead the X-Men as long as Storm remains on the team. Her next act is to relocate the mansion from Limbo to Central Park, New York so the X-Men can refocus on being part of the world instead of fearing it under the belief that if the X-Men truly are to be seen as heroes, then they need to actually live in the world that they are trying to save instead of constantly worrying about their own survival.
Under Kitty's new leadership, the X-Men go through some small changes in order to shed their past history and make new names for themselves, such as convincing Rachel Summers to change her code name to Prestige and renaming the mansion as The Xavier Institute for Mutant Education and Outreach. Kitty learns first-hand how hard it is to balance leading the X-Men as well as managing the mansion when there are many political factors trying to deliberately get in the way of the X-Men. She also begins to have awkward one-on-one moments with Colossus; they try to remain friends, but given their long history their interactions swiftly become complicated. Kitty's first case as field leader of the X-Men sees her and her team taking on a new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. After discovering that an outspoken anti-mutant politician brainwashed this new Brotherhood to work for her to publicly discredit mutants, Kitty threatened to expose her if she continued exploiting mutants for her own personal gain.
Dawn of X
After Krakoa became a new sovereign nation for Mutants, Kitty Pryde, now going by Captain Kate Pryde, discovers she is the sole mutant who is, for unknown reasons, unable to use the various warp gates leading to Krakoa. It is implied that she has done something to anger Krakoa, but that restriction does not mean Kitty cannot use other means to reach the mutant homeland. She steals a boat and sets sail for the island. Kitty's time on Krakoa proves to be just as fruitless, as the island's natural resources (like flowers that grow into biome homes) are similarly prohibited to Kitty. Emma Frost comes asking Kitty to take up a special mission: taking a bigger boat out to serve as pirate captain on the X-Men's mission to liberate mutants trapped in oppressive countries that do not recognize mutant sovereignty, while also smuggling and supplying for Emma's Hellfire Trading Company the lifesaving drugs the X-Men provide to humans. Kate Pryde is later appointed the new Red Queen of the Hellfire Trading Company by Emma Frost, to the dismay of Sebastian Shaw. Seeing Pryde as an obstacle to his complete control of the Hellfire Corporation, Shaw began plotting against Kate and her crew. After taking notice how Emma became overprotective of the newly crowned Red Queen, Shaw realized that for the same reason she can't travel through Krakoa's gates nor read or understand the Krakoan language until Emma implanted it in her brain, the X-Men's Resurrection Protocols also won't apply to her, which means Kate cannot be resurrected if she died. He orchestrated a distraction by paying off human supremacists Homines Verendi to stage an attack on his own son. Once Kate was defenseless, Shaw emerged from below deck and ensnared Lockheed with a net gun, making him a helpless hostage. He then released Krakoan seeds at her feet, which wrapped around her and prevented her from using her powers. He then dropped her and Lockheed into the sea. While Lockheed was able to survive, Kate sank helplessly, and once her head dropped under the surface, she had no air left and drowned instantly. Her death is later confirmed by Bishop as he retrieves Kate's body, as it was also established that the Resurrection Protocols indeed do not apply to Kate, as the Five, for reasons unknown, cannot resurrect her. However, she is later resurrected, as Emma Frost realized that it was due to the nature of Kate's intangibility powers that her mindless body was unable to break out of the egg.
Powers and abilities
Kitty is a mutant with the ability to pass through solid matter by passing her atomic particles through the spaces between the atoms of the object through which she is moving. In this way she and the object through which she is passing can temporarily merge without interacting, and each is unharmed when Shadowcat has finished passing through the object. This process is called "phasing" or quantum tunneling and it renders her almost completely intangible to physical touch. Shadowcat passes through objects at the same speed at which she is moving before she enters them. Since she is unable to breathe while inside an object, she can only continuously phase through solid objects (as when she travels underground) as long as she can hold her breath. However, contrary depictions of the duration of her phasing ability have been presented, such as when she has phased miles within an object. The use of her abilities also interferes with any electrical systems as she passes through by disrupting the flow of electrons from atom to atom, including the bio-electric systems of living bodies if she concentrates in the right way. This typically causes machines to malfunction or be destroyed as she phases through them, and can induce shock and unconsciousness in living beings.
Using her power began as an optional ability, but for a period (over ten years of published comics, approximately two years in-continuity) Kitty existed in a naturally "phased" state, and had to consciously choose to become solid. Kitty has returned to her original form and is normally solid and must choose to use her power. While phasing, she does not physically walk on surfaces, but rather interacts with the molecules of air above them, allowing her to ascend and descend, causing her to seemingly walk on air. While phased, she is immune to most physical attacks, and has inconsistent showings of some resistance to telepathy. The density of some materials (such as adamantium) can prove deleterious to her phasing, causing her to be severely disoriented or experience pain if she tries to pass through them. Some energy attacks also prove problematic for Kitty. For example, an energy blast fired by Harpoon, a member of the Marauders, caused her to lose her ability to become fully tangible for months. Magic and magical beings can also harm her in her phased state, as demonstrated in a battle with a N'Garai demon whose claws left no visible marks, but caused Kitty severe pain as they passed through her intangible body.
Kitty can also extend her powers to phase other people and objects. She is able to phase at least six other people (or objects of similar mass) with her, so long as they establish and maintain physical contact with her. She can extend her phasing effect to her own clothing or any other object with mass up to that of a small truck, as long as she remains in contact with it. Kitty can also make objects intangible by maintaining contact with them. She has threatened to leave people phased into a wall, and used her power offensively to harm the Technarch Magus, and Danger.
Kitty's powers seem to have increased over the years. During an X-Treme X-Men story arc in which she is kidnapped by Reverend William Stryker, she phases out of sync with Earth's rotation to move from one place in the world (only east or west) to another seemingly instantaneously. At the climax of Astonishing X-Men, Kitty phases a 10 mi (16 km) long "bullet" composed of super-dense alien metals through the entire planet Earth. This feat caused her considerable strain, but she is unable to phase out of the bullet. Moreover, originally Kitty found it difficult or impossible to phase only part of her body at a time. In the Days of Future Past story arc, she is possessed by her older future self, allowing her to solidify only her shoulder while phasing the rest of her body through Destiny—a feat explicitly beyond the 13-year-old Kitty's abilities. By contrast, the Kitty Pryde of Joss Whedon's run can punch and kick someone standing on the other side of a wall, selectively phasing and unphasing body parts as necessary. She can even run and leap through an armed opponent, grabbing their weapon as she passes by, which presumably requires her to solidify only the surface area of the palms of her hands and then immediately phase both her palms and the weapon.
Besides her mutant powers, Kitty is a genius in the field of applied technology and computer science. She is highly talented in the design and use of computer hardware. She is a skilled pilot of piston and jet engine aircraft, and a competent pilot of certain advanced interstellar vehicles. She has previously shown a unique ability to wield the Soulsword and also be harmed by it. Since her possession by the ninja demon Ogun, she has been consistently shown to be an excellent hand-to-hand combatant, having since been endowed with a lifetime of training in the martial arts of Japanese ninja and samurai.
She is a professional-level dancer in both ballet and modern dance. She speaks fluent English, Japanese, Russian, and the royal and standard languages of the alien Shi'ar and Skrull, and has moderate expertise in Gaelic, Hebrew, and German.
Kitty also shares a mental/empathic connection with her pet dragon Lockheed; both she and the alien dragon can "sense" each other's presence at times and generally understand one another's thoughts and actions.
When Kitty used the Black Vortex, her powers were augmented to a cosmic scale making her a god-like being. She can phase through any material of any density and can even phase a planet out of Thane's amber, whereas in her normal state it is an extremely difficult task to simply phase herself out of the amber. She can also apparently transverse between the planes of the multiverse and is immune to the effects of space. Her appearance can be changed but her natural form appears to be rather gaseous in look.
Other versions
In addition to her mainstream incarnation, Kitty Pryde has been depicted in other fictional universes.
Age of Apocalypse
In the Age of Apocalypse reality, Kitty grows up under harsh circumstances and her nature reflects it. She has short hair, tight clothes, and chain smokes cigarettes. Her parents are killed in the Chicago Cullings, and she is forcibly recruited into Apocalypse's army, but is later rescued by Colossus. Magneto puts Shadowcat under Weapon X's training, hoping to turn her into the X-Men's assassin, and she is given a set of retractable artificial claws around each wrist to better imitate her teacher's fighting style. After the fallout between Colossus and Magneto, Shadowcat sides with Colossus, whom she has married. Instead of leaving the fight against Apocalypse altogether, the couple become the teachers of Generation Next. The two submit their trainees to harsh situations, giving them little comfort despite the fact that Shadowcat is close to the age of her students.
Shadowcat assists the team in rescuing Illyana Rasputin from the Seattle Core, and, at Colossus' behest, abandons her students after Illyana is saved. She is killed by Colossus in his ruthless obsession to protect his sister, Illyana; coming between an enraged Colossus and his endangered sister, Shadowcat never believed he would harm her.
Days of Future Past
In the Days of Future Past timeline (Earth-811), Shadowcat goes by the name Kate Pryde. Kate attempts to go back in time to prevent the assassination of Senator Robert Kelly by Mystique and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. She succeeds, only to create a separate timeline where the events of her past still come to pass. After returning to her own time Kate helps Rachel Summers escape back to the timeline she just created. Captured by Sentinels, Kate escapes by phasing through her inhibitor collar and fell into a time warp, causing her to merge with the Sentinel that was scanning her, and arrives in the timeline Rachel is inhabiting. Kate's mind settles in a small, metal, off-spherical body and becomes known as Widget. After a few adventures in that timeline, mostly in company with her Earth-616 counterpart's team Excalibur, Kate regains her memory and returns to her original timeline where she is able to reprogram the ruling Sentinels to protect life, ending their tyranny.
Earth X
In Earth X it is revealed in the appendix of issue six that Kitty Pryde is killed saving Colossus while he could not shift into his metal form. Instead of phasing the bullet through her, she heroically takes the bullet and is killed.
Exiles
A version of Kitty Pryde codenamed Cat first appeared in Exiles #96. She is younger than her Earth-616 counterpart. She has the appearance and powers of the normal Shadowcat although she wears a different costume. Prior to her joining the Exiles, this version of Kitty had been recruited by Emma Frost as one of the core agents of the Hellfire Club's strike force. She helps Psylocke defeat Doom's soldiers who have invaded the Panoptichron. She helps retrieve Blink, Morph, and Sabretooth from being scattered across the multiverse. She works as a computer expert for the team and is a full member of the Exiles.
Cat's skill with using her powers means she is not tied to any dimension and can see through various realities, including those of the mind (for instance seeing the various personalities in Sage's mind as "ghosts" surrounding her). Her arrival in the Crystal Palace and connection to its computers has increased this, giving her the ability to "cascade" through different alternative versions of herself, altering her appearance and details of her powers. Amongst other versions, she has assumed the form of a Kitty Pryde with the appearance and powers of Tigra. During the New Exiles' last mission Cat faced off against Madame Hydra (Sue Storm) and killed her at the cost of her own life.
There has been another version of Kitty that appeared in the King Hyperion story arc (Exiles #38-40). She had survived an attack on the X-Mansion by the Sentinels. The Colossus from her universe had been killed in the attack but she had the same feelings towards Weapon X's Colossus even though he was not her Colossus. The two eventually fell in love with each other. Unfortunately this did not last since she died with Colossus when they were shot into the empty vacuum of space by Hyperion.
House of M
When the Scarlet Witch altered reality in the 616 Universe, creating the reality known as House of M where mutants were the dominant population, Kitty Pryde was a teacher in a public middle school in Cincinnati, Ohio. Like many of the heroes of Earth 616, she is reminded of the true reality by Layla Miller and recruited in the fight to restore reality.
Magik
In the limited series Magik (Illyana and Storm), an alternative reality Kitty renames herself "Cat" after she is mutated by the demonic sorcerer Belasco into a more feline form, with cat eyes, whiskers, a tail, and enhanced physical abilities and senses. Trapped in Belasco's Limbo, Cat takes a militant view towards defeating the sorcerer, eschewing the magic that her reality's Storm embraces, instead turning to skills in swordplay and physical combat. She tries to save the Illyana Rasputin of Earth-616 from corruption through magic by taking Illyana into the wilderness of Limbo and teaching the child to fight and survive. Like the Kitty Pryde of Earth-616 eventually would, Cat became Illyana's best friend, but more in the role of an older sister due to the difference in their ages.
Cat's plan goes awry when the pair's attempt to confront Belasco fails, at the cost of the life of an enslaved Nightcrawler; Illyana falls under Belasco's influence and Cat is further transformed towards a feline, with a semi-animalistic mind completely loyal to Belasco. Cat is eventually slain by Illyana when Belasco sets Cat upon his rebellious apprentice; facing death at Cat's hands and knowing that, deep down, a part of Kitty still exists and hates her enslavement, Illyana broke Cat's neck in self-defense.
Long after Illyana overthrows Belasco, escapes Limbo, and becomes a member of the junior X-Men team known as the New Mutants, Cat's remains are found by the team in Limbo's throne room. By then she had completely decomposed to a skeleton. Illyana, facing a rebellion of Limbo's demon population that threatened to overrun Earth, smashed Cat's skull in rage over the demonic taint that Belasco left on her soul and frustration over the horrible choice she had to make to kill Cat.
Marvel Zombies
Kitty is briefly shown in the background as a zombie in Ultimate Fantastic Four #23, despite her mutant phasing powers. She is also seen in Marvel Zombies: Dead Days, when zombie Alpha Flight attack the X-Men. This would appear to have been retconned, though, as of Marvel Zombies: Halloween, which depicts her and her son Peter with Colossus surviving for several years in an out of the way house farm, encountering zombies, but, fortunately, being rescued by Mephisto, who dispatched the remaining zombies.
The Earth-91126/Earth-Z Kitty is recruited by Earth-2149/Marvel Zombies Spider-Man to help him develop a cure for the zombie hunger, on the grounds that her powers mean that she would be in no danger from him if he should succumb to his zombie instincts, but she is later seemingly killed when the zombie Quasar holds her underwater until she is forced to become solid once more, allowing the infected Namor to eat her flesh (much to the rage of the zombie Wolverine, of Earth-2149).
Mutant X
Storm was taken by the vampire Dracula and unlike Earth 616, she does not return. Kitty goes off to battle her, either to save or kill her. Kitty slays several vampires in the way but Storm proves too much for her and Kitty becomes her unwilling slave for some time. She later shows up as the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club and seems to be none too happy with Storm. It's also hinted that she was engaged or going to be engaged to Colossus. Her ultimate fate at the end of the series is unknown.
Lightning Force
In the reality of Earth-597, an alternative universe where World War II was won by Nazi Germany, Kitty is forced to serve as Shadowcat alongside Nightcrawler, Meggan, and Hauptmann Englande as a member of the Lightning Force (a version of Excalibur), made a virtual slave because of her Jewish heritage. She leads a sad existence and is easily identified by her shaved head and the Star of David tattooed on her forehead. It is indicated, from her own statements and those made by her reality's counterpart of Moira MacTaggert, that this Shadowcat is a true ghost, raised from the dead by a combination of science and magic and bound to serve the Nazi regime. This Shadowcat had the added ability to disrupt life force with her phasing power, knocking her victims unconscious, much like how her counterpart in the "prime" Marvel Universe (Earth-616) can disrupt technology that she phases through. She is also able to alter her facial features to a "demonic" aspect when attacking enemies or else responding to aggressive, commanding behavior from her superiors.
Pirate Kitty
Kitty tells Illyana a bedtime story and casts herself as Pirate Kitty Pryde, captain of the Abdul Alhazred, who operated in a magical world. Unlike her mainstream counterpart, she did not have any mutant powers and wore a classic pirate outfit which also included her Star of David necklace. She was also sometimes known as Colleen. Kitty was good friends of her version of Colossus, the Bamfs (Nightcrawler), Windrider (Storm), the "Fiend-with-no-name" (later revealed to be named "Mean") (Wolverine) and Lockheed (an alternative version of the X-Jet). Kitty also helped her versions of Professor X and Cyclops capture and cure that universe's version of Dark Phoenix.
At first she was only a fairy tale character, but later it is revealed that her fairy tale is actually an alternative universe. (In fact, several members of this universe, the Bamfs, would later come to Earth-616 to cause trouble.) When Earth-616's Nightcrawler was temporarily stranded in her world, Kitty helped him defeat the sorcerer Shagreen and also encountered the Earth-616 versions of Illyana, Lockheed, and herself.
Professor W's X-Men
In the native universe of the Exiles member Nocturne, Kitty is a senior member of the X-Men led by Nightcrawler. She is a teacher and TJ refers to her as "Aunt Kate". During a fight with Apocalypse Kitty gets exposed to a machine that reverts her to a younger stage of her life when she had only been with the X-Men a few weeks. Nocturne helps Kitty fit into the school and becomes her best friend. She also proves useful in the fight against the Brotherhood led by Cyclops.
Ruins
Imprisoned alongside other mutants at a prison camp in Texas by President X, Kitty attempted to use her phasing powers to escape, only to get stuck halfway through her cell door, losing three feet of intestines in the process.
Secret Wars (2015)
During the Secret Wars storyline, a version of Kitty named Kitten resides in the wuxia-inspired K'un-L'un region of Battleworld. In this reality, Kitten is a martial artist who joins Callisto's band of outcasts after being expelled from her school for attempting a forbidden technique, a side effect of which left her intangible. Kitten and her fellow outcasts became pupils of Shang-Chi, the exiled son of Emperor Zheng Zu. Dubbing their new school The Lowest Caste, Shang-Chi represents the group as their master for the tournament deciding the next Emperor of K'un-L'un, hoping to usurp his father's tyrannical rule. Kitten accompanies Shang-Chi for each of his fights in the Thirteen Chambers. During his final fight with Zu, Shang-Chi uses Kitten's technique of intangibility, which leads to his eventual victory and replaces his father as the new Emperor of K'un-L'un.
Ultimate Marvel
The Ultimate version of Shadowcat (Kitty Pryde) first appears as a 14-year-old girl in Ultimate X-Men #21. She is also Jewish and wears the Star of David around her neck, but does not appear to possess the same genius IQ as her mainstream (Earth-616) counterpart.
Kitty's mother, worried about Kitty's mutation, seeks help from Professor Charles Xavier. Kitty becomes a student at Xavier's school, when her mother allows her to attend under the condition she does not take part in any X-Men missions, nor train in any "Danger Room" simulations. Kitty soon rebels against this and joins the X-Men as their youngest member. She idolizes Spider-Man and has a crush on him; she even dates Peter Parker for a time. After a fierce argument with Professor Xavier concerning Peter's secret identity, which his Aunt May had just found out about, Kitty leaves the X-Men and enrolls in Peter's school. Their relationship is strained after their romantic involvement (as superheroes) becomes publicly known, making it impossible for them to date anymore in their civilian identities, and eventually comes to an end when Peter realizes he cannot get over his feelings for Mary Jane. However, Kitty still retains strong feelings for him.
Following the disastrous flood triggered by Magneto and the subsequent ban of public use of mutant powers, Kitty assumes the identity of the Shroud. Kitty also discovers that she can also decrease the space between her atoms make herself super-dense, giving her both superhuman strength and durability. When the authorities see Kitty as a threat, she enters into a fierce rage and demonstrates these powers for the first time to her friends. She is strong and angry enough to punch Spider-Man several feet through the air. She eventually escapes and goes into hiding in the now abandoned Morlock Tunnel with Iceman and the Human Torch after Peter Parker's death.
Kitty makes an appearance in Ultimate Comics: X, locating Jimmy Hudson, who is revealed to be Wolverine's son. Kitty was charged by Logan before his death to locate Jimmy and reveal his true origins to him.
After the death of Spider-Man she formed new team of X-Men consisting of herself, Iceman and the Human Torch. They soon rescued the mutant Rogue from the mutant-hunting Nimrod robots, going on to recruit Jimmy Hudson into their group as well. After killing the mutant-hunting William Stryker, Kitty decided to leave New York for the Southwest along with Bobby, Rogue, and Jimmy (leaving only Johnny behind) in order to save the mutants there and defeat the Nimrods, now controlled by the deceased Stryker's consciousness.
Spider-Gwen
In the reality where Gwen Stacy is Spider-Woman, Kitty is an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Black Ops department, where she works closely with Wolverine to keep him in check and to help him fight his immortal curse. Like the Age of Apocalypse version, she also wields artificial claws on her wrists. It's revealed that she works with Logan out of guilt, as Stryker forced her to use her powers to subject Logan to the Weapon X experiment.
What If
In What if Phoenix Had Not Died, Kitty is obliterated by Dark Phoenix before she destroyed the Earth.
In What If the X-Men had Lost Inferno?, Kitty is one of the last eight remaining superheroes on the planet. She is slain by a demonic Wolverine, but her death makes Wolverine come to his senses and he fights against Baron Mordo, who had joined up with the demon hordes.
In What If... Wolverine: Enemy of the State, Kitty is the only hero left to kill a Hydra-programmed Wolverine after he has taken down the Marvel Universe. Kitty was the last remaining member of the team assembled to recapture Wolverine. The initial plan failed and Kitty was forced to phase her hand into Wolverine's brain. She then solidified her hand killing Wolverine instantly although she lost her hand in the process.
In What if Magneto and Professor X Had Formed The X-Men Together, Kitty is the tech guru at the Good Shepard clinic (That reality's version of the X-Mansion). She is very similar to her mainstream counterpart. But unlike the mainstream version this Kitty Pryde would wear different coloured wigs and cut her natural hair short. She also had trouble with her powers since she would phase herself through a solid object and accidentally leave her clothes behind. She was also friends with Lockheed although she only called him Dragon.
In What if Astonishing X-Men, Kitty is amongst the X-Men who fight a Phoenix powered Emma Frost. She phased Emma's heart from her chest but a Phoenix fire flares up from her body killing Kitty instantly. In the second story during the events of Astonishing X-Men #6-#12 Elixir had not been able to heal Kitty after being impaled and she dies.
In "What if the Dark Phoenix Rose Again", Kitty has Colossus "set up a fastball special" to help her phase into a Master Mold. She is killed after solidifying inside the Master Mold's head destroying it in the process.
In What if Storm Had the Power of the Phoenix, Kitty helps revive the 'real' Storm (the Phoenix being the cosmic entity in Storm's shape) by phasing inside her body and getting her internal organs working again.
X-Babies
An X-Baby version of Shadowcat appears briefly in the X-Babies one-shot comic. She is wearing her original costume and is younger than the other X-Babies. She is named as Shadowkitty rather than Shadowcat or Kitty Pryde. She also doesn't seem to have a strong bond with the X-Baby version of Lockheed.
X-Men Forever
In the X-Men Forever series, Kitty and Nightcrawler have left Excalibur and rejoined the X-Men after the events of X-Men #1-3. Of the X-Men, she undergoes the most drastic changes from the events of X-Men Forever #1. During the battle with Fabian Cortez, she phases through Wolverine while he is being affected by Cortez's power. This drives her powers haywire as well, and somehow she ends up with one of Wolverine's claws in her wrist. Claremont has also hinted in dialogue throughout the title so far that she may have also undergone psychological or psychic changes as a result of the event. From Forever #4 to the current issue, she is shown to be able to use the claw in the exact method Wolverine would manifest it, with no apparent ill effects (the mechanism for this has not yet been made clear) outside of excruciating pain. Because of the merger with Logan's DNA she has begun to develop a healing factor, slower than Wolverine's but it heals faster when she is intangible. She has also slightly enhanced senses, she also can produce a set of five retractable claws on her left hand like Sabretooth. She has also begun to take on Logan's personality and memories as well. And because of this she is beginning to wonder what part of her truly remains the same.
X-Men: Misfits
In the X-Men: Misfits original English language manga one-shot graphic novel from Marvel and DelRay, Kitty is the newest and only female student of the all-male Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters, which is now experimenting with having a co-ed student body. As the sole girl, she becomes the center of attention and attraction for the rest of the students. She becomes a member and the mascot of the elitist fraternity, The Hellfire Club, and has a short-lived romantic relationship with the school troublemaker Pyro.
X-Men: The End
In the X-Men: The End future, Kitty Pryde becomes the mayor of Chicago and then President of the United States. She has three children: her eldest daughter, named Meredith, and twins 10 years younger than Meredith, Sara and Doug, with an unnamed partner who died protecting her from an assassination attempt.
Miscellaneous
In Excalibur #103, we see many alternative versions of Shadowcat. Many of these variations have appeared in other comics, such as Age of Apocalypse, but there were other variations, including one of her as a Phalanx convert, a sex dominatrix, a homeless person, a nun, a version wearing a costume similar to Phantom Girl, and a normal person who owns an Olde Curiosity Shoppe.
In New Mutants #63 Illyana (Magik), along with Lockheed, gets trapped on an alien spaceship that has been invaded by a Brood Queen. On this ship the Brood Queen created clones of the X-Men, including Kitty. This one had the Ariel suit on, but it was green, instead of the typical blue. These X-Men are implanted with Brood eggs. Her memories were altered by the Brood Queen like the other X-Men, but eventually they rebel against her and are free. Illyana uses the soulsword to eliminate the Brood Eggs from their bodies. The X-Men stay on the ship; whether they are still on it is unknown.
During the Cross Time Caper storyline a few different appearances of Kitty appear. One was a princess who was gifted with magic abilities. She eventually married a short dashing prince (who had originally fallen in love with the mainstream version of Kitty). A second version was a crime boss who was betrayed and killed by her partner in crime Illiyana Rasputin. A third was from a world of sentient dinosaurs. She went by the name of Shadowcompsognathus.
Collected editions
Several of Kitty Pryde's earlier adventures were collected in paperback form.
In other media
Music
Kitty Pryde is referenced in Weezer's song "In the Garage" from their "Blue Album".
Television
Kitty Pryde appeared as Sprite in "The X-Men Adventure" episode of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, which guest-starred the X-Men. She was voiced by Melissa Sue Anderson. She also appeared in her short-lived "Ariel" costume in the X-Men group cameo at the end of the episode "The Education of a Superhero".
Kitty Pryde (voiced by Kath Soucie) was a viewpoint character in the animated television one-shot Pryde of the X-Men, as the newest member of the team. She is a new recruit of the team and is initially frightened of Nightcrawler, due to his demonic appearance. She and Nightcrawler later succeed in defeating Magneto. Once Nightcrawler seemingly dies as a result of having apparently sacrificed himself, Kitty begins to cry until discovering that he is alive and is met with positive relations by her teammates, except Wolverine. As the pilot was a failure, and the character had lost prominence in comics at the time, she was not used in the next X-Men TV series, not even in cameos. Jubilee replaced her as the young viewpoint character, and in the adaptations of stories that involved her.
In the animated series X-Men: Evolution, Shadowcat is a main character, who is shown as the teenybopper of the team and who has a romantic interest in Brotherhood member Lance Alvers. Shadowcat saves Wolverine in the season one episode "Grim Reminder", where she unintentionally stows away with Nightcrawler while on the Blackbird without the knowledge that he was beginning to pilot the jet. She is also shown to have developed a close friendship with Nightcrawler, despite the fact that she at first displayed a dislike for his appearance. Besides Nightcrawler, she is shown to have formed a friendship with Rogue and Spyke. Her initial dislike of his appearance changes after he is severely wounded by Rogue, while she and the rest of the X-Men tried to recruit her. In this series, she does not have Lockheed for a pet, but she is shown preferring to sleep with a stuffed dragon instead of a teddy bear. Though she has an on-and-off interest in the delinquent mutant boy Lance Alvers, early in the series she displays interest in Cyclops. After Rogue is recruited, she serves as her support in beginning a romantic relationship with Scott and develops a friendship with her, despite their differences. When Avalanche tries to join the X-Men in the season two episode "Joyride", she tries to help him and shows additional attraction to him as she grades him and the other members of the junior team. After he informs her that some members of the group have started a joyride on the Blackbird and helps her avert catastrophe, she staunchly defends him once he is accused by Cyclops of being responsible. When Avalanche starts to leave, Shadowcat gives him a brief kiss before his departure. Their relationship continues with the two of them going to a school dance, talking on the phone and going to the mall. Despite being with the Brotherhood, Avalanche tries to protect Kitty in the fight against the Scarlet Witch. In season 3, Kitty and Lance's relationship briefly ends after the Brotherhood and Mystique blow up the X Mansion and are in part responsible for the exposure of mutants. Kitty calls Lance a "hood" after he attacks the high school and he says "he will never be good enough for her". Both look sad at these comments. In the fourth season, the X-Men try to use her powers to damage one of Apocalypse's domes and fails, instead being electrocuted briefly. In the fiftieth episode of the series, entitled "Ghost of a Chance", she comes across Danielle Moonstar once she depicts herself in a dream sequence to her. Once she wakes out of it, she tries to and successfully finds her, becoming friends with the girl after learning she had been in suspended animation for two years. Prior to this, it is discovered that her fear is phasing repeatedly into the ground and going further without any control of where she is going. Shadowcat plays a key role in the defeat of Apocalypse and asks the Brotherhood for help. They come to her aid; as Lance and Kitty resume their romantic relationship. Of the six main X-Men from the first season of the series, she is one of the four that is still a member of the team in the future Charles Xavier saw while in the mind of Apocalypse. Shadowcat was voiced by Maggie Blue O'Hara.
Shadowcat appears in Wolverine and the X-Men, voiced by Danielle Judovits and was a student at the Xavier Institute before the destruction of the X-Mansion and disappearance of Professor X. When Wolverine reformed the X-Men to take down the Mutant Response Division and save the dismal future controlled by the Sentinels, Kitty was on her way to the "mutant paradise" Genosha. The X-Men came to re-recruit her and she immediately rejoined the team. Shadowcat appears as the youngest member of the team and she seems to have a crush on Iceman as she is jealous when his attention is taken by Emma Frost and is shown with a love-struck face when she lands on Bobby during a Danger Room training session, though she quickly moves away from him when Angel arrives. She seems to have formed a friendship with Tildie Soames after babysitting her in one episode. In the last episode of the series, she uses her powers to penetrate a Sentinel controlled by Magneto, of which Beast had difficulty with. Her design is inspired by the appearance of the character in the Astonishing X-Men comics, and her costume emulates the design with the appearance of the blue and yellow used on her costume. The shorts she wears are based on the appearances of the original X-Men, and her first appearance when she wore a variant of the uniform.
Shadowcat appears in The Super Hero Squad Show episode "And Lo...A Pilot Shall Come". She appears alongside Colossus at the unveiling of the Great Wall that separates Super Hero City from Villainville and helping citizens into the S.H.I.E.L.D. Shelters. In the episode "Mysterious Mayhem at Mutant Academy", she uses Lockheed to chase Reptil and the hypnotized X-Men out of the girls' bathroom.
Motion comics
Shadowcat appears in the Astonishing X-Men motion comic, voiced by Eileen Stevens and later by Laura Harris.
Film
In the film X-Men, she has a small cameo, played by Sumela Kay. She is referenced as the "girl in Illinois who can walk through walls" by Senator Kelly. She is shown in Xavier's class when Wolverine walks in; she returns for her books which she had left behind, grabs them, and phases through the door on her way out. Xavier responds with a cheerful "Bye, Kitty" while Wolverine looks on, startled.
In X2, she has a brief appearance played by Katie Stuart. She is shown phasing through walls and through people to escape William Stryker's military forces during their attack on the X-Mansion. Another scene shows her falling through her bed to avoid an assault. She shares a room with Siryn; in the novelization it is stated that this is because her phasing ability gives her partial protection from Siryn's scream. When the President of the United States asks Professor Xavier how he got the files he gave him, Xavier replies that he knows a little girl who can walk through walls.
In X-Men: The Last Stand, she is portrayed by a pre-transition Elliot Page, and has a central role. She serves as a rival to Rogue for the romantic attentions of Iceman, since their close friendship and their kiss (deleted scene) make Rogue increasingly jealous and frustrated. She also joins the X-Men in the battle on Alcatraz Island, breaking off from the battle to save Leech from the Juggernaut. In the novelization of the film, it is hinted that at some point Kitty had a romantic relationship with Colossus, but that it had long since run its course, although Colossus appears to still retain feelings towards her.
Page reprised the role in X-Men: Days of Future Past. Pryde is the prime facilitator because she has developed a new power. In this film, she can send the consciousness of another person back into his or her body in the past. At the beginning of the film, she has been using this ability to repeatedly send Bishop four days back in time whenever the Sentinels attack, thus; preventing her group from ever engaging them by having him warn the past team before they are detected. In order to prevent the Sentinels' creation, she sends Wolverine back to 1973 (chosen as the strain of sending someone else back that far would snap their mind, with Logan's healing factor the only thing that makes such a trip survivable for him) and was gravely injured when Wolverine becomes violent; due to provocation from events in 1973. After the timeline was successfully altered, Kitty is seen teaching a class at the X-Mansion with Colossus. In the film's alternate release, called The Rogue Cut, Kitty's injuries from sending Wolverine back to the past result in the X-Men rescuing Rogue to take over for her. Rogue absorbs Kitty's powers and takes over, stabilizing Wolverine and Kitty helps Magneto flee a Sentinel attack.
In January 2018, a Kitty Pryde solo movie was announced to be in development, with Tim Miller attached as the director and Brian Michael Bendis as the writer, but in March 2019, after Disney's purchase of 21st Century Fox, Fox executive Emma Watts described The New Mutants as the final film in the X-Men series, thus; ending the development of the Kitty Pryde film.
Video games
Kitty Pryde appears in Konami's 1992 X-Men video arcade game, as a non-playable character (NPC). In this game, she is not known as "Sprite"; instead, she plays the "damsel in distress" role as it is based on "Pryde of the X-Men". In the 2010 re-release of the game she is voiced by Mela Lee.
Shadowcat is a playable character in the game X-Men II: The Fall of the Mutants.
Shadowcat appears as an NPC in the X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse, voiced by Kim Mai Guest. She has special dialogue with Colossus (who she scolds for flirting with Scarlet Witch).
Shadowcat appears in X-Men: The Official Game, with Kim Mai Guest reprising her role.
Shadowcat is a playable character in Marvel Super Hero Squad Online, voiced by Tara Strong.
In X-Men: Destiny, Gambit mentions that the U-Men had captured Kitty and extracted bits of her power. Gambit obtains a vial of a substance which temporarily lets the character fall through the roof (if the player chose the correct option).
Kitty Pryde is a playable character in the Facebook game Marvel: Avengers Alliance.
Kitty Pryde is a playable character in the X-Men: Days of Future Past app game.
Kitty Pryde is a playable character in the online MMO Marvel Heroes, with Danielle Judovits reprising her role.
Kitty Pryde appears as a playable character in Marvel Future Fight.
Kitty Pryde appears as a playable character in Marvel Puzzle Quest.
Kitty Pryde appears as a playable character in Marvel Strike Force.
Novels
Kitty Pryde appears in the X-Men/Star Trek crossover novel Planet X. In it, she is examined by Geordi La Forge, who notes the similarities between her ability and the chroniton displacement he and Ro Laren experienced in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Next Phase".
Reception
Kitty Pryde has been well received as a comic book character and as a member of the X-Men. Wizard magazine put her at number #13 in 200 Greatest Comic Characters of All Time. She was the highest female comic character in the list beating rivals such as Wonder Woman, Buffy Summers, and She-Hulk. IGN ranked her as the 47th greatest comic book hero of all time stating that "as X-Men writers have often found it useful to introduce younger teen recruits to offset the experienced members of the team, Kitty Pryde set the standard when she debuted, and none have surpassed her". IGN rated Kitty Pryde #3 on its list of the Top 25 X-Men from the Past 40 Years describing her as the mutant everyman, the common girl turned superhero; IGN also stated that as her pet dragon, Lockheed, "became instantly attached to Kitty, [they] were hooked early on". Marvel.com ranked her as the tenth greatest X-Men member stating that "unquestionably, the dynamic of the X-Men shifted entirely when teenage whiz kid Kitty Pryde joined the team in the early 1980s"; Marvel.com also stated that even though Kitty has since blossomed into a young woman of considerable maturity and power, she remains the access point to the X-Men for countless readers. A later list on Marvel's website, ranking the top 50 X-Men characters, placed her in first place, citing the ease of identifying with her for the audience, and her development over the years.
Notes
References
External links
Kitty Pryde at Marvel.com
UncannyXmen.net Spotlight on Shadowcat
American superheroes
Characters created by Chris Claremont
Characters created by John Byrne (comics)
Comics characters introduced in 1980
Excalibur (comics)
Female characters in animation
Female characters in film
Female characters in television
Fictional American Jews in comics
Fictional bisexual females
Fictional characters from Illinois
Fictional characters who can turn intangible
Fictional dancers
Fictional female ninja
Fictional linguists
Fictional mayors
Fictional schoolteachers
Fictional secret agents and spies
Fictional women soldiers and warriors
Jewish superheroes
Marvel Comics female superheroes
Marvel Comics film characters
Marvel Comics LGBT superheroes
Marvel Comics martial artists
Marvel Comics mutants
S.H.I.E.L.D. agents
Teenage characters in comics
X-Men members | true | [
"Why Girls Leave Home may refer to:\n\nWhy Girls Leave Home (1921 film), a lost American silent drama film produced by Harry Rapf for Warner Bros\nWhy Girls Leave Home (1945 film), a film directed by William Berke, starring Lola Lane\n\nDisambiguation pages",
"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)"
] |
[
"Synthesizer",
"Fingerboard controller"
] | C_c89ff2f867ac42a7b84b5baaff084d4e_0 | What is the fingerboard controller? | 1 | What is the fingerboard controller? | Synthesizer | A ribbon controller or other violin-like user interface may be used to control synthesizer parameters. The idea dates to Leon Theremin's 1922 first concept and his 1932 Fingerboard Theremin and Keyboard Theremin, Maurice Martenot's 1928 Ondes Martenot (sliding a metal ring), Friedrich Trautwein's 1929 Trautonium (finger pressure), and was also later utilized by Robert Moog. The ribbon controller has no moving parts. Instead, a finger pressed down and moved along it creates an electrical contact at some point along a pair of thin, flexible longitudinal strips whose electric potential varies from one end to the other. Older fingerboards used a long wire pressed to a resistive plate. A ribbon controller is similar to a touchpad, but a ribbon controller only registers linear motion. Although it may be used to operate any parameter that is affected by control voltages, a ribbon controller is most commonly associated with pitch bending. Fingerboard-controlled instruments include the Trautonium (1929), Hellertion (1929) and Heliophon (1936), Electro-Theremin (Tannerin, late 1950s), Persephone (2004), and the Swarmatron (2004). A ribbon controller is used as an additional controller in the Yamaha CS-80 and CS-60, the Korg Prophecy and Korg Trinity series, the Kurzweil synthesizers, Moog synthesizers, and others. Rock musician Keith Emerson used it with the Moog modular synthesizer from 1970 onward. In the late 1980s, keyboards in the synth lab at Berklee College of Music were equipped with membrane thin ribbon style controllers that output MIDI. They functioned as MIDI managers, with their programming language printed on their surface, and as expression/performance tools. Designed by Jeff Tripp of Perfect Fretworks Co., they were known as Tripp Strips. Such ribbon controllers can serve as a main MIDI controller instead of a keyboard, as with the Continuum instrument. CANNOTANSWER | Fingerboard-controlled instruments include the Trautonium (1929), Hellertion (1929) and Heliophon (1936), | A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms, through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and frequency modulation synthesis. These sounds may be altered by components such as filters, which cut or boost frequencies; envelopes, which control articulation, or how notes begin and end; and low-frequency oscillators, which modulate parameters such as pitch, volume, or filter characteristics affecting timbre. Synthesizers are typically played with keyboards or controlled by sequencers, software or other instruments, and may be synchronized to other equipment via MIDI.
Synthesizer-like instruments emerged in the United States in the mid-20th century with instruments such as the RCA Mark II, which was controlled with punch cards and used hundreds of vacuum tubes. The Moog synthesizer, developed by Robert Moog and first sold in 1964, is credited for pioneering concepts such as voltage-controlled oscillators, envelopes, noise generators, filters, and sequencers. In 1970, the smaller, cheaper Minimoog standardized synthesizers as self-contained instruments with built-in keyboards, unlike the larger modular synthesizers before it.
In 1978, Sequential Circuits released the Prophet-5, which used microprocessors to allow users to store sounds for the first time. 1982 saw the introduction of MIDI, a standardised means of synchronizing electronic instruments that remains an industry standard. The first mass-produced synthesizer, the Yamaha DX7, was launched in 1983, popularizing digital synthesis. Software synthesizers now can be run as plug-ins or embedded on single microchips in any electronic device.
Synthesizers were initially viewed as avant-garde, valued by the 1960s psychedelic and counter-cultural scenes but with little perceived commercial potential. Switched-On Bach (1968), a bestselling album of Bach compositions arranged for synthesizer by Wendy Carlos, took synthesizers to the mainstream. They were adopted by electronic acts and pop and rock groups in the 1960s and 1970s, and widely used in 1980s rock. Sampling, introduced with the Fairlight synthesizer in 1979, has influenced all genres of music and had a major influence on the development of electronic and hip hop music. Today, the synthesizer is used in nearly every genre of music, and is considered one of the most important instruments in the music industry. According to Fact in 2016, "The synthesizer is as important, and as ubiquitous, in modern music today as the human voice."
History
Precursors
As electricity became more widely available, the early 20th century saw the invention of electronic musical instruments including the Telharmonium, Trautonium, Ondes Martenot, and theremin. In the late 1930s, the Hammond Organ Company built the Novachord, a large instrument powered by 72 voltage-controlled amplifiers and 146 vacuum tubes. In 1948, the Canadian engineer Hugh Le Caine completed the electronic sackbut, a precursor to voltage-controlled synthesizers, with keyboard sensitivity allowing for vibrato, glissando, and attack control.
In 1957, Harry Olson and Herbert Belar completed the RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer at the RCA laboratories in Princeton, New Jersey. The instrument read punched paper tape that controlled an analog synthesizer containing 750 vacuum tubes. It was acquired by the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center and used almost exclusively by Milton Babbitt, a composer at Princeton University.
1960s: Early years
The authors of Analog Days define "the early years of the synthesizer" as between 1964 and the mid-1970s, beginning with the debut of the Moog synthesizer. Designed by American engineer Robert Moog, the synthesizer was composed of separate modules which created and shaped sounds, connected by patch cords. Moog developed a means of controlling pitch through voltage, the voltage-controlled oscillator. This, along with Moog components such as envelopes, noise generators, filters, and sequencers, became standard components in synthesizers.
Around the same period, American engineer Don Buchla created the Buchla Modular Electronic Music System. Instead of a conventional keyboard, Buchla's system used touchplates which transmitted control voltages depending on finger position and force. However, the Moog's keyboard made it more accessible and marketable to musicians, and keyboards became the standard means of controlling synthesizers. Moog and Buchla initially avoided the word synthesizer for their instruments, as it was associated with the RCA synthesizer; however, by the 1970s, "synthesizer" had become the standard term.
1970s: Portability, polyphony and patch memory
In 1970, Moog launched a cheaper, smaller synthesizer, the Minimoog. The Minimoog was the first synthesizer sold in music stores, and was more practical for live performance; it standardized the concept of synthesizers as self-contained instruments with built-in keyboards.
After retail stores started selling synthesizers in 1971, other synthesizer companies were established, including ARP in the US and EMS in the UK. ARP's products included the ARP 2600, which folded into a carrying case and had built-in speakers, and the Odyssey, a rival to the Minimoog. The less expensive EMS synthesizers were used by European art rock and progressive rock acts including Brian Eno and Pink Floyd. Designs for synthesizers appeared in the amateur electronics market, such as the "Practical Electronics Sound Synthesiser", published in Practical Electronics in 1973. By the mid-1970s, ARP was the world's largest synthesizer manufacturer, though it closed in 1981.
Early synthesizers were monophonic, meaning they could only play one note at a time. Some of the earliest commercial polyphonic synthesizers were created by American engineer Tom Oberheim, such as the OB-X (1979). In 1978, the American company Sequential Circuits released the Prophet-5, the first fully programmable polyphonic synthesizer. Whereas previous synthesizers required users to adjust cables and knobs to change sounds, with no guarantee of exactly recreating a sound, the Prophet-5 used microprocessors to store sounds in patch memory. This facilitated a move from synthesizers creating unpredictable sounds to producing "a standard package of familiar sounds".
1980s: Digital technology
The synthesizer market grew dramatically in the 1980s. 1982 saw the introduction of MIDI, a standardized means of synchronizing electronic instruments; it remains an industry standard. An influential sampling synthesizer, the Fairlight CMI, was released in 1979, with the ability to record and play back samples at different pitches. Though its high price made it inaccessible to amateurs, it was adopted by high-profile pop musicians including Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel. The success of the Fairlight drove competition, improving sampling technology and lowering prices; early competing samplers included the E-mu Emulator in 1981 and the Akai S-series in 1985.
In 1983, Yamaha released the first commercially successful digital synthesizer, the Yamaha DX7. Based on frequency modulation (FM) synthesis developed by Stanford University engineer John Chowning, the DX7 remains one of the bestselling synthesizers in history and was the first synthesizer to sell over 100,000 units. It was widely used in 1980s pop music. Compared to the "warm" and "fuzzy" sounds of analog synthesis, the DX7 was characterized by its "harsh", "glassy" and "chilly" sounds. Digital synthesizers typically contained preset sounds emulating acoustic instruments, with algorithms controlled with menus and buttons. The Synclavier, a digital synthesizer made with FM technology licensed from Yamaha, offered features such as 16-bit sampling and built-in digital recording. With a starting price of $13,000, its use was limited to universities, studios and wealthy artists.
The success of the DX7 led to competing digital synthesizers. The Roland D-50 (1987) blended Roland's linear arithmetic algorithm with samples, and was the first mass-produced synthesizer with built-in digital effects such as delay, reverb and chorus. In 1988, the Japanese manufacturer Korg released the M1, a digital synthesizer workstation featuring sampled transients and loops; with over 250,000 units sold, it remains the bestselling synthesizer in history. The advent of digital synthesizers led to a downturn in interest in analog synthesizers.
1990s–present: Software synthesizers and analog revival
1997 saw the release of ReBirth by Propellerhead Software and Reality by Seer Systems, the first software synthesizers that could be played in real time via MIDI. In 1999, an update to the music software Cubase allowed users to run software instruments (including synthesizers) as plug-ins, triggering a wave of new software instruments. Propellerhead's Reason, released in 2000, introduced an array of recognizable virtual studio equipment.
The market for patchable and modular synthesizers rebounded in the late 1990s. In the 2000s, older analog synthesizers regained popularity, sometimes selling for much more than their original prices. In the 2010s, new, affordable analog synthesizers were introduced by companies including Moog, Korg, Arturia and Dave Smith Instruments. The renewed interest is credited to the appeal of imperfect "organic" sounds and simpler interfaces, and modern surface-mount technology making analog synthesizers cheaper and faster to manufacture.
Impact
Early synthesizers were viewed as avant-garde, valued by the 1960s psychedelic and counter-cultural scenes for their ability to make new sounds, but with little perceived commercial potential. Switched-On Bach (1968), a bestselling album of Bach compositions arranged for Moog synthesizer by Wendy Carlos, demonstrated that synthesizers could be more than "random noise machines", taking them to the mainstream. However, debates were held about the appropriateness of synthesizers in baroque music, and according to the Guardian they were quickly abandoned in "serious classical circles".
The Moog was adopted by acts including the Doors, the Grateful Dead, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and Keith Emerson. Emerson was the first major rock musician to perform with the Moog and it became a trademark of his performances, helping take his band Emerson, Lake & Palmer to global stardom; according to Analog Days, the likes of Emerson, with his Moog performances, "did for the keyboard what Jimi Hendrix did for the guitar".
The portable Minimoog (1970), much smaller than the modular synthesizers before it, made synthesizers more common in live performance. The Minimoog took a place in mainstream black music, most notably in the work of Stevie Wonder, and in jazz, such as the work of Sun Ra. It was also used by electronic artists such as Kraftwerk, who used it on their albums Autobahn (1974) and The Man-Machine (1978), and later by Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, and Gary Numan. In the late 1970s and the early 1980s, the Micromoog was widely used in the emerging disco genre by artists including Abba and Giorgio Moroder. Some acts felt that using synthesizers to create sounds was "cheating"; Queen wrote in their album liner notes that they did not use them.
Early synthesizers could only play one note at a time, making them suitable for basslines, leads and solos. With the rise of polyphonic synthesizers in the 70s and 80s, "the keyboard in rock once more started to revert to the background, to be used for fills and atmosphere rather than for soloing". Sampling, introduced with the Fairlight synthesizer in 1979, has influenced all genres of music and had a major influence on the development of electronic and hip hop music.
In the 1970s, electronic music composers such as Jean Michel Jarre and Isao Tomita released successful synthesizer-led instrumental albums. This influenced the emergence of synthpop, a subgenre of new wave, from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. The work of German krautrock bands such as Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, British acts such as John Foxx, Gary Numan and David Bowie, African-American acts such as George Clinton and Zapp, and Japanese electronic acts such as Yellow Magic Orchestra and Kitaro were influential in the development of the genre. Gary Numan's 1979 hits "Are 'Friends' Electric?" and "Cars" made heavy use of synthesizers. OMD's "Enola Gay" (1980) used distinctive electronic percussion and a synthesized melody. Soft Cell used a synthesized melody on their 1981 hit "Tainted Love". Nick Rhodes, keyboardist of Duran Duran, used various synthesizers including the Roland Jupiter-4 and Jupiter-8. Chart hits include Depeche Mode's "Just Can't Get Enough" (1981), the Human League's "Don't You Want Me" and works by Ultravox.
In the 1980s, digital synthesizers were widely used in pop music. The Yamaha DX7, released in 1983, became a pop staple, used on songs by A-ha, Kenny Loggins, Kool & the Gang. Its "E PIANO 1" preset became particularly famous, especially for power ballads, and was used by artists including Whitney Houston, Chicago, Prince, Phil Collins, Luther Vandross, Billy Ocean, and Celine Dion. The Roland TB-303 (1981), in conjunction with the Roland TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines, became a foundation of electronic dance music genres such as house and techno when producers acquired cheap second-hand units later in the decade. Korg M1 presets were widely used in 1990s house music, beginning with Madonna's 1990 single "Vogue".
Today, the synthesizer is used in nearly every genre of music. It is considered by the authors of Analog Days "the only innovation that can stand alongside the electric guitar as a great new instrument of the age of electricity ... Both led to new forms of music, and both had massive popular appeal." The authors draw a connection to the synthesizer's origins in 1960s psychedelia to the raves and British "second summer of love" of the 1980s and the club scenes of the 1990s and 2000s. According to Fact in 2016, "The synthesizer is as important, and as ubiquitous, in modern music today as the human voice." It is one of the most important instruments in the music industry.
Film and television
Synthesizers are common in film and television soundtracks. ARP synthesizers, for example, were used to create sound effects for the 1977 science fiction films Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Star Wars, including the "voice" of the robot R2-D2. In the 70s and 80s, synthesizers were used in the scores for thrillers and horror films including A Clockwork Orange (1971), Apocalypse Now (1979), The Fog (1980) and Manhunter (1986). Brad Fiedel used a Prophet synthesizer to record the soundtrack for The Terminator (1984), and the filmmaker John Carpenter used them extensively for his soundtracks. Synthesizers were used to create themes for television shows including Knight Rider (1982), Twin Peaks (1990) and Stranger Things (2016).
Jobs
The rise of the synthesizer led to major changes in music industry jobs, comparable to the earlier arrival of sound in film, which put live musicians accompanying silent films out of work. With its ability to imitate instruments such as strings and horns, the synthesizer threatened the jobs of session musicians. For a period, the Moog was banned from use in commercial work, a restriction negotiated by the American Federation of Musicians (AFM). Robert Moog felt that the AFM had not realized that his instrument had to be studied like any other, and instead imagined that "all the sounds that musicians could make somehow existed in the Moog — all you had to do was push a button that said 'Jascha Heifetz' and out would come the most fantastic violin player".
Musician Walter Sear persuaded the AFM that the synthesizer demanded skill, and the category of "synthesizer player" was accepted into the union; however, players were still subject to "suspicion and hostility" for several years. In 1982, following a tour by Barry Manilow using synthesizers instead of an orchestra, the British Musicians' Union attempted to ban synthesizers, attracting controversy. That decade, a few musicians skilled at programming the popular Yamaha DX7 found employment creating sounds for other acts.
Sound synthesis
Synthesizers generate audio through various forms of analogue and digital synthesis.
In subtractive synthesis, complex waveforms are generated by oscillators and then shaped with filters to remove or boost specific frequencies. Subtractive synthesis is characterized as "rich" and "warm".
In additive synthesis, a large number of waveforms, usually sine waves, are combined into a composite sound.
In frequency modulation (FM) synthesis, waveforms are modulated with the frequency of other waveforms; the resulting complex waveform can, in turn, be used to modulate another, and this another, and so on. FM synthesis can imitate acoustic sounds such as piano, strings and organs. FM synthesis is characterized as "harsh", "glassy" and "chilly".
Phase distortion synthesis, implemented in Casio CZ synthesizers, is similar to FM synthesis.
In wavetable synthesis, synthesizers modulate smoothly between digital representations of different waveforms, changing the shape and timbre.
In sample-based synthesis, instead of sounds being created by synthesizers, samples (digital recordings of sounds) are played back and shaped with components such as filters, envelopes and LFOs.
In vector synthesis, pioneered by the Prophet VS, users crossfade between different sound sources using controllers such as joysticks.
In granular synthesis, an audio sample is split into "grains", usually between one hundredth and one tenth of a second in length, which are recombined and played back.
In physical modelling synthesis, a mathematical model of a physical sound source is created.
Components
Oscillators
Oscillators produce waveforms (such as sawtooth, sine, or pulse waves) with different timbres.
Voltage-controlled amplifiers
Voltage-controlled amplifiers (VCAs) control the volume or gain of the audio signal. VCAs can be modulated by other components, such as LFOs and envelopes. A VCA is a preamp that boosts (amplifies) the electronic signal before passing it on to an external or built-in power amplifier, as well as a means to control its amplitude (volume) using an attenuator. The gain of the VCA is affected by a control voltage (CV), coming from an envelope generator, an LFO, the keyboard or some other source.
Filters
Voltage-controlled filters (VCFs) "shape" the sound generated by the oscillators in the frequency domain, often under the control of an envelope or LFO. These are essential to subtractive synthesis. Filters are particularly important in subtractive synthesis, being designed to pass some frequency regions (or "bands") through unattenuated while significantly attenuating ("subtracting") others. The low-pass filter is most frequently used, but band-pass filters, band-reject filters and high-pass filters are also sometimes available.
The filter may be controlled with a second ADSR envelope. An "envelope modulation" ("env mod") parameter on many synthesizers with filter envelopes determines how much the envelope affects the filter. If turned all the way down, the filter produces a flat sound with no envelope. When turned up the envelope becomes more noticeable, expanding the minimum and maximum range of the filter. The envelope applied on the filter helps the sound designer generating long notes or short notes by moving the parameters up and down such as decay, sustain and finally release. For instance by using a short decay with no sustain, the sound generated is commonly known as a stab. Sound designers may prefer shaping the sound with filter instead of volume.
Envelopes
Envelopes control how sounds change over time. They may control parameters such as amplitude (volume), filters (frequencies), or pitch. The most common envelope is the ADSR (attack, decay, sustain, release) envelope:
Attack is the time taken for initial run-up of level from nil to peak, beginning when the note is triggered.
Decay is the time taken for the subsequent run down from the attack level to the designated sustain level.
Sustain is the level during the main sequence of the sound's duration, until the key is released.
Release is the time taken for the level to decay from the sustain level to zero after the key is released.
Low-frequency oscillators
Low-frequency oscillators (LFOs) produce waveforms used to modulate parameters, such as the pitch of oscillators (producing vibrato).
Arpeggiators
Arpeggiators, included in many synthesizer models, take input chords and convert them into arpeggios. They usually include controls for speed, range and mode (the movement of the arpeggio).
Controllers
Synthesizers are often controlled with electronic or digital keyboards or MIDI controller keyboards, which may be built into the synthesizer unit or attached via connections such as CV/gate, USB, or MIDI. Keyboards may offer expression such as velocity sensitivity and aftertouch, allowing for more control over the sound. Other controllers include Ribbon controllers, which track the movement of the finger across a touch-sensitive surface; wind controllers, played similarly to woodwind instruments; motion-sensitive controllers similar to video game motion controllers; electronic drum pads, played similarly to the heads of a drum kit; touchplates, which send signals depending on finger position and force; controllers designed for microtonal tunings; touchscreen devices such as tablets and smartphones; and fingerpads.
Clones
Synthesizer clones are unlicensed recreations of previous synthesizers, often marketed as affordable versions of famous musical equipment. Clones are available as physical instruments and software. Companies that have sold software clones include Arturia and Native Instruments. Behringer manufactures equipment modelled on instruments including the Minimoog, Pro-One, and TB-303, and drum machines such as the TR-808. Other synthesizer clones include the MiniMOD (a series of Eurorack modules based on the Minimoog), the Intellijel Atlantis (based on the SH-101), and the x0x Heart (based on the TB-303).
Creating clones of older hardware is legal where the patents have expired. In 1997, Mackie lost their lawsuit against Behringer as copyright law in the United States did not cover their circuit board designs.
See also
Lists
List of synthesizers
List of synthesizer manufacturers
Various synthesizers
Guitar synthesizer
Keyboard bass
Keytar
Modular synthesizer
Semi-modular synthesizer
String synthesizer
Wind controller
Related instruments & technologies
Clavioline (Musitron)
Electronic keyboard
Musical instrument
Music workstation
Sampler
Speech synthesis
Vocaloid
Components & technologies
Analytic signal
Envelope detector
Low-frequency oscillation
MIDI
Music genres
Computer music
Electronic music
Notable works
List of compositions for electronic keyboard
References
Citations
Sources
Further reading
External links
Sound Synthesis Theory wikibook
Principles of Sound Synthesis at Salford University
Synthesizer Tutorial
Keyboard instruments
Bass (sound)
Hip hop production
New wave music
Rhythm section
Electric and electronic keyboard instruments | false | [
"A fingerboard is a part of a string instrument.\n\nFingerboard may also refer to:\n Fingerboard (skateboard), a miniature version of a skateboard controlled by the fingers\n Fingerboards, an article of climbing equipment\n Continuum Fingerboard, a continuous pitch performance controller developed by Haken Audio.\n Another name for a ribbon controller for a synthesizer\n Fingerboard (), a South African variant of the traditional board game carrom",
"Stagg S300RDS is an electric guitar made by the Belgian company Stagg Music. Its primary colour is black but it also comes in a red burst colour, and has a white pick guard. This guitar is from the Standard/S300 series.\n\nThe guitar is a Standard \"S\"E-Gitarre electric guitar; it has 3 single-coil pickups. The guitar also has 2 tone controls and 1 volume control. It has a 5-way switch Pickup Selector Switch. The guitar's body is made from alder. The neck is made up of hard maple, bolt-on, 648 mm, (25.5 in.). The fingerboard is made from rosewood and consists of 21 frets. The Bridge is a Classic \"S\" Style Tremolo. The machine heads are vintage-style nickel. The finish is high gloss.\n\nReferences \n http://www.instrumentalsavings.com/Stagg-S300RDS-Rosewood-Fingerboard-Electric-Guitar-p/stg-s300-rds.htm\n http://www.staggmusic.com/products/products_detail.php?langue=uk&oneid=433\n\nExternal links \n http://www.instrumentalsavings.com/Stagg-S300RDS-Rosewood-Fingerboard-Electric-Guitar-p/stg-s300-rds.htm\n\nElectric guitars"
] |
[
"Synthesizer",
"Fingerboard controller",
"What is the fingerboard controller?",
"Fingerboard-controlled instruments include the Trautonium (1929), Hellertion (1929) and Heliophon (1936),"
] | C_c89ff2f867ac42a7b84b5baaff084d4e_0 | Who used these intruments? | 2 | Who used fingerboard controllers? | Synthesizer | A ribbon controller or other violin-like user interface may be used to control synthesizer parameters. The idea dates to Leon Theremin's 1922 first concept and his 1932 Fingerboard Theremin and Keyboard Theremin, Maurice Martenot's 1928 Ondes Martenot (sliding a metal ring), Friedrich Trautwein's 1929 Trautonium (finger pressure), and was also later utilized by Robert Moog. The ribbon controller has no moving parts. Instead, a finger pressed down and moved along it creates an electrical contact at some point along a pair of thin, flexible longitudinal strips whose electric potential varies from one end to the other. Older fingerboards used a long wire pressed to a resistive plate. A ribbon controller is similar to a touchpad, but a ribbon controller only registers linear motion. Although it may be used to operate any parameter that is affected by control voltages, a ribbon controller is most commonly associated with pitch bending. Fingerboard-controlled instruments include the Trautonium (1929), Hellertion (1929) and Heliophon (1936), Electro-Theremin (Tannerin, late 1950s), Persephone (2004), and the Swarmatron (2004). A ribbon controller is used as an additional controller in the Yamaha CS-80 and CS-60, the Korg Prophecy and Korg Trinity series, the Kurzweil synthesizers, Moog synthesizers, and others. Rock musician Keith Emerson used it with the Moog modular synthesizer from 1970 onward. In the late 1980s, keyboards in the synth lab at Berklee College of Music were equipped with membrane thin ribbon style controllers that output MIDI. They functioned as MIDI managers, with their programming language printed on their surface, and as expression/performance tools. Designed by Jeff Tripp of Perfect Fretworks Co., they were known as Tripp Strips. Such ribbon controllers can serve as a main MIDI controller instead of a keyboard, as with the Continuum instrument. CANNOTANSWER | Rock musician Keith Emerson used it with the Moog modular synthesizer from 1970 onward. | A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms, through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and frequency modulation synthesis. These sounds may be altered by components such as filters, which cut or boost frequencies; envelopes, which control articulation, or how notes begin and end; and low-frequency oscillators, which modulate parameters such as pitch, volume, or filter characteristics affecting timbre. Synthesizers are typically played with keyboards or controlled by sequencers, software or other instruments, and may be synchronized to other equipment via MIDI.
Synthesizer-like instruments emerged in the United States in the mid-20th century with instruments such as the RCA Mark II, which was controlled with punch cards and used hundreds of vacuum tubes. The Moog synthesizer, developed by Robert Moog and first sold in 1964, is credited for pioneering concepts such as voltage-controlled oscillators, envelopes, noise generators, filters, and sequencers. In 1970, the smaller, cheaper Minimoog standardized synthesizers as self-contained instruments with built-in keyboards, unlike the larger modular synthesizers before it.
In 1978, Sequential Circuits released the Prophet-5, which used microprocessors to allow users to store sounds for the first time. 1982 saw the introduction of MIDI, a standardised means of synchronizing electronic instruments that remains an industry standard. The first mass-produced synthesizer, the Yamaha DX7, was launched in 1983, popularizing digital synthesis. Software synthesizers now can be run as plug-ins or embedded on single microchips in any electronic device.
Synthesizers were initially viewed as avant-garde, valued by the 1960s psychedelic and counter-cultural scenes but with little perceived commercial potential. Switched-On Bach (1968), a bestselling album of Bach compositions arranged for synthesizer by Wendy Carlos, took synthesizers to the mainstream. They were adopted by electronic acts and pop and rock groups in the 1960s and 1970s, and widely used in 1980s rock. Sampling, introduced with the Fairlight synthesizer in 1979, has influenced all genres of music and had a major influence on the development of electronic and hip hop music. Today, the synthesizer is used in nearly every genre of music, and is considered one of the most important instruments in the music industry. According to Fact in 2016, "The synthesizer is as important, and as ubiquitous, in modern music today as the human voice."
History
Precursors
As electricity became more widely available, the early 20th century saw the invention of electronic musical instruments including the Telharmonium, Trautonium, Ondes Martenot, and theremin. In the late 1930s, the Hammond Organ Company built the Novachord, a large instrument powered by 72 voltage-controlled amplifiers and 146 vacuum tubes. In 1948, the Canadian engineer Hugh Le Caine completed the electronic sackbut, a precursor to voltage-controlled synthesizers, with keyboard sensitivity allowing for vibrato, glissando, and attack control.
In 1957, Harry Olson and Herbert Belar completed the RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer at the RCA laboratories in Princeton, New Jersey. The instrument read punched paper tape that controlled an analog synthesizer containing 750 vacuum tubes. It was acquired by the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center and used almost exclusively by Milton Babbitt, a composer at Princeton University.
1960s: Early years
The authors of Analog Days define "the early years of the synthesizer" as between 1964 and the mid-1970s, beginning with the debut of the Moog synthesizer. Designed by American engineer Robert Moog, the synthesizer was composed of separate modules which created and shaped sounds, connected by patch cords. Moog developed a means of controlling pitch through voltage, the voltage-controlled oscillator. This, along with Moog components such as envelopes, noise generators, filters, and sequencers, became standard components in synthesizers.
Around the same period, American engineer Don Buchla created the Buchla Modular Electronic Music System. Instead of a conventional keyboard, Buchla's system used touchplates which transmitted control voltages depending on finger position and force. However, the Moog's keyboard made it more accessible and marketable to musicians, and keyboards became the standard means of controlling synthesizers. Moog and Buchla initially avoided the word synthesizer for their instruments, as it was associated with the RCA synthesizer; however, by the 1970s, "synthesizer" had become the standard term.
1970s: Portability, polyphony and patch memory
In 1970, Moog launched a cheaper, smaller synthesizer, the Minimoog. The Minimoog was the first synthesizer sold in music stores, and was more practical for live performance; it standardized the concept of synthesizers as self-contained instruments with built-in keyboards.
After retail stores started selling synthesizers in 1971, other synthesizer companies were established, including ARP in the US and EMS in the UK. ARP's products included the ARP 2600, which folded into a carrying case and had built-in speakers, and the Odyssey, a rival to the Minimoog. The less expensive EMS synthesizers were used by European art rock and progressive rock acts including Brian Eno and Pink Floyd. Designs for synthesizers appeared in the amateur electronics market, such as the "Practical Electronics Sound Synthesiser", published in Practical Electronics in 1973. By the mid-1970s, ARP was the world's largest synthesizer manufacturer, though it closed in 1981.
Early synthesizers were monophonic, meaning they could only play one note at a time. Some of the earliest commercial polyphonic synthesizers were created by American engineer Tom Oberheim, such as the OB-X (1979). In 1978, the American company Sequential Circuits released the Prophet-5, the first fully programmable polyphonic synthesizer. Whereas previous synthesizers required users to adjust cables and knobs to change sounds, with no guarantee of exactly recreating a sound, the Prophet-5 used microprocessors to store sounds in patch memory. This facilitated a move from synthesizers creating unpredictable sounds to producing "a standard package of familiar sounds".
1980s: Digital technology
The synthesizer market grew dramatically in the 1980s. 1982 saw the introduction of MIDI, a standardized means of synchronizing electronic instruments; it remains an industry standard. An influential sampling synthesizer, the Fairlight CMI, was released in 1979, with the ability to record and play back samples at different pitches. Though its high price made it inaccessible to amateurs, it was adopted by high-profile pop musicians including Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel. The success of the Fairlight drove competition, improving sampling technology and lowering prices; early competing samplers included the E-mu Emulator in 1981 and the Akai S-series in 1985.
In 1983, Yamaha released the first commercially successful digital synthesizer, the Yamaha DX7. Based on frequency modulation (FM) synthesis developed by Stanford University engineer John Chowning, the DX7 remains one of the bestselling synthesizers in history and was the first synthesizer to sell over 100,000 units. It was widely used in 1980s pop music. Compared to the "warm" and "fuzzy" sounds of analog synthesis, the DX7 was characterized by its "harsh", "glassy" and "chilly" sounds. Digital synthesizers typically contained preset sounds emulating acoustic instruments, with algorithms controlled with menus and buttons. The Synclavier, a digital synthesizer made with FM technology licensed from Yamaha, offered features such as 16-bit sampling and built-in digital recording. With a starting price of $13,000, its use was limited to universities, studios and wealthy artists.
The success of the DX7 led to competing digital synthesizers. The Roland D-50 (1987) blended Roland's linear arithmetic algorithm with samples, and was the first mass-produced synthesizer with built-in digital effects such as delay, reverb and chorus. In 1988, the Japanese manufacturer Korg released the M1, a digital synthesizer workstation featuring sampled transients and loops; with over 250,000 units sold, it remains the bestselling synthesizer in history. The advent of digital synthesizers led to a downturn in interest in analog synthesizers.
1990s–present: Software synthesizers and analog revival
1997 saw the release of ReBirth by Propellerhead Software and Reality by Seer Systems, the first software synthesizers that could be played in real time via MIDI. In 1999, an update to the music software Cubase allowed users to run software instruments (including synthesizers) as plug-ins, triggering a wave of new software instruments. Propellerhead's Reason, released in 2000, introduced an array of recognizable virtual studio equipment.
The market for patchable and modular synthesizers rebounded in the late 1990s. In the 2000s, older analog synthesizers regained popularity, sometimes selling for much more than their original prices. In the 2010s, new, affordable analog synthesizers were introduced by companies including Moog, Korg, Arturia and Dave Smith Instruments. The renewed interest is credited to the appeal of imperfect "organic" sounds and simpler interfaces, and modern surface-mount technology making analog synthesizers cheaper and faster to manufacture.
Impact
Early synthesizers were viewed as avant-garde, valued by the 1960s psychedelic and counter-cultural scenes for their ability to make new sounds, but with little perceived commercial potential. Switched-On Bach (1968), a bestselling album of Bach compositions arranged for Moog synthesizer by Wendy Carlos, demonstrated that synthesizers could be more than "random noise machines", taking them to the mainstream. However, debates were held about the appropriateness of synthesizers in baroque music, and according to the Guardian they were quickly abandoned in "serious classical circles".
The Moog was adopted by acts including the Doors, the Grateful Dead, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and Keith Emerson. Emerson was the first major rock musician to perform with the Moog and it became a trademark of his performances, helping take his band Emerson, Lake & Palmer to global stardom; according to Analog Days, the likes of Emerson, with his Moog performances, "did for the keyboard what Jimi Hendrix did for the guitar".
The portable Minimoog (1970), much smaller than the modular synthesizers before it, made synthesizers more common in live performance. The Minimoog took a place in mainstream black music, most notably in the work of Stevie Wonder, and in jazz, such as the work of Sun Ra. It was also used by electronic artists such as Kraftwerk, who used it on their albums Autobahn (1974) and The Man-Machine (1978), and later by Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, and Gary Numan. In the late 1970s and the early 1980s, the Micromoog was widely used in the emerging disco genre by artists including Abba and Giorgio Moroder. Some acts felt that using synthesizers to create sounds was "cheating"; Queen wrote in their album liner notes that they did not use them.
Early synthesizers could only play one note at a time, making them suitable for basslines, leads and solos. With the rise of polyphonic synthesizers in the 70s and 80s, "the keyboard in rock once more started to revert to the background, to be used for fills and atmosphere rather than for soloing". Sampling, introduced with the Fairlight synthesizer in 1979, has influenced all genres of music and had a major influence on the development of electronic and hip hop music.
In the 1970s, electronic music composers such as Jean Michel Jarre and Isao Tomita released successful synthesizer-led instrumental albums. This influenced the emergence of synthpop, a subgenre of new wave, from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. The work of German krautrock bands such as Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, British acts such as John Foxx, Gary Numan and David Bowie, African-American acts such as George Clinton and Zapp, and Japanese electronic acts such as Yellow Magic Orchestra and Kitaro were influential in the development of the genre. Gary Numan's 1979 hits "Are 'Friends' Electric?" and "Cars" made heavy use of synthesizers. OMD's "Enola Gay" (1980) used distinctive electronic percussion and a synthesized melody. Soft Cell used a synthesized melody on their 1981 hit "Tainted Love". Nick Rhodes, keyboardist of Duran Duran, used various synthesizers including the Roland Jupiter-4 and Jupiter-8. Chart hits include Depeche Mode's "Just Can't Get Enough" (1981), the Human League's "Don't You Want Me" and works by Ultravox.
In the 1980s, digital synthesizers were widely used in pop music. The Yamaha DX7, released in 1983, became a pop staple, used on songs by A-ha, Kenny Loggins, Kool & the Gang. Its "E PIANO 1" preset became particularly famous, especially for power ballads, and was used by artists including Whitney Houston, Chicago, Prince, Phil Collins, Luther Vandross, Billy Ocean, and Celine Dion. The Roland TB-303 (1981), in conjunction with the Roland TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines, became a foundation of electronic dance music genres such as house and techno when producers acquired cheap second-hand units later in the decade. Korg M1 presets were widely used in 1990s house music, beginning with Madonna's 1990 single "Vogue".
Today, the synthesizer is used in nearly every genre of music. It is considered by the authors of Analog Days "the only innovation that can stand alongside the electric guitar as a great new instrument of the age of electricity ... Both led to new forms of music, and both had massive popular appeal." The authors draw a connection to the synthesizer's origins in 1960s psychedelia to the raves and British "second summer of love" of the 1980s and the club scenes of the 1990s and 2000s. According to Fact in 2016, "The synthesizer is as important, and as ubiquitous, in modern music today as the human voice." It is one of the most important instruments in the music industry.
Film and television
Synthesizers are common in film and television soundtracks. ARP synthesizers, for example, were used to create sound effects for the 1977 science fiction films Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Star Wars, including the "voice" of the robot R2-D2. In the 70s and 80s, synthesizers were used in the scores for thrillers and horror films including A Clockwork Orange (1971), Apocalypse Now (1979), The Fog (1980) and Manhunter (1986). Brad Fiedel used a Prophet synthesizer to record the soundtrack for The Terminator (1984), and the filmmaker John Carpenter used them extensively for his soundtracks. Synthesizers were used to create themes for television shows including Knight Rider (1982), Twin Peaks (1990) and Stranger Things (2016).
Jobs
The rise of the synthesizer led to major changes in music industry jobs, comparable to the earlier arrival of sound in film, which put live musicians accompanying silent films out of work. With its ability to imitate instruments such as strings and horns, the synthesizer threatened the jobs of session musicians. For a period, the Moog was banned from use in commercial work, a restriction negotiated by the American Federation of Musicians (AFM). Robert Moog felt that the AFM had not realized that his instrument had to be studied like any other, and instead imagined that "all the sounds that musicians could make somehow existed in the Moog — all you had to do was push a button that said 'Jascha Heifetz' and out would come the most fantastic violin player".
Musician Walter Sear persuaded the AFM that the synthesizer demanded skill, and the category of "synthesizer player" was accepted into the union; however, players were still subject to "suspicion and hostility" for several years. In 1982, following a tour by Barry Manilow using synthesizers instead of an orchestra, the British Musicians' Union attempted to ban synthesizers, attracting controversy. That decade, a few musicians skilled at programming the popular Yamaha DX7 found employment creating sounds for other acts.
Sound synthesis
Synthesizers generate audio through various forms of analogue and digital synthesis.
In subtractive synthesis, complex waveforms are generated by oscillators and then shaped with filters to remove or boost specific frequencies. Subtractive synthesis is characterized as "rich" and "warm".
In additive synthesis, a large number of waveforms, usually sine waves, are combined into a composite sound.
In frequency modulation (FM) synthesis, waveforms are modulated with the frequency of other waveforms; the resulting complex waveform can, in turn, be used to modulate another, and this another, and so on. FM synthesis can imitate acoustic sounds such as piano, strings and organs. FM synthesis is characterized as "harsh", "glassy" and "chilly".
Phase distortion synthesis, implemented in Casio CZ synthesizers, is similar to FM synthesis.
In wavetable synthesis, synthesizers modulate smoothly between digital representations of different waveforms, changing the shape and timbre.
In sample-based synthesis, instead of sounds being created by synthesizers, samples (digital recordings of sounds) are played back and shaped with components such as filters, envelopes and LFOs.
In vector synthesis, pioneered by the Prophet VS, users crossfade between different sound sources using controllers such as joysticks.
In granular synthesis, an audio sample is split into "grains", usually between one hundredth and one tenth of a second in length, which are recombined and played back.
In physical modelling synthesis, a mathematical model of a physical sound source is created.
Components
Oscillators
Oscillators produce waveforms (such as sawtooth, sine, or pulse waves) with different timbres.
Voltage-controlled amplifiers
Voltage-controlled amplifiers (VCAs) control the volume or gain of the audio signal. VCAs can be modulated by other components, such as LFOs and envelopes. A VCA is a preamp that boosts (amplifies) the electronic signal before passing it on to an external or built-in power amplifier, as well as a means to control its amplitude (volume) using an attenuator. The gain of the VCA is affected by a control voltage (CV), coming from an envelope generator, an LFO, the keyboard or some other source.
Filters
Voltage-controlled filters (VCFs) "shape" the sound generated by the oscillators in the frequency domain, often under the control of an envelope or LFO. These are essential to subtractive synthesis. Filters are particularly important in subtractive synthesis, being designed to pass some frequency regions (or "bands") through unattenuated while significantly attenuating ("subtracting") others. The low-pass filter is most frequently used, but band-pass filters, band-reject filters and high-pass filters are also sometimes available.
The filter may be controlled with a second ADSR envelope. An "envelope modulation" ("env mod") parameter on many synthesizers with filter envelopes determines how much the envelope affects the filter. If turned all the way down, the filter produces a flat sound with no envelope. When turned up the envelope becomes more noticeable, expanding the minimum and maximum range of the filter. The envelope applied on the filter helps the sound designer generating long notes or short notes by moving the parameters up and down such as decay, sustain and finally release. For instance by using a short decay with no sustain, the sound generated is commonly known as a stab. Sound designers may prefer shaping the sound with filter instead of volume.
Envelopes
Envelopes control how sounds change over time. They may control parameters such as amplitude (volume), filters (frequencies), or pitch. The most common envelope is the ADSR (attack, decay, sustain, release) envelope:
Attack is the time taken for initial run-up of level from nil to peak, beginning when the note is triggered.
Decay is the time taken for the subsequent run down from the attack level to the designated sustain level.
Sustain is the level during the main sequence of the sound's duration, until the key is released.
Release is the time taken for the level to decay from the sustain level to zero after the key is released.
Low-frequency oscillators
Low-frequency oscillators (LFOs) produce waveforms used to modulate parameters, such as the pitch of oscillators (producing vibrato).
Arpeggiators
Arpeggiators, included in many synthesizer models, take input chords and convert them into arpeggios. They usually include controls for speed, range and mode (the movement of the arpeggio).
Controllers
Synthesizers are often controlled with electronic or digital keyboards or MIDI controller keyboards, which may be built into the synthesizer unit or attached via connections such as CV/gate, USB, or MIDI. Keyboards may offer expression such as velocity sensitivity and aftertouch, allowing for more control over the sound. Other controllers include Ribbon controllers, which track the movement of the finger across a touch-sensitive surface; wind controllers, played similarly to woodwind instruments; motion-sensitive controllers similar to video game motion controllers; electronic drum pads, played similarly to the heads of a drum kit; touchplates, which send signals depending on finger position and force; controllers designed for microtonal tunings; touchscreen devices such as tablets and smartphones; and fingerpads.
Clones
Synthesizer clones are unlicensed recreations of previous synthesizers, often marketed as affordable versions of famous musical equipment. Clones are available as physical instruments and software. Companies that have sold software clones include Arturia and Native Instruments. Behringer manufactures equipment modelled on instruments including the Minimoog, Pro-One, and TB-303, and drum machines such as the TR-808. Other synthesizer clones include the MiniMOD (a series of Eurorack modules based on the Minimoog), the Intellijel Atlantis (based on the SH-101), and the x0x Heart (based on the TB-303).
Creating clones of older hardware is legal where the patents have expired. In 1997, Mackie lost their lawsuit against Behringer as copyright law in the United States did not cover their circuit board designs.
See also
Lists
List of synthesizers
List of synthesizer manufacturers
Various synthesizers
Guitar synthesizer
Keyboard bass
Keytar
Modular synthesizer
Semi-modular synthesizer
String synthesizer
Wind controller
Related instruments & technologies
Clavioline (Musitron)
Electronic keyboard
Musical instrument
Music workstation
Sampler
Speech synthesis
Vocaloid
Components & technologies
Analytic signal
Envelope detector
Low-frequency oscillation
MIDI
Music genres
Computer music
Electronic music
Notable works
List of compositions for electronic keyboard
References
Citations
Sources
Further reading
External links
Sound Synthesis Theory wikibook
Principles of Sound Synthesis at Salford University
Synthesizer Tutorial
Keyboard instruments
Bass (sound)
Hip hop production
New wave music
Rhythm section
Electric and electronic keyboard instruments | false | [
"The following is a list of drivers who are currently competing in a series sanctioned by the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR).\n\nNASCAR Cup Series drivers\nAll statistics used in these tables are as of the end of the 2022 Daytona 500. (Race 1/36)\n\nFull-time drivers\nDrivers who will compete in all 2022 NASCAR Cup Series races.\n\nPart-time drivers\nDrivers who will compete in at least one 2022 NASCAR Cup Series race.\n\nFree agents\nDrivers currently without a ride, but who competed for 2021 NASCAR Cup Series championship points.\n\nNASCAR Xfinity Series drivers\nAll statistics used in these tables are as of the end of the 2022 Production Alliance Group 300 (Race 2/33)\n\nFull-time drivers\nDrivers who will compete in all 2022 NASCAR Xfinity Series races.\n\nPart-time drivers\nDrivers who will compete in at least one 2022 NASCAR Xfinity Series race.\n\nFree agents\nDrivers currently without a ride, but who competed for 2019 NASCAR Xfinity Series championship points.\n\nNASCAR Camping World Truck Series drivers\nAll statistics used in these tables are as of the end of the 2022 NextEra Energy 250 (Race 1/23)\n\nFull-time drivers\nDrivers who will compete in all 2022 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series races.\n\nPart-time drivers\nDrivers who will compete in at least one 2022 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race.\n\nFree agents\nDrivers currently without a ride, but who competed for 2019 NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series championship points.\n\nARCA Menards Racing Series drivers\nAll statistics used in these tables are as of the end of the 2020 General Tire 150 (Race 2/20)\n\nFull-time drivers\nDrivers who will compete in all 2022 ARCA Menards Series races.\n\nPart-time drivers\nDrivers who will compete in at least one 2022 ARCA Menards Series race.\n\nARCA Menards Series East drivers\nAll statistics used in these tables are as of the end of the 2020 Skip's Western Outfitters 175 (Race 1/8)\n\nFull-time drivers\nDrivers who will compete in all 2020 ARCA Menards Series East races.\n\nPart-time drivers\nDrivers who will compete in at least one 2020 ARCA Menards Series East race.\n\nARCA Menards Series West drivers\nAll statistics used in these tables are as of the end of the 2019 Eneos NAPA Auto 150 (Race 2/14)\n\nFull-time drivers\nDrivers who will compete in all 2019 NASCAR K&N Pro Series West races.\n\nPart-time drivers\nDrivers who will compete in at least one 2019 NASCAR K&N Pro Series West race.\n\nNASCAR Whelen Modified Tour drivers\nAll statistics used in these tables are as of the end of the 2019 Icebreaker 150 (Race 3/16)\n\nFull-time drivers\n\nPart-time drivers\n\nNASCAR Pinty’s Series drivers\nAll statistics used in these tables are as of the end of the 2020 shortened season and only include active drivers during the year.\n\nFull-time drivers\n\nPart-time drivers\n\nNASCAR PEAK Mexico Series drivers\nAll statistics used in these tables are as of the end of the 2015 RedCo 240 (Race 15/15)\n\nFull-time drivers\n\nPart-time drivers\n\nNASCAR Whelen Euro Series – EuroNASCAR PRO Division drivers\nAll statistics used in these tables are as of the end of the 2020 NASCAR GP Belgium (Race 4/10). Records earned from 2009–2011 when the series was still called Racecar Euro Series (before NASCAR's acquisition of the series in 2012) will not be included to the statistics.\n\nFull-time drivers\nDrivers who are scheduled to compete in all 2020 NASCAR Whelen Euro Series races.\n\nPart-time drivers\nDrivers who competed in at least one 2020 NASCAR Whelen Euro Series race.\n\nNASCAR Whelen Euro Series – EuroNASCAR 2 Division drivers\nAll statistics used in these tables are as of the end of the 2020 NASCAR GP Belgium (Race 4/10). Records earned from 2009–2011 when the series was still called Racecar Euro Series (before NASCAR's acquisition of the series in 2012) will not be included to the statistics.\n\nFull-time drivers\nDrivers who are scheduled to compete in all 2020 NASCAR Whelen Euro Series races.\n\nPart-time drivers\nDrivers who competed in at least one 2020 NASCAR Whelen Euro Series race.\n\nSee also\n List of NASCAR teams\n List of female NASCAR drivers\n List of Canadians in NASCAR\n List of Hispanic NASCAR drivers\n List of foreign-born NASCAR race winners\n List of NASCAR champions\n List of all-time NASCAR Cup Series winners\n NASCAR's 50 Greatest Drivers\n Owner-driver (NASCAR)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nNASCAR.com\nNASCAR Home Tracks website\nRacing-Reference.info",
"A number of additional characters are used with the International Phonetic Alphabet by linguists documenting the languages of China and neighboring countries, especially linguists based in China.\n\nLetters\nPrimary vowels\nThese letters are used by those who want symbols for five equally-spaced vowels in formant space.\n = central \n = mid \n = mid \n\nFricative vowels\nThese letters, sometimes mistakenly called \"apical\", derive from Karlgren, from a turned .\n = \n = \n = \n = \n\nAlveolo-palatal consonants\nThese letters are featural derivatives of and .\n = \n = \n = \n =\n\nReferences\n\nInternational Phonetic Alphabet"
] |
[
"Synthesizer",
"Fingerboard controller",
"What is the fingerboard controller?",
"Fingerboard-controlled instruments include the Trautonium (1929), Hellertion (1929) and Heliophon (1936),",
"Who used these intruments?",
"Rock musician Keith Emerson used it with the Moog modular synthesizer from 1970 onward."
] | C_c89ff2f867ac42a7b84b5baaff084d4e_0 | Did any other artists use it? | 3 | Did any other artists besides Keith Emerson use a fingerboard controller? | Synthesizer | A ribbon controller or other violin-like user interface may be used to control synthesizer parameters. The idea dates to Leon Theremin's 1922 first concept and his 1932 Fingerboard Theremin and Keyboard Theremin, Maurice Martenot's 1928 Ondes Martenot (sliding a metal ring), Friedrich Trautwein's 1929 Trautonium (finger pressure), and was also later utilized by Robert Moog. The ribbon controller has no moving parts. Instead, a finger pressed down and moved along it creates an electrical contact at some point along a pair of thin, flexible longitudinal strips whose electric potential varies from one end to the other. Older fingerboards used a long wire pressed to a resistive plate. A ribbon controller is similar to a touchpad, but a ribbon controller only registers linear motion. Although it may be used to operate any parameter that is affected by control voltages, a ribbon controller is most commonly associated with pitch bending. Fingerboard-controlled instruments include the Trautonium (1929), Hellertion (1929) and Heliophon (1936), Electro-Theremin (Tannerin, late 1950s), Persephone (2004), and the Swarmatron (2004). A ribbon controller is used as an additional controller in the Yamaha CS-80 and CS-60, the Korg Prophecy and Korg Trinity series, the Kurzweil synthesizers, Moog synthesizers, and others. Rock musician Keith Emerson used it with the Moog modular synthesizer from 1970 onward. In the late 1980s, keyboards in the synth lab at Berklee College of Music were equipped with membrane thin ribbon style controllers that output MIDI. They functioned as MIDI managers, with their programming language printed on their surface, and as expression/performance tools. Designed by Jeff Tripp of Perfect Fretworks Co., they were known as Tripp Strips. Such ribbon controllers can serve as a main MIDI controller instead of a keyboard, as with the Continuum instrument. CANNOTANSWER | keyboards in the synth lab at Berklee College of Music were equipped with membrane thin ribbon style controllers that output MIDI. | A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms, through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and frequency modulation synthesis. These sounds may be altered by components such as filters, which cut or boost frequencies; envelopes, which control articulation, or how notes begin and end; and low-frequency oscillators, which modulate parameters such as pitch, volume, or filter characteristics affecting timbre. Synthesizers are typically played with keyboards or controlled by sequencers, software or other instruments, and may be synchronized to other equipment via MIDI.
Synthesizer-like instruments emerged in the United States in the mid-20th century with instruments such as the RCA Mark II, which was controlled with punch cards and used hundreds of vacuum tubes. The Moog synthesizer, developed by Robert Moog and first sold in 1964, is credited for pioneering concepts such as voltage-controlled oscillators, envelopes, noise generators, filters, and sequencers. In 1970, the smaller, cheaper Minimoog standardized synthesizers as self-contained instruments with built-in keyboards, unlike the larger modular synthesizers before it.
In 1978, Sequential Circuits released the Prophet-5, which used microprocessors to allow users to store sounds for the first time. 1982 saw the introduction of MIDI, a standardised means of synchronizing electronic instruments that remains an industry standard. The first mass-produced synthesizer, the Yamaha DX7, was launched in 1983, popularizing digital synthesis. Software synthesizers now can be run as plug-ins or embedded on single microchips in any electronic device.
Synthesizers were initially viewed as avant-garde, valued by the 1960s psychedelic and counter-cultural scenes but with little perceived commercial potential. Switched-On Bach (1968), a bestselling album of Bach compositions arranged for synthesizer by Wendy Carlos, took synthesizers to the mainstream. They were adopted by electronic acts and pop and rock groups in the 1960s and 1970s, and widely used in 1980s rock. Sampling, introduced with the Fairlight synthesizer in 1979, has influenced all genres of music and had a major influence on the development of electronic and hip hop music. Today, the synthesizer is used in nearly every genre of music, and is considered one of the most important instruments in the music industry. According to Fact in 2016, "The synthesizer is as important, and as ubiquitous, in modern music today as the human voice."
History
Precursors
As electricity became more widely available, the early 20th century saw the invention of electronic musical instruments including the Telharmonium, Trautonium, Ondes Martenot, and theremin. In the late 1930s, the Hammond Organ Company built the Novachord, a large instrument powered by 72 voltage-controlled amplifiers and 146 vacuum tubes. In 1948, the Canadian engineer Hugh Le Caine completed the electronic sackbut, a precursor to voltage-controlled synthesizers, with keyboard sensitivity allowing for vibrato, glissando, and attack control.
In 1957, Harry Olson and Herbert Belar completed the RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer at the RCA laboratories in Princeton, New Jersey. The instrument read punched paper tape that controlled an analog synthesizer containing 750 vacuum tubes. It was acquired by the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center and used almost exclusively by Milton Babbitt, a composer at Princeton University.
1960s: Early years
The authors of Analog Days define "the early years of the synthesizer" as between 1964 and the mid-1970s, beginning with the debut of the Moog synthesizer. Designed by American engineer Robert Moog, the synthesizer was composed of separate modules which created and shaped sounds, connected by patch cords. Moog developed a means of controlling pitch through voltage, the voltage-controlled oscillator. This, along with Moog components such as envelopes, noise generators, filters, and sequencers, became standard components in synthesizers.
Around the same period, American engineer Don Buchla created the Buchla Modular Electronic Music System. Instead of a conventional keyboard, Buchla's system used touchplates which transmitted control voltages depending on finger position and force. However, the Moog's keyboard made it more accessible and marketable to musicians, and keyboards became the standard means of controlling synthesizers. Moog and Buchla initially avoided the word synthesizer for their instruments, as it was associated with the RCA synthesizer; however, by the 1970s, "synthesizer" had become the standard term.
1970s: Portability, polyphony and patch memory
In 1970, Moog launched a cheaper, smaller synthesizer, the Minimoog. The Minimoog was the first synthesizer sold in music stores, and was more practical for live performance; it standardized the concept of synthesizers as self-contained instruments with built-in keyboards.
After retail stores started selling synthesizers in 1971, other synthesizer companies were established, including ARP in the US and EMS in the UK. ARP's products included the ARP 2600, which folded into a carrying case and had built-in speakers, and the Odyssey, a rival to the Minimoog. The less expensive EMS synthesizers were used by European art rock and progressive rock acts including Brian Eno and Pink Floyd. Designs for synthesizers appeared in the amateur electronics market, such as the "Practical Electronics Sound Synthesiser", published in Practical Electronics in 1973. By the mid-1970s, ARP was the world's largest synthesizer manufacturer, though it closed in 1981.
Early synthesizers were monophonic, meaning they could only play one note at a time. Some of the earliest commercial polyphonic synthesizers were created by American engineer Tom Oberheim, such as the OB-X (1979). In 1978, the American company Sequential Circuits released the Prophet-5, the first fully programmable polyphonic synthesizer. Whereas previous synthesizers required users to adjust cables and knobs to change sounds, with no guarantee of exactly recreating a sound, the Prophet-5 used microprocessors to store sounds in patch memory. This facilitated a move from synthesizers creating unpredictable sounds to producing "a standard package of familiar sounds".
1980s: Digital technology
The synthesizer market grew dramatically in the 1980s. 1982 saw the introduction of MIDI, a standardized means of synchronizing electronic instruments; it remains an industry standard. An influential sampling synthesizer, the Fairlight CMI, was released in 1979, with the ability to record and play back samples at different pitches. Though its high price made it inaccessible to amateurs, it was adopted by high-profile pop musicians including Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel. The success of the Fairlight drove competition, improving sampling technology and lowering prices; early competing samplers included the E-mu Emulator in 1981 and the Akai S-series in 1985.
In 1983, Yamaha released the first commercially successful digital synthesizer, the Yamaha DX7. Based on frequency modulation (FM) synthesis developed by Stanford University engineer John Chowning, the DX7 remains one of the bestselling synthesizers in history and was the first synthesizer to sell over 100,000 units. It was widely used in 1980s pop music. Compared to the "warm" and "fuzzy" sounds of analog synthesis, the DX7 was characterized by its "harsh", "glassy" and "chilly" sounds. Digital synthesizers typically contained preset sounds emulating acoustic instruments, with algorithms controlled with menus and buttons. The Synclavier, a digital synthesizer made with FM technology licensed from Yamaha, offered features such as 16-bit sampling and built-in digital recording. With a starting price of $13,000, its use was limited to universities, studios and wealthy artists.
The success of the DX7 led to competing digital synthesizers. The Roland D-50 (1987) blended Roland's linear arithmetic algorithm with samples, and was the first mass-produced synthesizer with built-in digital effects such as delay, reverb and chorus. In 1988, the Japanese manufacturer Korg released the M1, a digital synthesizer workstation featuring sampled transients and loops; with over 250,000 units sold, it remains the bestselling synthesizer in history. The advent of digital synthesizers led to a downturn in interest in analog synthesizers.
1990s–present: Software synthesizers and analog revival
1997 saw the release of ReBirth by Propellerhead Software and Reality by Seer Systems, the first software synthesizers that could be played in real time via MIDI. In 1999, an update to the music software Cubase allowed users to run software instruments (including synthesizers) as plug-ins, triggering a wave of new software instruments. Propellerhead's Reason, released in 2000, introduced an array of recognizable virtual studio equipment.
The market for patchable and modular synthesizers rebounded in the late 1990s. In the 2000s, older analog synthesizers regained popularity, sometimes selling for much more than their original prices. In the 2010s, new, affordable analog synthesizers were introduced by companies including Moog, Korg, Arturia and Dave Smith Instruments. The renewed interest is credited to the appeal of imperfect "organic" sounds and simpler interfaces, and modern surface-mount technology making analog synthesizers cheaper and faster to manufacture.
Impact
Early synthesizers were viewed as avant-garde, valued by the 1960s psychedelic and counter-cultural scenes for their ability to make new sounds, but with little perceived commercial potential. Switched-On Bach (1968), a bestselling album of Bach compositions arranged for Moog synthesizer by Wendy Carlos, demonstrated that synthesizers could be more than "random noise machines", taking them to the mainstream. However, debates were held about the appropriateness of synthesizers in baroque music, and according to the Guardian they were quickly abandoned in "serious classical circles".
The Moog was adopted by acts including the Doors, the Grateful Dead, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and Keith Emerson. Emerson was the first major rock musician to perform with the Moog and it became a trademark of his performances, helping take his band Emerson, Lake & Palmer to global stardom; according to Analog Days, the likes of Emerson, with his Moog performances, "did for the keyboard what Jimi Hendrix did for the guitar".
The portable Minimoog (1970), much smaller than the modular synthesizers before it, made synthesizers more common in live performance. The Minimoog took a place in mainstream black music, most notably in the work of Stevie Wonder, and in jazz, such as the work of Sun Ra. It was also used by electronic artists such as Kraftwerk, who used it on their albums Autobahn (1974) and The Man-Machine (1978), and later by Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, and Gary Numan. In the late 1970s and the early 1980s, the Micromoog was widely used in the emerging disco genre by artists including Abba and Giorgio Moroder. Some acts felt that using synthesizers to create sounds was "cheating"; Queen wrote in their album liner notes that they did not use them.
Early synthesizers could only play one note at a time, making them suitable for basslines, leads and solos. With the rise of polyphonic synthesizers in the 70s and 80s, "the keyboard in rock once more started to revert to the background, to be used for fills and atmosphere rather than for soloing". Sampling, introduced with the Fairlight synthesizer in 1979, has influenced all genres of music and had a major influence on the development of electronic and hip hop music.
In the 1970s, electronic music composers such as Jean Michel Jarre and Isao Tomita released successful synthesizer-led instrumental albums. This influenced the emergence of synthpop, a subgenre of new wave, from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. The work of German krautrock bands such as Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, British acts such as John Foxx, Gary Numan and David Bowie, African-American acts such as George Clinton and Zapp, and Japanese electronic acts such as Yellow Magic Orchestra and Kitaro were influential in the development of the genre. Gary Numan's 1979 hits "Are 'Friends' Electric?" and "Cars" made heavy use of synthesizers. OMD's "Enola Gay" (1980) used distinctive electronic percussion and a synthesized melody. Soft Cell used a synthesized melody on their 1981 hit "Tainted Love". Nick Rhodes, keyboardist of Duran Duran, used various synthesizers including the Roland Jupiter-4 and Jupiter-8. Chart hits include Depeche Mode's "Just Can't Get Enough" (1981), the Human League's "Don't You Want Me" and works by Ultravox.
In the 1980s, digital synthesizers were widely used in pop music. The Yamaha DX7, released in 1983, became a pop staple, used on songs by A-ha, Kenny Loggins, Kool & the Gang. Its "E PIANO 1" preset became particularly famous, especially for power ballads, and was used by artists including Whitney Houston, Chicago, Prince, Phil Collins, Luther Vandross, Billy Ocean, and Celine Dion. The Roland TB-303 (1981), in conjunction with the Roland TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines, became a foundation of electronic dance music genres such as house and techno when producers acquired cheap second-hand units later in the decade. Korg M1 presets were widely used in 1990s house music, beginning with Madonna's 1990 single "Vogue".
Today, the synthesizer is used in nearly every genre of music. It is considered by the authors of Analog Days "the only innovation that can stand alongside the electric guitar as a great new instrument of the age of electricity ... Both led to new forms of music, and both had massive popular appeal." The authors draw a connection to the synthesizer's origins in 1960s psychedelia to the raves and British "second summer of love" of the 1980s and the club scenes of the 1990s and 2000s. According to Fact in 2016, "The synthesizer is as important, and as ubiquitous, in modern music today as the human voice." It is one of the most important instruments in the music industry.
Film and television
Synthesizers are common in film and television soundtracks. ARP synthesizers, for example, were used to create sound effects for the 1977 science fiction films Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Star Wars, including the "voice" of the robot R2-D2. In the 70s and 80s, synthesizers were used in the scores for thrillers and horror films including A Clockwork Orange (1971), Apocalypse Now (1979), The Fog (1980) and Manhunter (1986). Brad Fiedel used a Prophet synthesizer to record the soundtrack for The Terminator (1984), and the filmmaker John Carpenter used them extensively for his soundtracks. Synthesizers were used to create themes for television shows including Knight Rider (1982), Twin Peaks (1990) and Stranger Things (2016).
Jobs
The rise of the synthesizer led to major changes in music industry jobs, comparable to the earlier arrival of sound in film, which put live musicians accompanying silent films out of work. With its ability to imitate instruments such as strings and horns, the synthesizer threatened the jobs of session musicians. For a period, the Moog was banned from use in commercial work, a restriction negotiated by the American Federation of Musicians (AFM). Robert Moog felt that the AFM had not realized that his instrument had to be studied like any other, and instead imagined that "all the sounds that musicians could make somehow existed in the Moog — all you had to do was push a button that said 'Jascha Heifetz' and out would come the most fantastic violin player".
Musician Walter Sear persuaded the AFM that the synthesizer demanded skill, and the category of "synthesizer player" was accepted into the union; however, players were still subject to "suspicion and hostility" for several years. In 1982, following a tour by Barry Manilow using synthesizers instead of an orchestra, the British Musicians' Union attempted to ban synthesizers, attracting controversy. That decade, a few musicians skilled at programming the popular Yamaha DX7 found employment creating sounds for other acts.
Sound synthesis
Synthesizers generate audio through various forms of analogue and digital synthesis.
In subtractive synthesis, complex waveforms are generated by oscillators and then shaped with filters to remove or boost specific frequencies. Subtractive synthesis is characterized as "rich" and "warm".
In additive synthesis, a large number of waveforms, usually sine waves, are combined into a composite sound.
In frequency modulation (FM) synthesis, waveforms are modulated with the frequency of other waveforms; the resulting complex waveform can, in turn, be used to modulate another, and this another, and so on. FM synthesis can imitate acoustic sounds such as piano, strings and organs. FM synthesis is characterized as "harsh", "glassy" and "chilly".
Phase distortion synthesis, implemented in Casio CZ synthesizers, is similar to FM synthesis.
In wavetable synthesis, synthesizers modulate smoothly between digital representations of different waveforms, changing the shape and timbre.
In sample-based synthesis, instead of sounds being created by synthesizers, samples (digital recordings of sounds) are played back and shaped with components such as filters, envelopes and LFOs.
In vector synthesis, pioneered by the Prophet VS, users crossfade between different sound sources using controllers such as joysticks.
In granular synthesis, an audio sample is split into "grains", usually between one hundredth and one tenth of a second in length, which are recombined and played back.
In physical modelling synthesis, a mathematical model of a physical sound source is created.
Components
Oscillators
Oscillators produce waveforms (such as sawtooth, sine, or pulse waves) with different timbres.
Voltage-controlled amplifiers
Voltage-controlled amplifiers (VCAs) control the volume or gain of the audio signal. VCAs can be modulated by other components, such as LFOs and envelopes. A VCA is a preamp that boosts (amplifies) the electronic signal before passing it on to an external or built-in power amplifier, as well as a means to control its amplitude (volume) using an attenuator. The gain of the VCA is affected by a control voltage (CV), coming from an envelope generator, an LFO, the keyboard or some other source.
Filters
Voltage-controlled filters (VCFs) "shape" the sound generated by the oscillators in the frequency domain, often under the control of an envelope or LFO. These are essential to subtractive synthesis. Filters are particularly important in subtractive synthesis, being designed to pass some frequency regions (or "bands") through unattenuated while significantly attenuating ("subtracting") others. The low-pass filter is most frequently used, but band-pass filters, band-reject filters and high-pass filters are also sometimes available.
The filter may be controlled with a second ADSR envelope. An "envelope modulation" ("env mod") parameter on many synthesizers with filter envelopes determines how much the envelope affects the filter. If turned all the way down, the filter produces a flat sound with no envelope. When turned up the envelope becomes more noticeable, expanding the minimum and maximum range of the filter. The envelope applied on the filter helps the sound designer generating long notes or short notes by moving the parameters up and down such as decay, sustain and finally release. For instance by using a short decay with no sustain, the sound generated is commonly known as a stab. Sound designers may prefer shaping the sound with filter instead of volume.
Envelopes
Envelopes control how sounds change over time. They may control parameters such as amplitude (volume), filters (frequencies), or pitch. The most common envelope is the ADSR (attack, decay, sustain, release) envelope:
Attack is the time taken for initial run-up of level from nil to peak, beginning when the note is triggered.
Decay is the time taken for the subsequent run down from the attack level to the designated sustain level.
Sustain is the level during the main sequence of the sound's duration, until the key is released.
Release is the time taken for the level to decay from the sustain level to zero after the key is released.
Low-frequency oscillators
Low-frequency oscillators (LFOs) produce waveforms used to modulate parameters, such as the pitch of oscillators (producing vibrato).
Arpeggiators
Arpeggiators, included in many synthesizer models, take input chords and convert them into arpeggios. They usually include controls for speed, range and mode (the movement of the arpeggio).
Controllers
Synthesizers are often controlled with electronic or digital keyboards or MIDI controller keyboards, which may be built into the synthesizer unit or attached via connections such as CV/gate, USB, or MIDI. Keyboards may offer expression such as velocity sensitivity and aftertouch, allowing for more control over the sound. Other controllers include Ribbon controllers, which track the movement of the finger across a touch-sensitive surface; wind controllers, played similarly to woodwind instruments; motion-sensitive controllers similar to video game motion controllers; electronic drum pads, played similarly to the heads of a drum kit; touchplates, which send signals depending on finger position and force; controllers designed for microtonal tunings; touchscreen devices such as tablets and smartphones; and fingerpads.
Clones
Synthesizer clones are unlicensed recreations of previous synthesizers, often marketed as affordable versions of famous musical equipment. Clones are available as physical instruments and software. Companies that have sold software clones include Arturia and Native Instruments. Behringer manufactures equipment modelled on instruments including the Minimoog, Pro-One, and TB-303, and drum machines such as the TR-808. Other synthesizer clones include the MiniMOD (a series of Eurorack modules based on the Minimoog), the Intellijel Atlantis (based on the SH-101), and the x0x Heart (based on the TB-303).
Creating clones of older hardware is legal where the patents have expired. In 1997, Mackie lost their lawsuit against Behringer as copyright law in the United States did not cover their circuit board designs.
See also
Lists
List of synthesizers
List of synthesizer manufacturers
Various synthesizers
Guitar synthesizer
Keyboard bass
Keytar
Modular synthesizer
Semi-modular synthesizer
String synthesizer
Wind controller
Related instruments & technologies
Clavioline (Musitron)
Electronic keyboard
Musical instrument
Music workstation
Sampler
Speech synthesis
Vocaloid
Components & technologies
Analytic signal
Envelope detector
Low-frequency oscillation
MIDI
Music genres
Computer music
Electronic music
Notable works
List of compositions for electronic keyboard
References
Citations
Sources
Further reading
External links
Sound Synthesis Theory wikibook
Principles of Sound Synthesis at Salford University
Synthesizer Tutorial
Keyboard instruments
Bass (sound)
Hip hop production
New wave music
Rhythm section
Electric and electronic keyboard instruments | false | [
"Multidimensional art is art that cannot be represented on a two-dimensional flat canvas. Artists create a third dimension with paper or another medium. In multidimensional art an artist can make use of virtually any items (mediums).\n\nMaterials used in multidimensional art\nMany artists make use of the objects and items they find in nature and or man made items. Some artists use paper and others make use of rubber, plastic, or sculpture. Artists also use other man made items like: textiles, milk cartons, or beads.\n\nJapanese born Nobuhiro Nakanishi puts photos on see through plastic and orders the photos in chronological order. He then mounts the photos on a wall in a line (stacking them) which gives the viewer a different perspective.\n\nMulti-dimensional artists\nJoseph Csaky\nLeo Monahan\nNnenna Okore\n\nSee also\n Art movement\n Creativity techniques\n Decorative arts\n List of art media\n List of artistic media\n List of art movements\n List of most expensive paintings\n List of most expensive sculptures\n List of art techniques\n List of sculptors\n Paper art\n Paper Art Museum\n Relief art\n\nReferences\n\nPainting techniques\n \nVisual arts genres\nModern art\nArtistic techniques",
"Video Vibrations was a 4-hour-long daily video block that showcased popular music videos. It was one of BET's early video shows. The show aired October 1, 1984 until 1997, when it was changed to Vibrations. It was developed to appeal to black audiences and show a wider array of black music than MTV or other networks at the time.\n\nThe first video on Video Vibrations was Prince's When Doves Cry. In the beginning, due to a limited supply of videos from black artists, popular mainstream white artists with crossover appeal were also featured in the lineup. As the supply of videos from black artists expanded, so did BET's position as an influential voice of the music industry.\n\nHosts\nThe show was hosted by a VJ speaking offscreen. All 3 hosts were prominent in radio as well.\n\nAlvin \"The Unseen VJ\" Jones (1984-1991), one of BET's other first VJ's,alongside Donnie Simpson.\n\"Captain\" Paul Porter (1991-1996).\nLorenzo \"Ice Tea\" Thomas (1996-1997)\n\nPopular segments\nRap Week - a segment dedicated to hip-hop and rap. Numerous artists were interviewed as well. This was also the inspiration for Alvin Jones to create Rap City. The show went off the air in 2008.\nThe Monday Music Marathon - a showcase of music videos by one artist or genre.\n\nMusic Intros\nThe program did not use a theme song or used any recorded tracks until 1991, when they used the single \"Mindflux\" from the British act N-Joi as their \"theme song\" for their intros and breaks up until they left the air in 1997.\n\nReferences \n\n1984 American television series debuts\n1997 American television series endings\n1980s American music television series\n1990s American music television series\nBET original programming"
] |
[
"Synthesizer",
"Fingerboard controller",
"What is the fingerboard controller?",
"Fingerboard-controlled instruments include the Trautonium (1929), Hellertion (1929) and Heliophon (1936),",
"Who used these intruments?",
"Rock musician Keith Emerson used it with the Moog modular synthesizer from 1970 onward.",
"Did any other artists use it?",
"keyboards in the synth lab at Berklee College of Music were equipped with membrane thin ribbon style controllers that output MIDI."
] | C_c89ff2f867ac42a7b84b5baaff084d4e_0 | Are they still used today? | 4 | Are fingerboard controllers still used today? | Synthesizer | A ribbon controller or other violin-like user interface may be used to control synthesizer parameters. The idea dates to Leon Theremin's 1922 first concept and his 1932 Fingerboard Theremin and Keyboard Theremin, Maurice Martenot's 1928 Ondes Martenot (sliding a metal ring), Friedrich Trautwein's 1929 Trautonium (finger pressure), and was also later utilized by Robert Moog. The ribbon controller has no moving parts. Instead, a finger pressed down and moved along it creates an electrical contact at some point along a pair of thin, flexible longitudinal strips whose electric potential varies from one end to the other. Older fingerboards used a long wire pressed to a resistive plate. A ribbon controller is similar to a touchpad, but a ribbon controller only registers linear motion. Although it may be used to operate any parameter that is affected by control voltages, a ribbon controller is most commonly associated with pitch bending. Fingerboard-controlled instruments include the Trautonium (1929), Hellertion (1929) and Heliophon (1936), Electro-Theremin (Tannerin, late 1950s), Persephone (2004), and the Swarmatron (2004). A ribbon controller is used as an additional controller in the Yamaha CS-80 and CS-60, the Korg Prophecy and Korg Trinity series, the Kurzweil synthesizers, Moog synthesizers, and others. Rock musician Keith Emerson used it with the Moog modular synthesizer from 1970 onward. In the late 1980s, keyboards in the synth lab at Berklee College of Music were equipped with membrane thin ribbon style controllers that output MIDI. They functioned as MIDI managers, with their programming language printed on their surface, and as expression/performance tools. Designed by Jeff Tripp of Perfect Fretworks Co., they were known as Tripp Strips. Such ribbon controllers can serve as a main MIDI controller instead of a keyboard, as with the Continuum instrument. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms, through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and frequency modulation synthesis. These sounds may be altered by components such as filters, which cut or boost frequencies; envelopes, which control articulation, or how notes begin and end; and low-frequency oscillators, which modulate parameters such as pitch, volume, or filter characteristics affecting timbre. Synthesizers are typically played with keyboards or controlled by sequencers, software or other instruments, and may be synchronized to other equipment via MIDI.
Synthesizer-like instruments emerged in the United States in the mid-20th century with instruments such as the RCA Mark II, which was controlled with punch cards and used hundreds of vacuum tubes. The Moog synthesizer, developed by Robert Moog and first sold in 1964, is credited for pioneering concepts such as voltage-controlled oscillators, envelopes, noise generators, filters, and sequencers. In 1970, the smaller, cheaper Minimoog standardized synthesizers as self-contained instruments with built-in keyboards, unlike the larger modular synthesizers before it.
In 1978, Sequential Circuits released the Prophet-5, which used microprocessors to allow users to store sounds for the first time. 1982 saw the introduction of MIDI, a standardised means of synchronizing electronic instruments that remains an industry standard. The first mass-produced synthesizer, the Yamaha DX7, was launched in 1983, popularizing digital synthesis. Software synthesizers now can be run as plug-ins or embedded on single microchips in any electronic device.
Synthesizers were initially viewed as avant-garde, valued by the 1960s psychedelic and counter-cultural scenes but with little perceived commercial potential. Switched-On Bach (1968), a bestselling album of Bach compositions arranged for synthesizer by Wendy Carlos, took synthesizers to the mainstream. They were adopted by electronic acts and pop and rock groups in the 1960s and 1970s, and widely used in 1980s rock. Sampling, introduced with the Fairlight synthesizer in 1979, has influenced all genres of music and had a major influence on the development of electronic and hip hop music. Today, the synthesizer is used in nearly every genre of music, and is considered one of the most important instruments in the music industry. According to Fact in 2016, "The synthesizer is as important, and as ubiquitous, in modern music today as the human voice."
History
Precursors
As electricity became more widely available, the early 20th century saw the invention of electronic musical instruments including the Telharmonium, Trautonium, Ondes Martenot, and theremin. In the late 1930s, the Hammond Organ Company built the Novachord, a large instrument powered by 72 voltage-controlled amplifiers and 146 vacuum tubes. In 1948, the Canadian engineer Hugh Le Caine completed the electronic sackbut, a precursor to voltage-controlled synthesizers, with keyboard sensitivity allowing for vibrato, glissando, and attack control.
In 1957, Harry Olson and Herbert Belar completed the RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer at the RCA laboratories in Princeton, New Jersey. The instrument read punched paper tape that controlled an analog synthesizer containing 750 vacuum tubes. It was acquired by the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center and used almost exclusively by Milton Babbitt, a composer at Princeton University.
1960s: Early years
The authors of Analog Days define "the early years of the synthesizer" as between 1964 and the mid-1970s, beginning with the debut of the Moog synthesizer. Designed by American engineer Robert Moog, the synthesizer was composed of separate modules which created and shaped sounds, connected by patch cords. Moog developed a means of controlling pitch through voltage, the voltage-controlled oscillator. This, along with Moog components such as envelopes, noise generators, filters, and sequencers, became standard components in synthesizers.
Around the same period, American engineer Don Buchla created the Buchla Modular Electronic Music System. Instead of a conventional keyboard, Buchla's system used touchplates which transmitted control voltages depending on finger position and force. However, the Moog's keyboard made it more accessible and marketable to musicians, and keyboards became the standard means of controlling synthesizers. Moog and Buchla initially avoided the word synthesizer for their instruments, as it was associated with the RCA synthesizer; however, by the 1970s, "synthesizer" had become the standard term.
1970s: Portability, polyphony and patch memory
In 1970, Moog launched a cheaper, smaller synthesizer, the Minimoog. The Minimoog was the first synthesizer sold in music stores, and was more practical for live performance; it standardized the concept of synthesizers as self-contained instruments with built-in keyboards.
After retail stores started selling synthesizers in 1971, other synthesizer companies were established, including ARP in the US and EMS in the UK. ARP's products included the ARP 2600, which folded into a carrying case and had built-in speakers, and the Odyssey, a rival to the Minimoog. The less expensive EMS synthesizers were used by European art rock and progressive rock acts including Brian Eno and Pink Floyd. Designs for synthesizers appeared in the amateur electronics market, such as the "Practical Electronics Sound Synthesiser", published in Practical Electronics in 1973. By the mid-1970s, ARP was the world's largest synthesizer manufacturer, though it closed in 1981.
Early synthesizers were monophonic, meaning they could only play one note at a time. Some of the earliest commercial polyphonic synthesizers were created by American engineer Tom Oberheim, such as the OB-X (1979). In 1978, the American company Sequential Circuits released the Prophet-5, the first fully programmable polyphonic synthesizer. Whereas previous synthesizers required users to adjust cables and knobs to change sounds, with no guarantee of exactly recreating a sound, the Prophet-5 used microprocessors to store sounds in patch memory. This facilitated a move from synthesizers creating unpredictable sounds to producing "a standard package of familiar sounds".
1980s: Digital technology
The synthesizer market grew dramatically in the 1980s. 1982 saw the introduction of MIDI, a standardized means of synchronizing electronic instruments; it remains an industry standard. An influential sampling synthesizer, the Fairlight CMI, was released in 1979, with the ability to record and play back samples at different pitches. Though its high price made it inaccessible to amateurs, it was adopted by high-profile pop musicians including Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel. The success of the Fairlight drove competition, improving sampling technology and lowering prices; early competing samplers included the E-mu Emulator in 1981 and the Akai S-series in 1985.
In 1983, Yamaha released the first commercially successful digital synthesizer, the Yamaha DX7. Based on frequency modulation (FM) synthesis developed by Stanford University engineer John Chowning, the DX7 remains one of the bestselling synthesizers in history and was the first synthesizer to sell over 100,000 units. It was widely used in 1980s pop music. Compared to the "warm" and "fuzzy" sounds of analog synthesis, the DX7 was characterized by its "harsh", "glassy" and "chilly" sounds. Digital synthesizers typically contained preset sounds emulating acoustic instruments, with algorithms controlled with menus and buttons. The Synclavier, a digital synthesizer made with FM technology licensed from Yamaha, offered features such as 16-bit sampling and built-in digital recording. With a starting price of $13,000, its use was limited to universities, studios and wealthy artists.
The success of the DX7 led to competing digital synthesizers. The Roland D-50 (1987) blended Roland's linear arithmetic algorithm with samples, and was the first mass-produced synthesizer with built-in digital effects such as delay, reverb and chorus. In 1988, the Japanese manufacturer Korg released the M1, a digital synthesizer workstation featuring sampled transients and loops; with over 250,000 units sold, it remains the bestselling synthesizer in history. The advent of digital synthesizers led to a downturn in interest in analog synthesizers.
1990s–present: Software synthesizers and analog revival
1997 saw the release of ReBirth by Propellerhead Software and Reality by Seer Systems, the first software synthesizers that could be played in real time via MIDI. In 1999, an update to the music software Cubase allowed users to run software instruments (including synthesizers) as plug-ins, triggering a wave of new software instruments. Propellerhead's Reason, released in 2000, introduced an array of recognizable virtual studio equipment.
The market for patchable and modular synthesizers rebounded in the late 1990s. In the 2000s, older analog synthesizers regained popularity, sometimes selling for much more than their original prices. In the 2010s, new, affordable analog synthesizers were introduced by companies including Moog, Korg, Arturia and Dave Smith Instruments. The renewed interest is credited to the appeal of imperfect "organic" sounds and simpler interfaces, and modern surface-mount technology making analog synthesizers cheaper and faster to manufacture.
Impact
Early synthesizers were viewed as avant-garde, valued by the 1960s psychedelic and counter-cultural scenes for their ability to make new sounds, but with little perceived commercial potential. Switched-On Bach (1968), a bestselling album of Bach compositions arranged for Moog synthesizer by Wendy Carlos, demonstrated that synthesizers could be more than "random noise machines", taking them to the mainstream. However, debates were held about the appropriateness of synthesizers in baroque music, and according to the Guardian they were quickly abandoned in "serious classical circles".
The Moog was adopted by acts including the Doors, the Grateful Dead, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and Keith Emerson. Emerson was the first major rock musician to perform with the Moog and it became a trademark of his performances, helping take his band Emerson, Lake & Palmer to global stardom; according to Analog Days, the likes of Emerson, with his Moog performances, "did for the keyboard what Jimi Hendrix did for the guitar".
The portable Minimoog (1970), much smaller than the modular synthesizers before it, made synthesizers more common in live performance. The Minimoog took a place in mainstream black music, most notably in the work of Stevie Wonder, and in jazz, such as the work of Sun Ra. It was also used by electronic artists such as Kraftwerk, who used it on their albums Autobahn (1974) and The Man-Machine (1978), and later by Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, and Gary Numan. In the late 1970s and the early 1980s, the Micromoog was widely used in the emerging disco genre by artists including Abba and Giorgio Moroder. Some acts felt that using synthesizers to create sounds was "cheating"; Queen wrote in their album liner notes that they did not use them.
Early synthesizers could only play one note at a time, making them suitable for basslines, leads and solos. With the rise of polyphonic synthesizers in the 70s and 80s, "the keyboard in rock once more started to revert to the background, to be used for fills and atmosphere rather than for soloing". Sampling, introduced with the Fairlight synthesizer in 1979, has influenced all genres of music and had a major influence on the development of electronic and hip hop music.
In the 1970s, electronic music composers such as Jean Michel Jarre and Isao Tomita released successful synthesizer-led instrumental albums. This influenced the emergence of synthpop, a subgenre of new wave, from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. The work of German krautrock bands such as Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, British acts such as John Foxx, Gary Numan and David Bowie, African-American acts such as George Clinton and Zapp, and Japanese electronic acts such as Yellow Magic Orchestra and Kitaro were influential in the development of the genre. Gary Numan's 1979 hits "Are 'Friends' Electric?" and "Cars" made heavy use of synthesizers. OMD's "Enola Gay" (1980) used distinctive electronic percussion and a synthesized melody. Soft Cell used a synthesized melody on their 1981 hit "Tainted Love". Nick Rhodes, keyboardist of Duran Duran, used various synthesizers including the Roland Jupiter-4 and Jupiter-8. Chart hits include Depeche Mode's "Just Can't Get Enough" (1981), the Human League's "Don't You Want Me" and works by Ultravox.
In the 1980s, digital synthesizers were widely used in pop music. The Yamaha DX7, released in 1983, became a pop staple, used on songs by A-ha, Kenny Loggins, Kool & the Gang. Its "E PIANO 1" preset became particularly famous, especially for power ballads, and was used by artists including Whitney Houston, Chicago, Prince, Phil Collins, Luther Vandross, Billy Ocean, and Celine Dion. The Roland TB-303 (1981), in conjunction with the Roland TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines, became a foundation of electronic dance music genres such as house and techno when producers acquired cheap second-hand units later in the decade. Korg M1 presets were widely used in 1990s house music, beginning with Madonna's 1990 single "Vogue".
Today, the synthesizer is used in nearly every genre of music. It is considered by the authors of Analog Days "the only innovation that can stand alongside the electric guitar as a great new instrument of the age of electricity ... Both led to new forms of music, and both had massive popular appeal." The authors draw a connection to the synthesizer's origins in 1960s psychedelia to the raves and British "second summer of love" of the 1980s and the club scenes of the 1990s and 2000s. According to Fact in 2016, "The synthesizer is as important, and as ubiquitous, in modern music today as the human voice." It is one of the most important instruments in the music industry.
Film and television
Synthesizers are common in film and television soundtracks. ARP synthesizers, for example, were used to create sound effects for the 1977 science fiction films Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Star Wars, including the "voice" of the robot R2-D2. In the 70s and 80s, synthesizers were used in the scores for thrillers and horror films including A Clockwork Orange (1971), Apocalypse Now (1979), The Fog (1980) and Manhunter (1986). Brad Fiedel used a Prophet synthesizer to record the soundtrack for The Terminator (1984), and the filmmaker John Carpenter used them extensively for his soundtracks. Synthesizers were used to create themes for television shows including Knight Rider (1982), Twin Peaks (1990) and Stranger Things (2016).
Jobs
The rise of the synthesizer led to major changes in music industry jobs, comparable to the earlier arrival of sound in film, which put live musicians accompanying silent films out of work. With its ability to imitate instruments such as strings and horns, the synthesizer threatened the jobs of session musicians. For a period, the Moog was banned from use in commercial work, a restriction negotiated by the American Federation of Musicians (AFM). Robert Moog felt that the AFM had not realized that his instrument had to be studied like any other, and instead imagined that "all the sounds that musicians could make somehow existed in the Moog — all you had to do was push a button that said 'Jascha Heifetz' and out would come the most fantastic violin player".
Musician Walter Sear persuaded the AFM that the synthesizer demanded skill, and the category of "synthesizer player" was accepted into the union; however, players were still subject to "suspicion and hostility" for several years. In 1982, following a tour by Barry Manilow using synthesizers instead of an orchestra, the British Musicians' Union attempted to ban synthesizers, attracting controversy. That decade, a few musicians skilled at programming the popular Yamaha DX7 found employment creating sounds for other acts.
Sound synthesis
Synthesizers generate audio through various forms of analogue and digital synthesis.
In subtractive synthesis, complex waveforms are generated by oscillators and then shaped with filters to remove or boost specific frequencies. Subtractive synthesis is characterized as "rich" and "warm".
In additive synthesis, a large number of waveforms, usually sine waves, are combined into a composite sound.
In frequency modulation (FM) synthesis, waveforms are modulated with the frequency of other waveforms; the resulting complex waveform can, in turn, be used to modulate another, and this another, and so on. FM synthesis can imitate acoustic sounds such as piano, strings and organs. FM synthesis is characterized as "harsh", "glassy" and "chilly".
Phase distortion synthesis, implemented in Casio CZ synthesizers, is similar to FM synthesis.
In wavetable synthesis, synthesizers modulate smoothly between digital representations of different waveforms, changing the shape and timbre.
In sample-based synthesis, instead of sounds being created by synthesizers, samples (digital recordings of sounds) are played back and shaped with components such as filters, envelopes and LFOs.
In vector synthesis, pioneered by the Prophet VS, users crossfade between different sound sources using controllers such as joysticks.
In granular synthesis, an audio sample is split into "grains", usually between one hundredth and one tenth of a second in length, which are recombined and played back.
In physical modelling synthesis, a mathematical model of a physical sound source is created.
Components
Oscillators
Oscillators produce waveforms (such as sawtooth, sine, or pulse waves) with different timbres.
Voltage-controlled amplifiers
Voltage-controlled amplifiers (VCAs) control the volume or gain of the audio signal. VCAs can be modulated by other components, such as LFOs and envelopes. A VCA is a preamp that boosts (amplifies) the electronic signal before passing it on to an external or built-in power amplifier, as well as a means to control its amplitude (volume) using an attenuator. The gain of the VCA is affected by a control voltage (CV), coming from an envelope generator, an LFO, the keyboard or some other source.
Filters
Voltage-controlled filters (VCFs) "shape" the sound generated by the oscillators in the frequency domain, often under the control of an envelope or LFO. These are essential to subtractive synthesis. Filters are particularly important in subtractive synthesis, being designed to pass some frequency regions (or "bands") through unattenuated while significantly attenuating ("subtracting") others. The low-pass filter is most frequently used, but band-pass filters, band-reject filters and high-pass filters are also sometimes available.
The filter may be controlled with a second ADSR envelope. An "envelope modulation" ("env mod") parameter on many synthesizers with filter envelopes determines how much the envelope affects the filter. If turned all the way down, the filter produces a flat sound with no envelope. When turned up the envelope becomes more noticeable, expanding the minimum and maximum range of the filter. The envelope applied on the filter helps the sound designer generating long notes or short notes by moving the parameters up and down such as decay, sustain and finally release. For instance by using a short decay with no sustain, the sound generated is commonly known as a stab. Sound designers may prefer shaping the sound with filter instead of volume.
Envelopes
Envelopes control how sounds change over time. They may control parameters such as amplitude (volume), filters (frequencies), or pitch. The most common envelope is the ADSR (attack, decay, sustain, release) envelope:
Attack is the time taken for initial run-up of level from nil to peak, beginning when the note is triggered.
Decay is the time taken for the subsequent run down from the attack level to the designated sustain level.
Sustain is the level during the main sequence of the sound's duration, until the key is released.
Release is the time taken for the level to decay from the sustain level to zero after the key is released.
Low-frequency oscillators
Low-frequency oscillators (LFOs) produce waveforms used to modulate parameters, such as the pitch of oscillators (producing vibrato).
Arpeggiators
Arpeggiators, included in many synthesizer models, take input chords and convert them into arpeggios. They usually include controls for speed, range and mode (the movement of the arpeggio).
Controllers
Synthesizers are often controlled with electronic or digital keyboards or MIDI controller keyboards, which may be built into the synthesizer unit or attached via connections such as CV/gate, USB, or MIDI. Keyboards may offer expression such as velocity sensitivity and aftertouch, allowing for more control over the sound. Other controllers include Ribbon controllers, which track the movement of the finger across a touch-sensitive surface; wind controllers, played similarly to woodwind instruments; motion-sensitive controllers similar to video game motion controllers; electronic drum pads, played similarly to the heads of a drum kit; touchplates, which send signals depending on finger position and force; controllers designed for microtonal tunings; touchscreen devices such as tablets and smartphones; and fingerpads.
Clones
Synthesizer clones are unlicensed recreations of previous synthesizers, often marketed as affordable versions of famous musical equipment. Clones are available as physical instruments and software. Companies that have sold software clones include Arturia and Native Instruments. Behringer manufactures equipment modelled on instruments including the Minimoog, Pro-One, and TB-303, and drum machines such as the TR-808. Other synthesizer clones include the MiniMOD (a series of Eurorack modules based on the Minimoog), the Intellijel Atlantis (based on the SH-101), and the x0x Heart (based on the TB-303).
Creating clones of older hardware is legal where the patents have expired. In 1997, Mackie lost their lawsuit against Behringer as copyright law in the United States did not cover their circuit board designs.
See also
Lists
List of synthesizers
List of synthesizer manufacturers
Various synthesizers
Guitar synthesizer
Keyboard bass
Keytar
Modular synthesizer
Semi-modular synthesizer
String synthesizer
Wind controller
Related instruments & technologies
Clavioline (Musitron)
Electronic keyboard
Musical instrument
Music workstation
Sampler
Speech synthesis
Vocaloid
Components & technologies
Analytic signal
Envelope detector
Low-frequency oscillation
MIDI
Music genres
Computer music
Electronic music
Notable works
List of compositions for electronic keyboard
References
Citations
Sources
Further reading
External links
Sound Synthesis Theory wikibook
Principles of Sound Synthesis at Salford University
Synthesizer Tutorial
Keyboard instruments
Bass (sound)
Hip hop production
New wave music
Rhythm section
Electric and electronic keyboard instruments | false | [
"Duodji is a traditional Sami handicraft, dating back to a time when the Sami were far more isolated from the outside world than they are today. Duodji tools, clothing and accessories are functional and useful, and may also incorporate artistic elements. Sami duodji artists are able to bring function and art together in a delicate way so as to create beautiful works of art in their own right.\n\nThese functional items include knives, cases, ladies' bags, wooden cups, certain articles of clothing, etc. Duodji items were made and meant to be used in an everyday work environment.\n\nMaterials used\nTraditionally Sami handicraft was divided into two sub-groups, men's and women's handicraft. Men used mostly wood and antlers as well as other bones from reindeer when crafting, while women used leather and roots. The traditional Sami colours are red, green, blue and yellow.\n\nWell known artists\nDuodji artists are still active in Sapmi and still carry on the traditions of the Duodji. Although there have been slight changes in the traditional Duodji, today they are considered valuable pieces of art by collectors from all over the world. Some of the Duodji artists today are Olov Svonni, Martin Kuorak, Anders Sunna, Lars Pirak and Per Olof Utsi.\n\nGákti\n\nThe traditional costume, the gákti, is of great cultural importance and is mainly used for weddings, funerals, confirmations and other cultural events. The gákti's appearance differs from place to place and it tends to be longer in southern Sápmi than in the north. Traditionally leather, sinews, and wool was used to make the gákti, today however both velvet and silk can be used.\n\nGallery\n\nSee also\n Kuksa\n Gákti\n\nExternal links\n Duodji at Design-Handverk \n Doudji Institute: https://web.archive.org/web/20090819063819/http://www.duodji.info/english/index.php?sladja=46 Retrieved Jan/29/2008\n Sameslöjdstiftelsen (Sami Duodji Association): https://web.archive.org/web/20080116222630/http://www.sameslojdstiftelsen.com/?p=42 Retrieved Jan/29/2008\n\nSámi culture\nSámi art\nHandicrafts\nSámi-language terms",
"is a type of music used in kabuki theatre performances in Japan.\n\nOriginally derived from the Portuguese word , meaning a stretchy material (and still used today to refer to knitted garments), came to denote a form of theatrical music which expanded and contracted in order to fit the events unfolding on stage. Played on the , interludes are generally called for to accompany sections of dialogue. As a result, they are usually instrumental solos, rather than songs. Despite this, the genre is still classified as a subset of (\"long song\") music.\n\nReferences\n\nJapanese styles of music\nKabuki"
] |
[
"Synthesizer",
"Fingerboard controller",
"What is the fingerboard controller?",
"Fingerboard-controlled instruments include the Trautonium (1929), Hellertion (1929) and Heliophon (1936),",
"Who used these intruments?",
"Rock musician Keith Emerson used it with the Moog modular synthesizer from 1970 onward.",
"Did any other artists use it?",
"keyboards in the synth lab at Berklee College of Music were equipped with membrane thin ribbon style controllers that output MIDI.",
"Are they still used today?",
"I don't know."
] | C_c89ff2f867ac42a7b84b5baaff084d4e_0 | Are there any other interesting aspects of this article? | 5 | Are there any other interesting aspects of this article aside from Keith Emerson using a fingerboard controller? | Synthesizer | A ribbon controller or other violin-like user interface may be used to control synthesizer parameters. The idea dates to Leon Theremin's 1922 first concept and his 1932 Fingerboard Theremin and Keyboard Theremin, Maurice Martenot's 1928 Ondes Martenot (sliding a metal ring), Friedrich Trautwein's 1929 Trautonium (finger pressure), and was also later utilized by Robert Moog. The ribbon controller has no moving parts. Instead, a finger pressed down and moved along it creates an electrical contact at some point along a pair of thin, flexible longitudinal strips whose electric potential varies from one end to the other. Older fingerboards used a long wire pressed to a resistive plate. A ribbon controller is similar to a touchpad, but a ribbon controller only registers linear motion. Although it may be used to operate any parameter that is affected by control voltages, a ribbon controller is most commonly associated with pitch bending. Fingerboard-controlled instruments include the Trautonium (1929), Hellertion (1929) and Heliophon (1936), Electro-Theremin (Tannerin, late 1950s), Persephone (2004), and the Swarmatron (2004). A ribbon controller is used as an additional controller in the Yamaha CS-80 and CS-60, the Korg Prophecy and Korg Trinity series, the Kurzweil synthesizers, Moog synthesizers, and others. Rock musician Keith Emerson used it with the Moog modular synthesizer from 1970 onward. In the late 1980s, keyboards in the synth lab at Berklee College of Music were equipped with membrane thin ribbon style controllers that output MIDI. They functioned as MIDI managers, with their programming language printed on their surface, and as expression/performance tools. Designed by Jeff Tripp of Perfect Fretworks Co., they were known as Tripp Strips. Such ribbon controllers can serve as a main MIDI controller instead of a keyboard, as with the Continuum instrument. CANNOTANSWER | A ribbon controller is similar to a touchpad, but a ribbon controller only registers linear motion. | A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms, through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and frequency modulation synthesis. These sounds may be altered by components such as filters, which cut or boost frequencies; envelopes, which control articulation, or how notes begin and end; and low-frequency oscillators, which modulate parameters such as pitch, volume, or filter characteristics affecting timbre. Synthesizers are typically played with keyboards or controlled by sequencers, software or other instruments, and may be synchronized to other equipment via MIDI.
Synthesizer-like instruments emerged in the United States in the mid-20th century with instruments such as the RCA Mark II, which was controlled with punch cards and used hundreds of vacuum tubes. The Moog synthesizer, developed by Robert Moog and first sold in 1964, is credited for pioneering concepts such as voltage-controlled oscillators, envelopes, noise generators, filters, and sequencers. In 1970, the smaller, cheaper Minimoog standardized synthesizers as self-contained instruments with built-in keyboards, unlike the larger modular synthesizers before it.
In 1978, Sequential Circuits released the Prophet-5, which used microprocessors to allow users to store sounds for the first time. 1982 saw the introduction of MIDI, a standardised means of synchronizing electronic instruments that remains an industry standard. The first mass-produced synthesizer, the Yamaha DX7, was launched in 1983, popularizing digital synthesis. Software synthesizers now can be run as plug-ins or embedded on single microchips in any electronic device.
Synthesizers were initially viewed as avant-garde, valued by the 1960s psychedelic and counter-cultural scenes but with little perceived commercial potential. Switched-On Bach (1968), a bestselling album of Bach compositions arranged for synthesizer by Wendy Carlos, took synthesizers to the mainstream. They were adopted by electronic acts and pop and rock groups in the 1960s and 1970s, and widely used in 1980s rock. Sampling, introduced with the Fairlight synthesizer in 1979, has influenced all genres of music and had a major influence on the development of electronic and hip hop music. Today, the synthesizer is used in nearly every genre of music, and is considered one of the most important instruments in the music industry. According to Fact in 2016, "The synthesizer is as important, and as ubiquitous, in modern music today as the human voice."
History
Precursors
As electricity became more widely available, the early 20th century saw the invention of electronic musical instruments including the Telharmonium, Trautonium, Ondes Martenot, and theremin. In the late 1930s, the Hammond Organ Company built the Novachord, a large instrument powered by 72 voltage-controlled amplifiers and 146 vacuum tubes. In 1948, the Canadian engineer Hugh Le Caine completed the electronic sackbut, a precursor to voltage-controlled synthesizers, with keyboard sensitivity allowing for vibrato, glissando, and attack control.
In 1957, Harry Olson and Herbert Belar completed the RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer at the RCA laboratories in Princeton, New Jersey. The instrument read punched paper tape that controlled an analog synthesizer containing 750 vacuum tubes. It was acquired by the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center and used almost exclusively by Milton Babbitt, a composer at Princeton University.
1960s: Early years
The authors of Analog Days define "the early years of the synthesizer" as between 1964 and the mid-1970s, beginning with the debut of the Moog synthesizer. Designed by American engineer Robert Moog, the synthesizer was composed of separate modules which created and shaped sounds, connected by patch cords. Moog developed a means of controlling pitch through voltage, the voltage-controlled oscillator. This, along with Moog components such as envelopes, noise generators, filters, and sequencers, became standard components in synthesizers.
Around the same period, American engineer Don Buchla created the Buchla Modular Electronic Music System. Instead of a conventional keyboard, Buchla's system used touchplates which transmitted control voltages depending on finger position and force. However, the Moog's keyboard made it more accessible and marketable to musicians, and keyboards became the standard means of controlling synthesizers. Moog and Buchla initially avoided the word synthesizer for their instruments, as it was associated with the RCA synthesizer; however, by the 1970s, "synthesizer" had become the standard term.
1970s: Portability, polyphony and patch memory
In 1970, Moog launched a cheaper, smaller synthesizer, the Minimoog. The Minimoog was the first synthesizer sold in music stores, and was more practical for live performance; it standardized the concept of synthesizers as self-contained instruments with built-in keyboards.
After retail stores started selling synthesizers in 1971, other synthesizer companies were established, including ARP in the US and EMS in the UK. ARP's products included the ARP 2600, which folded into a carrying case and had built-in speakers, and the Odyssey, a rival to the Minimoog. The less expensive EMS synthesizers were used by European art rock and progressive rock acts including Brian Eno and Pink Floyd. Designs for synthesizers appeared in the amateur electronics market, such as the "Practical Electronics Sound Synthesiser", published in Practical Electronics in 1973. By the mid-1970s, ARP was the world's largest synthesizer manufacturer, though it closed in 1981.
Early synthesizers were monophonic, meaning they could only play one note at a time. Some of the earliest commercial polyphonic synthesizers were created by American engineer Tom Oberheim, such as the OB-X (1979). In 1978, the American company Sequential Circuits released the Prophet-5, the first fully programmable polyphonic synthesizer. Whereas previous synthesizers required users to adjust cables and knobs to change sounds, with no guarantee of exactly recreating a sound, the Prophet-5 used microprocessors to store sounds in patch memory. This facilitated a move from synthesizers creating unpredictable sounds to producing "a standard package of familiar sounds".
1980s: Digital technology
The synthesizer market grew dramatically in the 1980s. 1982 saw the introduction of MIDI, a standardized means of synchronizing electronic instruments; it remains an industry standard. An influential sampling synthesizer, the Fairlight CMI, was released in 1979, with the ability to record and play back samples at different pitches. Though its high price made it inaccessible to amateurs, it was adopted by high-profile pop musicians including Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel. The success of the Fairlight drove competition, improving sampling technology and lowering prices; early competing samplers included the E-mu Emulator in 1981 and the Akai S-series in 1985.
In 1983, Yamaha released the first commercially successful digital synthesizer, the Yamaha DX7. Based on frequency modulation (FM) synthesis developed by Stanford University engineer John Chowning, the DX7 remains one of the bestselling synthesizers in history and was the first synthesizer to sell over 100,000 units. It was widely used in 1980s pop music. Compared to the "warm" and "fuzzy" sounds of analog synthesis, the DX7 was characterized by its "harsh", "glassy" and "chilly" sounds. Digital synthesizers typically contained preset sounds emulating acoustic instruments, with algorithms controlled with menus and buttons. The Synclavier, a digital synthesizer made with FM technology licensed from Yamaha, offered features such as 16-bit sampling and built-in digital recording. With a starting price of $13,000, its use was limited to universities, studios and wealthy artists.
The success of the DX7 led to competing digital synthesizers. The Roland D-50 (1987) blended Roland's linear arithmetic algorithm with samples, and was the first mass-produced synthesizer with built-in digital effects such as delay, reverb and chorus. In 1988, the Japanese manufacturer Korg released the M1, a digital synthesizer workstation featuring sampled transients and loops; with over 250,000 units sold, it remains the bestselling synthesizer in history. The advent of digital synthesizers led to a downturn in interest in analog synthesizers.
1990s–present: Software synthesizers and analog revival
1997 saw the release of ReBirth by Propellerhead Software and Reality by Seer Systems, the first software synthesizers that could be played in real time via MIDI. In 1999, an update to the music software Cubase allowed users to run software instruments (including synthesizers) as plug-ins, triggering a wave of new software instruments. Propellerhead's Reason, released in 2000, introduced an array of recognizable virtual studio equipment.
The market for patchable and modular synthesizers rebounded in the late 1990s. In the 2000s, older analog synthesizers regained popularity, sometimes selling for much more than their original prices. In the 2010s, new, affordable analog synthesizers were introduced by companies including Moog, Korg, Arturia and Dave Smith Instruments. The renewed interest is credited to the appeal of imperfect "organic" sounds and simpler interfaces, and modern surface-mount technology making analog synthesizers cheaper and faster to manufacture.
Impact
Early synthesizers were viewed as avant-garde, valued by the 1960s psychedelic and counter-cultural scenes for their ability to make new sounds, but with little perceived commercial potential. Switched-On Bach (1968), a bestselling album of Bach compositions arranged for Moog synthesizer by Wendy Carlos, demonstrated that synthesizers could be more than "random noise machines", taking them to the mainstream. However, debates were held about the appropriateness of synthesizers in baroque music, and according to the Guardian they were quickly abandoned in "serious classical circles".
The Moog was adopted by acts including the Doors, the Grateful Dead, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and Keith Emerson. Emerson was the first major rock musician to perform with the Moog and it became a trademark of his performances, helping take his band Emerson, Lake & Palmer to global stardom; according to Analog Days, the likes of Emerson, with his Moog performances, "did for the keyboard what Jimi Hendrix did for the guitar".
The portable Minimoog (1970), much smaller than the modular synthesizers before it, made synthesizers more common in live performance. The Minimoog took a place in mainstream black music, most notably in the work of Stevie Wonder, and in jazz, such as the work of Sun Ra. It was also used by electronic artists such as Kraftwerk, who used it on their albums Autobahn (1974) and The Man-Machine (1978), and later by Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, and Gary Numan. In the late 1970s and the early 1980s, the Micromoog was widely used in the emerging disco genre by artists including Abba and Giorgio Moroder. Some acts felt that using synthesizers to create sounds was "cheating"; Queen wrote in their album liner notes that they did not use them.
Early synthesizers could only play one note at a time, making them suitable for basslines, leads and solos. With the rise of polyphonic synthesizers in the 70s and 80s, "the keyboard in rock once more started to revert to the background, to be used for fills and atmosphere rather than for soloing". Sampling, introduced with the Fairlight synthesizer in 1979, has influenced all genres of music and had a major influence on the development of electronic and hip hop music.
In the 1970s, electronic music composers such as Jean Michel Jarre and Isao Tomita released successful synthesizer-led instrumental albums. This influenced the emergence of synthpop, a subgenre of new wave, from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. The work of German krautrock bands such as Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, British acts such as John Foxx, Gary Numan and David Bowie, African-American acts such as George Clinton and Zapp, and Japanese electronic acts such as Yellow Magic Orchestra and Kitaro were influential in the development of the genre. Gary Numan's 1979 hits "Are 'Friends' Electric?" and "Cars" made heavy use of synthesizers. OMD's "Enola Gay" (1980) used distinctive electronic percussion and a synthesized melody. Soft Cell used a synthesized melody on their 1981 hit "Tainted Love". Nick Rhodes, keyboardist of Duran Duran, used various synthesizers including the Roland Jupiter-4 and Jupiter-8. Chart hits include Depeche Mode's "Just Can't Get Enough" (1981), the Human League's "Don't You Want Me" and works by Ultravox.
In the 1980s, digital synthesizers were widely used in pop music. The Yamaha DX7, released in 1983, became a pop staple, used on songs by A-ha, Kenny Loggins, Kool & the Gang. Its "E PIANO 1" preset became particularly famous, especially for power ballads, and was used by artists including Whitney Houston, Chicago, Prince, Phil Collins, Luther Vandross, Billy Ocean, and Celine Dion. The Roland TB-303 (1981), in conjunction with the Roland TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines, became a foundation of electronic dance music genres such as house and techno when producers acquired cheap second-hand units later in the decade. Korg M1 presets were widely used in 1990s house music, beginning with Madonna's 1990 single "Vogue".
Today, the synthesizer is used in nearly every genre of music. It is considered by the authors of Analog Days "the only innovation that can stand alongside the electric guitar as a great new instrument of the age of electricity ... Both led to new forms of music, and both had massive popular appeal." The authors draw a connection to the synthesizer's origins in 1960s psychedelia to the raves and British "second summer of love" of the 1980s and the club scenes of the 1990s and 2000s. According to Fact in 2016, "The synthesizer is as important, and as ubiquitous, in modern music today as the human voice." It is one of the most important instruments in the music industry.
Film and television
Synthesizers are common in film and television soundtracks. ARP synthesizers, for example, were used to create sound effects for the 1977 science fiction films Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Star Wars, including the "voice" of the robot R2-D2. In the 70s and 80s, synthesizers were used in the scores for thrillers and horror films including A Clockwork Orange (1971), Apocalypse Now (1979), The Fog (1980) and Manhunter (1986). Brad Fiedel used a Prophet synthesizer to record the soundtrack for The Terminator (1984), and the filmmaker John Carpenter used them extensively for his soundtracks. Synthesizers were used to create themes for television shows including Knight Rider (1982), Twin Peaks (1990) and Stranger Things (2016).
Jobs
The rise of the synthesizer led to major changes in music industry jobs, comparable to the earlier arrival of sound in film, which put live musicians accompanying silent films out of work. With its ability to imitate instruments such as strings and horns, the synthesizer threatened the jobs of session musicians. For a period, the Moog was banned from use in commercial work, a restriction negotiated by the American Federation of Musicians (AFM). Robert Moog felt that the AFM had not realized that his instrument had to be studied like any other, and instead imagined that "all the sounds that musicians could make somehow existed in the Moog — all you had to do was push a button that said 'Jascha Heifetz' and out would come the most fantastic violin player".
Musician Walter Sear persuaded the AFM that the synthesizer demanded skill, and the category of "synthesizer player" was accepted into the union; however, players were still subject to "suspicion and hostility" for several years. In 1982, following a tour by Barry Manilow using synthesizers instead of an orchestra, the British Musicians' Union attempted to ban synthesizers, attracting controversy. That decade, a few musicians skilled at programming the popular Yamaha DX7 found employment creating sounds for other acts.
Sound synthesis
Synthesizers generate audio through various forms of analogue and digital synthesis.
In subtractive synthesis, complex waveforms are generated by oscillators and then shaped with filters to remove or boost specific frequencies. Subtractive synthesis is characterized as "rich" and "warm".
In additive synthesis, a large number of waveforms, usually sine waves, are combined into a composite sound.
In frequency modulation (FM) synthesis, waveforms are modulated with the frequency of other waveforms; the resulting complex waveform can, in turn, be used to modulate another, and this another, and so on. FM synthesis can imitate acoustic sounds such as piano, strings and organs. FM synthesis is characterized as "harsh", "glassy" and "chilly".
Phase distortion synthesis, implemented in Casio CZ synthesizers, is similar to FM synthesis.
In wavetable synthesis, synthesizers modulate smoothly between digital representations of different waveforms, changing the shape and timbre.
In sample-based synthesis, instead of sounds being created by synthesizers, samples (digital recordings of sounds) are played back and shaped with components such as filters, envelopes and LFOs.
In vector synthesis, pioneered by the Prophet VS, users crossfade between different sound sources using controllers such as joysticks.
In granular synthesis, an audio sample is split into "grains", usually between one hundredth and one tenth of a second in length, which are recombined and played back.
In physical modelling synthesis, a mathematical model of a physical sound source is created.
Components
Oscillators
Oscillators produce waveforms (such as sawtooth, sine, or pulse waves) with different timbres.
Voltage-controlled amplifiers
Voltage-controlled amplifiers (VCAs) control the volume or gain of the audio signal. VCAs can be modulated by other components, such as LFOs and envelopes. A VCA is a preamp that boosts (amplifies) the electronic signal before passing it on to an external or built-in power amplifier, as well as a means to control its amplitude (volume) using an attenuator. The gain of the VCA is affected by a control voltage (CV), coming from an envelope generator, an LFO, the keyboard or some other source.
Filters
Voltage-controlled filters (VCFs) "shape" the sound generated by the oscillators in the frequency domain, often under the control of an envelope or LFO. These are essential to subtractive synthesis. Filters are particularly important in subtractive synthesis, being designed to pass some frequency regions (or "bands") through unattenuated while significantly attenuating ("subtracting") others. The low-pass filter is most frequently used, but band-pass filters, band-reject filters and high-pass filters are also sometimes available.
The filter may be controlled with a second ADSR envelope. An "envelope modulation" ("env mod") parameter on many synthesizers with filter envelopes determines how much the envelope affects the filter. If turned all the way down, the filter produces a flat sound with no envelope. When turned up the envelope becomes more noticeable, expanding the minimum and maximum range of the filter. The envelope applied on the filter helps the sound designer generating long notes or short notes by moving the parameters up and down such as decay, sustain and finally release. For instance by using a short decay with no sustain, the sound generated is commonly known as a stab. Sound designers may prefer shaping the sound with filter instead of volume.
Envelopes
Envelopes control how sounds change over time. They may control parameters such as amplitude (volume), filters (frequencies), or pitch. The most common envelope is the ADSR (attack, decay, sustain, release) envelope:
Attack is the time taken for initial run-up of level from nil to peak, beginning when the note is triggered.
Decay is the time taken for the subsequent run down from the attack level to the designated sustain level.
Sustain is the level during the main sequence of the sound's duration, until the key is released.
Release is the time taken for the level to decay from the sustain level to zero after the key is released.
Low-frequency oscillators
Low-frequency oscillators (LFOs) produce waveforms used to modulate parameters, such as the pitch of oscillators (producing vibrato).
Arpeggiators
Arpeggiators, included in many synthesizer models, take input chords and convert them into arpeggios. They usually include controls for speed, range and mode (the movement of the arpeggio).
Controllers
Synthesizers are often controlled with electronic or digital keyboards or MIDI controller keyboards, which may be built into the synthesizer unit or attached via connections such as CV/gate, USB, or MIDI. Keyboards may offer expression such as velocity sensitivity and aftertouch, allowing for more control over the sound. Other controllers include Ribbon controllers, which track the movement of the finger across a touch-sensitive surface; wind controllers, played similarly to woodwind instruments; motion-sensitive controllers similar to video game motion controllers; electronic drum pads, played similarly to the heads of a drum kit; touchplates, which send signals depending on finger position and force; controllers designed for microtonal tunings; touchscreen devices such as tablets and smartphones; and fingerpads.
Clones
Synthesizer clones are unlicensed recreations of previous synthesizers, often marketed as affordable versions of famous musical equipment. Clones are available as physical instruments and software. Companies that have sold software clones include Arturia and Native Instruments. Behringer manufactures equipment modelled on instruments including the Minimoog, Pro-One, and TB-303, and drum machines such as the TR-808. Other synthesizer clones include the MiniMOD (a series of Eurorack modules based on the Minimoog), the Intellijel Atlantis (based on the SH-101), and the x0x Heart (based on the TB-303).
Creating clones of older hardware is legal where the patents have expired. In 1997, Mackie lost their lawsuit against Behringer as copyright law in the United States did not cover their circuit board designs.
See also
Lists
List of synthesizers
List of synthesizer manufacturers
Various synthesizers
Guitar synthesizer
Keyboard bass
Keytar
Modular synthesizer
Semi-modular synthesizer
String synthesizer
Wind controller
Related instruments & technologies
Clavioline (Musitron)
Electronic keyboard
Musical instrument
Music workstation
Sampler
Speech synthesis
Vocaloid
Components & technologies
Analytic signal
Envelope detector
Low-frequency oscillation
MIDI
Music genres
Computer music
Electronic music
Notable works
List of compositions for electronic keyboard
References
Citations
Sources
Further reading
External links
Sound Synthesis Theory wikibook
Principles of Sound Synthesis at Salford University
Synthesizer Tutorial
Keyboard instruments
Bass (sound)
Hip hop production
New wave music
Rhythm section
Electric and electronic keyboard instruments | 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",
"This article is about the demographic features of the population of Saint Mary's, including population density, internet access, crime rate, and other aspects of the population.\n\nPopulation \nAccording to the 2011 census the population of Saint Mary was 7,341.\n\nOther demographics statistics (2011)\n\nCensus Data (2011)\n\nIndividual\n\nHousehold \nThere are 2,512 households in Saint Mary Parish.\n\nSee also\nDemographics of Antigua and Barbuda\n\nReferences\n\nAntigua and Barbuda Christians\nDemographics of Antigua and Barbuda"
] |
[
"Harry Hopkins",
"New Deal"
] | C_8b44bc5ae6ef463b8c370e35db5c9b9d_0 | What was the New Deal? | 1 | What was the Harry Hopkins' New Deal? | Harry Hopkins | In March 1933, Roosevelt summoned Hopkins to Washington as federal relief administrator. Convinced that paid work was psychologically more valuable than cash handouts, Hopkins sought to continue and expand New York State's work-relief programs, the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration. He supervised the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Over 90% of the people employed by the Hopkins programs were unemployed or on relief. He feuded with Harold Ickes, who ran a rival program--the Public Works Administration--which also created jobs but did not require applicants to be unemployed or on relief. FERA, the largest program from 1933 to 1935, involved giving money to localities to operate work relief projects to employ those on direct relief. CWA was similar but did not require workers to be on relief in order to receive a government sponsored job. In less than four months, the CWA hired four million people, and during its five months of operation, the CWA built and repaired 200 swimming pools, 3,700 playgrounds, 40,000 schools, 250,000 miles (400,000 km) of road, and 12 million feet of sewer pipe. The WPA, which followed the CWA, employed 8.5 million people in its seven-year history, working on 1.4 million projects, including the building or repair of 103 golf courses, 1,000 airports, 2,500 hospitals, 2,500 sports stadiums, 3,900 schools, 8,192 parks, 12,800 playgrounds, 124,031 bridges, 125,110 public buildings, and 651,087 miles (1,047,823 km) of highways and roads. The WPA operated on its own, and on selected projects in cooperation with local and state governments, but always with its own staff and budget. Hopkins started programs for youth (National Youth Administration) and for artists and writers (Federal One Programs). He and Eleanor Roosevelt worked together to publicize and defend New Deal relief programs. He was concerned with rural areas but increasingly focused on cities in the Great Depression. Before Hopkins began to decline from his struggle with stomach cancer in the late 1930s, FDR appeared to be training him as a possible successor. With the advent of World War II in Europe, however, FDR himself ran again in 1940, winning an unprecedented third term. CANNOTANSWER | Roosevelt summoned Hopkins to Washington as federal relief administrator. | Harry Lloyd Hopkins (August 17, 1890 – January 29, 1946) was an American statesman, public administrator, and presidential advisor. A trusted deputy to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Hopkins directed New Deal relief programs before serving as the 8th United States Secretary of Commerce from 1938 to 1940 and as Roosevelt's chief foreign policy advisor and liaison to Allied leaders during World War II. During his career, Hopkins supervised the New York Temporary Emergency Relief Administration, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the Civil Works Administration, and the Works Progress Administration, which he built into the largest employer in the United States. He later oversaw the $50 billion Lend-Lease program of military aid to the Allies and, as Roosevelt's personal envoy, played a pivotal role in shaping the alliance between the United States and the United Kingdom.
Born in Iowa, Hopkins settled in New York City after he graduated from Grinnell College. He accepted a position in New York City's Bureau of Child Welfare and worked for various social work and public health organizations. He was elected president of the National Association of Social Workers in 1923. In 1931, New York Temporary Emergency Relief Administration chairman Jesse I. Straus hired Hopkins as the agency's executive director. His successful leadership of the program earned the attention of then-New York Governor Roosevelt, who brought Hopkins into his federal administration after he won the 1932 presidential election. Hopkins enjoyed close relationships with President Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and was considered a potential successor to the president until the late 1930s, when his health began to decline due to a long-running battle with stomach cancer.
As Roosevelt's closest confidante, Hopkins assumed a leading foreign policy role after the outset of World War II. From 1940 until 1943, Hopkins lived in the White House and assisted the president in the management of American foreign policy, particularly toward the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. He traveled frequently to the United Kingdom, whose prime minister, Winston Churchill, recalled Hopkins in his memoirs as a "natural leader of men" with "a flaming soul." Hopkins attended the major conferences of the Allied powers, including the Cairo Conference (November 1943), the Tehran Conference (November–December 1943), the Casablanca Conference (January 1943), and the Yalta Conference (February 1945). His health continued to decline, and he died in 1946 at the age of 55.
Early life
Hopkins was born at 512 Tenth Street in Sioux City, Iowa, the fourth child of four sons and one daughter of David Aldona and Anna (née Pickett) Hopkins. His father, born in Bangor, Maine, ran a harness shop (after an erratic career as a salesman, prospector, storekeeper, and bowling-alley operator), but his real passion was bowling, and he eventually returned to it as a business. Anna Hopkins, born in Hamilton, Ontario, had moved at an early age to Vermillion, South Dakota, where she married David. She was deeply religious and active in the affairs of the Methodist church. Shortly after Harry was born, the family moved successively to Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Kearney and Hastings, Nebraska. They spent two years in Chicago and finally settled in Grinnell, Iowa.
Hopkins attended Grinnell College and soon after his graduation in 1912 took a job with Christodora House, a social settlement house in New York City's Lower East Side ghetto. In the spring of 1913, he accepted a position from John A. Kingsbury of the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor (AICP) as a "friendly visitor" and superintendent of the Employment Bureau within the AICP's Department of Family Welfare. During the 1915 recession, Hopkins and the AICP's William Matthews, with $5,000 from Elizabeth Milbank Anderson's Milbank Memorial Fund, organized the Bronx Park Employment program, which was one of the first public employment programs in the US.
Social and public health work
In 1915, New York City Mayor John Purroy Mitchel appointed Hopkins executive secretary of the Bureau of Child Welfare which administered pensions to mothers with dependent children.
Hopkins at first opposed America's entrance into World War I, but, when war was declared in 1917, he supported it enthusiastically. He was rejected for the draft because of a bad eye. Hopkins moved to New Orleans where he worked for the American Red Cross as director of Civilian Relief, Gulf Division. Eventually, the Gulf Division of the Red Cross merged with the Southwestern Division and Hopkins, headquartered now in Atlanta, was appointed general manager in 1921. Hopkins helped draft a charter for the American Association of Social Workers (AASW) and was elected its president in 1923.
In 1922, Hopkins returned to New York City, where the AICP was involved with the Milbank Memorial Fund and the State Charities Aid Association in running three health demonstrations in New York State. Hopkins became manager of the Bellevue-Yorkville health project and assistant director of the AICP. In mid-1924 he became executive director of the New York Tuberculosis Association. During his tenure, the agency grew enormously and absorbed the New York Heart Association.
In 1931, New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt named R. H. Macy's department store president Jesse Straus as president of the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration (TERA). Straus named Hopkins, then unknown to Roosevelt, as TERA's executive director. His efficient administration of the initial $20 million outlay to the agency gained Roosevelt's attention, and in 1932, he promoted Hopkins to the presidency of the agency. Hopkins and Eleanor Roosevelt began a long friendship, which strengthened his role in relief programs.
New Deal
In March 1933, Roosevelt summoned Hopkins to Washington as federal relief administrator. Convinced that paid work was psychologically more valuable than cash handouts, Hopkins sought to continue and expand New York State's work relief programs, the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration. He supervised the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Over 90% of the people employed by the Hopkins programs were unemployed or on relief. He feuded with Harold Ickes, who ran a rival program, the Public Works Administration, which also created jobs but did not require applicants to be unemployed or on relief.
FERA, the largest program from 1933 to 1935, involved giving money to localities to operate work relief projects to employ those on direct relief. CWA was similar but did not require workers to be on relief to receive a government-sponsored job. In less than four months, the CWA hired four million people, and during its five months of operation, the CWA built and repaired 200 swimming pools, 3,700 playgrounds, 40,000 schools, of road, and 12 million feet of sewer pipe.
The WPA, which followed the CWA, employed 8.5 million people in its seven-year history, working on 1.4 million projects, including the building or repair of 103 golf courses, 1,000 airports, 2,500 hospitals, 2,500 sports stadiums, 3,900 schools, 8,192 parks, 12,800 playgrounds, 124,031 bridges, 125,110 public buildings, and of highways and roads. The WPA operated on its own on selected projects in co-operation with local and state governments, but always with its own staff and budget. Hopkins started programs for youth (National Youth Administration) and for artists and writers (Federal One Programs). Hopkins and Eleanor Roosevelt worked together to publicize and defend New Deal relief programs. He was concerned with rural areas but increasingly focused on cities in the Great Depression.
Before Hopkins began to decline from his struggle with stomach cancer in the late 1930s, Roosevelt appeared to be training him as a possible successor. With the advent of World War II in Europe, however, Roosevelt ran again in 1940 and won an unprecedented third term.
World War II
On May 10, 1940, after a long night and day spent discussing the German invasion of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg that had ended the so-called "Phoney War," Roosevelt urged a tired Hopkins to stay for dinner and then the night in a second-floor White House bedroom. Hopkins would live out of the bedroom for the next three-and-a-half years.
On December 7, 1941, at 1:40 pm, Hopkins was in the Oval Study, in the White House, having lunch with President Roosevelt, when Roosevelt received the first report that Pearl Harbor had been attacked via phone from Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox. Initially, Hopkins was skeptical of the news until Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Harold Rainsford Stark called a few minutes later to confirm Pearl Harbor had in fact been attacked.
During the war years, Hopkins acted as Roosevelt's chief emissary to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. In January 1941, Roosevelt dispatched Hopkins to assess Britain's determination and situation. Churchill escorted the important visitor all over the United Kingdom. Before he returned, at a small dinner party in the North British Hotel, Glasgow, Hopkins rose to propose a toast: "I suppose you wish to know what I am going to say to President Roosevelt on my return. Well I am going to quote to you one verse from the Book of Ruth ... 'Whither thou goest, I will go and where thou lodgest I will lodge, thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.'" Hopkins became the administrator of the Lend-Lease program, under which the United States gave to Britain and Soviet Union, China, and other Allied nations food, oil, and materiel including warships, warplanes and weaponry. Repayment was primarily in the form of Allied military action against the enemy, as well as leases on army and naval bases in Allied territory used by American forces.
Hopkins had a major voice in policy for the vast $50 billion Lend-Lease program, especially regarding supplies, first for Britain and then, upon the German invasion, the Soviets. He went to Moscow in July 1941 to make personal contact with Joseph Stalin. Hopkins recommended and Roosevelt accepted the inclusion of the Soviets in Lend Lease. Hopkins made Lend Lease decisions in terms of Roosevelt's broad foreign policy goals. He accompanied Churchill to the Atlantic Conference. Hopkins promoted an aggressive war against Germany and successfully urged Roosevelt to use the Navy to protect convoys headed for Britain before the US had entered the war in December 1941. Roosevelt brought him along as advisor to his meetings with Churchill and Stalin at Cairo, Tehran, Casablanca in 1942-43, and Yalta in 1945. He was a firm supporter of China, which received Lend-Lease aid for its military and air force. Hopkins wielded more diplomatic power than the entire State Department. Hopkins helped identify and sponsor numerous potential leaders, including Dwight D. Eisenhower. He continued to live in the White House and saw the President more often than any other advisor.
In mid-1943, Hopkins faced a barrage of criticism from Republicans and the press that he had abused his position for personal profit. One Representative asserted that British media tycoon Lord Beaverbrook had given Hopkins's wife, Louise, $500,000 worth of emeralds, which Louise denied. Newspapers ran stories detailing sumptuous dinners that Hopkins attended while he was making public calls for sacrifice. Hopkins briefly considered suing the Chicago Tribune for libel after a story that compared him to Grigory Rasputin, the famous courtier of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, but he was dissuaded by Roosevelt.
Although Hopkins's health was steadily declining, Roosevelt sent him on additional trips to Europe in 1945. Hopkins attended the Yalta Conference in February 1945. He tried to resign after Roosevelt died, but President Harry S. Truman sent Hopkins on one more mission to Moscow.
Hopkins had three sons who served in the armed forces during the war: Robert, David and Stephen. Stephen was killed in action while he was serving in the Marine Corps.
Relations with Soviet Union
Hopkins was the top American official assigned to dealing with Soviet officials during World War II. He liaised with Soviet officials from the middle ranks to the very highest, including Stalin. Anastas Mikoyan was Hopkins' counterpart with responsibility for Lend-Lease. He often explained Roosevelt's plans to Stalin and other top Soviet officials to enlist Soviet support for American objectives, an endeavor that met with limited success. A particularly striking example of bad faith was Moscow's refusal to allow American naval experts to see the German experimental U-boat station at Gdynia captured on March 28, 1945 and thus to help the protection of the very convoys that carried Lend-Lease aid. In turn, Hopkins passed on Stalin's stated goals and needs to Roosevelt. As the top American decision maker in Lend-Lease, he gave priority to supplying the Soviet Union, despite repeated objections from Republicans. As Soviet soldiers were bearing the brunt of the war, Hopkins felt that American aid to the Soviets would hasten the war's conclusion.
Hopkins continued to be a target of attacks even after his death. George Racey Jordan testified to the House Un-American Activities Committee in December 1949 that Hopkins passed nuclear secrets to the Soviets. Historians do not cite Jordan as credible since at the time Jordan claimed to have met with Hopkins in Washington regarding uranium shipments, Hopkins was in intensive care at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. In 1963, the FBI concluded that Jordan "either lied for publicity and profit or was delusional."
Many US lend-lease records, including the correspondence of Hopkins and Edward Stettinius and the minutes of the Soviet protocol committee, were only declassified in the 1970s, long after opinions about Soviet espionage had hardened into dogma. These files are now open, and they confirm the veracity of nearly all of Jordan's claims, except for his allegation that Hopkin's actions were illegal.
It is likely that any Soviets who spoke to Hopkins would have been routinely required to report the contact to the NKVD, the Soviet national security agency. Eduard Mark (1998) says that some Soviets, such as spymaster Iskhak Akhmerov, thought that Hopkins was pro-Soviet, but others thought that he was not. Verne W. Newton, the author of FDR and the Holocaust, said that no writer discussing Hopkins has identified any secrets disclosed or any decision in which he distorted American priorities to help communism. As Mark demonstrated, Hopkins was not pro-Soviet in his recommendations to Roosevelt; he was anti-German and pro-American. Any "secrets" disclosed were authorized. Mark says that at the time, any actions were taken specifically to help the American war effort and to prevent the Soviets from making a deal with Hitler.
It is currently considered likely that Laurence Duggan was the titular agent "19." Hopkins may simply have been naïve in his estimation of Soviet intentions. The historian Robert Conquest wrote that "Hopkins seems just to have accepted an absurdly fallacious stereotype of Soviet motivation, without making any attempt whatever to think, or to study the readily available evidence, or to seek the judgement of the knowledgeable. He conducted policy vis-a-vis Stalin with mere dogmatic confidence in his own (and his circle's) unshakeable sentiments."
Personal life
In 1913, Hopkins married Ethel Gross (1886–1976), a Hungarian-Jewish immigrant active in New York City's Progressive movement. They had three sons: David, Robert, and Stephen, (they had lost an infant daughter to whooping cough) and though Gross divorced Hopkins in 1930 shortly before Hopkins became a public figure, the two kept up an intimate correspondence until 1945. In 1931, Hopkins married Barbara Duncan, who died of cancer six years later. They had one daughter, Diana (1932-2020). In 1942, Hopkins married Louise Gill Macy (1906–1963) in the Yellow Oval Room at the White House. Macy was a divorced, gregarious former editor for Harper's Bazaar. The two continued to live at the White House at Roosevelt's request, though Louise eventually demanded a home of their own. Hopkins ended his long White House stay on December 21, 1943, moving with his wife to a Georgetown townhouse.
Cancer and death
In mid-1939, Hopkins was told that he had stomach cancer, and doctors performed an extensive operation that removed 75% of his stomach. What remained of Hopkins's stomach struggled to digest proteins and fat, and a few months after the operation, doctors stated that he had only four weeks to live. At this point, Roosevelt brought in experts, who transfused Hopkins with blood plasma that halted his deterioration. When the "Phony War" phase of World War II ended in May 1940, the situation galvanised Hopkins; as Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote, "the curative impact of Hopkins' increasingly crucial role in the war effort was to postpone the sentence of death the doctors had given him for five more years".
Though his death has been attributed to his stomach cancer, some historians have suggested that it was the cumulative malnutrition related to his post-cancer digestive problems. Another claim is that Hopkins died from liver failure due to hepatitis or cirrhosis, but Robert Sherwood authoritatively reported that Hopkins' postmortem examination showed the cause of death was hemosiderosis due to hepatic iron accumulation from his many blood transfusions and iron supplements.
Hopkins died in New York City on January 29, 1946, at the age of 55. His body was cremated and his ashes interred in his former college town at the Hazelwood Cemetery in Grinnell, Iowa. There is a house on the Grinnell College campus named after him.
References
West, Diana. "American Betrayal" =(2014)
Further reading
Adams, Henry Hitch. Harry Hopkins: A Biography (1977)
Bremer, William W. "Along the 'American Way': The New Deal's Work Relief Programs for the Unemployed," Journal of American History Vol. 62, No. 3 (Dec., 1975), pp. 636–652 in JSTOR
Hopkins, June. "The road not taken: Harry Hopkins and New Deal Work Relief." Presidential Studies Quarterly 29, 2(306-316). online edition
Howard, Donald S. The WPA and Federal Relief Policy (1943) online edition
Klehr, Harvey; Haynes, John Earl. "Harry Hopkins and Soviet Espionage" Intelligence & National Security (Nov 2014) 29#6 pp 864–879.
Kurzman, Paul A. Harry Hopkins and the New Deal, R. E. Burdick Publishers (1974)
Meacham, Jon. Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship Random House (2003).
McJimsey, George. "Hopkins, Harry Lloyd" in American National Biography Online (2000)
McJimsey George T. Harry Hopkins: Ally of the Poor and Defender of Democracy (1987), biography.
Meriam, Lewis. Relief and Social Security. The Brookings Institution. (1946). Highly detailed analysis and statistical summary of all New Deal relief programs; 900 pages online edition
Sherwood, Robert E. Roosevelt and Hopkins (1948), memoir by senior FDR aide; Pulitzer Prize; published in England as The White House Papers Of Harry L. Hopkins Vol. I (1948) to Jan 1942; online vol 1 to Jan 1942
Singleton, Jeff. The American Dole: Unemployment Relief and the Welfare State in the Great Depression (2000) online edition
Smith, Jason Scott. Building New Deal Liberalism: The Political Economy of Public Works, 1933-1956 (2005)
Smith, Jean Edward. FDR, Random House (2007) scholarly biography
Williams, Edward Ainsworth. Federal Aid for Relief (1939) online edition
"Harry Lloyd Hopkins". Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement 4: 1946-1950. American Council of Learned Societies, 1974.
World War II
Allen, R.G.D. "Mutual Aid between the U.S. and the British Empire, 1941–5", in Journal of the Royal Statistical Society no. 109 #3, 1946. pp 243–77 in JSTOR detailed statistical data on Lend Lease
Clarke, Sir Richard. Anglo-American Economic Collaboration in War and Peace, 1942-1949. (1982), British perspective
Dallek, Robert. Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (2nd ed. 1995) standard scholarly survey online
Dawson, Raymond H. The Decision to Aid Russia, 1941: Foreign Policy and Domestic Politics (1959)
Dobson, Alan P. U.S. Wartime Aid to Britain, 1940-1946 London, 1986.
Herring Jr. George C. Aid to Russia, 1941-1946: Strategy, Diplomacy, the Origins of the Cold War (1973) online edition
Kimball, Warren F. The Most Unsordid Act: Lend-Lease, 1939-1941 (1969).
Kimball, Warren F. "Franklin D. Roosevelt and World War II," Presidential Studies Quarterly Vol. 34#1 (2004) pp 83+.
Louis, William Roger. Imperialism at Bay: The United States and the Decolonization of the British Empire, 1941-1945. 1977.
MacManus, James. Sleep in Peace Tonight, (Thomas Dunne Books, New York 2014), , A novel about Hopkins in London in 1941
O'Sullivan, Christopher. Harry Hopkins: FDR's Envoy to Churchill and Stalin. (Rowman and Littlefield 2014)
Reynolds, David. The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance 1937-1941: A Study on Competitive Cooperation (1981)
Roll, David. The Hopkins Touch: Harry Hopkins and the Forging of the Alliance to Defeat Hitler (2012) excerpt and text search and author webcast presentation
Sherwood, Robert E. Roosevelt and Hopkins (1948), memoir by senior FDR aide; Pulitzer Prize. online complete edition
Tuttle, Dwight William. Harry L. Hopkins and Anglo-American-Soviet Relations, 1941-1945 (1983)
Woods, Randall Bennett. A Changing of the Guard: Anglo-American Relations, 1941-1946 (1990)
External links
Svetlana Chervonnaya, "Hopkins, Harry Lloyd (1890-1946)," Documents Talk: A Non-Definitive History, www.documentstalk.com/
Harry Hopkins Index at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum
United States Secretaries of Commerce
+
People of the New Deal arts projects
Works Progress Administration administrators
Franklin D. Roosevelt administration cabinet members
20th-century American politicians
1890 births
1946 deaths
Deaths from stomach cancer
Deaths from cancer in New York (state)
Politicians from Sioux City, Iowa
American diplomats
Grinnell College alumni
Recipients of the Distinguished Service Medal (US Army)
New York (state) Democrats
People in public health
People from Georgetown (Washington, D.C.)
Civilian recipients of the Distinguished Service Medal (United States) | true | [
"New Deal was a registered political party in the United Kingdom. Its founder was Professor Alan Sked, who also founded the UK Independence Party (UKIP).\n\nPolicies of the New Deal party included 'direct and transparent democracy' and 'liberal values without prejudice to race, religion, gender, etc.\" New Deal was labelled the 'leftwing version of UKIP'.\n\nNew Deal is described by its founder, Professor Alan Sked, as a centre-left political party, committed to withdrawal from the European Union. He criticises UKIP as turning into \"a far-right and what I think is an extremist and racist party\".\n\nThe term \"New Deal\", first used by US president Franklin D. Roosevelt, was also used by Tony Blair's government from 1997 to describe changes to welfare and unemployment policy.\n\nThe same year the party was launched, Sked became ill, his mother became sick and his brother died. As of June 2016, the party has been de-registered by Electoral Commission for having never fielded a single candidate in any election. The party boycotted the 2014 European Elections.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nOfficial website in 2014\n\nBritish nationalism\nEurosceptic parties in the United Kingdom\nPolitical parties established in 2013\nPolitical parties disestablished in 2015\nDefunct political parties in England\nUK Independence Party breakaway groups",
"Loop 461, the New Deal Loop, is a state highway in the U.S. state of Texas. It stretches along Monroe Avenue through New Deal, between exits 13 and 15 of Interstate 27/U.S. Highway 87. It was authorized on April 1, 1968, after the new US 87 freeway was built, and initially marked as US 87 Business. Along the way, it intersects Farm to Market Road 1729 (Main Street).\n\nRoute description\nLoop 461 begins at an interchange with I-27/US 87 in New Deal, Lubbock County, heading north on two-lane undivided Monroe Avenue. The road passes through residential areas, bending north-northeast before heading north as it runs to the west of a BNSF Railway line. The highway crosses FM 1729 and runs between more homes to the west and the railroad tracks to the east. Loop 461 reaches its northern terminus at another interchange with I-27/US 87.\n\nHistory\nLoop 461 was created on its current alignment on February 29, 1968, replacing what had been a part of US 87. The route was originally signed as US 87 Business.\n\nJunction list\n\nReferences\n\n461\nTransportation in Lubbock County, Texas\nU.S. Route 87"
] |
[
"Harry Hopkins",
"New Deal",
"What was the New Deal?",
"Roosevelt summoned Hopkins to Washington as federal relief administrator."
] | C_8b44bc5ae6ef463b8c370e35db5c9b9d_0 | Was the move successful? | 2 | Was Harry Hopkins' move successful? | Harry Hopkins | In March 1933, Roosevelt summoned Hopkins to Washington as federal relief administrator. Convinced that paid work was psychologically more valuable than cash handouts, Hopkins sought to continue and expand New York State's work-relief programs, the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration. He supervised the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Over 90% of the people employed by the Hopkins programs were unemployed or on relief. He feuded with Harold Ickes, who ran a rival program--the Public Works Administration--which also created jobs but did not require applicants to be unemployed or on relief. FERA, the largest program from 1933 to 1935, involved giving money to localities to operate work relief projects to employ those on direct relief. CWA was similar but did not require workers to be on relief in order to receive a government sponsored job. In less than four months, the CWA hired four million people, and during its five months of operation, the CWA built and repaired 200 swimming pools, 3,700 playgrounds, 40,000 schools, 250,000 miles (400,000 km) of road, and 12 million feet of sewer pipe. The WPA, which followed the CWA, employed 8.5 million people in its seven-year history, working on 1.4 million projects, including the building or repair of 103 golf courses, 1,000 airports, 2,500 hospitals, 2,500 sports stadiums, 3,900 schools, 8,192 parks, 12,800 playgrounds, 124,031 bridges, 125,110 public buildings, and 651,087 miles (1,047,823 km) of highways and roads. The WPA operated on its own, and on selected projects in cooperation with local and state governments, but always with its own staff and budget. Hopkins started programs for youth (National Youth Administration) and for artists and writers (Federal One Programs). He and Eleanor Roosevelt worked together to publicize and defend New Deal relief programs. He was concerned with rural areas but increasingly focused on cities in the Great Depression. Before Hopkins began to decline from his struggle with stomach cancer in the late 1930s, FDR appeared to be training him as a possible successor. With the advent of World War II in Europe, however, FDR himself ran again in 1940, winning an unprecedented third term. CANNOTANSWER | Hopkins sought to continue and expand New York State's work-relief programs, the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration. | Harry Lloyd Hopkins (August 17, 1890 – January 29, 1946) was an American statesman, public administrator, and presidential advisor. A trusted deputy to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Hopkins directed New Deal relief programs before serving as the 8th United States Secretary of Commerce from 1938 to 1940 and as Roosevelt's chief foreign policy advisor and liaison to Allied leaders during World War II. During his career, Hopkins supervised the New York Temporary Emergency Relief Administration, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the Civil Works Administration, and the Works Progress Administration, which he built into the largest employer in the United States. He later oversaw the $50 billion Lend-Lease program of military aid to the Allies and, as Roosevelt's personal envoy, played a pivotal role in shaping the alliance between the United States and the United Kingdom.
Born in Iowa, Hopkins settled in New York City after he graduated from Grinnell College. He accepted a position in New York City's Bureau of Child Welfare and worked for various social work and public health organizations. He was elected president of the National Association of Social Workers in 1923. In 1931, New York Temporary Emergency Relief Administration chairman Jesse I. Straus hired Hopkins as the agency's executive director. His successful leadership of the program earned the attention of then-New York Governor Roosevelt, who brought Hopkins into his federal administration after he won the 1932 presidential election. Hopkins enjoyed close relationships with President Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and was considered a potential successor to the president until the late 1930s, when his health began to decline due to a long-running battle with stomach cancer.
As Roosevelt's closest confidante, Hopkins assumed a leading foreign policy role after the outset of World War II. From 1940 until 1943, Hopkins lived in the White House and assisted the president in the management of American foreign policy, particularly toward the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. He traveled frequently to the United Kingdom, whose prime minister, Winston Churchill, recalled Hopkins in his memoirs as a "natural leader of men" with "a flaming soul." Hopkins attended the major conferences of the Allied powers, including the Cairo Conference (November 1943), the Tehran Conference (November–December 1943), the Casablanca Conference (January 1943), and the Yalta Conference (February 1945). His health continued to decline, and he died in 1946 at the age of 55.
Early life
Hopkins was born at 512 Tenth Street in Sioux City, Iowa, the fourth child of four sons and one daughter of David Aldona and Anna (née Pickett) Hopkins. His father, born in Bangor, Maine, ran a harness shop (after an erratic career as a salesman, prospector, storekeeper, and bowling-alley operator), but his real passion was bowling, and he eventually returned to it as a business. Anna Hopkins, born in Hamilton, Ontario, had moved at an early age to Vermillion, South Dakota, where she married David. She was deeply religious and active in the affairs of the Methodist church. Shortly after Harry was born, the family moved successively to Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Kearney and Hastings, Nebraska. They spent two years in Chicago and finally settled in Grinnell, Iowa.
Hopkins attended Grinnell College and soon after his graduation in 1912 took a job with Christodora House, a social settlement house in New York City's Lower East Side ghetto. In the spring of 1913, he accepted a position from John A. Kingsbury of the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor (AICP) as a "friendly visitor" and superintendent of the Employment Bureau within the AICP's Department of Family Welfare. During the 1915 recession, Hopkins and the AICP's William Matthews, with $5,000 from Elizabeth Milbank Anderson's Milbank Memorial Fund, organized the Bronx Park Employment program, which was one of the first public employment programs in the US.
Social and public health work
In 1915, New York City Mayor John Purroy Mitchel appointed Hopkins executive secretary of the Bureau of Child Welfare which administered pensions to mothers with dependent children.
Hopkins at first opposed America's entrance into World War I, but, when war was declared in 1917, he supported it enthusiastically. He was rejected for the draft because of a bad eye. Hopkins moved to New Orleans where he worked for the American Red Cross as director of Civilian Relief, Gulf Division. Eventually, the Gulf Division of the Red Cross merged with the Southwestern Division and Hopkins, headquartered now in Atlanta, was appointed general manager in 1921. Hopkins helped draft a charter for the American Association of Social Workers (AASW) and was elected its president in 1923.
In 1922, Hopkins returned to New York City, where the AICP was involved with the Milbank Memorial Fund and the State Charities Aid Association in running three health demonstrations in New York State. Hopkins became manager of the Bellevue-Yorkville health project and assistant director of the AICP. In mid-1924 he became executive director of the New York Tuberculosis Association. During his tenure, the agency grew enormously and absorbed the New York Heart Association.
In 1931, New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt named R. H. Macy's department store president Jesse Straus as president of the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration (TERA). Straus named Hopkins, then unknown to Roosevelt, as TERA's executive director. His efficient administration of the initial $20 million outlay to the agency gained Roosevelt's attention, and in 1932, he promoted Hopkins to the presidency of the agency. Hopkins and Eleanor Roosevelt began a long friendship, which strengthened his role in relief programs.
New Deal
In March 1933, Roosevelt summoned Hopkins to Washington as federal relief administrator. Convinced that paid work was psychologically more valuable than cash handouts, Hopkins sought to continue and expand New York State's work relief programs, the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration. He supervised the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Over 90% of the people employed by the Hopkins programs were unemployed or on relief. He feuded with Harold Ickes, who ran a rival program, the Public Works Administration, which also created jobs but did not require applicants to be unemployed or on relief.
FERA, the largest program from 1933 to 1935, involved giving money to localities to operate work relief projects to employ those on direct relief. CWA was similar but did not require workers to be on relief to receive a government-sponsored job. In less than four months, the CWA hired four million people, and during its five months of operation, the CWA built and repaired 200 swimming pools, 3,700 playgrounds, 40,000 schools, of road, and 12 million feet of sewer pipe.
The WPA, which followed the CWA, employed 8.5 million people in its seven-year history, working on 1.4 million projects, including the building or repair of 103 golf courses, 1,000 airports, 2,500 hospitals, 2,500 sports stadiums, 3,900 schools, 8,192 parks, 12,800 playgrounds, 124,031 bridges, 125,110 public buildings, and of highways and roads. The WPA operated on its own on selected projects in co-operation with local and state governments, but always with its own staff and budget. Hopkins started programs for youth (National Youth Administration) and for artists and writers (Federal One Programs). Hopkins and Eleanor Roosevelt worked together to publicize and defend New Deal relief programs. He was concerned with rural areas but increasingly focused on cities in the Great Depression.
Before Hopkins began to decline from his struggle with stomach cancer in the late 1930s, Roosevelt appeared to be training him as a possible successor. With the advent of World War II in Europe, however, Roosevelt ran again in 1940 and won an unprecedented third term.
World War II
On May 10, 1940, after a long night and day spent discussing the German invasion of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg that had ended the so-called "Phoney War," Roosevelt urged a tired Hopkins to stay for dinner and then the night in a second-floor White House bedroom. Hopkins would live out of the bedroom for the next three-and-a-half years.
On December 7, 1941, at 1:40 pm, Hopkins was in the Oval Study, in the White House, having lunch with President Roosevelt, when Roosevelt received the first report that Pearl Harbor had been attacked via phone from Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox. Initially, Hopkins was skeptical of the news until Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Harold Rainsford Stark called a few minutes later to confirm Pearl Harbor had in fact been attacked.
During the war years, Hopkins acted as Roosevelt's chief emissary to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. In January 1941, Roosevelt dispatched Hopkins to assess Britain's determination and situation. Churchill escorted the important visitor all over the United Kingdom. Before he returned, at a small dinner party in the North British Hotel, Glasgow, Hopkins rose to propose a toast: "I suppose you wish to know what I am going to say to President Roosevelt on my return. Well I am going to quote to you one verse from the Book of Ruth ... 'Whither thou goest, I will go and where thou lodgest I will lodge, thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.'" Hopkins became the administrator of the Lend-Lease program, under which the United States gave to Britain and Soviet Union, China, and other Allied nations food, oil, and materiel including warships, warplanes and weaponry. Repayment was primarily in the form of Allied military action against the enemy, as well as leases on army and naval bases in Allied territory used by American forces.
Hopkins had a major voice in policy for the vast $50 billion Lend-Lease program, especially regarding supplies, first for Britain and then, upon the German invasion, the Soviets. He went to Moscow in July 1941 to make personal contact with Joseph Stalin. Hopkins recommended and Roosevelt accepted the inclusion of the Soviets in Lend Lease. Hopkins made Lend Lease decisions in terms of Roosevelt's broad foreign policy goals. He accompanied Churchill to the Atlantic Conference. Hopkins promoted an aggressive war against Germany and successfully urged Roosevelt to use the Navy to protect convoys headed for Britain before the US had entered the war in December 1941. Roosevelt brought him along as advisor to his meetings with Churchill and Stalin at Cairo, Tehran, Casablanca in 1942-43, and Yalta in 1945. He was a firm supporter of China, which received Lend-Lease aid for its military and air force. Hopkins wielded more diplomatic power than the entire State Department. Hopkins helped identify and sponsor numerous potential leaders, including Dwight D. Eisenhower. He continued to live in the White House and saw the President more often than any other advisor.
In mid-1943, Hopkins faced a barrage of criticism from Republicans and the press that he had abused his position for personal profit. One Representative asserted that British media tycoon Lord Beaverbrook had given Hopkins's wife, Louise, $500,000 worth of emeralds, which Louise denied. Newspapers ran stories detailing sumptuous dinners that Hopkins attended while he was making public calls for sacrifice. Hopkins briefly considered suing the Chicago Tribune for libel after a story that compared him to Grigory Rasputin, the famous courtier of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, but he was dissuaded by Roosevelt.
Although Hopkins's health was steadily declining, Roosevelt sent him on additional trips to Europe in 1945. Hopkins attended the Yalta Conference in February 1945. He tried to resign after Roosevelt died, but President Harry S. Truman sent Hopkins on one more mission to Moscow.
Hopkins had three sons who served in the armed forces during the war: Robert, David and Stephen. Stephen was killed in action while he was serving in the Marine Corps.
Relations with Soviet Union
Hopkins was the top American official assigned to dealing with Soviet officials during World War II. He liaised with Soviet officials from the middle ranks to the very highest, including Stalin. Anastas Mikoyan was Hopkins' counterpart with responsibility for Lend-Lease. He often explained Roosevelt's plans to Stalin and other top Soviet officials to enlist Soviet support for American objectives, an endeavor that met with limited success. A particularly striking example of bad faith was Moscow's refusal to allow American naval experts to see the German experimental U-boat station at Gdynia captured on March 28, 1945 and thus to help the protection of the very convoys that carried Lend-Lease aid. In turn, Hopkins passed on Stalin's stated goals and needs to Roosevelt. As the top American decision maker in Lend-Lease, he gave priority to supplying the Soviet Union, despite repeated objections from Republicans. As Soviet soldiers were bearing the brunt of the war, Hopkins felt that American aid to the Soviets would hasten the war's conclusion.
Hopkins continued to be a target of attacks even after his death. George Racey Jordan testified to the House Un-American Activities Committee in December 1949 that Hopkins passed nuclear secrets to the Soviets. Historians do not cite Jordan as credible since at the time Jordan claimed to have met with Hopkins in Washington regarding uranium shipments, Hopkins was in intensive care at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. In 1963, the FBI concluded that Jordan "either lied for publicity and profit or was delusional."
Many US lend-lease records, including the correspondence of Hopkins and Edward Stettinius and the minutes of the Soviet protocol committee, were only declassified in the 1970s, long after opinions about Soviet espionage had hardened into dogma. These files are now open, and they confirm the veracity of nearly all of Jordan's claims, except for his allegation that Hopkin's actions were illegal.
It is likely that any Soviets who spoke to Hopkins would have been routinely required to report the contact to the NKVD, the Soviet national security agency. Eduard Mark (1998) says that some Soviets, such as spymaster Iskhak Akhmerov, thought that Hopkins was pro-Soviet, but others thought that he was not. Verne W. Newton, the author of FDR and the Holocaust, said that no writer discussing Hopkins has identified any secrets disclosed or any decision in which he distorted American priorities to help communism. As Mark demonstrated, Hopkins was not pro-Soviet in his recommendations to Roosevelt; he was anti-German and pro-American. Any "secrets" disclosed were authorized. Mark says that at the time, any actions were taken specifically to help the American war effort and to prevent the Soviets from making a deal with Hitler.
It is currently considered likely that Laurence Duggan was the titular agent "19." Hopkins may simply have been naïve in his estimation of Soviet intentions. The historian Robert Conquest wrote that "Hopkins seems just to have accepted an absurdly fallacious stereotype of Soviet motivation, without making any attempt whatever to think, or to study the readily available evidence, or to seek the judgement of the knowledgeable. He conducted policy vis-a-vis Stalin with mere dogmatic confidence in his own (and his circle's) unshakeable sentiments."
Personal life
In 1913, Hopkins married Ethel Gross (1886–1976), a Hungarian-Jewish immigrant active in New York City's Progressive movement. They had three sons: David, Robert, and Stephen, (they had lost an infant daughter to whooping cough) and though Gross divorced Hopkins in 1930 shortly before Hopkins became a public figure, the two kept up an intimate correspondence until 1945. In 1931, Hopkins married Barbara Duncan, who died of cancer six years later. They had one daughter, Diana (1932-2020). In 1942, Hopkins married Louise Gill Macy (1906–1963) in the Yellow Oval Room at the White House. Macy was a divorced, gregarious former editor for Harper's Bazaar. The two continued to live at the White House at Roosevelt's request, though Louise eventually demanded a home of their own. Hopkins ended his long White House stay on December 21, 1943, moving with his wife to a Georgetown townhouse.
Cancer and death
In mid-1939, Hopkins was told that he had stomach cancer, and doctors performed an extensive operation that removed 75% of his stomach. What remained of Hopkins's stomach struggled to digest proteins and fat, and a few months after the operation, doctors stated that he had only four weeks to live. At this point, Roosevelt brought in experts, who transfused Hopkins with blood plasma that halted his deterioration. When the "Phony War" phase of World War II ended in May 1940, the situation galvanised Hopkins; as Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote, "the curative impact of Hopkins' increasingly crucial role in the war effort was to postpone the sentence of death the doctors had given him for five more years".
Though his death has been attributed to his stomach cancer, some historians have suggested that it was the cumulative malnutrition related to his post-cancer digestive problems. Another claim is that Hopkins died from liver failure due to hepatitis or cirrhosis, but Robert Sherwood authoritatively reported that Hopkins' postmortem examination showed the cause of death was hemosiderosis due to hepatic iron accumulation from his many blood transfusions and iron supplements.
Hopkins died in New York City on January 29, 1946, at the age of 55. His body was cremated and his ashes interred in his former college town at the Hazelwood Cemetery in Grinnell, Iowa. There is a house on the Grinnell College campus named after him.
References
West, Diana. "American Betrayal" =(2014)
Further reading
Adams, Henry Hitch. Harry Hopkins: A Biography (1977)
Bremer, William W. "Along the 'American Way': The New Deal's Work Relief Programs for the Unemployed," Journal of American History Vol. 62, No. 3 (Dec., 1975), pp. 636–652 in JSTOR
Hopkins, June. "The road not taken: Harry Hopkins and New Deal Work Relief." Presidential Studies Quarterly 29, 2(306-316). online edition
Howard, Donald S. The WPA and Federal Relief Policy (1943) online edition
Klehr, Harvey; Haynes, John Earl. "Harry Hopkins and Soviet Espionage" Intelligence & National Security (Nov 2014) 29#6 pp 864–879.
Kurzman, Paul A. Harry Hopkins and the New Deal, R. E. Burdick Publishers (1974)
Meacham, Jon. Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship Random House (2003).
McJimsey, George. "Hopkins, Harry Lloyd" in American National Biography Online (2000)
McJimsey George T. Harry Hopkins: Ally of the Poor and Defender of Democracy (1987), biography.
Meriam, Lewis. Relief and Social Security. The Brookings Institution. (1946). Highly detailed analysis and statistical summary of all New Deal relief programs; 900 pages online edition
Sherwood, Robert E. Roosevelt and Hopkins (1948), memoir by senior FDR aide; Pulitzer Prize; published in England as The White House Papers Of Harry L. Hopkins Vol. I (1948) to Jan 1942; online vol 1 to Jan 1942
Singleton, Jeff. The American Dole: Unemployment Relief and the Welfare State in the Great Depression (2000) online edition
Smith, Jason Scott. Building New Deal Liberalism: The Political Economy of Public Works, 1933-1956 (2005)
Smith, Jean Edward. FDR, Random House (2007) scholarly biography
Williams, Edward Ainsworth. Federal Aid for Relief (1939) online edition
"Harry Lloyd Hopkins". Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement 4: 1946-1950. American Council of Learned Societies, 1974.
World War II
Allen, R.G.D. "Mutual Aid between the U.S. and the British Empire, 1941–5", in Journal of the Royal Statistical Society no. 109 #3, 1946. pp 243–77 in JSTOR detailed statistical data on Lend Lease
Clarke, Sir Richard. Anglo-American Economic Collaboration in War and Peace, 1942-1949. (1982), British perspective
Dallek, Robert. Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (2nd ed. 1995) standard scholarly survey online
Dawson, Raymond H. The Decision to Aid Russia, 1941: Foreign Policy and Domestic Politics (1959)
Dobson, Alan P. U.S. Wartime Aid to Britain, 1940-1946 London, 1986.
Herring Jr. George C. Aid to Russia, 1941-1946: Strategy, Diplomacy, the Origins of the Cold War (1973) online edition
Kimball, Warren F. The Most Unsordid Act: Lend-Lease, 1939-1941 (1969).
Kimball, Warren F. "Franklin D. Roosevelt and World War II," Presidential Studies Quarterly Vol. 34#1 (2004) pp 83+.
Louis, William Roger. Imperialism at Bay: The United States and the Decolonization of the British Empire, 1941-1945. 1977.
MacManus, James. Sleep in Peace Tonight, (Thomas Dunne Books, New York 2014), , A novel about Hopkins in London in 1941
O'Sullivan, Christopher. Harry Hopkins: FDR's Envoy to Churchill and Stalin. (Rowman and Littlefield 2014)
Reynolds, David. The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance 1937-1941: A Study on Competitive Cooperation (1981)
Roll, David. The Hopkins Touch: Harry Hopkins and the Forging of the Alliance to Defeat Hitler (2012) excerpt and text search and author webcast presentation
Sherwood, Robert E. Roosevelt and Hopkins (1948), memoir by senior FDR aide; Pulitzer Prize. online complete edition
Tuttle, Dwight William. Harry L. Hopkins and Anglo-American-Soviet Relations, 1941-1945 (1983)
Woods, Randall Bennett. A Changing of the Guard: Anglo-American Relations, 1941-1946 (1990)
External links
Svetlana Chervonnaya, "Hopkins, Harry Lloyd (1890-1946)," Documents Talk: A Non-Definitive History, www.documentstalk.com/
Harry Hopkins Index at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum
United States Secretaries of Commerce
+
People of the New Deal arts projects
Works Progress Administration administrators
Franklin D. Roosevelt administration cabinet members
20th-century American politicians
1890 births
1946 deaths
Deaths from stomach cancer
Deaths from cancer in New York (state)
Politicians from Sioux City, Iowa
American diplomats
Grinnell College alumni
Recipients of the Distinguished Service Medal (US Army)
New York (state) Democrats
People in public health
People from Georgetown (Washington, D.C.)
Civilian recipients of the Distinguished Service Medal (United States) | false | [
"\"Nothin' Move But the Money\" is the lead single released from Mic Geronimo's second album, Vendetta.\n\nThe song was produced by Sean \"Puffy\" Combs and Daven \"Prestige\" Vanderpool from the production team, The Hitmen and featured vocals from Combs and R&B singer Kelly Price. The official remix featured verses from Black Rob and DMX and was produced by another Hitmen member Nashiem Myrick.\n\nThe song became Geronimo's most successful single, becoming his only appearance on the Billboard Hot 100. The official music video was directed by Christopher Erskin.\n\nSingle track listing\n\nA-side\n\"Nothin' Move But the Money\" (Radio version)\n\"Nothin' Move But the Money\" (Album version)\n\"Nothin' Move But the Money\" (Instrumental version)\n\"Nothin' Move But the Money\" (A cappella version)\n\nB-side\n\"Usual Suspects\" (Radio version)\n\"Usual Suspects\" (Album version)\n\"Usual Suspects\" (Instrumental version)\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\n1997 songs\n1998 singles\nSean Combs songs\nMic Geronimo songs\nMusic videos directed by Christopher Erskin\nKelly Price songs\nTVT Records singles",
"Next Move (1947–1968) was an American Thoroughbred Champion racehorse.\n\nBackground\nNext Move was bred and raced by prominent horseman Alfred G. Vanderbilt II She was sired by Calumet Farm's stallion Bull Lea. Her dam was Vanderbilt 's Now What, a multiple stakes winner and the 1939 American Champion Two-Year-Old Filly whose sire was Chance Play, the 1927 American Horse of the Year.\n\nShe was trained by future U.S. Racing Hall of Fame trainer Bill Winfrey.\n\nRacing career\nAt age three Next Move won eight important stakes races at tracks on both the East and West Coast of the United States en route to being voted American Champion Three-Year-Old Filly honors. Notably, in a race against colts, she finished second to future Hall of Fame inductee Hill Prince in the Sunset Handicap at Hollywood Park Racetrack.\n\nAt age four, Next Move did not enjoy the same success as she had at age three. However, she won the Las Flores Handicap at California's Santa Anita Park and at the same track ran second against her male counterparts in California's richest race, the Santa Anita Handicap. Racing at age five in 1952, Next Move had another outstanding campaign and was American Champion Older Female Horse by the Thoroughbred Racing Association. The Daily Racing Form's rival award for Champion Female Handicap horse was won by the three-year-old Real Delight.\n\nBreeding record\nNext Move was retired to broodmare duty at Vanderbilt's Sagamore Farm in Glyndon, Maryland. She had five foals by Vanderbilt's Hall of Fame stallion Native Dancer and one by Turn-To. The most successful of her offspring on the track was the filly Good Move, winner of the 1960 Spinaway Stakes and in a Laurel Park Racecourse record time, the Selima Stakes.\n\nReferences\n Next Move's pedigree and partial racing stats\n\n1947 racehorse births\n1968 racehorse deaths\nRacehorses bred in Maryland\nRacehorses trained in the United States\nAmerican Champion racehorses\nThoroughbred family 20"
] |
[
"Harry Hopkins",
"New Deal",
"What was the New Deal?",
"Roosevelt summoned Hopkins to Washington as federal relief administrator.",
"Was the move successful?",
"Hopkins sought to continue and expand New York State's work-relief programs, the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration."
] | C_8b44bc5ae6ef463b8c370e35db5c9b9d_0 | Are there any other interesting aspects about this article? | 3 | Are there any other interesting aspects about this article besides Roosevelt summoning Harry Hopkins to Washington as a federal relief administrator? | Harry Hopkins | In March 1933, Roosevelt summoned Hopkins to Washington as federal relief administrator. Convinced that paid work was psychologically more valuable than cash handouts, Hopkins sought to continue and expand New York State's work-relief programs, the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration. He supervised the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Over 90% of the people employed by the Hopkins programs were unemployed or on relief. He feuded with Harold Ickes, who ran a rival program--the Public Works Administration--which also created jobs but did not require applicants to be unemployed or on relief. FERA, the largest program from 1933 to 1935, involved giving money to localities to operate work relief projects to employ those on direct relief. CWA was similar but did not require workers to be on relief in order to receive a government sponsored job. In less than four months, the CWA hired four million people, and during its five months of operation, the CWA built and repaired 200 swimming pools, 3,700 playgrounds, 40,000 schools, 250,000 miles (400,000 km) of road, and 12 million feet of sewer pipe. The WPA, which followed the CWA, employed 8.5 million people in its seven-year history, working on 1.4 million projects, including the building or repair of 103 golf courses, 1,000 airports, 2,500 hospitals, 2,500 sports stadiums, 3,900 schools, 8,192 parks, 12,800 playgrounds, 124,031 bridges, 125,110 public buildings, and 651,087 miles (1,047,823 km) of highways and roads. The WPA operated on its own, and on selected projects in cooperation with local and state governments, but always with its own staff and budget. Hopkins started programs for youth (National Youth Administration) and for artists and writers (Federal One Programs). He and Eleanor Roosevelt worked together to publicize and defend New Deal relief programs. He was concerned with rural areas but increasingly focused on cities in the Great Depression. Before Hopkins began to decline from his struggle with stomach cancer in the late 1930s, FDR appeared to be training him as a possible successor. With the advent of World War II in Europe, however, FDR himself ran again in 1940, winning an unprecedented third term. CANNOTANSWER | FERA, the largest program from 1933 to 1935, involved giving money to localities to operate work relief projects to employ those on direct relief. | Harry Lloyd Hopkins (August 17, 1890 – January 29, 1946) was an American statesman, public administrator, and presidential advisor. A trusted deputy to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Hopkins directed New Deal relief programs before serving as the 8th United States Secretary of Commerce from 1938 to 1940 and as Roosevelt's chief foreign policy advisor and liaison to Allied leaders during World War II. During his career, Hopkins supervised the New York Temporary Emergency Relief Administration, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the Civil Works Administration, and the Works Progress Administration, which he built into the largest employer in the United States. He later oversaw the $50 billion Lend-Lease program of military aid to the Allies and, as Roosevelt's personal envoy, played a pivotal role in shaping the alliance between the United States and the United Kingdom.
Born in Iowa, Hopkins settled in New York City after he graduated from Grinnell College. He accepted a position in New York City's Bureau of Child Welfare and worked for various social work and public health organizations. He was elected president of the National Association of Social Workers in 1923. In 1931, New York Temporary Emergency Relief Administration chairman Jesse I. Straus hired Hopkins as the agency's executive director. His successful leadership of the program earned the attention of then-New York Governor Roosevelt, who brought Hopkins into his federal administration after he won the 1932 presidential election. Hopkins enjoyed close relationships with President Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and was considered a potential successor to the president until the late 1930s, when his health began to decline due to a long-running battle with stomach cancer.
As Roosevelt's closest confidante, Hopkins assumed a leading foreign policy role after the outset of World War II. From 1940 until 1943, Hopkins lived in the White House and assisted the president in the management of American foreign policy, particularly toward the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. He traveled frequently to the United Kingdom, whose prime minister, Winston Churchill, recalled Hopkins in his memoirs as a "natural leader of men" with "a flaming soul." Hopkins attended the major conferences of the Allied powers, including the Cairo Conference (November 1943), the Tehran Conference (November–December 1943), the Casablanca Conference (January 1943), and the Yalta Conference (February 1945). His health continued to decline, and he died in 1946 at the age of 55.
Early life
Hopkins was born at 512 Tenth Street in Sioux City, Iowa, the fourth child of four sons and one daughter of David Aldona and Anna (née Pickett) Hopkins. His father, born in Bangor, Maine, ran a harness shop (after an erratic career as a salesman, prospector, storekeeper, and bowling-alley operator), but his real passion was bowling, and he eventually returned to it as a business. Anna Hopkins, born in Hamilton, Ontario, had moved at an early age to Vermillion, South Dakota, where she married David. She was deeply religious and active in the affairs of the Methodist church. Shortly after Harry was born, the family moved successively to Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Kearney and Hastings, Nebraska. They spent two years in Chicago and finally settled in Grinnell, Iowa.
Hopkins attended Grinnell College and soon after his graduation in 1912 took a job with Christodora House, a social settlement house in New York City's Lower East Side ghetto. In the spring of 1913, he accepted a position from John A. Kingsbury of the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor (AICP) as a "friendly visitor" and superintendent of the Employment Bureau within the AICP's Department of Family Welfare. During the 1915 recession, Hopkins and the AICP's William Matthews, with $5,000 from Elizabeth Milbank Anderson's Milbank Memorial Fund, organized the Bronx Park Employment program, which was one of the first public employment programs in the US.
Social and public health work
In 1915, New York City Mayor John Purroy Mitchel appointed Hopkins executive secretary of the Bureau of Child Welfare which administered pensions to mothers with dependent children.
Hopkins at first opposed America's entrance into World War I, but, when war was declared in 1917, he supported it enthusiastically. He was rejected for the draft because of a bad eye. Hopkins moved to New Orleans where he worked for the American Red Cross as director of Civilian Relief, Gulf Division. Eventually, the Gulf Division of the Red Cross merged with the Southwestern Division and Hopkins, headquartered now in Atlanta, was appointed general manager in 1921. Hopkins helped draft a charter for the American Association of Social Workers (AASW) and was elected its president in 1923.
In 1922, Hopkins returned to New York City, where the AICP was involved with the Milbank Memorial Fund and the State Charities Aid Association in running three health demonstrations in New York State. Hopkins became manager of the Bellevue-Yorkville health project and assistant director of the AICP. In mid-1924 he became executive director of the New York Tuberculosis Association. During his tenure, the agency grew enormously and absorbed the New York Heart Association.
In 1931, New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt named R. H. Macy's department store president Jesse Straus as president of the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration (TERA). Straus named Hopkins, then unknown to Roosevelt, as TERA's executive director. His efficient administration of the initial $20 million outlay to the agency gained Roosevelt's attention, and in 1932, he promoted Hopkins to the presidency of the agency. Hopkins and Eleanor Roosevelt began a long friendship, which strengthened his role in relief programs.
New Deal
In March 1933, Roosevelt summoned Hopkins to Washington as federal relief administrator. Convinced that paid work was psychologically more valuable than cash handouts, Hopkins sought to continue and expand New York State's work relief programs, the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration. He supervised the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Over 90% of the people employed by the Hopkins programs were unemployed or on relief. He feuded with Harold Ickes, who ran a rival program, the Public Works Administration, which also created jobs but did not require applicants to be unemployed or on relief.
FERA, the largest program from 1933 to 1935, involved giving money to localities to operate work relief projects to employ those on direct relief. CWA was similar but did not require workers to be on relief to receive a government-sponsored job. In less than four months, the CWA hired four million people, and during its five months of operation, the CWA built and repaired 200 swimming pools, 3,700 playgrounds, 40,000 schools, of road, and 12 million feet of sewer pipe.
The WPA, which followed the CWA, employed 8.5 million people in its seven-year history, working on 1.4 million projects, including the building or repair of 103 golf courses, 1,000 airports, 2,500 hospitals, 2,500 sports stadiums, 3,900 schools, 8,192 parks, 12,800 playgrounds, 124,031 bridges, 125,110 public buildings, and of highways and roads. The WPA operated on its own on selected projects in co-operation with local and state governments, but always with its own staff and budget. Hopkins started programs for youth (National Youth Administration) and for artists and writers (Federal One Programs). Hopkins and Eleanor Roosevelt worked together to publicize and defend New Deal relief programs. He was concerned with rural areas but increasingly focused on cities in the Great Depression.
Before Hopkins began to decline from his struggle with stomach cancer in the late 1930s, Roosevelt appeared to be training him as a possible successor. With the advent of World War II in Europe, however, Roosevelt ran again in 1940 and won an unprecedented third term.
World War II
On May 10, 1940, after a long night and day spent discussing the German invasion of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg that had ended the so-called "Phoney War," Roosevelt urged a tired Hopkins to stay for dinner and then the night in a second-floor White House bedroom. Hopkins would live out of the bedroom for the next three-and-a-half years.
On December 7, 1941, at 1:40 pm, Hopkins was in the Oval Study, in the White House, having lunch with President Roosevelt, when Roosevelt received the first report that Pearl Harbor had been attacked via phone from Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox. Initially, Hopkins was skeptical of the news until Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Harold Rainsford Stark called a few minutes later to confirm Pearl Harbor had in fact been attacked.
During the war years, Hopkins acted as Roosevelt's chief emissary to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. In January 1941, Roosevelt dispatched Hopkins to assess Britain's determination and situation. Churchill escorted the important visitor all over the United Kingdom. Before he returned, at a small dinner party in the North British Hotel, Glasgow, Hopkins rose to propose a toast: "I suppose you wish to know what I am going to say to President Roosevelt on my return. Well I am going to quote to you one verse from the Book of Ruth ... 'Whither thou goest, I will go and where thou lodgest I will lodge, thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.'" Hopkins became the administrator of the Lend-Lease program, under which the United States gave to Britain and Soviet Union, China, and other Allied nations food, oil, and materiel including warships, warplanes and weaponry. Repayment was primarily in the form of Allied military action against the enemy, as well as leases on army and naval bases in Allied territory used by American forces.
Hopkins had a major voice in policy for the vast $50 billion Lend-Lease program, especially regarding supplies, first for Britain and then, upon the German invasion, the Soviets. He went to Moscow in July 1941 to make personal contact with Joseph Stalin. Hopkins recommended and Roosevelt accepted the inclusion of the Soviets in Lend Lease. Hopkins made Lend Lease decisions in terms of Roosevelt's broad foreign policy goals. He accompanied Churchill to the Atlantic Conference. Hopkins promoted an aggressive war against Germany and successfully urged Roosevelt to use the Navy to protect convoys headed for Britain before the US had entered the war in December 1941. Roosevelt brought him along as advisor to his meetings with Churchill and Stalin at Cairo, Tehran, Casablanca in 1942-43, and Yalta in 1945. He was a firm supporter of China, which received Lend-Lease aid for its military and air force. Hopkins wielded more diplomatic power than the entire State Department. Hopkins helped identify and sponsor numerous potential leaders, including Dwight D. Eisenhower. He continued to live in the White House and saw the President more often than any other advisor.
In mid-1943, Hopkins faced a barrage of criticism from Republicans and the press that he had abused his position for personal profit. One Representative asserted that British media tycoon Lord Beaverbrook had given Hopkins's wife, Louise, $500,000 worth of emeralds, which Louise denied. Newspapers ran stories detailing sumptuous dinners that Hopkins attended while he was making public calls for sacrifice. Hopkins briefly considered suing the Chicago Tribune for libel after a story that compared him to Grigory Rasputin, the famous courtier of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, but he was dissuaded by Roosevelt.
Although Hopkins's health was steadily declining, Roosevelt sent him on additional trips to Europe in 1945. Hopkins attended the Yalta Conference in February 1945. He tried to resign after Roosevelt died, but President Harry S. Truman sent Hopkins on one more mission to Moscow.
Hopkins had three sons who served in the armed forces during the war: Robert, David and Stephen. Stephen was killed in action while he was serving in the Marine Corps.
Relations with Soviet Union
Hopkins was the top American official assigned to dealing with Soviet officials during World War II. He liaised with Soviet officials from the middle ranks to the very highest, including Stalin. Anastas Mikoyan was Hopkins' counterpart with responsibility for Lend-Lease. He often explained Roosevelt's plans to Stalin and other top Soviet officials to enlist Soviet support for American objectives, an endeavor that met with limited success. A particularly striking example of bad faith was Moscow's refusal to allow American naval experts to see the German experimental U-boat station at Gdynia captured on March 28, 1945 and thus to help the protection of the very convoys that carried Lend-Lease aid. In turn, Hopkins passed on Stalin's stated goals and needs to Roosevelt. As the top American decision maker in Lend-Lease, he gave priority to supplying the Soviet Union, despite repeated objections from Republicans. As Soviet soldiers were bearing the brunt of the war, Hopkins felt that American aid to the Soviets would hasten the war's conclusion.
Hopkins continued to be a target of attacks even after his death. George Racey Jordan testified to the House Un-American Activities Committee in December 1949 that Hopkins passed nuclear secrets to the Soviets. Historians do not cite Jordan as credible since at the time Jordan claimed to have met with Hopkins in Washington regarding uranium shipments, Hopkins was in intensive care at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. In 1963, the FBI concluded that Jordan "either lied for publicity and profit or was delusional."
Many US lend-lease records, including the correspondence of Hopkins and Edward Stettinius and the minutes of the Soviet protocol committee, were only declassified in the 1970s, long after opinions about Soviet espionage had hardened into dogma. These files are now open, and they confirm the veracity of nearly all of Jordan's claims, except for his allegation that Hopkin's actions were illegal.
It is likely that any Soviets who spoke to Hopkins would have been routinely required to report the contact to the NKVD, the Soviet national security agency. Eduard Mark (1998) says that some Soviets, such as spymaster Iskhak Akhmerov, thought that Hopkins was pro-Soviet, but others thought that he was not. Verne W. Newton, the author of FDR and the Holocaust, said that no writer discussing Hopkins has identified any secrets disclosed or any decision in which he distorted American priorities to help communism. As Mark demonstrated, Hopkins was not pro-Soviet in his recommendations to Roosevelt; he was anti-German and pro-American. Any "secrets" disclosed were authorized. Mark says that at the time, any actions were taken specifically to help the American war effort and to prevent the Soviets from making a deal with Hitler.
It is currently considered likely that Laurence Duggan was the titular agent "19." Hopkins may simply have been naïve in his estimation of Soviet intentions. The historian Robert Conquest wrote that "Hopkins seems just to have accepted an absurdly fallacious stereotype of Soviet motivation, without making any attempt whatever to think, or to study the readily available evidence, or to seek the judgement of the knowledgeable. He conducted policy vis-a-vis Stalin with mere dogmatic confidence in his own (and his circle's) unshakeable sentiments."
Personal life
In 1913, Hopkins married Ethel Gross (1886–1976), a Hungarian-Jewish immigrant active in New York City's Progressive movement. They had three sons: David, Robert, and Stephen, (they had lost an infant daughter to whooping cough) and though Gross divorced Hopkins in 1930 shortly before Hopkins became a public figure, the two kept up an intimate correspondence until 1945. In 1931, Hopkins married Barbara Duncan, who died of cancer six years later. They had one daughter, Diana (1932-2020). In 1942, Hopkins married Louise Gill Macy (1906–1963) in the Yellow Oval Room at the White House. Macy was a divorced, gregarious former editor for Harper's Bazaar. The two continued to live at the White House at Roosevelt's request, though Louise eventually demanded a home of their own. Hopkins ended his long White House stay on December 21, 1943, moving with his wife to a Georgetown townhouse.
Cancer and death
In mid-1939, Hopkins was told that he had stomach cancer, and doctors performed an extensive operation that removed 75% of his stomach. What remained of Hopkins's stomach struggled to digest proteins and fat, and a few months after the operation, doctors stated that he had only four weeks to live. At this point, Roosevelt brought in experts, who transfused Hopkins with blood plasma that halted his deterioration. When the "Phony War" phase of World War II ended in May 1940, the situation galvanised Hopkins; as Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote, "the curative impact of Hopkins' increasingly crucial role in the war effort was to postpone the sentence of death the doctors had given him for five more years".
Though his death has been attributed to his stomach cancer, some historians have suggested that it was the cumulative malnutrition related to his post-cancer digestive problems. Another claim is that Hopkins died from liver failure due to hepatitis or cirrhosis, but Robert Sherwood authoritatively reported that Hopkins' postmortem examination showed the cause of death was hemosiderosis due to hepatic iron accumulation from his many blood transfusions and iron supplements.
Hopkins died in New York City on January 29, 1946, at the age of 55. His body was cremated and his ashes interred in his former college town at the Hazelwood Cemetery in Grinnell, Iowa. There is a house on the Grinnell College campus named after him.
References
West, Diana. "American Betrayal" =(2014)
Further reading
Adams, Henry Hitch. Harry Hopkins: A Biography (1977)
Bremer, William W. "Along the 'American Way': The New Deal's Work Relief Programs for the Unemployed," Journal of American History Vol. 62, No. 3 (Dec., 1975), pp. 636–652 in JSTOR
Hopkins, June. "The road not taken: Harry Hopkins and New Deal Work Relief." Presidential Studies Quarterly 29, 2(306-316). online edition
Howard, Donald S. The WPA and Federal Relief Policy (1943) online edition
Klehr, Harvey; Haynes, John Earl. "Harry Hopkins and Soviet Espionage" Intelligence & National Security (Nov 2014) 29#6 pp 864–879.
Kurzman, Paul A. Harry Hopkins and the New Deal, R. E. Burdick Publishers (1974)
Meacham, Jon. Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship Random House (2003).
McJimsey, George. "Hopkins, Harry Lloyd" in American National Biography Online (2000)
McJimsey George T. Harry Hopkins: Ally of the Poor and Defender of Democracy (1987), biography.
Meriam, Lewis. Relief and Social Security. The Brookings Institution. (1946). Highly detailed analysis and statistical summary of all New Deal relief programs; 900 pages online edition
Sherwood, Robert E. Roosevelt and Hopkins (1948), memoir by senior FDR aide; Pulitzer Prize; published in England as The White House Papers Of Harry L. Hopkins Vol. I (1948) to Jan 1942; online vol 1 to Jan 1942
Singleton, Jeff. The American Dole: Unemployment Relief and the Welfare State in the Great Depression (2000) online edition
Smith, Jason Scott. Building New Deal Liberalism: The Political Economy of Public Works, 1933-1956 (2005)
Smith, Jean Edward. FDR, Random House (2007) scholarly biography
Williams, Edward Ainsworth. Federal Aid for Relief (1939) online edition
"Harry Lloyd Hopkins". Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement 4: 1946-1950. American Council of Learned Societies, 1974.
World War II
Allen, R.G.D. "Mutual Aid between the U.S. and the British Empire, 1941–5", in Journal of the Royal Statistical Society no. 109 #3, 1946. pp 243–77 in JSTOR detailed statistical data on Lend Lease
Clarke, Sir Richard. Anglo-American Economic Collaboration in War and Peace, 1942-1949. (1982), British perspective
Dallek, Robert. Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (2nd ed. 1995) standard scholarly survey online
Dawson, Raymond H. The Decision to Aid Russia, 1941: Foreign Policy and Domestic Politics (1959)
Dobson, Alan P. U.S. Wartime Aid to Britain, 1940-1946 London, 1986.
Herring Jr. George C. Aid to Russia, 1941-1946: Strategy, Diplomacy, the Origins of the Cold War (1973) online edition
Kimball, Warren F. The Most Unsordid Act: Lend-Lease, 1939-1941 (1969).
Kimball, Warren F. "Franklin D. Roosevelt and World War II," Presidential Studies Quarterly Vol. 34#1 (2004) pp 83+.
Louis, William Roger. Imperialism at Bay: The United States and the Decolonization of the British Empire, 1941-1945. 1977.
MacManus, James. Sleep in Peace Tonight, (Thomas Dunne Books, New York 2014), , A novel about Hopkins in London in 1941
O'Sullivan, Christopher. Harry Hopkins: FDR's Envoy to Churchill and Stalin. (Rowman and Littlefield 2014)
Reynolds, David. The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance 1937-1941: A Study on Competitive Cooperation (1981)
Roll, David. The Hopkins Touch: Harry Hopkins and the Forging of the Alliance to Defeat Hitler (2012) excerpt and text search and author webcast presentation
Sherwood, Robert E. Roosevelt and Hopkins (1948), memoir by senior FDR aide; Pulitzer Prize. online complete edition
Tuttle, Dwight William. Harry L. Hopkins and Anglo-American-Soviet Relations, 1941-1945 (1983)
Woods, Randall Bennett. A Changing of the Guard: Anglo-American Relations, 1941-1946 (1990)
External links
Svetlana Chervonnaya, "Hopkins, Harry Lloyd (1890-1946)," Documents Talk: A Non-Definitive History, www.documentstalk.com/
Harry Hopkins Index at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum
United States Secretaries of Commerce
+
People of the New Deal arts projects
Works Progress Administration administrators
Franklin D. Roosevelt administration cabinet members
20th-century American politicians
1890 births
1946 deaths
Deaths from stomach cancer
Deaths from cancer in New York (state)
Politicians from Sioux City, Iowa
American diplomats
Grinnell College alumni
Recipients of the Distinguished Service Medal (US Army)
New York (state) Democrats
People in public health
People from Georgetown (Washington, D.C.)
Civilian recipients of the Distinguished Service Medal (United States) | 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"
] |
[
"Harry Hopkins",
"New Deal",
"What was the New Deal?",
"Roosevelt summoned Hopkins to Washington as federal relief administrator.",
"Was the move successful?",
"Hopkins sought to continue and expand New York State's work-relief programs, the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration.",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"FERA, the largest program from 1933 to 1935, involved giving money to localities to operate work relief projects to employ those on direct relief."
] | C_8b44bc5ae6ef463b8c370e35db5c9b9d_0 | Were there any other programs during this time? | 4 | Were there any other programs during 1933-1935 besides the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration? | Harry Hopkins | In March 1933, Roosevelt summoned Hopkins to Washington as federal relief administrator. Convinced that paid work was psychologically more valuable than cash handouts, Hopkins sought to continue and expand New York State's work-relief programs, the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration. He supervised the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Over 90% of the people employed by the Hopkins programs were unemployed or on relief. He feuded with Harold Ickes, who ran a rival program--the Public Works Administration--which also created jobs but did not require applicants to be unemployed or on relief. FERA, the largest program from 1933 to 1935, involved giving money to localities to operate work relief projects to employ those on direct relief. CWA was similar but did not require workers to be on relief in order to receive a government sponsored job. In less than four months, the CWA hired four million people, and during its five months of operation, the CWA built and repaired 200 swimming pools, 3,700 playgrounds, 40,000 schools, 250,000 miles (400,000 km) of road, and 12 million feet of sewer pipe. The WPA, which followed the CWA, employed 8.5 million people in its seven-year history, working on 1.4 million projects, including the building or repair of 103 golf courses, 1,000 airports, 2,500 hospitals, 2,500 sports stadiums, 3,900 schools, 8,192 parks, 12,800 playgrounds, 124,031 bridges, 125,110 public buildings, and 651,087 miles (1,047,823 km) of highways and roads. The WPA operated on its own, and on selected projects in cooperation with local and state governments, but always with its own staff and budget. Hopkins started programs for youth (National Youth Administration) and for artists and writers (Federal One Programs). He and Eleanor Roosevelt worked together to publicize and defend New Deal relief programs. He was concerned with rural areas but increasingly focused on cities in the Great Depression. Before Hopkins began to decline from his struggle with stomach cancer in the late 1930s, FDR appeared to be training him as a possible successor. With the advent of World War II in Europe, however, FDR himself ran again in 1940, winning an unprecedented third term. CANNOTANSWER | CWA was similar but did not require workers to be on relief in order to receive a government sponsored job. | Harry Lloyd Hopkins (August 17, 1890 – January 29, 1946) was an American statesman, public administrator, and presidential advisor. A trusted deputy to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Hopkins directed New Deal relief programs before serving as the 8th United States Secretary of Commerce from 1938 to 1940 and as Roosevelt's chief foreign policy advisor and liaison to Allied leaders during World War II. During his career, Hopkins supervised the New York Temporary Emergency Relief Administration, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the Civil Works Administration, and the Works Progress Administration, which he built into the largest employer in the United States. He later oversaw the $50 billion Lend-Lease program of military aid to the Allies and, as Roosevelt's personal envoy, played a pivotal role in shaping the alliance between the United States and the United Kingdom.
Born in Iowa, Hopkins settled in New York City after he graduated from Grinnell College. He accepted a position in New York City's Bureau of Child Welfare and worked for various social work and public health organizations. He was elected president of the National Association of Social Workers in 1923. In 1931, New York Temporary Emergency Relief Administration chairman Jesse I. Straus hired Hopkins as the agency's executive director. His successful leadership of the program earned the attention of then-New York Governor Roosevelt, who brought Hopkins into his federal administration after he won the 1932 presidential election. Hopkins enjoyed close relationships with President Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and was considered a potential successor to the president until the late 1930s, when his health began to decline due to a long-running battle with stomach cancer.
As Roosevelt's closest confidante, Hopkins assumed a leading foreign policy role after the outset of World War II. From 1940 until 1943, Hopkins lived in the White House and assisted the president in the management of American foreign policy, particularly toward the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. He traveled frequently to the United Kingdom, whose prime minister, Winston Churchill, recalled Hopkins in his memoirs as a "natural leader of men" with "a flaming soul." Hopkins attended the major conferences of the Allied powers, including the Cairo Conference (November 1943), the Tehran Conference (November–December 1943), the Casablanca Conference (January 1943), and the Yalta Conference (February 1945). His health continued to decline, and he died in 1946 at the age of 55.
Early life
Hopkins was born at 512 Tenth Street in Sioux City, Iowa, the fourth child of four sons and one daughter of David Aldona and Anna (née Pickett) Hopkins. His father, born in Bangor, Maine, ran a harness shop (after an erratic career as a salesman, prospector, storekeeper, and bowling-alley operator), but his real passion was bowling, and he eventually returned to it as a business. Anna Hopkins, born in Hamilton, Ontario, had moved at an early age to Vermillion, South Dakota, where she married David. She was deeply religious and active in the affairs of the Methodist church. Shortly after Harry was born, the family moved successively to Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Kearney and Hastings, Nebraska. They spent two years in Chicago and finally settled in Grinnell, Iowa.
Hopkins attended Grinnell College and soon after his graduation in 1912 took a job with Christodora House, a social settlement house in New York City's Lower East Side ghetto. In the spring of 1913, he accepted a position from John A. Kingsbury of the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor (AICP) as a "friendly visitor" and superintendent of the Employment Bureau within the AICP's Department of Family Welfare. During the 1915 recession, Hopkins and the AICP's William Matthews, with $5,000 from Elizabeth Milbank Anderson's Milbank Memorial Fund, organized the Bronx Park Employment program, which was one of the first public employment programs in the US.
Social and public health work
In 1915, New York City Mayor John Purroy Mitchel appointed Hopkins executive secretary of the Bureau of Child Welfare which administered pensions to mothers with dependent children.
Hopkins at first opposed America's entrance into World War I, but, when war was declared in 1917, he supported it enthusiastically. He was rejected for the draft because of a bad eye. Hopkins moved to New Orleans where he worked for the American Red Cross as director of Civilian Relief, Gulf Division. Eventually, the Gulf Division of the Red Cross merged with the Southwestern Division and Hopkins, headquartered now in Atlanta, was appointed general manager in 1921. Hopkins helped draft a charter for the American Association of Social Workers (AASW) and was elected its president in 1923.
In 1922, Hopkins returned to New York City, where the AICP was involved with the Milbank Memorial Fund and the State Charities Aid Association in running three health demonstrations in New York State. Hopkins became manager of the Bellevue-Yorkville health project and assistant director of the AICP. In mid-1924 he became executive director of the New York Tuberculosis Association. During his tenure, the agency grew enormously and absorbed the New York Heart Association.
In 1931, New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt named R. H. Macy's department store president Jesse Straus as president of the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration (TERA). Straus named Hopkins, then unknown to Roosevelt, as TERA's executive director. His efficient administration of the initial $20 million outlay to the agency gained Roosevelt's attention, and in 1932, he promoted Hopkins to the presidency of the agency. Hopkins and Eleanor Roosevelt began a long friendship, which strengthened his role in relief programs.
New Deal
In March 1933, Roosevelt summoned Hopkins to Washington as federal relief administrator. Convinced that paid work was psychologically more valuable than cash handouts, Hopkins sought to continue and expand New York State's work relief programs, the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration. He supervised the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Over 90% of the people employed by the Hopkins programs were unemployed or on relief. He feuded with Harold Ickes, who ran a rival program, the Public Works Administration, which also created jobs but did not require applicants to be unemployed or on relief.
FERA, the largest program from 1933 to 1935, involved giving money to localities to operate work relief projects to employ those on direct relief. CWA was similar but did not require workers to be on relief to receive a government-sponsored job. In less than four months, the CWA hired four million people, and during its five months of operation, the CWA built and repaired 200 swimming pools, 3,700 playgrounds, 40,000 schools, of road, and 12 million feet of sewer pipe.
The WPA, which followed the CWA, employed 8.5 million people in its seven-year history, working on 1.4 million projects, including the building or repair of 103 golf courses, 1,000 airports, 2,500 hospitals, 2,500 sports stadiums, 3,900 schools, 8,192 parks, 12,800 playgrounds, 124,031 bridges, 125,110 public buildings, and of highways and roads. The WPA operated on its own on selected projects in co-operation with local and state governments, but always with its own staff and budget. Hopkins started programs for youth (National Youth Administration) and for artists and writers (Federal One Programs). Hopkins and Eleanor Roosevelt worked together to publicize and defend New Deal relief programs. He was concerned with rural areas but increasingly focused on cities in the Great Depression.
Before Hopkins began to decline from his struggle with stomach cancer in the late 1930s, Roosevelt appeared to be training him as a possible successor. With the advent of World War II in Europe, however, Roosevelt ran again in 1940 and won an unprecedented third term.
World War II
On May 10, 1940, after a long night and day spent discussing the German invasion of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg that had ended the so-called "Phoney War," Roosevelt urged a tired Hopkins to stay for dinner and then the night in a second-floor White House bedroom. Hopkins would live out of the bedroom for the next three-and-a-half years.
On December 7, 1941, at 1:40 pm, Hopkins was in the Oval Study, in the White House, having lunch with President Roosevelt, when Roosevelt received the first report that Pearl Harbor had been attacked via phone from Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox. Initially, Hopkins was skeptical of the news until Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Harold Rainsford Stark called a few minutes later to confirm Pearl Harbor had in fact been attacked.
During the war years, Hopkins acted as Roosevelt's chief emissary to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. In January 1941, Roosevelt dispatched Hopkins to assess Britain's determination and situation. Churchill escorted the important visitor all over the United Kingdom. Before he returned, at a small dinner party in the North British Hotel, Glasgow, Hopkins rose to propose a toast: "I suppose you wish to know what I am going to say to President Roosevelt on my return. Well I am going to quote to you one verse from the Book of Ruth ... 'Whither thou goest, I will go and where thou lodgest I will lodge, thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.'" Hopkins became the administrator of the Lend-Lease program, under which the United States gave to Britain and Soviet Union, China, and other Allied nations food, oil, and materiel including warships, warplanes and weaponry. Repayment was primarily in the form of Allied military action against the enemy, as well as leases on army and naval bases in Allied territory used by American forces.
Hopkins had a major voice in policy for the vast $50 billion Lend-Lease program, especially regarding supplies, first for Britain and then, upon the German invasion, the Soviets. He went to Moscow in July 1941 to make personal contact with Joseph Stalin. Hopkins recommended and Roosevelt accepted the inclusion of the Soviets in Lend Lease. Hopkins made Lend Lease decisions in terms of Roosevelt's broad foreign policy goals. He accompanied Churchill to the Atlantic Conference. Hopkins promoted an aggressive war against Germany and successfully urged Roosevelt to use the Navy to protect convoys headed for Britain before the US had entered the war in December 1941. Roosevelt brought him along as advisor to his meetings with Churchill and Stalin at Cairo, Tehran, Casablanca in 1942-43, and Yalta in 1945. He was a firm supporter of China, which received Lend-Lease aid for its military and air force. Hopkins wielded more diplomatic power than the entire State Department. Hopkins helped identify and sponsor numerous potential leaders, including Dwight D. Eisenhower. He continued to live in the White House and saw the President more often than any other advisor.
In mid-1943, Hopkins faced a barrage of criticism from Republicans and the press that he had abused his position for personal profit. One Representative asserted that British media tycoon Lord Beaverbrook had given Hopkins's wife, Louise, $500,000 worth of emeralds, which Louise denied. Newspapers ran stories detailing sumptuous dinners that Hopkins attended while he was making public calls for sacrifice. Hopkins briefly considered suing the Chicago Tribune for libel after a story that compared him to Grigory Rasputin, the famous courtier of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, but he was dissuaded by Roosevelt.
Although Hopkins's health was steadily declining, Roosevelt sent him on additional trips to Europe in 1945. Hopkins attended the Yalta Conference in February 1945. He tried to resign after Roosevelt died, but President Harry S. Truman sent Hopkins on one more mission to Moscow.
Hopkins had three sons who served in the armed forces during the war: Robert, David and Stephen. Stephen was killed in action while he was serving in the Marine Corps.
Relations with Soviet Union
Hopkins was the top American official assigned to dealing with Soviet officials during World War II. He liaised with Soviet officials from the middle ranks to the very highest, including Stalin. Anastas Mikoyan was Hopkins' counterpart with responsibility for Lend-Lease. He often explained Roosevelt's plans to Stalin and other top Soviet officials to enlist Soviet support for American objectives, an endeavor that met with limited success. A particularly striking example of bad faith was Moscow's refusal to allow American naval experts to see the German experimental U-boat station at Gdynia captured on March 28, 1945 and thus to help the protection of the very convoys that carried Lend-Lease aid. In turn, Hopkins passed on Stalin's stated goals and needs to Roosevelt. As the top American decision maker in Lend-Lease, he gave priority to supplying the Soviet Union, despite repeated objections from Republicans. As Soviet soldiers were bearing the brunt of the war, Hopkins felt that American aid to the Soviets would hasten the war's conclusion.
Hopkins continued to be a target of attacks even after his death. George Racey Jordan testified to the House Un-American Activities Committee in December 1949 that Hopkins passed nuclear secrets to the Soviets. Historians do not cite Jordan as credible since at the time Jordan claimed to have met with Hopkins in Washington regarding uranium shipments, Hopkins was in intensive care at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. In 1963, the FBI concluded that Jordan "either lied for publicity and profit or was delusional."
Many US lend-lease records, including the correspondence of Hopkins and Edward Stettinius and the minutes of the Soviet protocol committee, were only declassified in the 1970s, long after opinions about Soviet espionage had hardened into dogma. These files are now open, and they confirm the veracity of nearly all of Jordan's claims, except for his allegation that Hopkin's actions were illegal.
It is likely that any Soviets who spoke to Hopkins would have been routinely required to report the contact to the NKVD, the Soviet national security agency. Eduard Mark (1998) says that some Soviets, such as spymaster Iskhak Akhmerov, thought that Hopkins was pro-Soviet, but others thought that he was not. Verne W. Newton, the author of FDR and the Holocaust, said that no writer discussing Hopkins has identified any secrets disclosed or any decision in which he distorted American priorities to help communism. As Mark demonstrated, Hopkins was not pro-Soviet in his recommendations to Roosevelt; he was anti-German and pro-American. Any "secrets" disclosed were authorized. Mark says that at the time, any actions were taken specifically to help the American war effort and to prevent the Soviets from making a deal with Hitler.
It is currently considered likely that Laurence Duggan was the titular agent "19." Hopkins may simply have been naïve in his estimation of Soviet intentions. The historian Robert Conquest wrote that "Hopkins seems just to have accepted an absurdly fallacious stereotype of Soviet motivation, without making any attempt whatever to think, or to study the readily available evidence, or to seek the judgement of the knowledgeable. He conducted policy vis-a-vis Stalin with mere dogmatic confidence in his own (and his circle's) unshakeable sentiments."
Personal life
In 1913, Hopkins married Ethel Gross (1886–1976), a Hungarian-Jewish immigrant active in New York City's Progressive movement. They had three sons: David, Robert, and Stephen, (they had lost an infant daughter to whooping cough) and though Gross divorced Hopkins in 1930 shortly before Hopkins became a public figure, the two kept up an intimate correspondence until 1945. In 1931, Hopkins married Barbara Duncan, who died of cancer six years later. They had one daughter, Diana (1932-2020). In 1942, Hopkins married Louise Gill Macy (1906–1963) in the Yellow Oval Room at the White House. Macy was a divorced, gregarious former editor for Harper's Bazaar. The two continued to live at the White House at Roosevelt's request, though Louise eventually demanded a home of their own. Hopkins ended his long White House stay on December 21, 1943, moving with his wife to a Georgetown townhouse.
Cancer and death
In mid-1939, Hopkins was told that he had stomach cancer, and doctors performed an extensive operation that removed 75% of his stomach. What remained of Hopkins's stomach struggled to digest proteins and fat, and a few months after the operation, doctors stated that he had only four weeks to live. At this point, Roosevelt brought in experts, who transfused Hopkins with blood plasma that halted his deterioration. When the "Phony War" phase of World War II ended in May 1940, the situation galvanised Hopkins; as Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote, "the curative impact of Hopkins' increasingly crucial role in the war effort was to postpone the sentence of death the doctors had given him for five more years".
Though his death has been attributed to his stomach cancer, some historians have suggested that it was the cumulative malnutrition related to his post-cancer digestive problems. Another claim is that Hopkins died from liver failure due to hepatitis or cirrhosis, but Robert Sherwood authoritatively reported that Hopkins' postmortem examination showed the cause of death was hemosiderosis due to hepatic iron accumulation from his many blood transfusions and iron supplements.
Hopkins died in New York City on January 29, 1946, at the age of 55. His body was cremated and his ashes interred in his former college town at the Hazelwood Cemetery in Grinnell, Iowa. There is a house on the Grinnell College campus named after him.
References
West, Diana. "American Betrayal" =(2014)
Further reading
Adams, Henry Hitch. Harry Hopkins: A Biography (1977)
Bremer, William W. "Along the 'American Way': The New Deal's Work Relief Programs for the Unemployed," Journal of American History Vol. 62, No. 3 (Dec., 1975), pp. 636–652 in JSTOR
Hopkins, June. "The road not taken: Harry Hopkins and New Deal Work Relief." Presidential Studies Quarterly 29, 2(306-316). online edition
Howard, Donald S. The WPA and Federal Relief Policy (1943) online edition
Klehr, Harvey; Haynes, John Earl. "Harry Hopkins and Soviet Espionage" Intelligence & National Security (Nov 2014) 29#6 pp 864–879.
Kurzman, Paul A. Harry Hopkins and the New Deal, R. E. Burdick Publishers (1974)
Meacham, Jon. Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship Random House (2003).
McJimsey, George. "Hopkins, Harry Lloyd" in American National Biography Online (2000)
McJimsey George T. Harry Hopkins: Ally of the Poor and Defender of Democracy (1987), biography.
Meriam, Lewis. Relief and Social Security. The Brookings Institution. (1946). Highly detailed analysis and statistical summary of all New Deal relief programs; 900 pages online edition
Sherwood, Robert E. Roosevelt and Hopkins (1948), memoir by senior FDR aide; Pulitzer Prize; published in England as The White House Papers Of Harry L. Hopkins Vol. I (1948) to Jan 1942; online vol 1 to Jan 1942
Singleton, Jeff. The American Dole: Unemployment Relief and the Welfare State in the Great Depression (2000) online edition
Smith, Jason Scott. Building New Deal Liberalism: The Political Economy of Public Works, 1933-1956 (2005)
Smith, Jean Edward. FDR, Random House (2007) scholarly biography
Williams, Edward Ainsworth. Federal Aid for Relief (1939) online edition
"Harry Lloyd Hopkins". Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement 4: 1946-1950. American Council of Learned Societies, 1974.
World War II
Allen, R.G.D. "Mutual Aid between the U.S. and the British Empire, 1941–5", in Journal of the Royal Statistical Society no. 109 #3, 1946. pp 243–77 in JSTOR detailed statistical data on Lend Lease
Clarke, Sir Richard. Anglo-American Economic Collaboration in War and Peace, 1942-1949. (1982), British perspective
Dallek, Robert. Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (2nd ed. 1995) standard scholarly survey online
Dawson, Raymond H. The Decision to Aid Russia, 1941: Foreign Policy and Domestic Politics (1959)
Dobson, Alan P. U.S. Wartime Aid to Britain, 1940-1946 London, 1986.
Herring Jr. George C. Aid to Russia, 1941-1946: Strategy, Diplomacy, the Origins of the Cold War (1973) online edition
Kimball, Warren F. The Most Unsordid Act: Lend-Lease, 1939-1941 (1969).
Kimball, Warren F. "Franklin D. Roosevelt and World War II," Presidential Studies Quarterly Vol. 34#1 (2004) pp 83+.
Louis, William Roger. Imperialism at Bay: The United States and the Decolonization of the British Empire, 1941-1945. 1977.
MacManus, James. Sleep in Peace Tonight, (Thomas Dunne Books, New York 2014), , A novel about Hopkins in London in 1941
O'Sullivan, Christopher. Harry Hopkins: FDR's Envoy to Churchill and Stalin. (Rowman and Littlefield 2014)
Reynolds, David. The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance 1937-1941: A Study on Competitive Cooperation (1981)
Roll, David. The Hopkins Touch: Harry Hopkins and the Forging of the Alliance to Defeat Hitler (2012) excerpt and text search and author webcast presentation
Sherwood, Robert E. Roosevelt and Hopkins (1948), memoir by senior FDR aide; Pulitzer Prize. online complete edition
Tuttle, Dwight William. Harry L. Hopkins and Anglo-American-Soviet Relations, 1941-1945 (1983)
Woods, Randall Bennett. A Changing of the Guard: Anglo-American Relations, 1941-1946 (1990)
External links
Svetlana Chervonnaya, "Hopkins, Harry Lloyd (1890-1946)," Documents Talk: A Non-Definitive History, www.documentstalk.com/
Harry Hopkins Index at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum
United States Secretaries of Commerce
+
People of the New Deal arts projects
Works Progress Administration administrators
Franklin D. Roosevelt administration cabinet members
20th-century American politicians
1890 births
1946 deaths
Deaths from stomach cancer
Deaths from cancer in New York (state)
Politicians from Sioux City, Iowa
American diplomats
Grinnell College alumni
Recipients of the Distinguished Service Medal (US Army)
New York (state) Democrats
People in public health
People from Georgetown (Washington, D.C.)
Civilian recipients of the Distinguished Service Medal (United States) | false | [
"Beyond Tomorrow (aka Beyond This World) was an American radio drama series developed for CBS in the spring of 1950.\n\nBeyond Tomorrow was meant to be CBS's first science fiction radio program. The show was announced in newspapers but it is not known if any episodes were actually broadcast. An audition show and three additional shows were transcribed to disk.\n\nList of episodes\n\nExternal links\nOTR.net\nThis site has Realmedia versions of 'Incident at SwitchPath' and 'The Outer Limit'. The other episodes listed there are from Exploring Tomorrow.\nOld Time Radio Researchers Group Library\nOld Time Radio Researchers Group Library has streaming files of episodes 1, 2, and 3.\nRadioGold Index\nFull cast list and other information. Also has info on Beyond This World.\nExcerpt from On The Air\nSmall blurb about the show.\nRadio Horror Hosts\nSome book quotes. Two episodes in RealMedia format\nOTR Source\nGood write-up. Many references\nOTR Site\nText version of episode list\n\nAmerican radio dramas\nAmerican science fiction radio programs\n1950s American radio programs\nCBS Radio programs",
"The IBM Type-III Library (also: Type-III software, Type-III product) was software provided by IBM to its customers, available without charge, liability, or support, and typically (perhaps always) in source-code format. The best known examples are for mainframe software, but IBM also used this same classification on smaller systems.\n\nIBM also distributed other systems in source code form. Most early operating systems were shipped in this way. Source distribution of the VM family of operating systems continued for several decades after it supplanted CP/CMS from the Type-III Library, and TPF was always distributed in source form, apparently continued today with z/TPF. Unlike Type-III software, such systems were supported by IBM.\n\nScope of the IBM Program Libraries\n\nDuring the mainframe era, IBM made a wide variety of programs available to its customers. Programs were offered in two broad categories. The first category of programs were IBM developed and supported. These were termed Type I (Programming systems) and Type II (Application Programs). These programs were subjected to formal testing and were maintained by IBM.\n \nThe second category of available programs were termed Type III and Type IV programs. Type III (IBM Contributed Programs) and Type IV (Customer Contributed Programs) were programs of general interest contributed to the Program Information Department (PID) for distribution. These programs and their documents were distributed in the author's original form and were not subjected to any formal testing.\n \nThese libraries were maintained by the IBM Program Information Department, headquartered in Hawthorne, New York, with its distribution center in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, which published separate catalogs for each compatible family of IBM Processors.\n\n An IBM publication on CP/CMS characterized IBM's Type-III products as \"IBM employee contributed\" and further characterized them as follows:\n\n [The software] has not been submitted to any formal test. Type III Programs are provided by the IBM Corporation as part of its service to customers, but recipients are expected to make the final evaluation as to the usefulness of the programs in their own environment. There is no committed maintenance for Type III Programs, nor does IBM make any warranty, expressed or implied, as to the documentation, function or performance of such programs.\n\nOriginally, these programs were not individually priced, but were provided at no cost as part of IBM’s service. In 1969, IBM “unbundled,” separately pricing hardware, software, and services. The Type-III library was eventually replaced by several different product designations. Programs contributed by customers were known as \"Installed User Programs\" (IUPs) and those developed by IBM employees as \"Field Developed Programs\" (FDPs). The \"field developed\" moniker was something of a misnomer, as quite a few FDPs were written by employees in the IBM programming groups rather than by field personnel.\n\nProducts\nSome of the many Type-III programs offered by IBM include:\n 1961: General Purpose Simulation System (GPSS) \n 1968: APL programming language for the IBM 1130 and System/360 computers\n May 1968: CP/CMS\n Houston Automatic Spooling Priority (HASP) \n\n JOVIAL compiler\n August 1969: Conversational Programming System (CPS)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n Creating the Software Industry: Recollections of Software Company Founders of the 1960s\n\nType-III\nSoftware licenses\nFree and open-source software licenses"
] |
[
"Harry Hopkins",
"New Deal",
"What was the New Deal?",
"Roosevelt summoned Hopkins to Washington as federal relief administrator.",
"Was the move successful?",
"Hopkins sought to continue and expand New York State's work-relief programs, the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration.",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"FERA, the largest program from 1933 to 1935, involved giving money to localities to operate work relief projects to employ those on direct relief.",
"Were there any other programs during this time?",
"CWA was similar but did not require workers to be on relief in order to receive a government sponsored job."
] | C_8b44bc5ae6ef463b8c370e35db5c9b9d_0 | What did CWA stand for? | 5 | What did CWA stand for in 1933-1935? | Harry Hopkins | In March 1933, Roosevelt summoned Hopkins to Washington as federal relief administrator. Convinced that paid work was psychologically more valuable than cash handouts, Hopkins sought to continue and expand New York State's work-relief programs, the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration. He supervised the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Over 90% of the people employed by the Hopkins programs were unemployed or on relief. He feuded with Harold Ickes, who ran a rival program--the Public Works Administration--which also created jobs but did not require applicants to be unemployed or on relief. FERA, the largest program from 1933 to 1935, involved giving money to localities to operate work relief projects to employ those on direct relief. CWA was similar but did not require workers to be on relief in order to receive a government sponsored job. In less than four months, the CWA hired four million people, and during its five months of operation, the CWA built and repaired 200 swimming pools, 3,700 playgrounds, 40,000 schools, 250,000 miles (400,000 km) of road, and 12 million feet of sewer pipe. The WPA, which followed the CWA, employed 8.5 million people in its seven-year history, working on 1.4 million projects, including the building or repair of 103 golf courses, 1,000 airports, 2,500 hospitals, 2,500 sports stadiums, 3,900 schools, 8,192 parks, 12,800 playgrounds, 124,031 bridges, 125,110 public buildings, and 651,087 miles (1,047,823 km) of highways and roads. The WPA operated on its own, and on selected projects in cooperation with local and state governments, but always with its own staff and budget. Hopkins started programs for youth (National Youth Administration) and for artists and writers (Federal One Programs). He and Eleanor Roosevelt worked together to publicize and defend New Deal relief programs. He was concerned with rural areas but increasingly focused on cities in the Great Depression. Before Hopkins began to decline from his struggle with stomach cancer in the late 1930s, FDR appeared to be training him as a possible successor. With the advent of World War II in Europe, however, FDR himself ran again in 1940, winning an unprecedented third term. CANNOTANSWER | Civil Works Administration (CWA), | Harry Lloyd Hopkins (August 17, 1890 – January 29, 1946) was an American statesman, public administrator, and presidential advisor. A trusted deputy to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Hopkins directed New Deal relief programs before serving as the 8th United States Secretary of Commerce from 1938 to 1940 and as Roosevelt's chief foreign policy advisor and liaison to Allied leaders during World War II. During his career, Hopkins supervised the New York Temporary Emergency Relief Administration, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the Civil Works Administration, and the Works Progress Administration, which he built into the largest employer in the United States. He later oversaw the $50 billion Lend-Lease program of military aid to the Allies and, as Roosevelt's personal envoy, played a pivotal role in shaping the alliance between the United States and the United Kingdom.
Born in Iowa, Hopkins settled in New York City after he graduated from Grinnell College. He accepted a position in New York City's Bureau of Child Welfare and worked for various social work and public health organizations. He was elected president of the National Association of Social Workers in 1923. In 1931, New York Temporary Emergency Relief Administration chairman Jesse I. Straus hired Hopkins as the agency's executive director. His successful leadership of the program earned the attention of then-New York Governor Roosevelt, who brought Hopkins into his federal administration after he won the 1932 presidential election. Hopkins enjoyed close relationships with President Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and was considered a potential successor to the president until the late 1930s, when his health began to decline due to a long-running battle with stomach cancer.
As Roosevelt's closest confidante, Hopkins assumed a leading foreign policy role after the outset of World War II. From 1940 until 1943, Hopkins lived in the White House and assisted the president in the management of American foreign policy, particularly toward the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. He traveled frequently to the United Kingdom, whose prime minister, Winston Churchill, recalled Hopkins in his memoirs as a "natural leader of men" with "a flaming soul." Hopkins attended the major conferences of the Allied powers, including the Cairo Conference (November 1943), the Tehran Conference (November–December 1943), the Casablanca Conference (January 1943), and the Yalta Conference (February 1945). His health continued to decline, and he died in 1946 at the age of 55.
Early life
Hopkins was born at 512 Tenth Street in Sioux City, Iowa, the fourth child of four sons and one daughter of David Aldona and Anna (née Pickett) Hopkins. His father, born in Bangor, Maine, ran a harness shop (after an erratic career as a salesman, prospector, storekeeper, and bowling-alley operator), but his real passion was bowling, and he eventually returned to it as a business. Anna Hopkins, born in Hamilton, Ontario, had moved at an early age to Vermillion, South Dakota, where she married David. She was deeply religious and active in the affairs of the Methodist church. Shortly after Harry was born, the family moved successively to Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Kearney and Hastings, Nebraska. They spent two years in Chicago and finally settled in Grinnell, Iowa.
Hopkins attended Grinnell College and soon after his graduation in 1912 took a job with Christodora House, a social settlement house in New York City's Lower East Side ghetto. In the spring of 1913, he accepted a position from John A. Kingsbury of the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor (AICP) as a "friendly visitor" and superintendent of the Employment Bureau within the AICP's Department of Family Welfare. During the 1915 recession, Hopkins and the AICP's William Matthews, with $5,000 from Elizabeth Milbank Anderson's Milbank Memorial Fund, organized the Bronx Park Employment program, which was one of the first public employment programs in the US.
Social and public health work
In 1915, New York City Mayor John Purroy Mitchel appointed Hopkins executive secretary of the Bureau of Child Welfare which administered pensions to mothers with dependent children.
Hopkins at first opposed America's entrance into World War I, but, when war was declared in 1917, he supported it enthusiastically. He was rejected for the draft because of a bad eye. Hopkins moved to New Orleans where he worked for the American Red Cross as director of Civilian Relief, Gulf Division. Eventually, the Gulf Division of the Red Cross merged with the Southwestern Division and Hopkins, headquartered now in Atlanta, was appointed general manager in 1921. Hopkins helped draft a charter for the American Association of Social Workers (AASW) and was elected its president in 1923.
In 1922, Hopkins returned to New York City, where the AICP was involved with the Milbank Memorial Fund and the State Charities Aid Association in running three health demonstrations in New York State. Hopkins became manager of the Bellevue-Yorkville health project and assistant director of the AICP. In mid-1924 he became executive director of the New York Tuberculosis Association. During his tenure, the agency grew enormously and absorbed the New York Heart Association.
In 1931, New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt named R. H. Macy's department store president Jesse Straus as president of the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration (TERA). Straus named Hopkins, then unknown to Roosevelt, as TERA's executive director. His efficient administration of the initial $20 million outlay to the agency gained Roosevelt's attention, and in 1932, he promoted Hopkins to the presidency of the agency. Hopkins and Eleanor Roosevelt began a long friendship, which strengthened his role in relief programs.
New Deal
In March 1933, Roosevelt summoned Hopkins to Washington as federal relief administrator. Convinced that paid work was psychologically more valuable than cash handouts, Hopkins sought to continue and expand New York State's work relief programs, the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration. He supervised the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Over 90% of the people employed by the Hopkins programs were unemployed or on relief. He feuded with Harold Ickes, who ran a rival program, the Public Works Administration, which also created jobs but did not require applicants to be unemployed or on relief.
FERA, the largest program from 1933 to 1935, involved giving money to localities to operate work relief projects to employ those on direct relief. CWA was similar but did not require workers to be on relief to receive a government-sponsored job. In less than four months, the CWA hired four million people, and during its five months of operation, the CWA built and repaired 200 swimming pools, 3,700 playgrounds, 40,000 schools, of road, and 12 million feet of sewer pipe.
The WPA, which followed the CWA, employed 8.5 million people in its seven-year history, working on 1.4 million projects, including the building or repair of 103 golf courses, 1,000 airports, 2,500 hospitals, 2,500 sports stadiums, 3,900 schools, 8,192 parks, 12,800 playgrounds, 124,031 bridges, 125,110 public buildings, and of highways and roads. The WPA operated on its own on selected projects in co-operation with local and state governments, but always with its own staff and budget. Hopkins started programs for youth (National Youth Administration) and for artists and writers (Federal One Programs). Hopkins and Eleanor Roosevelt worked together to publicize and defend New Deal relief programs. He was concerned with rural areas but increasingly focused on cities in the Great Depression.
Before Hopkins began to decline from his struggle with stomach cancer in the late 1930s, Roosevelt appeared to be training him as a possible successor. With the advent of World War II in Europe, however, Roosevelt ran again in 1940 and won an unprecedented third term.
World War II
On May 10, 1940, after a long night and day spent discussing the German invasion of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg that had ended the so-called "Phoney War," Roosevelt urged a tired Hopkins to stay for dinner and then the night in a second-floor White House bedroom. Hopkins would live out of the bedroom for the next three-and-a-half years.
On December 7, 1941, at 1:40 pm, Hopkins was in the Oval Study, in the White House, having lunch with President Roosevelt, when Roosevelt received the first report that Pearl Harbor had been attacked via phone from Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox. Initially, Hopkins was skeptical of the news until Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Harold Rainsford Stark called a few minutes later to confirm Pearl Harbor had in fact been attacked.
During the war years, Hopkins acted as Roosevelt's chief emissary to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. In January 1941, Roosevelt dispatched Hopkins to assess Britain's determination and situation. Churchill escorted the important visitor all over the United Kingdom. Before he returned, at a small dinner party in the North British Hotel, Glasgow, Hopkins rose to propose a toast: "I suppose you wish to know what I am going to say to President Roosevelt on my return. Well I am going to quote to you one verse from the Book of Ruth ... 'Whither thou goest, I will go and where thou lodgest I will lodge, thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.'" Hopkins became the administrator of the Lend-Lease program, under which the United States gave to Britain and Soviet Union, China, and other Allied nations food, oil, and materiel including warships, warplanes and weaponry. Repayment was primarily in the form of Allied military action against the enemy, as well as leases on army and naval bases in Allied territory used by American forces.
Hopkins had a major voice in policy for the vast $50 billion Lend-Lease program, especially regarding supplies, first for Britain and then, upon the German invasion, the Soviets. He went to Moscow in July 1941 to make personal contact with Joseph Stalin. Hopkins recommended and Roosevelt accepted the inclusion of the Soviets in Lend Lease. Hopkins made Lend Lease decisions in terms of Roosevelt's broad foreign policy goals. He accompanied Churchill to the Atlantic Conference. Hopkins promoted an aggressive war against Germany and successfully urged Roosevelt to use the Navy to protect convoys headed for Britain before the US had entered the war in December 1941. Roosevelt brought him along as advisor to his meetings with Churchill and Stalin at Cairo, Tehran, Casablanca in 1942-43, and Yalta in 1945. He was a firm supporter of China, which received Lend-Lease aid for its military and air force. Hopkins wielded more diplomatic power than the entire State Department. Hopkins helped identify and sponsor numerous potential leaders, including Dwight D. Eisenhower. He continued to live in the White House and saw the President more often than any other advisor.
In mid-1943, Hopkins faced a barrage of criticism from Republicans and the press that he had abused his position for personal profit. One Representative asserted that British media tycoon Lord Beaverbrook had given Hopkins's wife, Louise, $500,000 worth of emeralds, which Louise denied. Newspapers ran stories detailing sumptuous dinners that Hopkins attended while he was making public calls for sacrifice. Hopkins briefly considered suing the Chicago Tribune for libel after a story that compared him to Grigory Rasputin, the famous courtier of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, but he was dissuaded by Roosevelt.
Although Hopkins's health was steadily declining, Roosevelt sent him on additional trips to Europe in 1945. Hopkins attended the Yalta Conference in February 1945. He tried to resign after Roosevelt died, but President Harry S. Truman sent Hopkins on one more mission to Moscow.
Hopkins had three sons who served in the armed forces during the war: Robert, David and Stephen. Stephen was killed in action while he was serving in the Marine Corps.
Relations with Soviet Union
Hopkins was the top American official assigned to dealing with Soviet officials during World War II. He liaised with Soviet officials from the middle ranks to the very highest, including Stalin. Anastas Mikoyan was Hopkins' counterpart with responsibility for Lend-Lease. He often explained Roosevelt's plans to Stalin and other top Soviet officials to enlist Soviet support for American objectives, an endeavor that met with limited success. A particularly striking example of bad faith was Moscow's refusal to allow American naval experts to see the German experimental U-boat station at Gdynia captured on March 28, 1945 and thus to help the protection of the very convoys that carried Lend-Lease aid. In turn, Hopkins passed on Stalin's stated goals and needs to Roosevelt. As the top American decision maker in Lend-Lease, he gave priority to supplying the Soviet Union, despite repeated objections from Republicans. As Soviet soldiers were bearing the brunt of the war, Hopkins felt that American aid to the Soviets would hasten the war's conclusion.
Hopkins continued to be a target of attacks even after his death. George Racey Jordan testified to the House Un-American Activities Committee in December 1949 that Hopkins passed nuclear secrets to the Soviets. Historians do not cite Jordan as credible since at the time Jordan claimed to have met with Hopkins in Washington regarding uranium shipments, Hopkins was in intensive care at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. In 1963, the FBI concluded that Jordan "either lied for publicity and profit or was delusional."
Many US lend-lease records, including the correspondence of Hopkins and Edward Stettinius and the minutes of the Soviet protocol committee, were only declassified in the 1970s, long after opinions about Soviet espionage had hardened into dogma. These files are now open, and they confirm the veracity of nearly all of Jordan's claims, except for his allegation that Hopkin's actions were illegal.
It is likely that any Soviets who spoke to Hopkins would have been routinely required to report the contact to the NKVD, the Soviet national security agency. Eduard Mark (1998) says that some Soviets, such as spymaster Iskhak Akhmerov, thought that Hopkins was pro-Soviet, but others thought that he was not. Verne W. Newton, the author of FDR and the Holocaust, said that no writer discussing Hopkins has identified any secrets disclosed or any decision in which he distorted American priorities to help communism. As Mark demonstrated, Hopkins was not pro-Soviet in his recommendations to Roosevelt; he was anti-German and pro-American. Any "secrets" disclosed were authorized. Mark says that at the time, any actions were taken specifically to help the American war effort and to prevent the Soviets from making a deal with Hitler.
It is currently considered likely that Laurence Duggan was the titular agent "19." Hopkins may simply have been naïve in his estimation of Soviet intentions. The historian Robert Conquest wrote that "Hopkins seems just to have accepted an absurdly fallacious stereotype of Soviet motivation, without making any attempt whatever to think, or to study the readily available evidence, or to seek the judgement of the knowledgeable. He conducted policy vis-a-vis Stalin with mere dogmatic confidence in his own (and his circle's) unshakeable sentiments."
Personal life
In 1913, Hopkins married Ethel Gross (1886–1976), a Hungarian-Jewish immigrant active in New York City's Progressive movement. They had three sons: David, Robert, and Stephen, (they had lost an infant daughter to whooping cough) and though Gross divorced Hopkins in 1930 shortly before Hopkins became a public figure, the two kept up an intimate correspondence until 1945. In 1931, Hopkins married Barbara Duncan, who died of cancer six years later. They had one daughter, Diana (1932-2020). In 1942, Hopkins married Louise Gill Macy (1906–1963) in the Yellow Oval Room at the White House. Macy was a divorced, gregarious former editor for Harper's Bazaar. The two continued to live at the White House at Roosevelt's request, though Louise eventually demanded a home of their own. Hopkins ended his long White House stay on December 21, 1943, moving with his wife to a Georgetown townhouse.
Cancer and death
In mid-1939, Hopkins was told that he had stomach cancer, and doctors performed an extensive operation that removed 75% of his stomach. What remained of Hopkins's stomach struggled to digest proteins and fat, and a few months after the operation, doctors stated that he had only four weeks to live. At this point, Roosevelt brought in experts, who transfused Hopkins with blood plasma that halted his deterioration. When the "Phony War" phase of World War II ended in May 1940, the situation galvanised Hopkins; as Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote, "the curative impact of Hopkins' increasingly crucial role in the war effort was to postpone the sentence of death the doctors had given him for five more years".
Though his death has been attributed to his stomach cancer, some historians have suggested that it was the cumulative malnutrition related to his post-cancer digestive problems. Another claim is that Hopkins died from liver failure due to hepatitis or cirrhosis, but Robert Sherwood authoritatively reported that Hopkins' postmortem examination showed the cause of death was hemosiderosis due to hepatic iron accumulation from his many blood transfusions and iron supplements.
Hopkins died in New York City on January 29, 1946, at the age of 55. His body was cremated and his ashes interred in his former college town at the Hazelwood Cemetery in Grinnell, Iowa. There is a house on the Grinnell College campus named after him.
References
West, Diana. "American Betrayal" =(2014)
Further reading
Adams, Henry Hitch. Harry Hopkins: A Biography (1977)
Bremer, William W. "Along the 'American Way': The New Deal's Work Relief Programs for the Unemployed," Journal of American History Vol. 62, No. 3 (Dec., 1975), pp. 636–652 in JSTOR
Hopkins, June. "The road not taken: Harry Hopkins and New Deal Work Relief." Presidential Studies Quarterly 29, 2(306-316). online edition
Howard, Donald S. The WPA and Federal Relief Policy (1943) online edition
Klehr, Harvey; Haynes, John Earl. "Harry Hopkins and Soviet Espionage" Intelligence & National Security (Nov 2014) 29#6 pp 864–879.
Kurzman, Paul A. Harry Hopkins and the New Deal, R. E. Burdick Publishers (1974)
Meacham, Jon. Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship Random House (2003).
McJimsey, George. "Hopkins, Harry Lloyd" in American National Biography Online (2000)
McJimsey George T. Harry Hopkins: Ally of the Poor and Defender of Democracy (1987), biography.
Meriam, Lewis. Relief and Social Security. The Brookings Institution. (1946). Highly detailed analysis and statistical summary of all New Deal relief programs; 900 pages online edition
Sherwood, Robert E. Roosevelt and Hopkins (1948), memoir by senior FDR aide; Pulitzer Prize; published in England as The White House Papers Of Harry L. Hopkins Vol. I (1948) to Jan 1942; online vol 1 to Jan 1942
Singleton, Jeff. The American Dole: Unemployment Relief and the Welfare State in the Great Depression (2000) online edition
Smith, Jason Scott. Building New Deal Liberalism: The Political Economy of Public Works, 1933-1956 (2005)
Smith, Jean Edward. FDR, Random House (2007) scholarly biography
Williams, Edward Ainsworth. Federal Aid for Relief (1939) online edition
"Harry Lloyd Hopkins". Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement 4: 1946-1950. American Council of Learned Societies, 1974.
World War II
Allen, R.G.D. "Mutual Aid between the U.S. and the British Empire, 1941–5", in Journal of the Royal Statistical Society no. 109 #3, 1946. pp 243–77 in JSTOR detailed statistical data on Lend Lease
Clarke, Sir Richard. Anglo-American Economic Collaboration in War and Peace, 1942-1949. (1982), British perspective
Dallek, Robert. Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (2nd ed. 1995) standard scholarly survey online
Dawson, Raymond H. The Decision to Aid Russia, 1941: Foreign Policy and Domestic Politics (1959)
Dobson, Alan P. U.S. Wartime Aid to Britain, 1940-1946 London, 1986.
Herring Jr. George C. Aid to Russia, 1941-1946: Strategy, Diplomacy, the Origins of the Cold War (1973) online edition
Kimball, Warren F. The Most Unsordid Act: Lend-Lease, 1939-1941 (1969).
Kimball, Warren F. "Franklin D. Roosevelt and World War II," Presidential Studies Quarterly Vol. 34#1 (2004) pp 83+.
Louis, William Roger. Imperialism at Bay: The United States and the Decolonization of the British Empire, 1941-1945. 1977.
MacManus, James. Sleep in Peace Tonight, (Thomas Dunne Books, New York 2014), , A novel about Hopkins in London in 1941
O'Sullivan, Christopher. Harry Hopkins: FDR's Envoy to Churchill and Stalin. (Rowman and Littlefield 2014)
Reynolds, David. The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance 1937-1941: A Study on Competitive Cooperation (1981)
Roll, David. The Hopkins Touch: Harry Hopkins and the Forging of the Alliance to Defeat Hitler (2012) excerpt and text search and author webcast presentation
Sherwood, Robert E. Roosevelt and Hopkins (1948), memoir by senior FDR aide; Pulitzer Prize. online complete edition
Tuttle, Dwight William. Harry L. Hopkins and Anglo-American-Soviet Relations, 1941-1945 (1983)
Woods, Randall Bennett. A Changing of the Guard: Anglo-American Relations, 1941-1946 (1990)
External links
Svetlana Chervonnaya, "Hopkins, Harry Lloyd (1890-1946)," Documents Talk: A Non-Definitive History, www.documentstalk.com/
Harry Hopkins Index at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum
United States Secretaries of Commerce
+
People of the New Deal arts projects
Works Progress Administration administrators
Franklin D. Roosevelt administration cabinet members
20th-century American politicians
1890 births
1946 deaths
Deaths from stomach cancer
Deaths from cancer in New York (state)
Politicians from Sioux City, Iowa
American diplomats
Grinnell College alumni
Recipients of the Distinguished Service Medal (US Army)
New York (state) Democrats
People in public health
People from Georgetown (Washington, D.C.)
Civilian recipients of the Distinguished Service Medal (United States) | true | [
"A CEN Workshop Agreement (commonly abbreviated CWA) is a reference document from the European Committee for Standardization (CEN). It is, by definition, not an official standard from the member organizations.\n\nIn the field of electronic signatures, several CWAs exist. In July 2003 the European Commission granted the following three CWAs status as generally recognized technical standards, presumed to be in accordance with the Electronic Signatures Directive (1999/93/EC):\n CWA 14167-1 (June 2003): security requirements for trustworthy systems managing certificates for electronic signatures — Part 1: System Security Requirements\n CWA 14167-2 (March 2004): security requirements for trustworthy systems managing certificates for electronic signatures — Part 2: cryptographic module for CSP signing operations — Protection Profile (MCSO-PP)\n CWA 14169 (March 2004): secure signature creation devices.\n\nOther CWA deals with e-signature; among them:\n CWA 14170 Signature Creation Process and Environment.\n CWA 14171 Signature Validation Process and Environment.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n CEN Workshop Agreements – CEN website\n CEN Workshop Agreements on E-signature – CEN website\n\nEN standards\nEuropean Committee for Standardization",
"Concerned Women for America (CWA) is a socially conservative, evangelical Christian non-profit women's legislative action committee in the United States. Headquartered in Washington D.C., the CWA is involved in social and political movements, through which it aims to incorporate Christian ideology. The group is primarily led by well-funded anti-feminist interests.\n\nThe group was founded in San Diego, California in 1978 by Beverly LaHaye, whose husband Timothy LaHaye was an evangelical Christian minister and author of Battle for the Mind, as well as coauthor of the Left Behind series.\n\nThe CWA identifies itself as an amalgam of \"policy experts and...activists[s]\" with an anti-feminist approach to politics.\n\nFormation \n\nConcerned Women for America is part of a movement known as the New Christian Right. Organized in reaction to the establishment of its liberal counterpart, the National Organization for Women; the growing dispute over traditional gender roles; and the rising discussion of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), the CWA set out to \"fight policies that it believe[d] [to] disrupt traditional gender roles and norms.\" Fueling its formation, an interview between Barbara Walters and Betty Friedan, a prominent feminist activist, gained public attention in 1978 regarding women's issues. In the interview, Friedan claimed to speak for American women. Beverly LaHaye did not believe that Betty Friedan was speaking for the majority of women because feminist views were, according to LaHaye, anti-God and anti-family. In regards to the interview, LaHaye stated that she was convinced Friedan's goal was a \"misguided attempt to dismantle the bedrock of American culture: the family,\" and that she believed Christian women were not included in discussions of women's rights. In this regard, the \"concern\" that the CWA had behind the name of the group was in response to the worries that feminism would \"ruin\" America. Such fears and opposition to much of the Democratic Party's ideology during this era led Beverly LaHaye to host a series of conventions and rallies in San Diego, resulting in Concerned Women for America's formation. As a result, the CWA became known as \"the largest women's organization of the Christian Right during the 1980s and 1990s.\"\n\nThe CWA began with local prayer chapters mobilized around issues such as the ERA and legalized abortion. In 1987, the CWA relocated from San Diego, California to Washington, DC, at which time it formally established a national office and a national presence.\n\nIssues \nThe CWA identifies itself as an organization in opposition of feminism that speaks for evangelical women who feel that the national feminist movement does not support their interests. The CWA has taken strong conservative stances on several highly debated matters. The CWA has publicly stated its opposition to issues such as abortion, sex education, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, needle exchange programs, pornography, cloning, drug abuse, secular education, gambling, or any other efforts which \"intervene with natural human life.\" The organization's stance on contraception is not as clear, however, for member's opinions on this topic vary widely. The only definite statement the CWA has put forth in regards to contraception is that its stance, as a whole, is ambiguous, but that \"many Catholic women follow the church’s teaching on the use of contraceptives.\" The CWA focuses on promoting its conservative, Christian-based ideology through seven \"core issues\".\n\nAbortion \nA few years prior to the organization's founding, the Supreme Court released its decisions regarding Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, which granted women the right to attain an abortion, and disbanded all state laws restricting such action. Because many of the CWA's members were supporters of the Right to Life Movement and strongly opposed these rulings, Concerned Women for America is recognized as a pro-life organization. At the time of its founding, the CWA, along with similar organizations which spawned during this era, identified itself as part of the \"pro-family movement,\" arguing that abortion defied both Christian morality and traditional family values.\n\nThe CWA was a proponent of the welfare revisions set out by the 1994 \"Contract with America\", which aimed to reduce the frequency and acceptance of illegitimate (out of wedlock) births. These revisions suggested (1) incentivizing states to \"reduce illegitimate births without...increas[ing] abortions\" by way of block grants; (2) denying monetary assistance to \"children born to unmarried minor mothers;\" and (3) establishing a \"family cap\" in which unwed mothers could only be compensated for one child, all of which the CWA supported due to its strong opposition to abortion and its defense of the traditional family, as discussed below.\n\nCurrently, the CWA strives to inform the public of the harm it claims that abortion has on men, women and their families. The CWA began using the common pro-life movement's rhetoric of protecting women and their health in the mid-1990s, as a way to promote interest in the pro-life movement. The CWA lobbies for defunding domestic and international family planning programs, especially those that perform abortions or provide Norplant. The CWA supports crisis pregnancy centers and post-abortion counseling services.\n\nThe CWA opposes emergency contraception, such as Plan B, on the grounds that it \"blurs the line\" between contraception and abortion.\n\nSame-sex marriage \nAs a supporter of traditional gender roles and the nuclear family, the CWA publicly defends western familialism and traditional sexual division of labor. As such, the CWA is a supporter of the sanctity of marriage and reproduction, and strongly opposes divorce.\n\nRegarding the defense of the family, the CWA was a latecomer to the opposition of the ERA. The CWA believes that the woman's place is within the home, therefore the rights set forth by the ERA threatened the traditional nuclear family. The CWA built a national network of prayer chains in opposition to the ERA. The CWA was a supporter of the Defense of Marriage Act as DOMA declared homosexual marriages to be illegal, thus supporting the CWA's ideals of both heterosexuality and marriage.\n\nThe CWA believes it is a Christian's duty to start a family, explaining their general disapproval of those who do not wish to have children. More specifically, these familial ideals tie into the CWA's understanding of women and motherhood; as expressed by founder Beverly LaHaye, women have a \"natural\" desire to be mothers, leading to the organization's encouragement of women's domesticity through stay-at-home motherhood.\n\nThe CWA opposed the 1988 Act for Better Child Care (H.R. 3660), which would have provided government-sponsored child care for families in which both parents are working. The CWA also testified against the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 on the premise that it was biased against those who could not afford to take leave.\n\nIn support of these ideals, the CWA opposes pornography, believing that consumption of such media can disrupt traditional family values, as well as promote domestic violence. More specifically, the CWA \"contends that pornography persuades men to demean their wives, to ruin their marriages, and to engage in illicit sexual behaviors\". In addition, the CWA claims that the proliferation of and lack of regulation for pornography promotes gay rights and premarital sex, both of which it strongly opposes.\n\nReligious education in public schools \nBeing a Christian organization, the CWA is known to promote Christian teachings in schools. The CWA believes that they must defend \"God's truth,\" and to do so, they advocate against \"secular humanist\" teachings and influence in public education. It is for these reasons that the CWA initially gained recognition as a public policy organization, for it publicly opposed the U.S. Supreme Court's rulings in 1962 and 1963, which banned religious teachings and practices, such as prayers and Bible readings, in public schools.\n\nTo provide a more historical context of the organization's educational efforts, in 1983, the CWA's desire for a combination of fundamental and religious teachings was concretely displayed through a lawsuit, known today as Mozert v. Hawkins County Board of Education, which arose between parents (members of the CWA) and a local Tennessee school board. The case began when a local mother, Vicki Frost, reprimanded the administration at her daughter's school for providing students with books that discussed evolution, feminism, and telepathy, which she contended \"could turn children away from God.\" The dispute quickly escalated as a group of likeminded parents joined Frost and filed a federal lawsuit, resulting in the CWA's public support against the school and People for the American Way, one of its many liberal counterparts. Fearing the growth of the \"Religious New Right,\" the CWA claimed that students should have the right to freely exercise their religion, parents should have a voice in their child's education, and there should be greater control over schools as a whole, arguments which gained favor in the trial court in 1986. To the CWA's dismay, however, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed this decision in 1987.\n\nThe CWA believes that sex education should not be taught in school, and that parents should be empowered to teach their own children about sex. However, they also concede that if it is taught in school, then it needs to be abstinence-only sex education. Many \"sexual conservatives,\" as Lisa McGirr refers to them in her research regarding sex education, have relied on the CWA to help them implement such ideology into the development or modification of sex education programs in schools, as well as to provide educational speakers.\n\nCWA supports teaching intelligent design in public schools and advocates school prayer, saying in a 1988 book titled America: To Pray or Not To Pray?, that since the Engel v. Vitale Supreme Court case of 1962 outlawed government-directed prayer, morality has declined in public schools and in society in general. As described above, the CWA aided the plaintiff in the 1983 case Mozert v. Hawkins, by arguing it is unconstitutional for public schools to require reading material that conflicts with the religious values of parents.\n\nIn similar fashion to the Mozert case, the CWA was recognized for its support of Nathan Bishop Middle School and the Providence, Rhode Island school district in the 1992 Lee v. Weisman case. Contrary to Mozert v. Hawkins, in which the CWA protested against the school's nonsecular teaching, Lee v. Weisman resulted in support from conservative Christian organizations, such as the CWA, who fought to defend the maintenance of religious practices in public schools, such as prayer at graduation.\n\nAlong with its support of the welfare revisions in the Contract with America, the CWA advocated for other amendments, such as the reinstitution of state-sponsored school prayer and \"the eligibility of religious programs for public funding.\"\n\nNational sovereignty \nThe CWA originally opposed the U.S. involvement in the United Nations, but have since accepted the UN and instead focus on the alleged dangers of conferences and treaties. The CWA has more influence in international affairs than many other conservative organizations because they are active in the UN.\n\nThe CWA opposed CEDAW, The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, which was adopted by the UN in 1979. They view CEDAW as a tool to undermine the traditional family and guarantee global abortion and prostitution.\n\nSexual exploitation \nThe CWA sees a problem with men becoming addicted to pornography asserting that it leads to the exploitation and victimization of women.\n\nIn addition to pornography, the CWA opposes prostitution. The CWA believes that legalizing prostitution would increase sex trafficking, not decrease it as other organizations have proposed.\n\nThe CWA has been actively involved in the prevention of sex trafficking; working closely with the National Organization for Women, the Family Research Council, Catholics for a Free Choice, Gloria Steinem, and Chuck Colson, the CWA has increased awareness of this issue, and was a major contributor in the establishment of The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) in 2000.\n\nIn response to Google and Mozilla's plans to test a standard which would encrypt the Domain Name System, which could possibly impede internet surveillance by law enforcement, a CWA spokesperson said \"We believe it is important for all stakeholders in the internet ecosystem to work together to ensure that encrypted DNS does not lead to unintended consequences that harm our children.\"\n\nSupport for Israel \nOn 8 May 2013 CWA's board of directors voted unanimously to include support for Israel as part of its core mission. CWA says it will support \"laws and policies that strengthen the ties between Israel and the U.S.\" and \"Policies enacted by our State Department, Department of Defense and others that encourage the development of our relationship with Israel.” Penny Nancy said that support from CWA's founder, Beverly LaHaye, was the biggest driver behind the group formalizing its support for Israel. This relationship is backed by a long history of conservative Christians' support for Israel.\n\nLeadership\n\nPresident/CEO \n\n Carmen Pate, President 1996–1999\n Wendy Wright, President 2006–2013\n Penny Young Nance, CEO (2010–2013) and President 2013–present\n Nance was previously a Federal Communications Commission advisor on children's social and media concerns.\n\nWorking through the media \nIn the late 1990s, the CWA garnered attention by way of its midday broadcasts on KFAX, a San Francisco-based Christian radio station. These broadcasts often featured Beverly LaHaye Live, a popular talk-show segment which spoke about the CWA's mission, morals, and aspirations for society. Today, the CWA continues to produce a daily radio show, however it is now entitled Concerned Women Today, and focuses primarily on calling members and other listeners to action by encouraging them to \"lobby senators\".\n\nThe CWA publishes a monthly magazine called Family Voice, which chronicles their current events as well as ways in which members can become more involved with the organization.\n\nBeverly LaHaye Institute \nThe Beverly LaHaye Institute (BLI) is the research arm of the CWA. BLI is considered one of the CWA's official think tanks. The BLI has a variety of research style essays and briefs that cover a wide variety of topics the CWA is interested in, most of which is published or featured on the CWA website.\n\nBLI filed an amicus brief in January 2014 in Sebelius vs. Hobby Lobby. Most of the amicus briefs in the Hobby Lobby case focused on religious freedom issues. BLI's brief had a unique focus on rebutting the government's argument that the birth control mandate imposed by Affordable Care Act would improve women's health and prevent unintended pregnancies. The BLI brief rejected a clear-cut notion of \"intended\" and \"unintended\" pregnancies. BLI argued that the government's evidence, based mostly on a 2011 Institute of Medicine report, did not prove the birth control mandate would increase use rates for birth control or that unintended pregnancies harm women's health. The brief also argued against the government's claim that the mandate promotes \"gender equity.\"\n\nCulture and Family Institute \nThe Culture and Family Institute is one of two of the CWA's research facilities. The Culture and Family Institute, founded in 2001, is a think tank that focuses exclusively on opposition to gay rights activism.\n\nSee also \n\nWomen in conservatism in the United States\nSusan B. Anthony List\nBeverly LaHaye\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n \n\nAnti-abortion organizations in the United States\nCharities based in Washington, D.C.\nWomen's political advocacy groups in the United States\nOrganizations established in 1979\nChristian organizations based in the United States\nConservative organizations in the United States\nPolitical advocacy groups in the United States\nReligious charities based in the United States\nWomen in Washington, D.C."
] |
[
"Harry Hopkins",
"New Deal",
"What was the New Deal?",
"Roosevelt summoned Hopkins to Washington as federal relief administrator.",
"Was the move successful?",
"Hopkins sought to continue and expand New York State's work-relief programs, the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration.",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"FERA, the largest program from 1933 to 1935, involved giving money to localities to operate work relief projects to employ those on direct relief.",
"Were there any other programs during this time?",
"CWA was similar but did not require workers to be on relief in order to receive a government sponsored job.",
"What did CWA stand for?",
"Civil Works Administration (CWA),"
] | C_8b44bc5ae6ef463b8c370e35db5c9b9d_0 | What does FERA stand for? | 6 | What does FERA stand for? | Harry Hopkins | In March 1933, Roosevelt summoned Hopkins to Washington as federal relief administrator. Convinced that paid work was psychologically more valuable than cash handouts, Hopkins sought to continue and expand New York State's work-relief programs, the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration. He supervised the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Over 90% of the people employed by the Hopkins programs were unemployed or on relief. He feuded with Harold Ickes, who ran a rival program--the Public Works Administration--which also created jobs but did not require applicants to be unemployed or on relief. FERA, the largest program from 1933 to 1935, involved giving money to localities to operate work relief projects to employ those on direct relief. CWA was similar but did not require workers to be on relief in order to receive a government sponsored job. In less than four months, the CWA hired four million people, and during its five months of operation, the CWA built and repaired 200 swimming pools, 3,700 playgrounds, 40,000 schools, 250,000 miles (400,000 km) of road, and 12 million feet of sewer pipe. The WPA, which followed the CWA, employed 8.5 million people in its seven-year history, working on 1.4 million projects, including the building or repair of 103 golf courses, 1,000 airports, 2,500 hospitals, 2,500 sports stadiums, 3,900 schools, 8,192 parks, 12,800 playgrounds, 124,031 bridges, 125,110 public buildings, and 651,087 miles (1,047,823 km) of highways and roads. The WPA operated on its own, and on selected projects in cooperation with local and state governments, but always with its own staff and budget. Hopkins started programs for youth (National Youth Administration) and for artists and writers (Federal One Programs). He and Eleanor Roosevelt worked together to publicize and defend New Deal relief programs. He was concerned with rural areas but increasingly focused on cities in the Great Depression. Before Hopkins began to decline from his struggle with stomach cancer in the late 1930s, FDR appeared to be training him as a possible successor. With the advent of World War II in Europe, however, FDR himself ran again in 1940, winning an unprecedented third term. CANNOTANSWER | Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), | Harry Lloyd Hopkins (August 17, 1890 – January 29, 1946) was an American statesman, public administrator, and presidential advisor. A trusted deputy to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Hopkins directed New Deal relief programs before serving as the 8th United States Secretary of Commerce from 1938 to 1940 and as Roosevelt's chief foreign policy advisor and liaison to Allied leaders during World War II. During his career, Hopkins supervised the New York Temporary Emergency Relief Administration, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the Civil Works Administration, and the Works Progress Administration, which he built into the largest employer in the United States. He later oversaw the $50 billion Lend-Lease program of military aid to the Allies and, as Roosevelt's personal envoy, played a pivotal role in shaping the alliance between the United States and the United Kingdom.
Born in Iowa, Hopkins settled in New York City after he graduated from Grinnell College. He accepted a position in New York City's Bureau of Child Welfare and worked for various social work and public health organizations. He was elected president of the National Association of Social Workers in 1923. In 1931, New York Temporary Emergency Relief Administration chairman Jesse I. Straus hired Hopkins as the agency's executive director. His successful leadership of the program earned the attention of then-New York Governor Roosevelt, who brought Hopkins into his federal administration after he won the 1932 presidential election. Hopkins enjoyed close relationships with President Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and was considered a potential successor to the president until the late 1930s, when his health began to decline due to a long-running battle with stomach cancer.
As Roosevelt's closest confidante, Hopkins assumed a leading foreign policy role after the outset of World War II. From 1940 until 1943, Hopkins lived in the White House and assisted the president in the management of American foreign policy, particularly toward the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. He traveled frequently to the United Kingdom, whose prime minister, Winston Churchill, recalled Hopkins in his memoirs as a "natural leader of men" with "a flaming soul." Hopkins attended the major conferences of the Allied powers, including the Cairo Conference (November 1943), the Tehran Conference (November–December 1943), the Casablanca Conference (January 1943), and the Yalta Conference (February 1945). His health continued to decline, and he died in 1946 at the age of 55.
Early life
Hopkins was born at 512 Tenth Street in Sioux City, Iowa, the fourth child of four sons and one daughter of David Aldona and Anna (née Pickett) Hopkins. His father, born in Bangor, Maine, ran a harness shop (after an erratic career as a salesman, prospector, storekeeper, and bowling-alley operator), but his real passion was bowling, and he eventually returned to it as a business. Anna Hopkins, born in Hamilton, Ontario, had moved at an early age to Vermillion, South Dakota, where she married David. She was deeply religious and active in the affairs of the Methodist church. Shortly after Harry was born, the family moved successively to Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Kearney and Hastings, Nebraska. They spent two years in Chicago and finally settled in Grinnell, Iowa.
Hopkins attended Grinnell College and soon after his graduation in 1912 took a job with Christodora House, a social settlement house in New York City's Lower East Side ghetto. In the spring of 1913, he accepted a position from John A. Kingsbury of the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor (AICP) as a "friendly visitor" and superintendent of the Employment Bureau within the AICP's Department of Family Welfare. During the 1915 recession, Hopkins and the AICP's William Matthews, with $5,000 from Elizabeth Milbank Anderson's Milbank Memorial Fund, organized the Bronx Park Employment program, which was one of the first public employment programs in the US.
Social and public health work
In 1915, New York City Mayor John Purroy Mitchel appointed Hopkins executive secretary of the Bureau of Child Welfare which administered pensions to mothers with dependent children.
Hopkins at first opposed America's entrance into World War I, but, when war was declared in 1917, he supported it enthusiastically. He was rejected for the draft because of a bad eye. Hopkins moved to New Orleans where he worked for the American Red Cross as director of Civilian Relief, Gulf Division. Eventually, the Gulf Division of the Red Cross merged with the Southwestern Division and Hopkins, headquartered now in Atlanta, was appointed general manager in 1921. Hopkins helped draft a charter for the American Association of Social Workers (AASW) and was elected its president in 1923.
In 1922, Hopkins returned to New York City, where the AICP was involved with the Milbank Memorial Fund and the State Charities Aid Association in running three health demonstrations in New York State. Hopkins became manager of the Bellevue-Yorkville health project and assistant director of the AICP. In mid-1924 he became executive director of the New York Tuberculosis Association. During his tenure, the agency grew enormously and absorbed the New York Heart Association.
In 1931, New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt named R. H. Macy's department store president Jesse Straus as president of the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration (TERA). Straus named Hopkins, then unknown to Roosevelt, as TERA's executive director. His efficient administration of the initial $20 million outlay to the agency gained Roosevelt's attention, and in 1932, he promoted Hopkins to the presidency of the agency. Hopkins and Eleanor Roosevelt began a long friendship, which strengthened his role in relief programs.
New Deal
In March 1933, Roosevelt summoned Hopkins to Washington as federal relief administrator. Convinced that paid work was psychologically more valuable than cash handouts, Hopkins sought to continue and expand New York State's work relief programs, the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration. He supervised the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Over 90% of the people employed by the Hopkins programs were unemployed or on relief. He feuded with Harold Ickes, who ran a rival program, the Public Works Administration, which also created jobs but did not require applicants to be unemployed or on relief.
FERA, the largest program from 1933 to 1935, involved giving money to localities to operate work relief projects to employ those on direct relief. CWA was similar but did not require workers to be on relief to receive a government-sponsored job. In less than four months, the CWA hired four million people, and during its five months of operation, the CWA built and repaired 200 swimming pools, 3,700 playgrounds, 40,000 schools, of road, and 12 million feet of sewer pipe.
The WPA, which followed the CWA, employed 8.5 million people in its seven-year history, working on 1.4 million projects, including the building or repair of 103 golf courses, 1,000 airports, 2,500 hospitals, 2,500 sports stadiums, 3,900 schools, 8,192 parks, 12,800 playgrounds, 124,031 bridges, 125,110 public buildings, and of highways and roads. The WPA operated on its own on selected projects in co-operation with local and state governments, but always with its own staff and budget. Hopkins started programs for youth (National Youth Administration) and for artists and writers (Federal One Programs). Hopkins and Eleanor Roosevelt worked together to publicize and defend New Deal relief programs. He was concerned with rural areas but increasingly focused on cities in the Great Depression.
Before Hopkins began to decline from his struggle with stomach cancer in the late 1930s, Roosevelt appeared to be training him as a possible successor. With the advent of World War II in Europe, however, Roosevelt ran again in 1940 and won an unprecedented third term.
World War II
On May 10, 1940, after a long night and day spent discussing the German invasion of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg that had ended the so-called "Phoney War," Roosevelt urged a tired Hopkins to stay for dinner and then the night in a second-floor White House bedroom. Hopkins would live out of the bedroom for the next three-and-a-half years.
On December 7, 1941, at 1:40 pm, Hopkins was in the Oval Study, in the White House, having lunch with President Roosevelt, when Roosevelt received the first report that Pearl Harbor had been attacked via phone from Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox. Initially, Hopkins was skeptical of the news until Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Harold Rainsford Stark called a few minutes later to confirm Pearl Harbor had in fact been attacked.
During the war years, Hopkins acted as Roosevelt's chief emissary to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. In January 1941, Roosevelt dispatched Hopkins to assess Britain's determination and situation. Churchill escorted the important visitor all over the United Kingdom. Before he returned, at a small dinner party in the North British Hotel, Glasgow, Hopkins rose to propose a toast: "I suppose you wish to know what I am going to say to President Roosevelt on my return. Well I am going to quote to you one verse from the Book of Ruth ... 'Whither thou goest, I will go and where thou lodgest I will lodge, thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.'" Hopkins became the administrator of the Lend-Lease program, under which the United States gave to Britain and Soviet Union, China, and other Allied nations food, oil, and materiel including warships, warplanes and weaponry. Repayment was primarily in the form of Allied military action against the enemy, as well as leases on army and naval bases in Allied territory used by American forces.
Hopkins had a major voice in policy for the vast $50 billion Lend-Lease program, especially regarding supplies, first for Britain and then, upon the German invasion, the Soviets. He went to Moscow in July 1941 to make personal contact with Joseph Stalin. Hopkins recommended and Roosevelt accepted the inclusion of the Soviets in Lend Lease. Hopkins made Lend Lease decisions in terms of Roosevelt's broad foreign policy goals. He accompanied Churchill to the Atlantic Conference. Hopkins promoted an aggressive war against Germany and successfully urged Roosevelt to use the Navy to protect convoys headed for Britain before the US had entered the war in December 1941. Roosevelt brought him along as advisor to his meetings with Churchill and Stalin at Cairo, Tehran, Casablanca in 1942-43, and Yalta in 1945. He was a firm supporter of China, which received Lend-Lease aid for its military and air force. Hopkins wielded more diplomatic power than the entire State Department. Hopkins helped identify and sponsor numerous potential leaders, including Dwight D. Eisenhower. He continued to live in the White House and saw the President more often than any other advisor.
In mid-1943, Hopkins faced a barrage of criticism from Republicans and the press that he had abused his position for personal profit. One Representative asserted that British media tycoon Lord Beaverbrook had given Hopkins's wife, Louise, $500,000 worth of emeralds, which Louise denied. Newspapers ran stories detailing sumptuous dinners that Hopkins attended while he was making public calls for sacrifice. Hopkins briefly considered suing the Chicago Tribune for libel after a story that compared him to Grigory Rasputin, the famous courtier of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, but he was dissuaded by Roosevelt.
Although Hopkins's health was steadily declining, Roosevelt sent him on additional trips to Europe in 1945. Hopkins attended the Yalta Conference in February 1945. He tried to resign after Roosevelt died, but President Harry S. Truman sent Hopkins on one more mission to Moscow.
Hopkins had three sons who served in the armed forces during the war: Robert, David and Stephen. Stephen was killed in action while he was serving in the Marine Corps.
Relations with Soviet Union
Hopkins was the top American official assigned to dealing with Soviet officials during World War II. He liaised with Soviet officials from the middle ranks to the very highest, including Stalin. Anastas Mikoyan was Hopkins' counterpart with responsibility for Lend-Lease. He often explained Roosevelt's plans to Stalin and other top Soviet officials to enlist Soviet support for American objectives, an endeavor that met with limited success. A particularly striking example of bad faith was Moscow's refusal to allow American naval experts to see the German experimental U-boat station at Gdynia captured on March 28, 1945 and thus to help the protection of the very convoys that carried Lend-Lease aid. In turn, Hopkins passed on Stalin's stated goals and needs to Roosevelt. As the top American decision maker in Lend-Lease, he gave priority to supplying the Soviet Union, despite repeated objections from Republicans. As Soviet soldiers were bearing the brunt of the war, Hopkins felt that American aid to the Soviets would hasten the war's conclusion.
Hopkins continued to be a target of attacks even after his death. George Racey Jordan testified to the House Un-American Activities Committee in December 1949 that Hopkins passed nuclear secrets to the Soviets. Historians do not cite Jordan as credible since at the time Jordan claimed to have met with Hopkins in Washington regarding uranium shipments, Hopkins was in intensive care at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. In 1963, the FBI concluded that Jordan "either lied for publicity and profit or was delusional."
Many US lend-lease records, including the correspondence of Hopkins and Edward Stettinius and the minutes of the Soviet protocol committee, were only declassified in the 1970s, long after opinions about Soviet espionage had hardened into dogma. These files are now open, and they confirm the veracity of nearly all of Jordan's claims, except for his allegation that Hopkin's actions were illegal.
It is likely that any Soviets who spoke to Hopkins would have been routinely required to report the contact to the NKVD, the Soviet national security agency. Eduard Mark (1998) says that some Soviets, such as spymaster Iskhak Akhmerov, thought that Hopkins was pro-Soviet, but others thought that he was not. Verne W. Newton, the author of FDR and the Holocaust, said that no writer discussing Hopkins has identified any secrets disclosed or any decision in which he distorted American priorities to help communism. As Mark demonstrated, Hopkins was not pro-Soviet in his recommendations to Roosevelt; he was anti-German and pro-American. Any "secrets" disclosed were authorized. Mark says that at the time, any actions were taken specifically to help the American war effort and to prevent the Soviets from making a deal with Hitler.
It is currently considered likely that Laurence Duggan was the titular agent "19." Hopkins may simply have been naïve in his estimation of Soviet intentions. The historian Robert Conquest wrote that "Hopkins seems just to have accepted an absurdly fallacious stereotype of Soviet motivation, without making any attempt whatever to think, or to study the readily available evidence, or to seek the judgement of the knowledgeable. He conducted policy vis-a-vis Stalin with mere dogmatic confidence in his own (and his circle's) unshakeable sentiments."
Personal life
In 1913, Hopkins married Ethel Gross (1886–1976), a Hungarian-Jewish immigrant active in New York City's Progressive movement. They had three sons: David, Robert, and Stephen, (they had lost an infant daughter to whooping cough) and though Gross divorced Hopkins in 1930 shortly before Hopkins became a public figure, the two kept up an intimate correspondence until 1945. In 1931, Hopkins married Barbara Duncan, who died of cancer six years later. They had one daughter, Diana (1932-2020). In 1942, Hopkins married Louise Gill Macy (1906–1963) in the Yellow Oval Room at the White House. Macy was a divorced, gregarious former editor for Harper's Bazaar. The two continued to live at the White House at Roosevelt's request, though Louise eventually demanded a home of their own. Hopkins ended his long White House stay on December 21, 1943, moving with his wife to a Georgetown townhouse.
Cancer and death
In mid-1939, Hopkins was told that he had stomach cancer, and doctors performed an extensive operation that removed 75% of his stomach. What remained of Hopkins's stomach struggled to digest proteins and fat, and a few months after the operation, doctors stated that he had only four weeks to live. At this point, Roosevelt brought in experts, who transfused Hopkins with blood plasma that halted his deterioration. When the "Phony War" phase of World War II ended in May 1940, the situation galvanised Hopkins; as Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote, "the curative impact of Hopkins' increasingly crucial role in the war effort was to postpone the sentence of death the doctors had given him for five more years".
Though his death has been attributed to his stomach cancer, some historians have suggested that it was the cumulative malnutrition related to his post-cancer digestive problems. Another claim is that Hopkins died from liver failure due to hepatitis or cirrhosis, but Robert Sherwood authoritatively reported that Hopkins' postmortem examination showed the cause of death was hemosiderosis due to hepatic iron accumulation from his many blood transfusions and iron supplements.
Hopkins died in New York City on January 29, 1946, at the age of 55. His body was cremated and his ashes interred in his former college town at the Hazelwood Cemetery in Grinnell, Iowa. There is a house on the Grinnell College campus named after him.
References
West, Diana. "American Betrayal" =(2014)
Further reading
Adams, Henry Hitch. Harry Hopkins: A Biography (1977)
Bremer, William W. "Along the 'American Way': The New Deal's Work Relief Programs for the Unemployed," Journal of American History Vol. 62, No. 3 (Dec., 1975), pp. 636–652 in JSTOR
Hopkins, June. "The road not taken: Harry Hopkins and New Deal Work Relief." Presidential Studies Quarterly 29, 2(306-316). online edition
Howard, Donald S. The WPA and Federal Relief Policy (1943) online edition
Klehr, Harvey; Haynes, John Earl. "Harry Hopkins and Soviet Espionage" Intelligence & National Security (Nov 2014) 29#6 pp 864–879.
Kurzman, Paul A. Harry Hopkins and the New Deal, R. E. Burdick Publishers (1974)
Meacham, Jon. Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship Random House (2003).
McJimsey, George. "Hopkins, Harry Lloyd" in American National Biography Online (2000)
McJimsey George T. Harry Hopkins: Ally of the Poor and Defender of Democracy (1987), biography.
Meriam, Lewis. Relief and Social Security. The Brookings Institution. (1946). Highly detailed analysis and statistical summary of all New Deal relief programs; 900 pages online edition
Sherwood, Robert E. Roosevelt and Hopkins (1948), memoir by senior FDR aide; Pulitzer Prize; published in England as The White House Papers Of Harry L. Hopkins Vol. I (1948) to Jan 1942; online vol 1 to Jan 1942
Singleton, Jeff. The American Dole: Unemployment Relief and the Welfare State in the Great Depression (2000) online edition
Smith, Jason Scott. Building New Deal Liberalism: The Political Economy of Public Works, 1933-1956 (2005)
Smith, Jean Edward. FDR, Random House (2007) scholarly biography
Williams, Edward Ainsworth. Federal Aid for Relief (1939) online edition
"Harry Lloyd Hopkins". Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement 4: 1946-1950. American Council of Learned Societies, 1974.
World War II
Allen, R.G.D. "Mutual Aid between the U.S. and the British Empire, 1941–5", in Journal of the Royal Statistical Society no. 109 #3, 1946. pp 243–77 in JSTOR detailed statistical data on Lend Lease
Clarke, Sir Richard. Anglo-American Economic Collaboration in War and Peace, 1942-1949. (1982), British perspective
Dallek, Robert. Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (2nd ed. 1995) standard scholarly survey online
Dawson, Raymond H. The Decision to Aid Russia, 1941: Foreign Policy and Domestic Politics (1959)
Dobson, Alan P. U.S. Wartime Aid to Britain, 1940-1946 London, 1986.
Herring Jr. George C. Aid to Russia, 1941-1946: Strategy, Diplomacy, the Origins of the Cold War (1973) online edition
Kimball, Warren F. The Most Unsordid Act: Lend-Lease, 1939-1941 (1969).
Kimball, Warren F. "Franklin D. Roosevelt and World War II," Presidential Studies Quarterly Vol. 34#1 (2004) pp 83+.
Louis, William Roger. Imperialism at Bay: The United States and the Decolonization of the British Empire, 1941-1945. 1977.
MacManus, James. Sleep in Peace Tonight, (Thomas Dunne Books, New York 2014), , A novel about Hopkins in London in 1941
O'Sullivan, Christopher. Harry Hopkins: FDR's Envoy to Churchill and Stalin. (Rowman and Littlefield 2014)
Reynolds, David. The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance 1937-1941: A Study on Competitive Cooperation (1981)
Roll, David. The Hopkins Touch: Harry Hopkins and the Forging of the Alliance to Defeat Hitler (2012) excerpt and text search and author webcast presentation
Sherwood, Robert E. Roosevelt and Hopkins (1948), memoir by senior FDR aide; Pulitzer Prize. online complete edition
Tuttle, Dwight William. Harry L. Hopkins and Anglo-American-Soviet Relations, 1941-1945 (1983)
Woods, Randall Bennett. A Changing of the Guard: Anglo-American Relations, 1941-1946 (1990)
External links
Svetlana Chervonnaya, "Hopkins, Harry Lloyd (1890-1946)," Documents Talk: A Non-Definitive History, www.documentstalk.com/
Harry Hopkins Index at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum
United States Secretaries of Commerce
+
People of the New Deal arts projects
Works Progress Administration administrators
Franklin D. Roosevelt administration cabinet members
20th-century American politicians
1890 births
1946 deaths
Deaths from stomach cancer
Deaths from cancer in New York (state)
Politicians from Sioux City, Iowa
American diplomats
Grinnell College alumni
Recipients of the Distinguished Service Medal (US Army)
New York (state) Democrats
People in public health
People from Georgetown (Washington, D.C.)
Civilian recipients of the Distinguished Service Medal (United States) | true | [
"Fera may refer to:\n Fera (band), a pop rock/singer-songwriter duo from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada\n Fera (constellation), old name for the southern constellation Lupus\n Fera (fish), a local name for several fish species and the eponymous dish\n Fera Airport, Fera Island, the Solomon Islands\nFera Island, an island in Isabel Province, Solomon Islands\n Fera Science Limited, formerly the Food and Environment Research Agency, UK\n\nFERA may refer to:\n Federal Emergency Relief Administration, US\n Federation of European Film Directors\n Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, India\n Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009, US\n\nSee also \n Ferae, a clade of mammals consisting of Carnivores and Pholidotes",
"Anthony Fera (born June 18, 1991) is an American football placekicker and punter who is currently a free agent.\n\nPlaying career\nHailing from Cypress, Texas, Fera attended St. Pius X High School. Fera later attended Penn State, redshirting in 2009. On November 17, 2010, Fera had an emergency appendectomy. In Penn State's 2011 game against Eastern Michigan, Fera became the first Nittany Lion since Chris Bahr in 1975 to be the starter for field goals, kickoffs and punts. After the 2011 season, Fera transferred to Texas. Fera missed the first four games of 2012 with a groin injury. Fera was a finalist for the 2013 Lou Groza Award.\n\nAfter college, Fera signed as a free agent for the BC Lions on May 27, 2015, eventually joining the practice roster on June 20, 2015. He was released by the team on June 3, 2016.\n\nOn August 9, 2016, Fera was signed by the Montreal Alouettes.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n Texas bio\n\nAmerican football placekickers\nAmerican football punters\nCanadian football placekickers\nCanadian football punters\nAmerican players of Canadian football\nPenn State Nittany Lions football players\nTexas Longhorns football players\nBC Lions players\nMontreal Alouettes players\nPlayers of American football from Philadelphia\nPlayers of American football from Texas\nPlayers of Canadian football from Philadelphia\nSportspeople from Harris County, Texas\n1991 births\nLiving people\nAll-American college football players"
] |
[
"Harry Hopkins",
"New Deal",
"What was the New Deal?",
"Roosevelt summoned Hopkins to Washington as federal relief administrator.",
"Was the move successful?",
"Hopkins sought to continue and expand New York State's work-relief programs, the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration.",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"FERA, the largest program from 1933 to 1935, involved giving money to localities to operate work relief projects to employ those on direct relief.",
"Were there any other programs during this time?",
"CWA was similar but did not require workers to be on relief in order to receive a government sponsored job.",
"What did CWA stand for?",
"Civil Works Administration (CWA),",
"What does FERA stand for?",
"Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA),"
] | C_8b44bc5ae6ef463b8c370e35db5c9b9d_0 | Did he do anything after the new deal was over? | 7 | Did Harry Hopkins do anything after the new deal was over? | Harry Hopkins | In March 1933, Roosevelt summoned Hopkins to Washington as federal relief administrator. Convinced that paid work was psychologically more valuable than cash handouts, Hopkins sought to continue and expand New York State's work-relief programs, the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration. He supervised the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Over 90% of the people employed by the Hopkins programs were unemployed or on relief. He feuded with Harold Ickes, who ran a rival program--the Public Works Administration--which also created jobs but did not require applicants to be unemployed or on relief. FERA, the largest program from 1933 to 1935, involved giving money to localities to operate work relief projects to employ those on direct relief. CWA was similar but did not require workers to be on relief in order to receive a government sponsored job. In less than four months, the CWA hired four million people, and during its five months of operation, the CWA built and repaired 200 swimming pools, 3,700 playgrounds, 40,000 schools, 250,000 miles (400,000 km) of road, and 12 million feet of sewer pipe. The WPA, which followed the CWA, employed 8.5 million people in its seven-year history, working on 1.4 million projects, including the building or repair of 103 golf courses, 1,000 airports, 2,500 hospitals, 2,500 sports stadiums, 3,900 schools, 8,192 parks, 12,800 playgrounds, 124,031 bridges, 125,110 public buildings, and 651,087 miles (1,047,823 km) of highways and roads. The WPA operated on its own, and on selected projects in cooperation with local and state governments, but always with its own staff and budget. Hopkins started programs for youth (National Youth Administration) and for artists and writers (Federal One Programs). He and Eleanor Roosevelt worked together to publicize and defend New Deal relief programs. He was concerned with rural areas but increasingly focused on cities in the Great Depression. Before Hopkins began to decline from his struggle with stomach cancer in the late 1930s, FDR appeared to be training him as a possible successor. With the advent of World War II in Europe, however, FDR himself ran again in 1940, winning an unprecedented third term. CANNOTANSWER | He supervised the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Over | Harry Lloyd Hopkins (August 17, 1890 – January 29, 1946) was an American statesman, public administrator, and presidential advisor. A trusted deputy to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Hopkins directed New Deal relief programs before serving as the 8th United States Secretary of Commerce from 1938 to 1940 and as Roosevelt's chief foreign policy advisor and liaison to Allied leaders during World War II. During his career, Hopkins supervised the New York Temporary Emergency Relief Administration, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the Civil Works Administration, and the Works Progress Administration, which he built into the largest employer in the United States. He later oversaw the $50 billion Lend-Lease program of military aid to the Allies and, as Roosevelt's personal envoy, played a pivotal role in shaping the alliance between the United States and the United Kingdom.
Born in Iowa, Hopkins settled in New York City after he graduated from Grinnell College. He accepted a position in New York City's Bureau of Child Welfare and worked for various social work and public health organizations. He was elected president of the National Association of Social Workers in 1923. In 1931, New York Temporary Emergency Relief Administration chairman Jesse I. Straus hired Hopkins as the agency's executive director. His successful leadership of the program earned the attention of then-New York Governor Roosevelt, who brought Hopkins into his federal administration after he won the 1932 presidential election. Hopkins enjoyed close relationships with President Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and was considered a potential successor to the president until the late 1930s, when his health began to decline due to a long-running battle with stomach cancer.
As Roosevelt's closest confidante, Hopkins assumed a leading foreign policy role after the outset of World War II. From 1940 until 1943, Hopkins lived in the White House and assisted the president in the management of American foreign policy, particularly toward the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. He traveled frequently to the United Kingdom, whose prime minister, Winston Churchill, recalled Hopkins in his memoirs as a "natural leader of men" with "a flaming soul." Hopkins attended the major conferences of the Allied powers, including the Cairo Conference (November 1943), the Tehran Conference (November–December 1943), the Casablanca Conference (January 1943), and the Yalta Conference (February 1945). His health continued to decline, and he died in 1946 at the age of 55.
Early life
Hopkins was born at 512 Tenth Street in Sioux City, Iowa, the fourth child of four sons and one daughter of David Aldona and Anna (née Pickett) Hopkins. His father, born in Bangor, Maine, ran a harness shop (after an erratic career as a salesman, prospector, storekeeper, and bowling-alley operator), but his real passion was bowling, and he eventually returned to it as a business. Anna Hopkins, born in Hamilton, Ontario, had moved at an early age to Vermillion, South Dakota, where she married David. She was deeply religious and active in the affairs of the Methodist church. Shortly after Harry was born, the family moved successively to Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Kearney and Hastings, Nebraska. They spent two years in Chicago and finally settled in Grinnell, Iowa.
Hopkins attended Grinnell College and soon after his graduation in 1912 took a job with Christodora House, a social settlement house in New York City's Lower East Side ghetto. In the spring of 1913, he accepted a position from John A. Kingsbury of the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor (AICP) as a "friendly visitor" and superintendent of the Employment Bureau within the AICP's Department of Family Welfare. During the 1915 recession, Hopkins and the AICP's William Matthews, with $5,000 from Elizabeth Milbank Anderson's Milbank Memorial Fund, organized the Bronx Park Employment program, which was one of the first public employment programs in the US.
Social and public health work
In 1915, New York City Mayor John Purroy Mitchel appointed Hopkins executive secretary of the Bureau of Child Welfare which administered pensions to mothers with dependent children.
Hopkins at first opposed America's entrance into World War I, but, when war was declared in 1917, he supported it enthusiastically. He was rejected for the draft because of a bad eye. Hopkins moved to New Orleans where he worked for the American Red Cross as director of Civilian Relief, Gulf Division. Eventually, the Gulf Division of the Red Cross merged with the Southwestern Division and Hopkins, headquartered now in Atlanta, was appointed general manager in 1921. Hopkins helped draft a charter for the American Association of Social Workers (AASW) and was elected its president in 1923.
In 1922, Hopkins returned to New York City, where the AICP was involved with the Milbank Memorial Fund and the State Charities Aid Association in running three health demonstrations in New York State. Hopkins became manager of the Bellevue-Yorkville health project and assistant director of the AICP. In mid-1924 he became executive director of the New York Tuberculosis Association. During his tenure, the agency grew enormously and absorbed the New York Heart Association.
In 1931, New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt named R. H. Macy's department store president Jesse Straus as president of the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration (TERA). Straus named Hopkins, then unknown to Roosevelt, as TERA's executive director. His efficient administration of the initial $20 million outlay to the agency gained Roosevelt's attention, and in 1932, he promoted Hopkins to the presidency of the agency. Hopkins and Eleanor Roosevelt began a long friendship, which strengthened his role in relief programs.
New Deal
In March 1933, Roosevelt summoned Hopkins to Washington as federal relief administrator. Convinced that paid work was psychologically more valuable than cash handouts, Hopkins sought to continue and expand New York State's work relief programs, the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration. He supervised the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Over 90% of the people employed by the Hopkins programs were unemployed or on relief. He feuded with Harold Ickes, who ran a rival program, the Public Works Administration, which also created jobs but did not require applicants to be unemployed or on relief.
FERA, the largest program from 1933 to 1935, involved giving money to localities to operate work relief projects to employ those on direct relief. CWA was similar but did not require workers to be on relief to receive a government-sponsored job. In less than four months, the CWA hired four million people, and during its five months of operation, the CWA built and repaired 200 swimming pools, 3,700 playgrounds, 40,000 schools, of road, and 12 million feet of sewer pipe.
The WPA, which followed the CWA, employed 8.5 million people in its seven-year history, working on 1.4 million projects, including the building or repair of 103 golf courses, 1,000 airports, 2,500 hospitals, 2,500 sports stadiums, 3,900 schools, 8,192 parks, 12,800 playgrounds, 124,031 bridges, 125,110 public buildings, and of highways and roads. The WPA operated on its own on selected projects in co-operation with local and state governments, but always with its own staff and budget. Hopkins started programs for youth (National Youth Administration) and for artists and writers (Federal One Programs). Hopkins and Eleanor Roosevelt worked together to publicize and defend New Deal relief programs. He was concerned with rural areas but increasingly focused on cities in the Great Depression.
Before Hopkins began to decline from his struggle with stomach cancer in the late 1930s, Roosevelt appeared to be training him as a possible successor. With the advent of World War II in Europe, however, Roosevelt ran again in 1940 and won an unprecedented third term.
World War II
On May 10, 1940, after a long night and day spent discussing the German invasion of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg that had ended the so-called "Phoney War," Roosevelt urged a tired Hopkins to stay for dinner and then the night in a second-floor White House bedroom. Hopkins would live out of the bedroom for the next three-and-a-half years.
On December 7, 1941, at 1:40 pm, Hopkins was in the Oval Study, in the White House, having lunch with President Roosevelt, when Roosevelt received the first report that Pearl Harbor had been attacked via phone from Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox. Initially, Hopkins was skeptical of the news until Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Harold Rainsford Stark called a few minutes later to confirm Pearl Harbor had in fact been attacked.
During the war years, Hopkins acted as Roosevelt's chief emissary to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. In January 1941, Roosevelt dispatched Hopkins to assess Britain's determination and situation. Churchill escorted the important visitor all over the United Kingdom. Before he returned, at a small dinner party in the North British Hotel, Glasgow, Hopkins rose to propose a toast: "I suppose you wish to know what I am going to say to President Roosevelt on my return. Well I am going to quote to you one verse from the Book of Ruth ... 'Whither thou goest, I will go and where thou lodgest I will lodge, thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.'" Hopkins became the administrator of the Lend-Lease program, under which the United States gave to Britain and Soviet Union, China, and other Allied nations food, oil, and materiel including warships, warplanes and weaponry. Repayment was primarily in the form of Allied military action against the enemy, as well as leases on army and naval bases in Allied territory used by American forces.
Hopkins had a major voice in policy for the vast $50 billion Lend-Lease program, especially regarding supplies, first for Britain and then, upon the German invasion, the Soviets. He went to Moscow in July 1941 to make personal contact with Joseph Stalin. Hopkins recommended and Roosevelt accepted the inclusion of the Soviets in Lend Lease. Hopkins made Lend Lease decisions in terms of Roosevelt's broad foreign policy goals. He accompanied Churchill to the Atlantic Conference. Hopkins promoted an aggressive war against Germany and successfully urged Roosevelt to use the Navy to protect convoys headed for Britain before the US had entered the war in December 1941. Roosevelt brought him along as advisor to his meetings with Churchill and Stalin at Cairo, Tehran, Casablanca in 1942-43, and Yalta in 1945. He was a firm supporter of China, which received Lend-Lease aid for its military and air force. Hopkins wielded more diplomatic power than the entire State Department. Hopkins helped identify and sponsor numerous potential leaders, including Dwight D. Eisenhower. He continued to live in the White House and saw the President more often than any other advisor.
In mid-1943, Hopkins faced a barrage of criticism from Republicans and the press that he had abused his position for personal profit. One Representative asserted that British media tycoon Lord Beaverbrook had given Hopkins's wife, Louise, $500,000 worth of emeralds, which Louise denied. Newspapers ran stories detailing sumptuous dinners that Hopkins attended while he was making public calls for sacrifice. Hopkins briefly considered suing the Chicago Tribune for libel after a story that compared him to Grigory Rasputin, the famous courtier of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, but he was dissuaded by Roosevelt.
Although Hopkins's health was steadily declining, Roosevelt sent him on additional trips to Europe in 1945. Hopkins attended the Yalta Conference in February 1945. He tried to resign after Roosevelt died, but President Harry S. Truman sent Hopkins on one more mission to Moscow.
Hopkins had three sons who served in the armed forces during the war: Robert, David and Stephen. Stephen was killed in action while he was serving in the Marine Corps.
Relations with Soviet Union
Hopkins was the top American official assigned to dealing with Soviet officials during World War II. He liaised with Soviet officials from the middle ranks to the very highest, including Stalin. Anastas Mikoyan was Hopkins' counterpart with responsibility for Lend-Lease. He often explained Roosevelt's plans to Stalin and other top Soviet officials to enlist Soviet support for American objectives, an endeavor that met with limited success. A particularly striking example of bad faith was Moscow's refusal to allow American naval experts to see the German experimental U-boat station at Gdynia captured on March 28, 1945 and thus to help the protection of the very convoys that carried Lend-Lease aid. In turn, Hopkins passed on Stalin's stated goals and needs to Roosevelt. As the top American decision maker in Lend-Lease, he gave priority to supplying the Soviet Union, despite repeated objections from Republicans. As Soviet soldiers were bearing the brunt of the war, Hopkins felt that American aid to the Soviets would hasten the war's conclusion.
Hopkins continued to be a target of attacks even after his death. George Racey Jordan testified to the House Un-American Activities Committee in December 1949 that Hopkins passed nuclear secrets to the Soviets. Historians do not cite Jordan as credible since at the time Jordan claimed to have met with Hopkins in Washington regarding uranium shipments, Hopkins was in intensive care at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. In 1963, the FBI concluded that Jordan "either lied for publicity and profit or was delusional."
Many US lend-lease records, including the correspondence of Hopkins and Edward Stettinius and the minutes of the Soviet protocol committee, were only declassified in the 1970s, long after opinions about Soviet espionage had hardened into dogma. These files are now open, and they confirm the veracity of nearly all of Jordan's claims, except for his allegation that Hopkin's actions were illegal.
It is likely that any Soviets who spoke to Hopkins would have been routinely required to report the contact to the NKVD, the Soviet national security agency. Eduard Mark (1998) says that some Soviets, such as spymaster Iskhak Akhmerov, thought that Hopkins was pro-Soviet, but others thought that he was not. Verne W. Newton, the author of FDR and the Holocaust, said that no writer discussing Hopkins has identified any secrets disclosed or any decision in which he distorted American priorities to help communism. As Mark demonstrated, Hopkins was not pro-Soviet in his recommendations to Roosevelt; he was anti-German and pro-American. Any "secrets" disclosed were authorized. Mark says that at the time, any actions were taken specifically to help the American war effort and to prevent the Soviets from making a deal with Hitler.
It is currently considered likely that Laurence Duggan was the titular agent "19." Hopkins may simply have been naïve in his estimation of Soviet intentions. The historian Robert Conquest wrote that "Hopkins seems just to have accepted an absurdly fallacious stereotype of Soviet motivation, without making any attempt whatever to think, or to study the readily available evidence, or to seek the judgement of the knowledgeable. He conducted policy vis-a-vis Stalin with mere dogmatic confidence in his own (and his circle's) unshakeable sentiments."
Personal life
In 1913, Hopkins married Ethel Gross (1886–1976), a Hungarian-Jewish immigrant active in New York City's Progressive movement. They had three sons: David, Robert, and Stephen, (they had lost an infant daughter to whooping cough) and though Gross divorced Hopkins in 1930 shortly before Hopkins became a public figure, the two kept up an intimate correspondence until 1945. In 1931, Hopkins married Barbara Duncan, who died of cancer six years later. They had one daughter, Diana (1932-2020). In 1942, Hopkins married Louise Gill Macy (1906–1963) in the Yellow Oval Room at the White House. Macy was a divorced, gregarious former editor for Harper's Bazaar. The two continued to live at the White House at Roosevelt's request, though Louise eventually demanded a home of their own. Hopkins ended his long White House stay on December 21, 1943, moving with his wife to a Georgetown townhouse.
Cancer and death
In mid-1939, Hopkins was told that he had stomach cancer, and doctors performed an extensive operation that removed 75% of his stomach. What remained of Hopkins's stomach struggled to digest proteins and fat, and a few months after the operation, doctors stated that he had only four weeks to live. At this point, Roosevelt brought in experts, who transfused Hopkins with blood plasma that halted his deterioration. When the "Phony War" phase of World War II ended in May 1940, the situation galvanised Hopkins; as Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote, "the curative impact of Hopkins' increasingly crucial role in the war effort was to postpone the sentence of death the doctors had given him for five more years".
Though his death has been attributed to his stomach cancer, some historians have suggested that it was the cumulative malnutrition related to his post-cancer digestive problems. Another claim is that Hopkins died from liver failure due to hepatitis or cirrhosis, but Robert Sherwood authoritatively reported that Hopkins' postmortem examination showed the cause of death was hemosiderosis due to hepatic iron accumulation from his many blood transfusions and iron supplements.
Hopkins died in New York City on January 29, 1946, at the age of 55. His body was cremated and his ashes interred in his former college town at the Hazelwood Cemetery in Grinnell, Iowa. There is a house on the Grinnell College campus named after him.
References
West, Diana. "American Betrayal" =(2014)
Further reading
Adams, Henry Hitch. Harry Hopkins: A Biography (1977)
Bremer, William W. "Along the 'American Way': The New Deal's Work Relief Programs for the Unemployed," Journal of American History Vol. 62, No. 3 (Dec., 1975), pp. 636–652 in JSTOR
Hopkins, June. "The road not taken: Harry Hopkins and New Deal Work Relief." Presidential Studies Quarterly 29, 2(306-316). online edition
Howard, Donald S. The WPA and Federal Relief Policy (1943) online edition
Klehr, Harvey; Haynes, John Earl. "Harry Hopkins and Soviet Espionage" Intelligence & National Security (Nov 2014) 29#6 pp 864–879.
Kurzman, Paul A. Harry Hopkins and the New Deal, R. E. Burdick Publishers (1974)
Meacham, Jon. Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship Random House (2003).
McJimsey, George. "Hopkins, Harry Lloyd" in American National Biography Online (2000)
McJimsey George T. Harry Hopkins: Ally of the Poor and Defender of Democracy (1987), biography.
Meriam, Lewis. Relief and Social Security. The Brookings Institution. (1946). Highly detailed analysis and statistical summary of all New Deal relief programs; 900 pages online edition
Sherwood, Robert E. Roosevelt and Hopkins (1948), memoir by senior FDR aide; Pulitzer Prize; published in England as The White House Papers Of Harry L. Hopkins Vol. I (1948) to Jan 1942; online vol 1 to Jan 1942
Singleton, Jeff. The American Dole: Unemployment Relief and the Welfare State in the Great Depression (2000) online edition
Smith, Jason Scott. Building New Deal Liberalism: The Political Economy of Public Works, 1933-1956 (2005)
Smith, Jean Edward. FDR, Random House (2007) scholarly biography
Williams, Edward Ainsworth. Federal Aid for Relief (1939) online edition
"Harry Lloyd Hopkins". Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement 4: 1946-1950. American Council of Learned Societies, 1974.
World War II
Allen, R.G.D. "Mutual Aid between the U.S. and the British Empire, 1941–5", in Journal of the Royal Statistical Society no. 109 #3, 1946. pp 243–77 in JSTOR detailed statistical data on Lend Lease
Clarke, Sir Richard. Anglo-American Economic Collaboration in War and Peace, 1942-1949. (1982), British perspective
Dallek, Robert. Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (2nd ed. 1995) standard scholarly survey online
Dawson, Raymond H. The Decision to Aid Russia, 1941: Foreign Policy and Domestic Politics (1959)
Dobson, Alan P. U.S. Wartime Aid to Britain, 1940-1946 London, 1986.
Herring Jr. George C. Aid to Russia, 1941-1946: Strategy, Diplomacy, the Origins of the Cold War (1973) online edition
Kimball, Warren F. The Most Unsordid Act: Lend-Lease, 1939-1941 (1969).
Kimball, Warren F. "Franklin D. Roosevelt and World War II," Presidential Studies Quarterly Vol. 34#1 (2004) pp 83+.
Louis, William Roger. Imperialism at Bay: The United States and the Decolonization of the British Empire, 1941-1945. 1977.
MacManus, James. Sleep in Peace Tonight, (Thomas Dunne Books, New York 2014), , A novel about Hopkins in London in 1941
O'Sullivan, Christopher. Harry Hopkins: FDR's Envoy to Churchill and Stalin. (Rowman and Littlefield 2014)
Reynolds, David. The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance 1937-1941: A Study on Competitive Cooperation (1981)
Roll, David. The Hopkins Touch: Harry Hopkins and the Forging of the Alliance to Defeat Hitler (2012) excerpt and text search and author webcast presentation
Sherwood, Robert E. Roosevelt and Hopkins (1948), memoir by senior FDR aide; Pulitzer Prize. online complete edition
Tuttle, Dwight William. Harry L. Hopkins and Anglo-American-Soviet Relations, 1941-1945 (1983)
Woods, Randall Bennett. A Changing of the Guard: Anglo-American Relations, 1941-1946 (1990)
External links
Svetlana Chervonnaya, "Hopkins, Harry Lloyd (1890-1946)," Documents Talk: A Non-Definitive History, www.documentstalk.com/
Harry Hopkins Index at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum
United States Secretaries of Commerce
+
People of the New Deal arts projects
Works Progress Administration administrators
Franklin D. Roosevelt administration cabinet members
20th-century American politicians
1890 births
1946 deaths
Deaths from stomach cancer
Deaths from cancer in New York (state)
Politicians from Sioux City, Iowa
American diplomats
Grinnell College alumni
Recipients of the Distinguished Service Medal (US Army)
New York (state) Democrats
People in public health
People from Georgetown (Washington, D.C.)
Civilian recipients of the Distinguished Service Medal (United States) | true | [
"Say Anything is the fourth full-length and self-titled studio album by American rock band Say Anything.\n\nBackground and recording\nIn late 2007, vocalist Max Bemis and drummer Coby Linder worked with Saves the Day vocalist-guitarist Chris Conley and guitarist David Soloway for the side project Two Tongues. In an online chat with fans on March 14, 2008, Max Bemis stated that the band has plans to record a new record called This Is Forever. He said it will be \"about God and how we relate to him.\" AbsolutePunk reported on August 1, 2008, that J Records \"picked up the option for Say Anything's next release.\" In November, alongside the announcement of Two Tongues' debut album, it was revealed that Say Anything was working on their next album, which would be released in 2009. On November 10, Bemis announced that the focus of the fourth album changed and the new record would be self-titled. He noted that the album, which was to be released in 2009, will ask \"what the point of all of it was.\"\n\nThough Bemis has explained that he was very proud of In Defense of the Genre, he described it as being more of an \"homage to sort of a lot of the bands that we liked and, like, a style that we respected.\" He then explained that the new album would be \"more concise and would be a bit more original, I want to say, and sort of pop out like ...Is a Real Boy did.\" He also explained that this CD has both the catchiest and most mature songs they've ever recorded and called it a \"step forward.\"\n\nDuring a concert at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York, on April 25, 2009, Max Bemis proclaimed to the crowd that the newest album titled Say Anything was complete, and would be released \"early summer\", after stating that he was married two weeks prior to the event on April 4, 2009.\n\nAccording to Say Anything's In Studio website, on May 21, 2009, Bemis posted a blog entry stating \"I just wanted to let you guys know we’re done recording our new record, entitled \"Say Anything\", and we’re moving into the mixing phase. It should be out this fall. This record is kind of a new start, or at least a new phase in the Say Anything story.\"\n\nRelease\nAfter originally being scheduled to be released through RCA Records on October 13, 2009, it was delayed to November 3. Say Anything frontman Max Bemis posted a blog entry on the band's official site on July 30 announcing its release, and said the album \"literally defines everything about the band we've built so far.\" Max Bemis confirmed through Twitter, on June 21, that the first single from the album will be \"Hate Everyone\". The single was released on August 25. The song impacted radio on September 15. The second single from the album was \"Do Better.\"\n\nOn September 15, 2009 the song \"Property\" from the upcoming album was made available to fans who signed up for the Say Anything official mailing list on the band's official website. The complete album was uploaded to the band's Myspace page on October 29, 2009. Max Bemis stated on his Twitter that the next single from the album would be \"Do Better\" and that Say Anything will debut their live performance of \"Do Better\" on the Angels and Airwaves Spring Tour 2010. \"Do Better\" debuted on April 5, 2010 at The Warfield in San Francisco.\n\nReception\n\nSay Anything was given a metascore of 76 on aggregator Metacritic, from 8 critics it was rated as receiving generally favorable reviews.\n\nA review from Sputnikmusic gave the album a 4.5/5 stars stating: \"Pretty much, Say Anything offers more for fans and opens up the Say Anything sound for new ‘users’ to come and enjoy.\"\n\nThe album debuted at number 25 on the Billboard 200, Say Anything's highest charting record to date.\n\nTrack listing\n\nBonus tracks\n\nDeluxe edition\nDouble Vinyl Gatefold LP\n3-D Poster w/ Glasses\n13 Track CD/MP3 Download\n9 Track Demo CD\nT-Shirt & Badge\n\"Hate Everyone\" Lyrics Sheet\nGuitar Pick Card\nIron-On Decal\n\nSay Anything's Secret Origin\n\nReferences\n\n2009 albums\nSay Anything (band) albums\nRCA Records albums\nAlbums produced by Neal Avron",
"\"Was There Anything I Could Do?\" is a song by the Australian alternative rock band The Go-Betweens that was issued as the second single from their sixth album 16 Lovers Lane. The song was released 3 October 1988 by Beggars Banquet Records in the UK and Mushroom Records in Australia but failed to chart in either region. It was released as a promotional single in the US by Capitol Records and charted on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks charts in the United States, peaking at No. 16.\n\n\"Was There Anything I Could Do?\" was not necessarily the unanimous choice by all members of the band, with claims by some that they wanted Forster's \"Clouds\" whilst McLennan pushed for the song as it was more driving and anthemic.\n\nCover versions \nThe song was covered by Maxïmo Park and included on a limited edition compilation album, released in July 2008 to celebrate the launch of Independents Day.\n\nIn 2010 a cover of the song by The Buzzards, was included on a Go-Betweens tribute album, Right Here.\n\nFranz Ferdinand in November 2013 covered the song on Triple J's Like a Version programme.\n\nIn 2014 a cover of the song by Missy Higgins was included on her album, Oz.\n\nTrack listing\n\nOriginal 7\" Vinyl release\n \"Was There Anything I Could Do?\" - 3:06\n \"Rock and Roll Friend\" - 3:30\n\nOriginal 12\" Vinyl release\n \"Was There Anything I Can Do?\" - 3:06\n \"Rock and Roll Friend\" - 3:30\n \"Mexican Postcard\" - 2:13\n\nOriginal CD single release\n \"Was There Anything I Can Do?\" - 3:06\n \"Rock and Roll Friend\" - 3:30\n \"Mexican Postcard\" - 2:13\n \"Bye Bye Pride\" - 4:06\n\nRelease history\n\nNotes\nA. :The US release was a 12\" promotional release with \"Was There Anything I Could Do?\" on each side.\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n [ \"Was There Anything I Could Do?\"] @ AllMusic\n \"Was There Anything I Could Do?\" @ MusicBrainz\n \"Was There Anything I Could Do?\" @ Discogs\n Video\n Alternate Video\n\n1988 singles\nThe Go-Betweens songs\n1988 songs\nMushroom Records singles\nBeggars Banquet Records singles\nSongs written by Grant McLennan\nSongs written by Robert Forster (musician)"
] |
[
"Boyz II Men",
"2011-12: Love Cruise and Twenty"
] | C_8f95b254b0fd4b59ad645c7e25273c01_0 | Are there any other interesting aspects about this article? | 1 | Are there any other interesting aspects about this article other than Boyz II Men, 2011-12: Love Cruise and Twenty? | Boyz II Men | Boyz II Men headlined a "Love Cruise" in honor of their 20th anniversary and in observance of Valentine's Day. The cruise took place February 11-14, 2011, and traveled from Miami, Florida, to Nassau, Bahamas. Cruise passengers received a Boyz II Men welcome cocktail party, a concert performance by Boyz II Men, an additional fan appreciation concert by Boyz II Men, a photo session with Boyz II Men (in small groups), a formal prom night, a poker tournament, a deck party with Boyz II Men and a guest DJ, a singles mixer, a gift bag, and onboard drawings for other Boyz II Men events. Couples were able to renew their wedding vows in a special ceremony with Boyz II Men. Twenty, named in recognition of Boyz II Men's twenty years in the music business, is a double CD album with thirteen original songs and eight rerecorded Boyz II Men classics. It was released on October 25, 2011. Twenty is the group's fourth release through MSM Music Group. It was released in Japan 13 days before its official US release date with the help of Avex Group, the biggest Japanese independent record label. Originally, Boyz II Men announced a reunion with original member Michael McCary for the Twenty album. On September 6, 2009, at a concert in Virginia Beach, Virginia, Stockman announced that their upcoming 20th anniversary album "include all 4 members", sparking a tremendous applause. But soon after that announcement, McCary declined and did not join the project. Boyz II Men contributed a cover of Japanese rock band L'Arc~en~Ciel's song "Snow Drop" to their 2012 tribute album. CANNOTANSWER | Boyz II Men headlined a "Love Cruise" in honor of their 20th anniversary and in observance of Valentine's Day. | Boyz II Men (pronounced boys to men), also known as B2M, is an American vocal harmony group from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, best known for emotional ballads and a cappella harmonies. They are currently a trio composed of baritone Nathan Morris alongside tenors Wanya Morris and Shawn Stockman. During the 1990s, Boyz II Men found fame on Motown Records as a quartet including bass Michael McCary, who left the group in 2003 due to back spasms that were eventually diagnosed as multiple sclerosis.
During the 1990s, Boyz II Men gained international success. This began with the release of top 5 singles "Motownphilly" and "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday" in 1991, followed by the number one single "End of the Road" in 1992, which reached the top of charts worldwide. "End of the Road" set a new record for longevity, staying at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for thirteen weeks. Boyz II Men proceeded to break this record with the subsequent releases of "I'll Make Love to You" and "One Sweet Day" (with Mariah Carey), which, at fourteen and sixteen weeks, respectively, each set new records for the total number of weeks at number one. "I'll Make Love to You" also topped the charts in Australia (for four weeks) and garnered international success.
Consequently, Boyz II Men is among the music industry's elite with regard to time spent at number one in Billboard history with 50 cumulative weeks, ranking sixth behind Drake, the Beatles, Rihanna, Elvis Presley and Carey. Furthermore, when "On Bended Knee" took the number one spot away from "I'll Make Love to You", Boyz II Men became only the third artists ever (after the Beatles and Presley) to replace themselves at the top of the Billboard Hot 100. These achievements were enough to earn Boyz II Men recognition as Billboard magazine's biggest boy band during the period of 1987 to 2012. Boyz II Men has received four Grammy Awards.
Boyz II Men continue to perform worldwide, as a trio. Their most recent studio album, Under the Streetlight, was released in 2017.
In June 2017, a section of Broad Street (from Christian to Carpenter Streets) in Philadelphia was renamed "Boyz II Men Boulevard". This section of the street is near the High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, where the members once attended.
History
1985–1990: Beginnings
The group, originally known as Unique Attraction, was started by friends Nathan Morris and Marc Nelson at the Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA) along with fellow schoolmates George Baldi, Jon Shoats, and Marguerite Walker in 1985. In 1987, Wanya Morris, who sang in the school's choir along with the members of Unique Attraction, joined the group and became a permanent member when he was only a freshman. In 1988 Baldi, Shoats, and Walker all left the group due to graduation. They then recruited Shawn Stockman after seeing him perform a solo in the school's choir. One day, Nate, Marc, Wanya and Shawn were practicing harmonies in a school bathroom and in walked Michael McCary who started singing along with the group and eventually became the group's new bass singer. Now with a permanent lineup of members, the group rehearsed in the high school's bathrooms, due to the excellent acoustics, and on the corners of their schools and local hangouts. They found inspiration in New Edition's harmonies and routines, and eventually renamed the group "Boyz II Men", after one of New Edition's songs, "Boys to Men", from their 1988 album Heart Break. After performing at a Valentine's Day party at school in 1989 they got their big break when they snuck into a concert put on by local radio station Power 99 at the Philadelphia Civic Center. Their plan was to find Will Smith backstage and perform for him. But while looking for Smith, they happened to cross paths with New Edition member Michael Bivins, who along with fellow groupmates Ricky Bell and Ronnie DeVoe just announced they were forming a New Edition spin-off trio Bell Biv DeVoe. After they sang New Edition's "Can You Stand the Rain" for him, Bivins and everyone in attendance including other celebrities were impressed. He then gave the group his number and told them to give him a call. Nate eventually called him, and he agreed to manage and helped produce the group.
The delay before recording their own material and reported personality conflicts led founding member Marc Nelson to leave the group, making Boyz II Men into the quartet that found international fame: Michael McCary, Nathan Morris, Wanya Morris, and Shawn Stockman.
1991–1992: Cooleyhighharmony and "End of the Road"
Boyz II Men's first album, Cooleyhighharmony, was released on Motown in 1991 and was produced by Michael Bivins. Cooleyhighharmonys drum-heavy new jack swing sound and multi-layered sampled backdrops were similar to that of Bell Biv DeVoe's own work, but featured classic-soul styled vocals in place of BBD's rapping and brassier singing. This style was dubbed "hip hop doo-wop" by the group and Bivins, who presented Boyz II Men and adolescent R&B group Another Bad Creation to the public as BBD's protégés.
From the beginning, Boyz II Men featured all four members as leads, avoiding the usual R&B group arrangement of one or two lead singers and a team of background singers. The multiple-lead arrangement became a Boyz II Men trademark, and it became typical to hear Wanya Morris' vibrato-heavy tenor, Shawn Stockman's tenor voice, Nathan Morris' baritone, and Michael McCary's bass (often used in spoken-word sections of many Boyz II Men hits) trading bars in each song.
The album's liner notes identified unique nicknames for each member of the group. These nicknames were devised in collaboration with Bivins in an attempt at marketing. Wanya was "Squirt", Shawn was "Slim", Michael was simply "Bass", and Nathan assumed the name "Alex Vanderpool", after a soap opera character who brandished a nerdy style.
Boyz II Men's first single, the Dallas Austin-produced "Motownphilly" featured a rap cameo by Michael Bivins that gives the story of how he met Boyz II Men. The single's release was accompanied with a music video that presented the group in hip hop style. (The video also included cameos from fellow Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts alumni Black Thought and Questlove of The Roots.) Cooleyhighharmonys second single was an a cappella cover of a classic Motown tune, G.C. Cameron's "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday" from the 1975 film Cooley High, while "Uhh Ahh" served as the third single.
Cooleyhighharmony achieved major success, eventually selling over nine million copies and winning the Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals at the 1992 Grammy Awards. Boyz II Men were also nominated for Best New Artist, along with British singer-songwriter Seal, fellow R&B group Color Me Badd, as well as dance group C+C Music Factory, but the Grammy was awarded to singer-songwriter Marc Cohn. "Motownphilly" and "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday" were number 1 R&B hits and top five U.S. pop hits.
In 1992, Boyz II Men joined MC Hammer's high-profile 2 Legit 2 Quit tour as an opening act. While traveling the country, their tour manager Khalil Roundtree was murdered in Chicago, and the group's future performances of "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday" were dedicated to him. As a result of this unfortunate experience, the song helped advance their success.
While touring during 1992, Boyz II Men returned briefly to the studio to record the single "End of the Road", co-written and produced by Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds, for the soundtrack to Eddie Murphy's film Boomerang. This song, released as a single on June 30, 1992, became Boyz II Men's biggest hit. It reached the number one position on the Billboard Hot 100 on August 15, remaining there for a record-setting 13 weeks, until November 14, 1992. The success of "End of the Road" instantly transformed Boyz II Men from up-and-coming R&B stars into mainstream music celebrities.
A revamped Cooleyhighharmony was reissued during 1993, with "End of the Road" added as a special bonus track, but "End of the Road" initially appeared only on the Boomerang soundtrack. Later the track was included on a collection of singles produced by Michael Bivins called "East Coast Family, Vol. 1". Shortly after the release of this compilation, Boyz II Men and Michael Bivins parted ways professionally. Boyz II Men continued to work with Babyface and other high-profile record producers over the next several years.
1994: II and "I'll Make Love to You"
After releasing a Christmas compilation, Christmas Interpretations in 1993, Boyz II Men returned to the studio for their highly anticipated sophomore effort. In 1994, II was released. II sold more than copies in the United States alone, becoming one of the best-selling albums ever released by an R&B group act, and one of the biggest albums of the decade. II later won two awards at the 1995 Grammy Awards including Best R&B Album.
Most of the tracks on II were written and produced by Tim & Bob—Tim Kelley and Bob Robinson (5), Babyface (2) and the successful team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis (2). Several of IIs tracks became major singles, among them Jam & Lewis's "On Bended Knee", and Babyface's "I'll Make Love to You" and "Water Runs Dry".
"I'll Make Love to You" broke "End of the Road's" 13-week record at number 1, by spending 14 weeks at the top of the chart (a feat equaled earlier that year by Whitney Houston's cover of "I Will Always Love You"). "On Bended Knee" replaced "I'll Make Love to You" at number 1, making Boyz II Men only the third act ever to replace itself at number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, after Elvis Presley and the Beatles.
In 1995, the group appeared as backing vocalists on "HIStory" from Michael Jackson's Grammy-nominated ninth album of the same name.
1997–1998: Evolution and label conflicts
Motown issued The Remix Collection, a compilation of remixes of various Boyz II Men songs from Cooleyhighharmony and II. The group itself had opposed the release of the collection because they felt the compilation did not represent Boyz II Men's best work. After the label released the album without their permission, there was a dispute between the company and the group. Boyz II Men initiated their own recording company Stonecreek (which released material by artists such as Uncle Sam), and they arranged for Stonecreek's distribution by Epic Records, not Motown.
Boyz II Men's third studio album, Evolution, was released during 1997 to mixed reviews and sold three million copies, far below the stratospheric success of IIs ( copies) and Cooleyhighharmony (). Only one of Evolutions singles, the Jam/Lewis-penned "Four Seasons of Loneliness", reached number 1 on the Hot 100 chart. The second single, the Babyface-helmed "A Song for Mama" (the theme song to the Babyface-produced film Soul Food) was a Top 10 success, but the follow-up "Can't Let Her Go" underperformed.
The global tour began in 1997 to promote Evolution was successful in terms of ticket sales, but behind the scenes, Boyz II Men was wracked by conflicts with their record label and internal conflicts among the members of the group. Making matters worse, health problems began to take their toll on the group. While on tour to support the Evolution album, Wanya Morris developed a polyp on his vocal cords, and the group was forced to postpone part of the tour until he recovered. McCary's multiple sclerosis meant that he was unable to participate in most of the group's dance routines.
Boyz II Men were nominated for 2 Grammys in 1998: Best R&B Album for Evolution and Best R&B Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group for "A Song for Mama".
1999–2001: Nathan Michael Shawn Wanya
In 1999, Motown's parent company, PolyGram, was bought by Universal Music Group. Amidst the major corporate restructure, Motown was merged with UMG's Universal Records, where Boyz II Men found themselves reassigned.
Their only studio LP album for Universal, 2000's Nathan Michael Shawn Wanya, was chiefly written and produced by the group itself, in an attempt to update their sound and ward off critics who questioned the group's reliance on Babyface's hit-making songcraft. While the critics were more receptive to Nathan Michael Shawn Wanya than they had been to its predecessor, the LP sold only 500,000 copies in the US, copies worldwide, and although its two singles, "Pass You By" and "Thank You in Advance" received media attention, neither became hits.
Boyz II Men departed from Universal in 2001, ending their relationship with the company that brought them to international stardom in 1991. The label released a very successful greatest hits compilation, Legacy: The Greatest Hits Collection, to close out their contract.
2002–2003: Full Circle and "The Color of Love"
Signing a new deal with Arista Records in 2002, Boyz II Men began recording the Full Circle album, and recruited Babyface for a new single, "The Color of Love". In an attempt to recapture the massive success the group had enjoyed a decade earlier, the album received a significant promotional budget. Arista commissioned a high-budget music video, shot in four different locales by four different directors: supervising director Little X filmed scenes featuring Michael McCary in India, Hype Williams filmed Shawn Stockman in Tokyo, Benny Boom filmed Nathan Morris in Ghana, and Chris Robinson filmed Wanya Morris in Puerto Rico and finally all were filmed in New York. The resulting music video had a debut on BET, but failed to have a great effect, and Full Circle, like Nathan Michael Shawn Wanya before it, sold slightly more than 500,000 copies in the US and copies worldwide.
Full Circle became Boyz II Men's final album as a quartet, and their last effort to receive extensive promotion from a major record company. On , 2003, Michael McCary left Boyz II Men due to chronic back problems resulting from multiple sclerosis (MS) and personal problems. Arista terminated Boyz II Men's contract on , and the remaining three members took a temporary hiatus from the music industry.
2004–2006: Throwback, Vol. 1 and The Remedy
After a year out of the spotlight, Boyz II Men created the independent label MSM Music Group (distributed through Koch Records), and released the Throwback, Vol. 1 LP in 2004. The album is a collection of covers of classic R&B and soul songs such as The Dazz Band's "Let It Whip", Michael Jackson's "Human Nature", and, as the single, Bobby Caldwell's "What You Won't Do for Love". For this record, Nathan took on the bass lines as well as the baritone vocals that he sang when Boyz II Men was a quartet. Throwback, Vol. 1 reached number 59 on the Billboard 200. The group launched an independent tour of North America and Asia in support of the Throwback series. The album sold over 200,000 copies with little to no promotion aside from the group's independent tour.
In 2005 Boyz II Men recorded a CD with Anderson Cameau called "Apocalypse", a project meant to benefit Haiti.
In 2006, Boyz II Men's seventh studio album, The Remedy, was released exclusively in Japan, where they found a thriving fan base. In other regions, The Remedy was made available online through the group's website on , 2007.
2007–2008: Hitsville USA
In mid-2007, the group re-signed with Universal Records and released the LP Motown: A Journey Through Hitsville USA through the Decca Records label. The LP is a cover album featuring songs from the Motown Records catalog, co-produced by Randy Jackson of American Idol fame. The Motown album includes covers of songs by The Temptations ("Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)"), Marvin Gaye ("Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing", "Mercy Mercy Me"), Smokey Robinson & the Miracles ("The Tracks of My Tears"), and even Boyz II Men themselves (an a cappella version of "End of the Road").
Commercially, Motown found some success. It peaked at number 6 on the US R&B chart and was certified Gold in the UK. The album was also a critical success. For the 51st Annual Grammy Awards in 2009, Boyz II Men received two nominations for the album Motown: A Journey Through Hitsville USA (Best R&B Album and Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals for "Ribbon in the Sky").
In 2008, Boyz II Men's three members appeared on Celebrity Don't Forget the Lyrics and created a sensation with their performance. They earned $500,000 for their two nominated charities; the appearance also generated interest in their next release.
2009: Love
In 2009, Boyz II Men announced plans for a new cover album, that covers "artists I don't think people would expect us to cover!" according to Shawn Stockman. Entitled Love, the album was released on , 2009. The album contains remakes of love songs from outside the R&B genre.
2011–2012: Love Cruise and Twenty
Boyz II Men headlined a "Love Cruise" in honor of their 20th anniversary and in observance of Valentine's Day. The cruise took place –14, 2011, and traveled from Miami, Florida, to Nassau, Bahamas. Cruise passengers received a Boyz II Men welcome cocktail party, a concert performance by Boyz II Men, an additional fan appreciation concert by Boyz II Men, a photo session with Boyz II Men (in small groups), a formal prom night, a poker tournament, a deck party with Boyz II Men and a guest DJ, a singles mixer, a gift bag, and onboard drawings for other Boyz II Men events. Couples were able to renew their wedding vows in a special ceremony with Boyz II Men.
Twenty, named in recognition of Boyz II Men's twenty years in the music business, is a double CD album with thirteen original songs and eight rerecorded Boyz II Men classics. It was released on October 25, 2011. Twenty is the group's fourth release through MSM Music Group. It was released in Japan 13 days before its official US release date with the help of Avex Group, the biggest Japanese independent record label.
Originally, Boyz II Men announced a reunion with original member Michael McCary for the Twenty album. On September 6, 2009, at a concert in Virginia Beach, Virginia, Stockman announced that their upcoming 20th anniversary album would "include all 4 members", sparking a tremendous applause.
But soon after that announcement, McCary declined and did not join the project.
As a trio, Boyz II Men performed as special guests on VH1's highly rated VH1 Divas Celebrate Soul concert.
Boyz II Men contributed a cover of Japanese rock band L'Arc~en~Ciel's song "Snow Drop" to their 2012 tribute album.
2013–present: The Package Tour, Collide, and Geico Commercials
On January 22, 2013, the group appeared on The View along with New Kids on the Block and 98 Degrees to announce their joint tour that took place in summer 2013. As of February 20, 2013, Boyz II Men announced that beginning March 1, 2013, they will stop touring and begin performing shows at the Mirage Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.
On January 13, 2014, the trio appeared at the end of an episode of How I Met Your Mother titled "Slapsgiving 3: Slappointment in Slapmarra", performing an a cappella version of the show's song "You Just Got Slapped". Their eleventh album, titled Collide, was released on October 21, 2014.
In 2016, the trio appeared in Grease: Live as the Teen Angels and sang Beauty School Dropout.
Wanya placed 4th for the 22nd season of the ABC realty competition series Dancing With The Stars. They also did music for an animated adaptation of The Snowy Day.
In 2017, the group began starring in television commercials for GEICO Auto Insurance.
On June 24, 2017, a section of Broad Street in Philadelphia, from Christian to Carpenter Streets, was renamed, “Boyz II Men Boulevard” by the city council. Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, where the members of Boyz II Men were once students, is on this section of Broad Street.
In August 2017, it was announced they were releasing a new album titled Under the Streetlight in the Fall. It was released on October 20, 2017.
On January 4, 2018, the group was featured in a new track released by Charlie Puth, titled "If You Leave Me Now", created for Charlie Puth's album Voicenotes.
On September 6, 2018, the group performed at the NFL 2018–2019 season kickoff at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, PA.
On October 2, 2018, the group performed "Ladies Man" on ABC's Dancing with the Stars. DeMarcus Ware and Lindsay Arnold danced a quickstep to the song.
The group is featured on a re-imagined version of Take That's song Love Ain't Here Anymore from their number one selling album Odyssey. Howard Donald revealed during an interview with Magic Radio that "he fulfilled a dream when they recorded this song".
On December 15, 2018, the group staged a concert at the Smart Araneta Coliseum with Filipino girl group DIVAS—a group composed of Kyla, Yeng Constantino, KZ Tandingan and Angeline Quinto titled Boyz II Men with DIVAS.
On September 18, 2019, it was reported that the group would play themselves on the ABC comedy series Schooled.
On September 30, 2019, Boyz II Men announced their Asia Tour, which is slated to take place after returning from their US tour and residency in Las Vegas. They will be visiting cities such as Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok (December 7), Singapore (December 9) and Manila.
Style and influence
Boyz II Men is among the biggest names in a cappella and R&B. With what was called "crossover appeal", Boyz II Men found themselves at the vanguard of the 1990s movement to take R&B back into the mainstream, where it had been back in the 1970s. Their use of hip-hop beats in combination with R&B was not unique, but it was Boyz II Men's enormous success with mainstream audiences in "putting harmony over the hip-hop tracks" that helped usher in the near-total dominance of the R&B genre on the pop charts in the 2000s and 2010s. On January 5, 2012, Boyz II Men were awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. They were featured on the first episode of the 2021 Netflix series This Is Pop, called "The Boyz II Men Effect", about their impact on the boy band scene in the 1990s.
Members
Current
Nathan Morris (1985–present)
Wanya Morris (1987–present)
Shawn Stockman (1988–present)
Former
Michael McCary (1988–2003)
Marc Nelson (1985–1990)
George Baldi (1985–1988)
Jon Shoats (1985–1988)
Marguerite Walker (1985–1988)
Discography
Studio albums
Cooleyhighharmony (1991)
Christmas Interpretations (1993)
II (1994)
Evolution (1997)
Nathan Michael Shawn Wanya (2000)
Full Circle (2002)
Throwback, Vol. 1 (2004)
The Remedy (2006)
Motown: A Journey Through Hitsville USA (2007)
Love (2009)
Twenty (2011)
Collide (2014)
Under the Streetlight (2017)
Filmography
"Going Home" (1995): A Disney Channel concert special filmed during Boyz II Men's "All Around the World Tour" live from the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas.
The group makes a guest appearance in fourth season episode "Twas the Night Before Christening of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in which they sing at Nicky's christening (1993).
"Living In Paradise?" (2000): They appeared as themselves on the hit show Moesha.
Long Shot: They appear as themselves performing at a charity event.
This Is Pop (2021): They are featured on the episode "The Boyz II Men Effect".
Celebrity Wheel of Fortune (2021): Wanya and Shawn play to win money for charities of their choice.
A Very Boyband Christmas (2021): Wanya and Shawn join members of 'Nsync, 98 Degrees and other boy bands to celebrate the holidays.
Live in Front of a Studio Audience (2021): The group performs the theme song of Diff'rent Strokes as the intro to the special’s reenactment of "Willis’s Privacy".
Awards and nominations
American Music Awards
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "5" | 1992
!scope="row" rowspan= "3" |Boyz II Men
|Favorite Soul/R&B New Artist
|
|-
|Favorite Pop/Rock New Artist
|
|-
|Favorite Soul/R&B Band/Duo/Group
|
|-
|"Motownphilly"
|Favorite Soul/R&B Single
|
|-
|Cooleyhighharmony
|Favorite Soul/R&B Album
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2" | 1993
|"End of the Road"
|Favorite Pop/Rock Song
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "3"|Boyz II Men
!scope="row" rowspan= "2"|Favorite Soul/R&B Band/Duo/Group
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "4" | 1995
|
|-
|Favorite Adult Contemporary Artist
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2"|"I'll Make Love to You"
|Favorite Soul/R&B Single
|
|-
|Favorite Pop/Rock Song
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "5" | 1996
!scope="row" rowspan= "2"|II
|Favorite Soul/R&B Album
|
|-
|Favorite Pop/Rock Album
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "4"|Boyz II Men
|Artist of the Year
|
|-
|Favorite Pop/Rock Band/Duo/Group
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2"|Favorite Soul/R&B Band/Duo/Group
|
|-
| 1998
|
|-
Billboard Music Awards
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2" | 1992
|Boyz II Men
|Top Hot 100 Artist
|
|-
|"End of the Road"
!scope="row" rowspan= "2" | Top Hot 100 Song
|
|-
| 1994
|"I'll Make Love to You"
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "3" | 1995
|II
|Top Billboard 200 Album
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2" | Boyz II Men
|Top Artist
|
|-
|Top R&B Artist
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2" | 1996
!scope="row" rowspan= "2" | "One Sweet Day" (with Mariah Carey)
|Top Hot 100 Song
|
|-
|Billboard Music Special Hot 100
|
|-
Grammy Awards
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2" | 1992
|Boyz II Men
|Best New Artist
|
|-
|Cooleyhighharmony
!scope="row" rowspan= "4"|Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal
|
|-
| 1993
|"End of the Road"
|
|-
| 1994
|"Let It Snow"
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "3" | 1995
|!scope="row" rowspan= "2"|"I'll Make Love To You"
|
|-
|Record of the Year
|
|-
|II
|Best R&B Album
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2" | 1996
|!scope="row" rowspan= "2"|"One Sweet Day" (with Mariah Carey)
|Record of the Year
|
|-
|Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2" | 1998
|"A Song For Mama"
|Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal
|
|-
|Evolution
!scope="row" rowspan= "2"|Best R&B Album
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2" | 2001
|Nathan Michael Shawn Wanya
|
|-
|"Pass You By"
!scope="row" rowspan= "2"|Best R&B Performance By a Duo or Group with Vocal
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2" | 2009
|"Ribbon In The Sky"
|
|-
|Motown: A Journey Through Hitsville USA
|Best R&B Album
|
|-
MTV Video Music Awards
!Ref.
|-
| 1993
| "End of the Road"
| rowspan=2|Best R&B Video
|
| rowspan=4|
|-
| rowspan=2|1995
| rowspan=2|"Water Runs Dry"
|
|-
| Best Cinematography
|
|-
| 1996
| "One Sweet Day" (with Mariah Carey)
| Best R&B Video
|
Soul Train Music Awards
|-
|1992
|Boyz II Men
|Best New R&B/Soul Artist
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "3"|1993
!scope="row" rowspan= "2"|"End of the Road"
|Song of the Year
|
|-
|Best R&B Music Video
|
|-
|"Please Don't Go"
|Best R&B Single – Group, Band or Duo
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2"|1995
|II
|R&B/Soul Album Group, Band or Duo
|
|-
|"I'll Make Love to You"
|R&B/Soul Single Group, Band or Duo
|
|-
|1996
|Boyz II Men
|Entertainer of the Year
|
|-
|1998
|Evolution
!scope="row" rowspan= "2"|Best R&B/Soul Album - Group, Band or Duo
|
|-
|2003
|Full Circle
|
|-
See also
List of best-selling music artists
List of artists who reached number one in the United States
References
External links
African-American musical groups
American contemporary R&B musical groups
American vocal groups
Ballad music groups
American boy bands
Grammy Award winners
Motown artists
Musical groups established in 1988
Musical groups from Philadelphia
Musical quartets
Musical trios
Sony Music Publishing artists
Vocal quartets
Vocal trios
Avex Group artists | 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"
] |
[
"Boyz II Men",
"2011-12: Love Cruise and Twenty",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"Boyz II Men headlined a \"Love Cruise\" in honor of their 20th anniversary and in observance of Valentine's Day."
] | C_8f95b254b0fd4b59ad645c7e25273c01_0 | Was that an album | 2 | Was Love Cruise and Twenty an album | Boyz II Men | Boyz II Men headlined a "Love Cruise" in honor of their 20th anniversary and in observance of Valentine's Day. The cruise took place February 11-14, 2011, and traveled from Miami, Florida, to Nassau, Bahamas. Cruise passengers received a Boyz II Men welcome cocktail party, a concert performance by Boyz II Men, an additional fan appreciation concert by Boyz II Men, a photo session with Boyz II Men (in small groups), a formal prom night, a poker tournament, a deck party with Boyz II Men and a guest DJ, a singles mixer, a gift bag, and onboard drawings for other Boyz II Men events. Couples were able to renew their wedding vows in a special ceremony with Boyz II Men. Twenty, named in recognition of Boyz II Men's twenty years in the music business, is a double CD album with thirteen original songs and eight rerecorded Boyz II Men classics. It was released on October 25, 2011. Twenty is the group's fourth release through MSM Music Group. It was released in Japan 13 days before its official US release date with the help of Avex Group, the biggest Japanese independent record label. Originally, Boyz II Men announced a reunion with original member Michael McCary for the Twenty album. On September 6, 2009, at a concert in Virginia Beach, Virginia, Stockman announced that their upcoming 20th anniversary album "include all 4 members", sparking a tremendous applause. But soon after that announcement, McCary declined and did not join the project. Boyz II Men contributed a cover of Japanese rock band L'Arc~en~Ciel's song "Snow Drop" to their 2012 tribute album. CANNOTANSWER | The cruise took place February 11-14, 2011, and traveled from Miami, Florida, to Nassau, Bahamas. | Boyz II Men (pronounced boys to men), also known as B2M, is an American vocal harmony group from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, best known for emotional ballads and a cappella harmonies. They are currently a trio composed of baritone Nathan Morris alongside tenors Wanya Morris and Shawn Stockman. During the 1990s, Boyz II Men found fame on Motown Records as a quartet including bass Michael McCary, who left the group in 2003 due to back spasms that were eventually diagnosed as multiple sclerosis.
During the 1990s, Boyz II Men gained international success. This began with the release of top 5 singles "Motownphilly" and "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday" in 1991, followed by the number one single "End of the Road" in 1992, which reached the top of charts worldwide. "End of the Road" set a new record for longevity, staying at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for thirteen weeks. Boyz II Men proceeded to break this record with the subsequent releases of "I'll Make Love to You" and "One Sweet Day" (with Mariah Carey), which, at fourteen and sixteen weeks, respectively, each set new records for the total number of weeks at number one. "I'll Make Love to You" also topped the charts in Australia (for four weeks) and garnered international success.
Consequently, Boyz II Men is among the music industry's elite with regard to time spent at number one in Billboard history with 50 cumulative weeks, ranking sixth behind Drake, the Beatles, Rihanna, Elvis Presley and Carey. Furthermore, when "On Bended Knee" took the number one spot away from "I'll Make Love to You", Boyz II Men became only the third artists ever (after the Beatles and Presley) to replace themselves at the top of the Billboard Hot 100. These achievements were enough to earn Boyz II Men recognition as Billboard magazine's biggest boy band during the period of 1987 to 2012. Boyz II Men has received four Grammy Awards.
Boyz II Men continue to perform worldwide, as a trio. Their most recent studio album, Under the Streetlight, was released in 2017.
In June 2017, a section of Broad Street (from Christian to Carpenter Streets) in Philadelphia was renamed "Boyz II Men Boulevard". This section of the street is near the High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, where the members once attended.
History
1985–1990: Beginnings
The group, originally known as Unique Attraction, was started by friends Nathan Morris and Marc Nelson at the Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA) along with fellow schoolmates George Baldi, Jon Shoats, and Marguerite Walker in 1985. In 1987, Wanya Morris, who sang in the school's choir along with the members of Unique Attraction, joined the group and became a permanent member when he was only a freshman. In 1988 Baldi, Shoats, and Walker all left the group due to graduation. They then recruited Shawn Stockman after seeing him perform a solo in the school's choir. One day, Nate, Marc, Wanya and Shawn were practicing harmonies in a school bathroom and in walked Michael McCary who started singing along with the group and eventually became the group's new bass singer. Now with a permanent lineup of members, the group rehearsed in the high school's bathrooms, due to the excellent acoustics, and on the corners of their schools and local hangouts. They found inspiration in New Edition's harmonies and routines, and eventually renamed the group "Boyz II Men", after one of New Edition's songs, "Boys to Men", from their 1988 album Heart Break. After performing at a Valentine's Day party at school in 1989 they got their big break when they snuck into a concert put on by local radio station Power 99 at the Philadelphia Civic Center. Their plan was to find Will Smith backstage and perform for him. But while looking for Smith, they happened to cross paths with New Edition member Michael Bivins, who along with fellow groupmates Ricky Bell and Ronnie DeVoe just announced they were forming a New Edition spin-off trio Bell Biv DeVoe. After they sang New Edition's "Can You Stand the Rain" for him, Bivins and everyone in attendance including other celebrities were impressed. He then gave the group his number and told them to give him a call. Nate eventually called him, and he agreed to manage and helped produce the group.
The delay before recording their own material and reported personality conflicts led founding member Marc Nelson to leave the group, making Boyz II Men into the quartet that found international fame: Michael McCary, Nathan Morris, Wanya Morris, and Shawn Stockman.
1991–1992: Cooleyhighharmony and "End of the Road"
Boyz II Men's first album, Cooleyhighharmony, was released on Motown in 1991 and was produced by Michael Bivins. Cooleyhighharmonys drum-heavy new jack swing sound and multi-layered sampled backdrops were similar to that of Bell Biv DeVoe's own work, but featured classic-soul styled vocals in place of BBD's rapping and brassier singing. This style was dubbed "hip hop doo-wop" by the group and Bivins, who presented Boyz II Men and adolescent R&B group Another Bad Creation to the public as BBD's protégés.
From the beginning, Boyz II Men featured all four members as leads, avoiding the usual R&B group arrangement of one or two lead singers and a team of background singers. The multiple-lead arrangement became a Boyz II Men trademark, and it became typical to hear Wanya Morris' vibrato-heavy tenor, Shawn Stockman's tenor voice, Nathan Morris' baritone, and Michael McCary's bass (often used in spoken-word sections of many Boyz II Men hits) trading bars in each song.
The album's liner notes identified unique nicknames for each member of the group. These nicknames were devised in collaboration with Bivins in an attempt at marketing. Wanya was "Squirt", Shawn was "Slim", Michael was simply "Bass", and Nathan assumed the name "Alex Vanderpool", after a soap opera character who brandished a nerdy style.
Boyz II Men's first single, the Dallas Austin-produced "Motownphilly" featured a rap cameo by Michael Bivins that gives the story of how he met Boyz II Men. The single's release was accompanied with a music video that presented the group in hip hop style. (The video also included cameos from fellow Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts alumni Black Thought and Questlove of The Roots.) Cooleyhighharmonys second single was an a cappella cover of a classic Motown tune, G.C. Cameron's "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday" from the 1975 film Cooley High, while "Uhh Ahh" served as the third single.
Cooleyhighharmony achieved major success, eventually selling over nine million copies and winning the Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals at the 1992 Grammy Awards. Boyz II Men were also nominated for Best New Artist, along with British singer-songwriter Seal, fellow R&B group Color Me Badd, as well as dance group C+C Music Factory, but the Grammy was awarded to singer-songwriter Marc Cohn. "Motownphilly" and "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday" were number 1 R&B hits and top five U.S. pop hits.
In 1992, Boyz II Men joined MC Hammer's high-profile 2 Legit 2 Quit tour as an opening act. While traveling the country, their tour manager Khalil Roundtree was murdered in Chicago, and the group's future performances of "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday" were dedicated to him. As a result of this unfortunate experience, the song helped advance their success.
While touring during 1992, Boyz II Men returned briefly to the studio to record the single "End of the Road", co-written and produced by Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds, for the soundtrack to Eddie Murphy's film Boomerang. This song, released as a single on June 30, 1992, became Boyz II Men's biggest hit. It reached the number one position on the Billboard Hot 100 on August 15, remaining there for a record-setting 13 weeks, until November 14, 1992. The success of "End of the Road" instantly transformed Boyz II Men from up-and-coming R&B stars into mainstream music celebrities.
A revamped Cooleyhighharmony was reissued during 1993, with "End of the Road" added as a special bonus track, but "End of the Road" initially appeared only on the Boomerang soundtrack. Later the track was included on a collection of singles produced by Michael Bivins called "East Coast Family, Vol. 1". Shortly after the release of this compilation, Boyz II Men and Michael Bivins parted ways professionally. Boyz II Men continued to work with Babyface and other high-profile record producers over the next several years.
1994: II and "I'll Make Love to You"
After releasing a Christmas compilation, Christmas Interpretations in 1993, Boyz II Men returned to the studio for their highly anticipated sophomore effort. In 1994, II was released. II sold more than copies in the United States alone, becoming one of the best-selling albums ever released by an R&B group act, and one of the biggest albums of the decade. II later won two awards at the 1995 Grammy Awards including Best R&B Album.
Most of the tracks on II were written and produced by Tim & Bob—Tim Kelley and Bob Robinson (5), Babyface (2) and the successful team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis (2). Several of IIs tracks became major singles, among them Jam & Lewis's "On Bended Knee", and Babyface's "I'll Make Love to You" and "Water Runs Dry".
"I'll Make Love to You" broke "End of the Road's" 13-week record at number 1, by spending 14 weeks at the top of the chart (a feat equaled earlier that year by Whitney Houston's cover of "I Will Always Love You"). "On Bended Knee" replaced "I'll Make Love to You" at number 1, making Boyz II Men only the third act ever to replace itself at number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, after Elvis Presley and the Beatles.
In 1995, the group appeared as backing vocalists on "HIStory" from Michael Jackson's Grammy-nominated ninth album of the same name.
1997–1998: Evolution and label conflicts
Motown issued The Remix Collection, a compilation of remixes of various Boyz II Men songs from Cooleyhighharmony and II. The group itself had opposed the release of the collection because they felt the compilation did not represent Boyz II Men's best work. After the label released the album without their permission, there was a dispute between the company and the group. Boyz II Men initiated their own recording company Stonecreek (which released material by artists such as Uncle Sam), and they arranged for Stonecreek's distribution by Epic Records, not Motown.
Boyz II Men's third studio album, Evolution, was released during 1997 to mixed reviews and sold three million copies, far below the stratospheric success of IIs ( copies) and Cooleyhighharmony (). Only one of Evolutions singles, the Jam/Lewis-penned "Four Seasons of Loneliness", reached number 1 on the Hot 100 chart. The second single, the Babyface-helmed "A Song for Mama" (the theme song to the Babyface-produced film Soul Food) was a Top 10 success, but the follow-up "Can't Let Her Go" underperformed.
The global tour began in 1997 to promote Evolution was successful in terms of ticket sales, but behind the scenes, Boyz II Men was wracked by conflicts with their record label and internal conflicts among the members of the group. Making matters worse, health problems began to take their toll on the group. While on tour to support the Evolution album, Wanya Morris developed a polyp on his vocal cords, and the group was forced to postpone part of the tour until he recovered. McCary's multiple sclerosis meant that he was unable to participate in most of the group's dance routines.
Boyz II Men were nominated for 2 Grammys in 1998: Best R&B Album for Evolution and Best R&B Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group for "A Song for Mama".
1999–2001: Nathan Michael Shawn Wanya
In 1999, Motown's parent company, PolyGram, was bought by Universal Music Group. Amidst the major corporate restructure, Motown was merged with UMG's Universal Records, where Boyz II Men found themselves reassigned.
Their only studio LP album for Universal, 2000's Nathan Michael Shawn Wanya, was chiefly written and produced by the group itself, in an attempt to update their sound and ward off critics who questioned the group's reliance on Babyface's hit-making songcraft. While the critics were more receptive to Nathan Michael Shawn Wanya than they had been to its predecessor, the LP sold only 500,000 copies in the US, copies worldwide, and although its two singles, "Pass You By" and "Thank You in Advance" received media attention, neither became hits.
Boyz II Men departed from Universal in 2001, ending their relationship with the company that brought them to international stardom in 1991. The label released a very successful greatest hits compilation, Legacy: The Greatest Hits Collection, to close out their contract.
2002–2003: Full Circle and "The Color of Love"
Signing a new deal with Arista Records in 2002, Boyz II Men began recording the Full Circle album, and recruited Babyface for a new single, "The Color of Love". In an attempt to recapture the massive success the group had enjoyed a decade earlier, the album received a significant promotional budget. Arista commissioned a high-budget music video, shot in four different locales by four different directors: supervising director Little X filmed scenes featuring Michael McCary in India, Hype Williams filmed Shawn Stockman in Tokyo, Benny Boom filmed Nathan Morris in Ghana, and Chris Robinson filmed Wanya Morris in Puerto Rico and finally all were filmed in New York. The resulting music video had a debut on BET, but failed to have a great effect, and Full Circle, like Nathan Michael Shawn Wanya before it, sold slightly more than 500,000 copies in the US and copies worldwide.
Full Circle became Boyz II Men's final album as a quartet, and their last effort to receive extensive promotion from a major record company. On , 2003, Michael McCary left Boyz II Men due to chronic back problems resulting from multiple sclerosis (MS) and personal problems. Arista terminated Boyz II Men's contract on , and the remaining three members took a temporary hiatus from the music industry.
2004–2006: Throwback, Vol. 1 and The Remedy
After a year out of the spotlight, Boyz II Men created the independent label MSM Music Group (distributed through Koch Records), and released the Throwback, Vol. 1 LP in 2004. The album is a collection of covers of classic R&B and soul songs such as The Dazz Band's "Let It Whip", Michael Jackson's "Human Nature", and, as the single, Bobby Caldwell's "What You Won't Do for Love". For this record, Nathan took on the bass lines as well as the baritone vocals that he sang when Boyz II Men was a quartet. Throwback, Vol. 1 reached number 59 on the Billboard 200. The group launched an independent tour of North America and Asia in support of the Throwback series. The album sold over 200,000 copies with little to no promotion aside from the group's independent tour.
In 2005 Boyz II Men recorded a CD with Anderson Cameau called "Apocalypse", a project meant to benefit Haiti.
In 2006, Boyz II Men's seventh studio album, The Remedy, was released exclusively in Japan, where they found a thriving fan base. In other regions, The Remedy was made available online through the group's website on , 2007.
2007–2008: Hitsville USA
In mid-2007, the group re-signed with Universal Records and released the LP Motown: A Journey Through Hitsville USA through the Decca Records label. The LP is a cover album featuring songs from the Motown Records catalog, co-produced by Randy Jackson of American Idol fame. The Motown album includes covers of songs by The Temptations ("Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)"), Marvin Gaye ("Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing", "Mercy Mercy Me"), Smokey Robinson & the Miracles ("The Tracks of My Tears"), and even Boyz II Men themselves (an a cappella version of "End of the Road").
Commercially, Motown found some success. It peaked at number 6 on the US R&B chart and was certified Gold in the UK. The album was also a critical success. For the 51st Annual Grammy Awards in 2009, Boyz II Men received two nominations for the album Motown: A Journey Through Hitsville USA (Best R&B Album and Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals for "Ribbon in the Sky").
In 2008, Boyz II Men's three members appeared on Celebrity Don't Forget the Lyrics and created a sensation with their performance. They earned $500,000 for their two nominated charities; the appearance also generated interest in their next release.
2009: Love
In 2009, Boyz II Men announced plans for a new cover album, that covers "artists I don't think people would expect us to cover!" according to Shawn Stockman. Entitled Love, the album was released on , 2009. The album contains remakes of love songs from outside the R&B genre.
2011–2012: Love Cruise and Twenty
Boyz II Men headlined a "Love Cruise" in honor of their 20th anniversary and in observance of Valentine's Day. The cruise took place –14, 2011, and traveled from Miami, Florida, to Nassau, Bahamas. Cruise passengers received a Boyz II Men welcome cocktail party, a concert performance by Boyz II Men, an additional fan appreciation concert by Boyz II Men, a photo session with Boyz II Men (in small groups), a formal prom night, a poker tournament, a deck party with Boyz II Men and a guest DJ, a singles mixer, a gift bag, and onboard drawings for other Boyz II Men events. Couples were able to renew their wedding vows in a special ceremony with Boyz II Men.
Twenty, named in recognition of Boyz II Men's twenty years in the music business, is a double CD album with thirteen original songs and eight rerecorded Boyz II Men classics. It was released on October 25, 2011. Twenty is the group's fourth release through MSM Music Group. It was released in Japan 13 days before its official US release date with the help of Avex Group, the biggest Japanese independent record label.
Originally, Boyz II Men announced a reunion with original member Michael McCary for the Twenty album. On September 6, 2009, at a concert in Virginia Beach, Virginia, Stockman announced that their upcoming 20th anniversary album would "include all 4 members", sparking a tremendous applause.
But soon after that announcement, McCary declined and did not join the project.
As a trio, Boyz II Men performed as special guests on VH1's highly rated VH1 Divas Celebrate Soul concert.
Boyz II Men contributed a cover of Japanese rock band L'Arc~en~Ciel's song "Snow Drop" to their 2012 tribute album.
2013–present: The Package Tour, Collide, and Geico Commercials
On January 22, 2013, the group appeared on The View along with New Kids on the Block and 98 Degrees to announce their joint tour that took place in summer 2013. As of February 20, 2013, Boyz II Men announced that beginning March 1, 2013, they will stop touring and begin performing shows at the Mirage Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.
On January 13, 2014, the trio appeared at the end of an episode of How I Met Your Mother titled "Slapsgiving 3: Slappointment in Slapmarra", performing an a cappella version of the show's song "You Just Got Slapped". Their eleventh album, titled Collide, was released on October 21, 2014.
In 2016, the trio appeared in Grease: Live as the Teen Angels and sang Beauty School Dropout.
Wanya placed 4th for the 22nd season of the ABC realty competition series Dancing With The Stars. They also did music for an animated adaptation of The Snowy Day.
In 2017, the group began starring in television commercials for GEICO Auto Insurance.
On June 24, 2017, a section of Broad Street in Philadelphia, from Christian to Carpenter Streets, was renamed, “Boyz II Men Boulevard” by the city council. Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, where the members of Boyz II Men were once students, is on this section of Broad Street.
In August 2017, it was announced they were releasing a new album titled Under the Streetlight in the Fall. It was released on October 20, 2017.
On January 4, 2018, the group was featured in a new track released by Charlie Puth, titled "If You Leave Me Now", created for Charlie Puth's album Voicenotes.
On September 6, 2018, the group performed at the NFL 2018–2019 season kickoff at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, PA.
On October 2, 2018, the group performed "Ladies Man" on ABC's Dancing with the Stars. DeMarcus Ware and Lindsay Arnold danced a quickstep to the song.
The group is featured on a re-imagined version of Take That's song Love Ain't Here Anymore from their number one selling album Odyssey. Howard Donald revealed during an interview with Magic Radio that "he fulfilled a dream when they recorded this song".
On December 15, 2018, the group staged a concert at the Smart Araneta Coliseum with Filipino girl group DIVAS—a group composed of Kyla, Yeng Constantino, KZ Tandingan and Angeline Quinto titled Boyz II Men with DIVAS.
On September 18, 2019, it was reported that the group would play themselves on the ABC comedy series Schooled.
On September 30, 2019, Boyz II Men announced their Asia Tour, which is slated to take place after returning from their US tour and residency in Las Vegas. They will be visiting cities such as Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok (December 7), Singapore (December 9) and Manila.
Style and influence
Boyz II Men is among the biggest names in a cappella and R&B. With what was called "crossover appeal", Boyz II Men found themselves at the vanguard of the 1990s movement to take R&B back into the mainstream, where it had been back in the 1970s. Their use of hip-hop beats in combination with R&B was not unique, but it was Boyz II Men's enormous success with mainstream audiences in "putting harmony over the hip-hop tracks" that helped usher in the near-total dominance of the R&B genre on the pop charts in the 2000s and 2010s. On January 5, 2012, Boyz II Men were awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. They were featured on the first episode of the 2021 Netflix series This Is Pop, called "The Boyz II Men Effect", about their impact on the boy band scene in the 1990s.
Members
Current
Nathan Morris (1985–present)
Wanya Morris (1987–present)
Shawn Stockman (1988–present)
Former
Michael McCary (1988–2003)
Marc Nelson (1985–1990)
George Baldi (1985–1988)
Jon Shoats (1985–1988)
Marguerite Walker (1985–1988)
Discography
Studio albums
Cooleyhighharmony (1991)
Christmas Interpretations (1993)
II (1994)
Evolution (1997)
Nathan Michael Shawn Wanya (2000)
Full Circle (2002)
Throwback, Vol. 1 (2004)
The Remedy (2006)
Motown: A Journey Through Hitsville USA (2007)
Love (2009)
Twenty (2011)
Collide (2014)
Under the Streetlight (2017)
Filmography
"Going Home" (1995): A Disney Channel concert special filmed during Boyz II Men's "All Around the World Tour" live from the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas.
The group makes a guest appearance in fourth season episode "Twas the Night Before Christening of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in which they sing at Nicky's christening (1993).
"Living In Paradise?" (2000): They appeared as themselves on the hit show Moesha.
Long Shot: They appear as themselves performing at a charity event.
This Is Pop (2021): They are featured on the episode "The Boyz II Men Effect".
Celebrity Wheel of Fortune (2021): Wanya and Shawn play to win money for charities of their choice.
A Very Boyband Christmas (2021): Wanya and Shawn join members of 'Nsync, 98 Degrees and other boy bands to celebrate the holidays.
Live in Front of a Studio Audience (2021): The group performs the theme song of Diff'rent Strokes as the intro to the special’s reenactment of "Willis’s Privacy".
Awards and nominations
American Music Awards
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "5" | 1992
!scope="row" rowspan= "3" |Boyz II Men
|Favorite Soul/R&B New Artist
|
|-
|Favorite Pop/Rock New Artist
|
|-
|Favorite Soul/R&B Band/Duo/Group
|
|-
|"Motownphilly"
|Favorite Soul/R&B Single
|
|-
|Cooleyhighharmony
|Favorite Soul/R&B Album
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2" | 1993
|"End of the Road"
|Favorite Pop/Rock Song
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "3"|Boyz II Men
!scope="row" rowspan= "2"|Favorite Soul/R&B Band/Duo/Group
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "4" | 1995
|
|-
|Favorite Adult Contemporary Artist
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2"|"I'll Make Love to You"
|Favorite Soul/R&B Single
|
|-
|Favorite Pop/Rock Song
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "5" | 1996
!scope="row" rowspan= "2"|II
|Favorite Soul/R&B Album
|
|-
|Favorite Pop/Rock Album
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "4"|Boyz II Men
|Artist of the Year
|
|-
|Favorite Pop/Rock Band/Duo/Group
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2"|Favorite Soul/R&B Band/Duo/Group
|
|-
| 1998
|
|-
Billboard Music Awards
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2" | 1992
|Boyz II Men
|Top Hot 100 Artist
|
|-
|"End of the Road"
!scope="row" rowspan= "2" | Top Hot 100 Song
|
|-
| 1994
|"I'll Make Love to You"
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "3" | 1995
|II
|Top Billboard 200 Album
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2" | Boyz II Men
|Top Artist
|
|-
|Top R&B Artist
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2" | 1996
!scope="row" rowspan= "2" | "One Sweet Day" (with Mariah Carey)
|Top Hot 100 Song
|
|-
|Billboard Music Special Hot 100
|
|-
Grammy Awards
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2" | 1992
|Boyz II Men
|Best New Artist
|
|-
|Cooleyhighharmony
!scope="row" rowspan= "4"|Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal
|
|-
| 1993
|"End of the Road"
|
|-
| 1994
|"Let It Snow"
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "3" | 1995
|!scope="row" rowspan= "2"|"I'll Make Love To You"
|
|-
|Record of the Year
|
|-
|II
|Best R&B Album
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2" | 1996
|!scope="row" rowspan= "2"|"One Sweet Day" (with Mariah Carey)
|Record of the Year
|
|-
|Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2" | 1998
|"A Song For Mama"
|Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal
|
|-
|Evolution
!scope="row" rowspan= "2"|Best R&B Album
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2" | 2001
|Nathan Michael Shawn Wanya
|
|-
|"Pass You By"
!scope="row" rowspan= "2"|Best R&B Performance By a Duo or Group with Vocal
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2" | 2009
|"Ribbon In The Sky"
|
|-
|Motown: A Journey Through Hitsville USA
|Best R&B Album
|
|-
MTV Video Music Awards
!Ref.
|-
| 1993
| "End of the Road"
| rowspan=2|Best R&B Video
|
| rowspan=4|
|-
| rowspan=2|1995
| rowspan=2|"Water Runs Dry"
|
|-
| Best Cinematography
|
|-
| 1996
| "One Sweet Day" (with Mariah Carey)
| Best R&B Video
|
Soul Train Music Awards
|-
|1992
|Boyz II Men
|Best New R&B/Soul Artist
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "3"|1993
!scope="row" rowspan= "2"|"End of the Road"
|Song of the Year
|
|-
|Best R&B Music Video
|
|-
|"Please Don't Go"
|Best R&B Single – Group, Band or Duo
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2"|1995
|II
|R&B/Soul Album Group, Band or Duo
|
|-
|"I'll Make Love to You"
|R&B/Soul Single Group, Band or Duo
|
|-
|1996
|Boyz II Men
|Entertainer of the Year
|
|-
|1998
|Evolution
!scope="row" rowspan= "2"|Best R&B/Soul Album - Group, Band or Duo
|
|-
|2003
|Full Circle
|
|-
See also
List of best-selling music artists
List of artists who reached number one in the United States
References
External links
African-American musical groups
American contemporary R&B musical groups
American vocal groups
Ballad music groups
American boy bands
Grammy Award winners
Motown artists
Musical groups established in 1988
Musical groups from Philadelphia
Musical quartets
Musical trios
Sony Music Publishing artists
Vocal quartets
Vocal trios
Avex Group artists | false | [
"That Was Then This Is Now may refer to:\n\nThat Was Then, This Is Now, a 1971 novel by S. E. Hinton\nThat Was Then... This Is Now, a 1985 film based on Hinton's novel\nThat Was Then, This Is Now (radio series), a BBC Radio 2 comedy sketch series\n\nMusic \nThat Was Then, This Is Now (Tha Dogg Pound album), 2009\n\"That Was Then, This Is Now\" (The James Cleaver Quintet album), 2011\nThat Was Then This Is Now (Wain McFarlane album), 2001\nThat Was Then, This Is Now, Vol. 1 (1999) and That Was Then, This Is Now, Vol. 2 (2000), studio albums by American rapper Frost\nThat Was Then, This Is Now (Andy Timmons album), an album by Andy Timmons\n\"That Was Then, This Is Now\" (song), a 1986 song by The Mosquitos, also covered by The Monkees\nThat Was Then, This Is Now, an album by Chasen\nThat Was Then, This Is Now (Josh Wilson album), 2015\n\nSee also\n\"That Was Then but This Is Now\", a 1983 song by ABC\nIf Not Now Then When?, an album by Ethan Johns\nIf Not Now Then When, an album by The Motels\nIf Not Now, When? (disambiguation)",
"Kilroy was here is an American expression that became popular during World War II, typically seen in graffiti.\n\nKilroy Was Here may also refer to:\n Kilroy Was Here (album), a 1983 album by Styx\n Kilroy Was Here (1947 film), an American comedy film\n Kilroy Was Here (1983 film), a short film made to tie in with the Styx album\n Killroy Was Here (upcoming film), an upcoming American horror anthology film based on the graffiti phenomenon"
] |
[
"Boyz II Men",
"2011-12: Love Cruise and Twenty",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"Boyz II Men headlined a \"Love Cruise\" in honor of their 20th anniversary and in observance of Valentine's Day.",
"Was that an album",
"The cruise took place February 11-14, 2011, and traveled from Miami, Florida, to Nassau, Bahamas."
] | C_8f95b254b0fd4b59ad645c7e25273c01_0 | What happen on the cruise | 3 | What happen on 2011-12: Love cruise | Boyz II Men | Boyz II Men headlined a "Love Cruise" in honor of their 20th anniversary and in observance of Valentine's Day. The cruise took place February 11-14, 2011, and traveled from Miami, Florida, to Nassau, Bahamas. Cruise passengers received a Boyz II Men welcome cocktail party, a concert performance by Boyz II Men, an additional fan appreciation concert by Boyz II Men, a photo session with Boyz II Men (in small groups), a formal prom night, a poker tournament, a deck party with Boyz II Men and a guest DJ, a singles mixer, a gift bag, and onboard drawings for other Boyz II Men events. Couples were able to renew their wedding vows in a special ceremony with Boyz II Men. Twenty, named in recognition of Boyz II Men's twenty years in the music business, is a double CD album with thirteen original songs and eight rerecorded Boyz II Men classics. It was released on October 25, 2011. Twenty is the group's fourth release through MSM Music Group. It was released in Japan 13 days before its official US release date with the help of Avex Group, the biggest Japanese independent record label. Originally, Boyz II Men announced a reunion with original member Michael McCary for the Twenty album. On September 6, 2009, at a concert in Virginia Beach, Virginia, Stockman announced that their upcoming 20th anniversary album "include all 4 members", sparking a tremendous applause. But soon after that announcement, McCary declined and did not join the project. Boyz II Men contributed a cover of Japanese rock band L'Arc~en~Ciel's song "Snow Drop" to their 2012 tribute album. CANNOTANSWER | Cruise passengers received a Boyz II Men welcome cocktail party, a concert performance by Boyz II Men, an additional fan appreciation concert by Boyz II Men, | Boyz II Men (pronounced boys to men), also known as B2M, is an American vocal harmony group from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, best known for emotional ballads and a cappella harmonies. They are currently a trio composed of baritone Nathan Morris alongside tenors Wanya Morris and Shawn Stockman. During the 1990s, Boyz II Men found fame on Motown Records as a quartet including bass Michael McCary, who left the group in 2003 due to back spasms that were eventually diagnosed as multiple sclerosis.
During the 1990s, Boyz II Men gained international success. This began with the release of top 5 singles "Motownphilly" and "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday" in 1991, followed by the number one single "End of the Road" in 1992, which reached the top of charts worldwide. "End of the Road" set a new record for longevity, staying at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for thirteen weeks. Boyz II Men proceeded to break this record with the subsequent releases of "I'll Make Love to You" and "One Sweet Day" (with Mariah Carey), which, at fourteen and sixteen weeks, respectively, each set new records for the total number of weeks at number one. "I'll Make Love to You" also topped the charts in Australia (for four weeks) and garnered international success.
Consequently, Boyz II Men is among the music industry's elite with regard to time spent at number one in Billboard history with 50 cumulative weeks, ranking sixth behind Drake, the Beatles, Rihanna, Elvis Presley and Carey. Furthermore, when "On Bended Knee" took the number one spot away from "I'll Make Love to You", Boyz II Men became only the third artists ever (after the Beatles and Presley) to replace themselves at the top of the Billboard Hot 100. These achievements were enough to earn Boyz II Men recognition as Billboard magazine's biggest boy band during the period of 1987 to 2012. Boyz II Men has received four Grammy Awards.
Boyz II Men continue to perform worldwide, as a trio. Their most recent studio album, Under the Streetlight, was released in 2017.
In June 2017, a section of Broad Street (from Christian to Carpenter Streets) in Philadelphia was renamed "Boyz II Men Boulevard". This section of the street is near the High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, where the members once attended.
History
1985–1990: Beginnings
The group, originally known as Unique Attraction, was started by friends Nathan Morris and Marc Nelson at the Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA) along with fellow schoolmates George Baldi, Jon Shoats, and Marguerite Walker in 1985. In 1987, Wanya Morris, who sang in the school's choir along with the members of Unique Attraction, joined the group and became a permanent member when he was only a freshman. In 1988 Baldi, Shoats, and Walker all left the group due to graduation. They then recruited Shawn Stockman after seeing him perform a solo in the school's choir. One day, Nate, Marc, Wanya and Shawn were practicing harmonies in a school bathroom and in walked Michael McCary who started singing along with the group and eventually became the group's new bass singer. Now with a permanent lineup of members, the group rehearsed in the high school's bathrooms, due to the excellent acoustics, and on the corners of their schools and local hangouts. They found inspiration in New Edition's harmonies and routines, and eventually renamed the group "Boyz II Men", after one of New Edition's songs, "Boys to Men", from their 1988 album Heart Break. After performing at a Valentine's Day party at school in 1989 they got their big break when they snuck into a concert put on by local radio station Power 99 at the Philadelphia Civic Center. Their plan was to find Will Smith backstage and perform for him. But while looking for Smith, they happened to cross paths with New Edition member Michael Bivins, who along with fellow groupmates Ricky Bell and Ronnie DeVoe just announced they were forming a New Edition spin-off trio Bell Biv DeVoe. After they sang New Edition's "Can You Stand the Rain" for him, Bivins and everyone in attendance including other celebrities were impressed. He then gave the group his number and told them to give him a call. Nate eventually called him, and he agreed to manage and helped produce the group.
The delay before recording their own material and reported personality conflicts led founding member Marc Nelson to leave the group, making Boyz II Men into the quartet that found international fame: Michael McCary, Nathan Morris, Wanya Morris, and Shawn Stockman.
1991–1992: Cooleyhighharmony and "End of the Road"
Boyz II Men's first album, Cooleyhighharmony, was released on Motown in 1991 and was produced by Michael Bivins. Cooleyhighharmonys drum-heavy new jack swing sound and multi-layered sampled backdrops were similar to that of Bell Biv DeVoe's own work, but featured classic-soul styled vocals in place of BBD's rapping and brassier singing. This style was dubbed "hip hop doo-wop" by the group and Bivins, who presented Boyz II Men and adolescent R&B group Another Bad Creation to the public as BBD's protégés.
From the beginning, Boyz II Men featured all four members as leads, avoiding the usual R&B group arrangement of one or two lead singers and a team of background singers. The multiple-lead arrangement became a Boyz II Men trademark, and it became typical to hear Wanya Morris' vibrato-heavy tenor, Shawn Stockman's tenor voice, Nathan Morris' baritone, and Michael McCary's bass (often used in spoken-word sections of many Boyz II Men hits) trading bars in each song.
The album's liner notes identified unique nicknames for each member of the group. These nicknames were devised in collaboration with Bivins in an attempt at marketing. Wanya was "Squirt", Shawn was "Slim", Michael was simply "Bass", and Nathan assumed the name "Alex Vanderpool", after a soap opera character who brandished a nerdy style.
Boyz II Men's first single, the Dallas Austin-produced "Motownphilly" featured a rap cameo by Michael Bivins that gives the story of how he met Boyz II Men. The single's release was accompanied with a music video that presented the group in hip hop style. (The video also included cameos from fellow Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts alumni Black Thought and Questlove of The Roots.) Cooleyhighharmonys second single was an a cappella cover of a classic Motown tune, G.C. Cameron's "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday" from the 1975 film Cooley High, while "Uhh Ahh" served as the third single.
Cooleyhighharmony achieved major success, eventually selling over nine million copies and winning the Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals at the 1992 Grammy Awards. Boyz II Men were also nominated for Best New Artist, along with British singer-songwriter Seal, fellow R&B group Color Me Badd, as well as dance group C+C Music Factory, but the Grammy was awarded to singer-songwriter Marc Cohn. "Motownphilly" and "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday" were number 1 R&B hits and top five U.S. pop hits.
In 1992, Boyz II Men joined MC Hammer's high-profile 2 Legit 2 Quit tour as an opening act. While traveling the country, their tour manager Khalil Roundtree was murdered in Chicago, and the group's future performances of "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday" were dedicated to him. As a result of this unfortunate experience, the song helped advance their success.
While touring during 1992, Boyz II Men returned briefly to the studio to record the single "End of the Road", co-written and produced by Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds, for the soundtrack to Eddie Murphy's film Boomerang. This song, released as a single on June 30, 1992, became Boyz II Men's biggest hit. It reached the number one position on the Billboard Hot 100 on August 15, remaining there for a record-setting 13 weeks, until November 14, 1992. The success of "End of the Road" instantly transformed Boyz II Men from up-and-coming R&B stars into mainstream music celebrities.
A revamped Cooleyhighharmony was reissued during 1993, with "End of the Road" added as a special bonus track, but "End of the Road" initially appeared only on the Boomerang soundtrack. Later the track was included on a collection of singles produced by Michael Bivins called "East Coast Family, Vol. 1". Shortly after the release of this compilation, Boyz II Men and Michael Bivins parted ways professionally. Boyz II Men continued to work with Babyface and other high-profile record producers over the next several years.
1994: II and "I'll Make Love to You"
After releasing a Christmas compilation, Christmas Interpretations in 1993, Boyz II Men returned to the studio for their highly anticipated sophomore effort. In 1994, II was released. II sold more than copies in the United States alone, becoming one of the best-selling albums ever released by an R&B group act, and one of the biggest albums of the decade. II later won two awards at the 1995 Grammy Awards including Best R&B Album.
Most of the tracks on II were written and produced by Tim & Bob—Tim Kelley and Bob Robinson (5), Babyface (2) and the successful team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis (2). Several of IIs tracks became major singles, among them Jam & Lewis's "On Bended Knee", and Babyface's "I'll Make Love to You" and "Water Runs Dry".
"I'll Make Love to You" broke "End of the Road's" 13-week record at number 1, by spending 14 weeks at the top of the chart (a feat equaled earlier that year by Whitney Houston's cover of "I Will Always Love You"). "On Bended Knee" replaced "I'll Make Love to You" at number 1, making Boyz II Men only the third act ever to replace itself at number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, after Elvis Presley and the Beatles.
In 1995, the group appeared as backing vocalists on "HIStory" from Michael Jackson's Grammy-nominated ninth album of the same name.
1997–1998: Evolution and label conflicts
Motown issued The Remix Collection, a compilation of remixes of various Boyz II Men songs from Cooleyhighharmony and II. The group itself had opposed the release of the collection because they felt the compilation did not represent Boyz II Men's best work. After the label released the album without their permission, there was a dispute between the company and the group. Boyz II Men initiated their own recording company Stonecreek (which released material by artists such as Uncle Sam), and they arranged for Stonecreek's distribution by Epic Records, not Motown.
Boyz II Men's third studio album, Evolution, was released during 1997 to mixed reviews and sold three million copies, far below the stratospheric success of IIs ( copies) and Cooleyhighharmony (). Only one of Evolutions singles, the Jam/Lewis-penned "Four Seasons of Loneliness", reached number 1 on the Hot 100 chart. The second single, the Babyface-helmed "A Song for Mama" (the theme song to the Babyface-produced film Soul Food) was a Top 10 success, but the follow-up "Can't Let Her Go" underperformed.
The global tour began in 1997 to promote Evolution was successful in terms of ticket sales, but behind the scenes, Boyz II Men was wracked by conflicts with their record label and internal conflicts among the members of the group. Making matters worse, health problems began to take their toll on the group. While on tour to support the Evolution album, Wanya Morris developed a polyp on his vocal cords, and the group was forced to postpone part of the tour until he recovered. McCary's multiple sclerosis meant that he was unable to participate in most of the group's dance routines.
Boyz II Men were nominated for 2 Grammys in 1998: Best R&B Album for Evolution and Best R&B Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group for "A Song for Mama".
1999–2001: Nathan Michael Shawn Wanya
In 1999, Motown's parent company, PolyGram, was bought by Universal Music Group. Amidst the major corporate restructure, Motown was merged with UMG's Universal Records, where Boyz II Men found themselves reassigned.
Their only studio LP album for Universal, 2000's Nathan Michael Shawn Wanya, was chiefly written and produced by the group itself, in an attempt to update their sound and ward off critics who questioned the group's reliance on Babyface's hit-making songcraft. While the critics were more receptive to Nathan Michael Shawn Wanya than they had been to its predecessor, the LP sold only 500,000 copies in the US, copies worldwide, and although its two singles, "Pass You By" and "Thank You in Advance" received media attention, neither became hits.
Boyz II Men departed from Universal in 2001, ending their relationship with the company that brought them to international stardom in 1991. The label released a very successful greatest hits compilation, Legacy: The Greatest Hits Collection, to close out their contract.
2002–2003: Full Circle and "The Color of Love"
Signing a new deal with Arista Records in 2002, Boyz II Men began recording the Full Circle album, and recruited Babyface for a new single, "The Color of Love". In an attempt to recapture the massive success the group had enjoyed a decade earlier, the album received a significant promotional budget. Arista commissioned a high-budget music video, shot in four different locales by four different directors: supervising director Little X filmed scenes featuring Michael McCary in India, Hype Williams filmed Shawn Stockman in Tokyo, Benny Boom filmed Nathan Morris in Ghana, and Chris Robinson filmed Wanya Morris in Puerto Rico and finally all were filmed in New York. The resulting music video had a debut on BET, but failed to have a great effect, and Full Circle, like Nathan Michael Shawn Wanya before it, sold slightly more than 500,000 copies in the US and copies worldwide.
Full Circle became Boyz II Men's final album as a quartet, and their last effort to receive extensive promotion from a major record company. On , 2003, Michael McCary left Boyz II Men due to chronic back problems resulting from multiple sclerosis (MS) and personal problems. Arista terminated Boyz II Men's contract on , and the remaining three members took a temporary hiatus from the music industry.
2004–2006: Throwback, Vol. 1 and The Remedy
After a year out of the spotlight, Boyz II Men created the independent label MSM Music Group (distributed through Koch Records), and released the Throwback, Vol. 1 LP in 2004. The album is a collection of covers of classic R&B and soul songs such as The Dazz Band's "Let It Whip", Michael Jackson's "Human Nature", and, as the single, Bobby Caldwell's "What You Won't Do for Love". For this record, Nathan took on the bass lines as well as the baritone vocals that he sang when Boyz II Men was a quartet. Throwback, Vol. 1 reached number 59 on the Billboard 200. The group launched an independent tour of North America and Asia in support of the Throwback series. The album sold over 200,000 copies with little to no promotion aside from the group's independent tour.
In 2005 Boyz II Men recorded a CD with Anderson Cameau called "Apocalypse", a project meant to benefit Haiti.
In 2006, Boyz II Men's seventh studio album, The Remedy, was released exclusively in Japan, where they found a thriving fan base. In other regions, The Remedy was made available online through the group's website on , 2007.
2007–2008: Hitsville USA
In mid-2007, the group re-signed with Universal Records and released the LP Motown: A Journey Through Hitsville USA through the Decca Records label. The LP is a cover album featuring songs from the Motown Records catalog, co-produced by Randy Jackson of American Idol fame. The Motown album includes covers of songs by The Temptations ("Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)"), Marvin Gaye ("Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing", "Mercy Mercy Me"), Smokey Robinson & the Miracles ("The Tracks of My Tears"), and even Boyz II Men themselves (an a cappella version of "End of the Road").
Commercially, Motown found some success. It peaked at number 6 on the US R&B chart and was certified Gold in the UK. The album was also a critical success. For the 51st Annual Grammy Awards in 2009, Boyz II Men received two nominations for the album Motown: A Journey Through Hitsville USA (Best R&B Album and Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals for "Ribbon in the Sky").
In 2008, Boyz II Men's three members appeared on Celebrity Don't Forget the Lyrics and created a sensation with their performance. They earned $500,000 for their two nominated charities; the appearance also generated interest in their next release.
2009: Love
In 2009, Boyz II Men announced plans for a new cover album, that covers "artists I don't think people would expect us to cover!" according to Shawn Stockman. Entitled Love, the album was released on , 2009. The album contains remakes of love songs from outside the R&B genre.
2011–2012: Love Cruise and Twenty
Boyz II Men headlined a "Love Cruise" in honor of their 20th anniversary and in observance of Valentine's Day. The cruise took place –14, 2011, and traveled from Miami, Florida, to Nassau, Bahamas. Cruise passengers received a Boyz II Men welcome cocktail party, a concert performance by Boyz II Men, an additional fan appreciation concert by Boyz II Men, a photo session with Boyz II Men (in small groups), a formal prom night, a poker tournament, a deck party with Boyz II Men and a guest DJ, a singles mixer, a gift bag, and onboard drawings for other Boyz II Men events. Couples were able to renew their wedding vows in a special ceremony with Boyz II Men.
Twenty, named in recognition of Boyz II Men's twenty years in the music business, is a double CD album with thirteen original songs and eight rerecorded Boyz II Men classics. It was released on October 25, 2011. Twenty is the group's fourth release through MSM Music Group. It was released in Japan 13 days before its official US release date with the help of Avex Group, the biggest Japanese independent record label.
Originally, Boyz II Men announced a reunion with original member Michael McCary for the Twenty album. On September 6, 2009, at a concert in Virginia Beach, Virginia, Stockman announced that their upcoming 20th anniversary album would "include all 4 members", sparking a tremendous applause.
But soon after that announcement, McCary declined and did not join the project.
As a trio, Boyz II Men performed as special guests on VH1's highly rated VH1 Divas Celebrate Soul concert.
Boyz II Men contributed a cover of Japanese rock band L'Arc~en~Ciel's song "Snow Drop" to their 2012 tribute album.
2013–present: The Package Tour, Collide, and Geico Commercials
On January 22, 2013, the group appeared on The View along with New Kids on the Block and 98 Degrees to announce their joint tour that took place in summer 2013. As of February 20, 2013, Boyz II Men announced that beginning March 1, 2013, they will stop touring and begin performing shows at the Mirage Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.
On January 13, 2014, the trio appeared at the end of an episode of How I Met Your Mother titled "Slapsgiving 3: Slappointment in Slapmarra", performing an a cappella version of the show's song "You Just Got Slapped". Their eleventh album, titled Collide, was released on October 21, 2014.
In 2016, the trio appeared in Grease: Live as the Teen Angels and sang Beauty School Dropout.
Wanya placed 4th for the 22nd season of the ABC realty competition series Dancing With The Stars. They also did music for an animated adaptation of The Snowy Day.
In 2017, the group began starring in television commercials for GEICO Auto Insurance.
On June 24, 2017, a section of Broad Street in Philadelphia, from Christian to Carpenter Streets, was renamed, “Boyz II Men Boulevard” by the city council. Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, where the members of Boyz II Men were once students, is on this section of Broad Street.
In August 2017, it was announced they were releasing a new album titled Under the Streetlight in the Fall. It was released on October 20, 2017.
On January 4, 2018, the group was featured in a new track released by Charlie Puth, titled "If You Leave Me Now", created for Charlie Puth's album Voicenotes.
On September 6, 2018, the group performed at the NFL 2018–2019 season kickoff at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, PA.
On October 2, 2018, the group performed "Ladies Man" on ABC's Dancing with the Stars. DeMarcus Ware and Lindsay Arnold danced a quickstep to the song.
The group is featured on a re-imagined version of Take That's song Love Ain't Here Anymore from their number one selling album Odyssey. Howard Donald revealed during an interview with Magic Radio that "he fulfilled a dream when they recorded this song".
On December 15, 2018, the group staged a concert at the Smart Araneta Coliseum with Filipino girl group DIVAS—a group composed of Kyla, Yeng Constantino, KZ Tandingan and Angeline Quinto titled Boyz II Men with DIVAS.
On September 18, 2019, it was reported that the group would play themselves on the ABC comedy series Schooled.
On September 30, 2019, Boyz II Men announced their Asia Tour, which is slated to take place after returning from their US tour and residency in Las Vegas. They will be visiting cities such as Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok (December 7), Singapore (December 9) and Manila.
Style and influence
Boyz II Men is among the biggest names in a cappella and R&B. With what was called "crossover appeal", Boyz II Men found themselves at the vanguard of the 1990s movement to take R&B back into the mainstream, where it had been back in the 1970s. Their use of hip-hop beats in combination with R&B was not unique, but it was Boyz II Men's enormous success with mainstream audiences in "putting harmony over the hip-hop tracks" that helped usher in the near-total dominance of the R&B genre on the pop charts in the 2000s and 2010s. On January 5, 2012, Boyz II Men were awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. They were featured on the first episode of the 2021 Netflix series This Is Pop, called "The Boyz II Men Effect", about their impact on the boy band scene in the 1990s.
Members
Current
Nathan Morris (1985–present)
Wanya Morris (1987–present)
Shawn Stockman (1988–present)
Former
Michael McCary (1988–2003)
Marc Nelson (1985–1990)
George Baldi (1985–1988)
Jon Shoats (1985–1988)
Marguerite Walker (1985–1988)
Discography
Studio albums
Cooleyhighharmony (1991)
Christmas Interpretations (1993)
II (1994)
Evolution (1997)
Nathan Michael Shawn Wanya (2000)
Full Circle (2002)
Throwback, Vol. 1 (2004)
The Remedy (2006)
Motown: A Journey Through Hitsville USA (2007)
Love (2009)
Twenty (2011)
Collide (2014)
Under the Streetlight (2017)
Filmography
"Going Home" (1995): A Disney Channel concert special filmed during Boyz II Men's "All Around the World Tour" live from the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas.
The group makes a guest appearance in fourth season episode "Twas the Night Before Christening of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in which they sing at Nicky's christening (1993).
"Living In Paradise?" (2000): They appeared as themselves on the hit show Moesha.
Long Shot: They appear as themselves performing at a charity event.
This Is Pop (2021): They are featured on the episode "The Boyz II Men Effect".
Celebrity Wheel of Fortune (2021): Wanya and Shawn play to win money for charities of their choice.
A Very Boyband Christmas (2021): Wanya and Shawn join members of 'Nsync, 98 Degrees and other boy bands to celebrate the holidays.
Live in Front of a Studio Audience (2021): The group performs the theme song of Diff'rent Strokes as the intro to the special’s reenactment of "Willis’s Privacy".
Awards and nominations
American Music Awards
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "5" | 1992
!scope="row" rowspan= "3" |Boyz II Men
|Favorite Soul/R&B New Artist
|
|-
|Favorite Pop/Rock New Artist
|
|-
|Favorite Soul/R&B Band/Duo/Group
|
|-
|"Motownphilly"
|Favorite Soul/R&B Single
|
|-
|Cooleyhighharmony
|Favorite Soul/R&B Album
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2" | 1993
|"End of the Road"
|Favorite Pop/Rock Song
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "3"|Boyz II Men
!scope="row" rowspan= "2"|Favorite Soul/R&B Band/Duo/Group
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "4" | 1995
|
|-
|Favorite Adult Contemporary Artist
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2"|"I'll Make Love to You"
|Favorite Soul/R&B Single
|
|-
|Favorite Pop/Rock Song
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "5" | 1996
!scope="row" rowspan= "2"|II
|Favorite Soul/R&B Album
|
|-
|Favorite Pop/Rock Album
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "4"|Boyz II Men
|Artist of the Year
|
|-
|Favorite Pop/Rock Band/Duo/Group
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2"|Favorite Soul/R&B Band/Duo/Group
|
|-
| 1998
|
|-
Billboard Music Awards
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2" | 1992
|Boyz II Men
|Top Hot 100 Artist
|
|-
|"End of the Road"
!scope="row" rowspan= "2" | Top Hot 100 Song
|
|-
| 1994
|"I'll Make Love to You"
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "3" | 1995
|II
|Top Billboard 200 Album
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2" | Boyz II Men
|Top Artist
|
|-
|Top R&B Artist
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2" | 1996
!scope="row" rowspan= "2" | "One Sweet Day" (with Mariah Carey)
|Top Hot 100 Song
|
|-
|Billboard Music Special Hot 100
|
|-
Grammy Awards
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2" | 1992
|Boyz II Men
|Best New Artist
|
|-
|Cooleyhighharmony
!scope="row" rowspan= "4"|Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal
|
|-
| 1993
|"End of the Road"
|
|-
| 1994
|"Let It Snow"
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "3" | 1995
|!scope="row" rowspan= "2"|"I'll Make Love To You"
|
|-
|Record of the Year
|
|-
|II
|Best R&B Album
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2" | 1996
|!scope="row" rowspan= "2"|"One Sweet Day" (with Mariah Carey)
|Record of the Year
|
|-
|Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2" | 1998
|"A Song For Mama"
|Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal
|
|-
|Evolution
!scope="row" rowspan= "2"|Best R&B Album
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2" | 2001
|Nathan Michael Shawn Wanya
|
|-
|"Pass You By"
!scope="row" rowspan= "2"|Best R&B Performance By a Duo or Group with Vocal
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2" | 2009
|"Ribbon In The Sky"
|
|-
|Motown: A Journey Through Hitsville USA
|Best R&B Album
|
|-
MTV Video Music Awards
!Ref.
|-
| 1993
| "End of the Road"
| rowspan=2|Best R&B Video
|
| rowspan=4|
|-
| rowspan=2|1995
| rowspan=2|"Water Runs Dry"
|
|-
| Best Cinematography
|
|-
| 1996
| "One Sweet Day" (with Mariah Carey)
| Best R&B Video
|
Soul Train Music Awards
|-
|1992
|Boyz II Men
|Best New R&B/Soul Artist
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "3"|1993
!scope="row" rowspan= "2"|"End of the Road"
|Song of the Year
|
|-
|Best R&B Music Video
|
|-
|"Please Don't Go"
|Best R&B Single – Group, Band or Duo
|
|-
!scope="row" rowspan= "2"|1995
|II
|R&B/Soul Album Group, Band or Duo
|
|-
|"I'll Make Love to You"
|R&B/Soul Single Group, Band or Duo
|
|-
|1996
|Boyz II Men
|Entertainer of the Year
|
|-
|1998
|Evolution
!scope="row" rowspan= "2"|Best R&B/Soul Album - Group, Band or Duo
|
|-
|2003
|Full Circle
|
|-
See also
List of best-selling music artists
List of artists who reached number one in the United States
References
External links
African-American musical groups
American contemporary R&B musical groups
American vocal groups
Ballad music groups
American boy bands
Grammy Award winners
Motown artists
Musical groups established in 1988
Musical groups from Philadelphia
Musical quartets
Musical trios
Sony Music Publishing artists
Vocal quartets
Vocal trios
Avex Group artists | true | [
"Fragments From A Space Cadet is the debut album by Kenneth Bager for which he received the Statens Kunstfond's (The Danish Arts Foundation's) award. It was released on May 24, 2006.\n\nTrack listing \n\"Fragment Six\" (Speak my name) ft. Camilla Munck\n\"Fragment Zero\" (And I kept dubbin')\n\"Fragment One\" (And I kept Hearing) ft. Gisli\n\"Fragment Two\" (The First Picture) ft. Julee Cruise\n\"Fragment Eight\" (The Sound of Swing) ft. The Hellerup Cool School Choir\n\"Fragment Five\" (Moonlight Talking) ft. Camilla Munck\n\"Fragment Seven\" (Les Fleurs) ft. Julee Cruise\n\"Fragment Three\" (Walther & Viola)\n\"Fragment Ten\" (On the floor — dub) ft. Julee Cruise\n\"Fragment Four\" (Love won't leave me alone) ft. Nikolaj Grandjean & Jean Luc Ponty\n\"Fragment Nine\" (Would you like to seduce me?)\n\"Fragment Eleven\" (The day after yesterday - a love story in five parts)\nPart 1: The Meeting\nPart 2: Traveling\nPart 3: The story ft. Julee Cruise\nPart 4: Reflections\nPart 5: It'll never happen again ft. Julee Cruise & Syd Matters\n\nReferences \n\n2006 debut albums",
"Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography is an unauthorized biography of actor Tom Cruise, written by Andrew Morton. The book was published in the United States in hardcover format on January 15, 2008 by St. Martin's Press, with a first printing of 400,000 copies, and an audio format on five CDs by Macmillan Audio.\n\nCruise's lawyers and the Church of Scientology have released several statements which question the truthfulness of assertions made by Morton in the book. In an official 15-page statement released to the press, the Church called the book \"a bigoted, defamatory assault replete with lies\". The book was not published in the United Kingdom or New Zealand due to strict libel laws in those countries. Although initially not published in Australia, it was later published there and became popular.\n\nThe book hit number one on Amazon.com's list of top sellers three days after it was published, and was number one on The New York Times Best Sellers list one week after publication. It was the number one bestseller in Australia for publisher AbeBooks in 2008. The book received mixed and critical reviews in The New York Times. The San Jose Mercury opined that it should be taken \"with the proper grain of salt\".\n\nContents \nMorton's book describes Cruise's relationship with Katie Holmes, his sexuality, and Cruise and Holmes' beliefs. Morton also asserts in the book that Holmes had to \"audition\" for the status of Cruise's girlfriend, and won the part over other actresses. The book also discusses details about Cruise's marriages to Mimi Rogers and Nicole Kidman, his relationship with Penélope Cruz, his behavior on The Oprah Winfrey Show, and his denunciation of Brooke Shields for using anti-depressants to help her cope with postpartum depression. Morton consulted a former senior Scientologist, who asserted that Kidman's lawyer had advised her not to publicly discuss Scientology or to speak out against it, even though she \"hated\" Scientology when Cruise left her in 2000. Morton's source stated \"I told the lawyer if she wants to stay with the children she will have to be quiet and not speak out about Scientology.\" Morton writes that Holmes joined Scientology in June 2006, and agreed that \"if she or any of her children were ever to suffer mental or terminal illness, they must turn only to Scientology's treatments\". Morton asserts that model Sofia Vergara stopped seeing Cruise in 2005 weeks before he met Holmes, and Vergara felt \"she had been deliberately targeted not only as a possible bride for Tom, but as a high-profile Scientology recruit who would be an alluring figurehead for a future recruitment drive in Latin America\".\n\nMorton asserts in the book that Cruise is the \"de facto second-in-charge\" in the Church of Scientology. When asked by the Associated Press what evidence he had about this, Morton stated \"Scientology would be a shadow of what it is today if it had not been for the involvement of Tom Cruise. He has been the poster boy. More than that, he has been recruiting fellow celebrities - people like Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith. ... More than that, he's been the front man for the organization.\"\n\nMorton writes that Church of Scientology leader David Miscavige consults Cruise on \"every aspect of planning and policy,\" that Miscavige joined Cruise and Holmes on their 2006 honeymoon in the Maldives, and that Church of Scientology officials select many of the employees that staff Cruise's mansion. According to Morton, Miscavige invited Cruise to the Church of Scientology's Gold Base in Hemet, California in 1989.\n\nKidman and Cruise were invited to Gold Base in 1990 after spending time together on the set of Days Of Thunder. Morton writes \"When Tom confided to the Scientology leader about the couple's fantasy of running through a meadow of wild flowers together, his friend apparently decided to make his dream come true.\" Morton writes that around the same time Cruise was beginning his relationship with Rogers, Miscavige made an announcement at a Church of Scientology rally, \"The most important recruit ever is in the process of being secured. His arrival will change the face of Scientology forever.\"\n\nResearch \nAccording to Morton, he began researching Tom Cruise after publishing his best-selling book on Princess Diana, Diana: Her True Story. Morton stated that he became interested in writing about the actor after watching Cruise jump on Oprah's couch during a May 23, 2005 appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show, and lecture Matt Lauer on his beliefs regarding psychiatry during a June 24, 2005 appearance on The Today Show \"I wondered: what is a 43-year-old man, who has been married twice before to women he has said were the loves of his life, with his son and daughter watching, doing behaving in this fashion — all because of Katie Holmes, a woman he has known for a matter of days? ... What was going on? I wanted to know more.\"\n\nIn an interview with the Associated Press, Morton stated that he asked Cruise for an interview, but was turned down: \"I asked Tom for an interview and he declined. The Church of Scientology has got a very controversial reputation and that is what he is linked with. An unauthorized biography would essentially be a compromise … I want to investigate it without any kind of fetters.\" Morton consulted with private investigator and former adult film actor Paul Baressi, who investigated Cruise's private life. He also consulted with Los Angeles, California attorney Graham Berry. Baressi stated he had begun investigating Cruise after his marriage to Nicole Kidman ended, but after six years of research on the actor had not been able to find any evidence that Cruise was gay. Baressi gave all of his research to Morton, and later told InTouch magazine: \"Everything I have found, and everything I know, points to Tom being heterosexual.\" Morton also traveled to Toronto, Ontario, Canada to interview people who knew Cruise when he was filming Cocktail. Several Paramount Pictures employees were interviewed about Cruise's termination by Sumner Redstone. The book had initially been planned for a February 2006 publication date.\n\nPrior to the book's publication, legal counsel for Cruise made statements to the press regarding the author's research. When an attorney for Tom Cruise read reports that Morton had obtained letters asserting Cruise had a homosexual affair while filming Eyes Wide Shut, he commented on a November 2005 letter he had written to Morton: \"I wrote a letter to Mr. Morton back in November and said he obviously was entitled to write the book but 'make sure you check your facts'. If he tries to use my letter to create the impression that Mr. Cruise did have a gay affair, we will certainly sue … because the story is false. Mr. Cruise is not gay.\" In an interview with InTouch Weekly, Cruise's attorney Bertram Fields commented on the book: \"To the extent that Mr. Morton's book sticks to the truth, it can't 'ruin' or 'harm' Tom … My guess is this book will be dull except for those parts that are lies.\" Cruise's publicist also stated that the book will consist of fabricated lies.\n\nMedia coverage \nOn November 11, 2007, the Daily Express reported that Andrew Morton had gone into hiding due to threats from Scientologists related to his work on the book. Morton was quoted as stating: \"I have received threats from the Scientologists and things have become pretty heavy — to the extent that it's almost more than my lawyers can handle … I’m not telling anyone where I’m moving to. I intend to disappear for a while.\" This quote was later repeated in other media sources. On November 23, 2007, the Daily Express issued an apology to the Church of Scientology. The paper stated that their original piece about threats from Scientologists to Morton was incorrect, and wrote: \"We apologise to the Church of Scientology and its members for the embarrassment and distress caused by the article.\" A December 2007 article in the New York Post stated: \"Mumbles out of London say Morton changed his phone number, moved from his home and lived in a secret place because Certain Persons were hassling him.\"\n\nWhen St. Martin's Press heard of a November 2007 InTouch Weekly cover story on the contents of the book, the publisher responded by stating that InTouch had not received an advance copy of Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography and was simply speculating. Brian Smith of St. Martin's Press was interviewed for the InTouch article, and commented on the book: \"No one has dared to write a book like this. So it's going to really be dealing with stuff no one has written about before.\"\n\nResponse from Cruise and Church of Scientology \nThe Daily Telegraph reported that lawyers for Cruise were preparing a lawsuit against publisher St. Martin's Press, seeking US$113 million in damages. Eliot Abelson, general counsel for the Church of Scientology, discussed the possibility of litigation from the Church in statements to the Daily Mail. An article in The Times wrote \"The Church of Scientology is reported to be considering filing suit against the US publishers.\"\n\nThe book has been criticized by representatives for both Tom Cruise and the Church of Scientology. In an interview with The Daily Mail, attorney Bertram Fields called the book a \"boring, poorly researched book by a man who never talked to anyone involved in Tom Cruise's life or anyone close to him,\" and criticized what he believed to be Morton's lack of independent research for the work. Fields said that Cruise would not read the book, saying \"He has no intention of reading it. He's very, very busy with a lot of things right now.\" Paula Wagner, Tom Cruise's business partner in their company Cruise/Wagner Productions, released a statement supporting Cruise and criticizing Morton's work. Wagner called the book \"a disgraceful piece of gossip-mongering, filled with distortions and outright lies that no sensible person will take seriously\".\n\nEliot Abelson said that the Church had attempted to contact Morton and give him a tour, but \"received nothing\". Abelson stated \"This was a pre-ordained mission to trash Tom Cruise. He didn't ask to speak to David Miscavige and wrote some horrible things about him which are totally untrue. No one has ever made complaints of that kind,\" and denied that Cruise was second-in-command of the Church of Scientology \"He is a parishioner, a well respected parishioner, but that's what he is. The only person who runs the Church and makes policy decisions is David Miscavige.\" \"It's not too late for St. Martin's Press to pull this book,\" Abelson said.\n\nOn January 14, 2008, Church of Scientology public affairs director Karin Pouw released a 15-page statement criticizing the book. In the statement, the Church of Scientology called the book \"a bigoted, defamatory assault replete with lies,\" and said that Cruise \"is a Scientology parishioner and holds no official or unofficial position in the Church hierarchy,\" and that \"Accuracy and truth were not on Morton's agenda.\" Cruise's publicity firm Rogers & Cowan, also issued a statement, which criticized Morton for not interviewing \"one person who has known or worked with Tom\" in the past 25 years, and also criticized Morton for writing \"outlandish and malicious lies to sell books\".\n\nIn January 2008 the niece of David Miscavige released a statement on the internet in favor of Morton's book. Jenna Miscavige Hill, whose father Ron Miscavige is the older brother of David Miscavige, criticized Pouw's statement about the book. Hill stated: \"I am absolutely shocked at how vehemently you insist upon not only denying the truths that have been stated about the church in that biography, but then take it a step further and tell outright lies.\" Hill's statement was part of an open letter to a Church of Scientology official which described how her family had been broken apart by Scientology policies. In response, Karin Pouw told the Agence France-Presse \"The church stands by its statement of 14 January. The church does not respond to newsgroup postings.\" Hill told the Agence France-Presse that she had released the statement in a public forum to draw attention to the Scientology practice of disconnection.\n\nThe book's publisher, St. Martin's Press, called the possibility of a lawsuit from Tom Cruise and the Church of Scientology \"unfortunate\", stating \"It is unfortunate that lawyers for both Mr. Cruise and Scientology have felt the need to threaten us with legal action at every step of the way.\" In a statement to Usmagazine.com the publisher supported Morton's research on the book: \"In the two years that we have worked with Andrew Morton on this book, we have been deeply impressed by his commitment to going beyond the rumors to get the facts that would enable him to paint a balanced and accurate portrait of such an enigmatic public figure.\"\n\nReception\n\nSales \nIn November 2007, Irish On-Line reported that the book would not be published in the United Kingdom, because it was anticipated not to contain anything \"sensational\" about Cruise that would make it a blockbuster. An article in the New York Post attributed this to the \"scandalous\" nature of the book, and what the paper referred to as \"UK's celebrity-friendly libel laws\". For similar reasons the book was not published by major booksellers in New Zealand and Australia, though an underground market for the book sprung up on auction site eBay there; the book was also available in some Australian independent bookstores, with buyers having to pay a significant premium on the cover price. Copies of the book sold for over A$60 on eBay Australia, and one eBay seller commented \"These things don't happen too often. The book has generated so much attention and the more people are hearing about it, the more that they want to buy it. The censorship factor has also had a major impact.\"\n\nThe book hit number nine on Amazon.com's list of top sellers the day it was published in the United States, and was at the number one spot three days after publication. Lycos reported that Internet searches for \"Tom Cruise\" jumped 333 percent the week the book was published. The book hit number one on The New York Times Best Sellers list one week after it was published, and as of February 3, 2008 it was still at the top of the list for hardback non-fiction. As of January 25, 2008, the book was number 16 on Amazon.com's top sellers. On January 31, 2008 the book was listed at number three in non-fiction on a list of \"Publishers Weekly Best-Sellers\" by the Associated Press, and reached the fifth-highest new entry on Nielsen BookScan's survey in February 2008. Though certain bookstores in Australia refused to sell the book due to legal concerns, it was the number one bestseller in Australia for on-line bookseller AbeBooks in 2008, and the number one most-borrowed non-fiction book at libraries in Brisbane in September 2008.\n\nReviews \nThe book received a mixed review in The New York Times, with Janet Maslin writing that \"Mr. Morton has found a number of former Scientologists who are willing to speak freely, and in some cases vengefully, about the group’s purported inner workings. Mr. Morton’s eagerness to include their voices leads him to push the limits of responsible reporting.\" She also stated that Morton, while \"readily assailable\" for some of his remarks in the book, \"is in some larger sense an astute observer. His overall impression of Mr. Cruise makes sense.\" In a separate review, Ada Calhoun of The New York Times wrote that Morton \"…champions the indignation of mostly anonymous former Scientologists in this brutal biography of the controversial religion’s most famous advocate, Tom Cruise\", noted that \"many attributed quotations lack sources\", and concluded her review with the observation that at times the book \"feels about as reliable as the tabloids and yet, astonishingly, somehow meaner.\" Writing in Entertainment Weekly, Mark Harris gave the book a grade of \"C-\", and said \"Cruise emerges from Morton's takedown moderately scratched but as uncracked as ever.\"\n\nTeresa Budasi of the Chicago Tribune described the book as \"fascinating\" — though Budasi also brought up a \"question as to what’s true and what isn’t.\" Budasi summed up her impression of the work, writing \"Morton’s book is as much an indictment on Cruise’s chosen faith as it is the life story of one of the world’s biggest movie stars. And by the end you realize that “Scientologist” is what will end up being the role of his lifetime.\"\n\nReviewing the book in The Wall Street Journal, Dave Shiflett said that Morton portrayed Cruise as \"a top-gun Scientologist who is up to no good,\" and that \"Mr. Morton, apparently unfazed by the reputation of the group's notoriously hair-triggered legal department, leaves few stones unhurled.\" Stefanie Roberts of The Independent Florida Alligator wrote \"Author Andrew Morton's narrative, though for the most part irritatingly unbiased, does a fair job of reaffirming how far gone Cruise truly is.\" Roberts wrote that the book would have drawn in more readers if it had \"taken a few more obvious jabs at Cruise.\" Writing in the San Jose Mercury News, Tony Hicks criticized parts of the work, and recommended that it be taken \"with the proper grain of salt\". Hicks wrote that \"Holes and all, it's a hard book to put down, especially with wild tales of Scientology spilling forth page after page. The entertainment value falls off toward book's end, when Morton attempts to wrap up his story with some editorializing and a diagnosis of both Cruise and his religion that, while seeming accurate to a degree, nevertheless comes off preachy.\"\n\nSee also \n\nBeing Tom Cruise\nRelationship of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes\n Trapped in the Closet (South Park)\n Tom Cruise: Unauthorized (1998)\nTom Cruise: All the World's A Stage (2006)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n\n \n \n\n2008 non-fiction books\nTom Cruise\nAmerican biographies\nUnauthorized biographies\nScientology-related controversies\nBooks critical of Scientology"
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